Chapter Twelve
July
Trey
After those first uneasy days, and Callie’s introduction to the important players in town at the crawfish boil, Trey reluctantly accepted that she didn’t seem likely to be heading back north anytime soon.
He did what he could to ensure that she was accepted all over the island as the new owner of the library.
Even if, in the back of his mind, he was mostly convinced he’d be able to talk her into selling the place to him before her required year here was up.
She’d agreed to think about it at least, which was all he could ask for.
As June turned into July, she was riding Khaki’s bike into town a few times a week for yoga classes at Serene Dreams, and had even let Tricia and the O’Brien sisters coax her out for drinks at the pub a couple of times.
If he were honest with himself, she’d fit in with island life much more quickly than he’d have expected, and it wasn’t just because of the way Khaki’s friendship had familiarized her with all the usual suspects around here.
He supposed her work at the library, where she had to be able to talk to people from all walks of life on a regular basis, made it easier for her to settle in.
In the meantime, he continued working on rehabbing the other rooms on the first floor of the library.
And Callie’s suggestions had been smart and in keeping with the style of the rest of the place.
She’d even suggested renting out the reading room as an event venue for wedding receptions or conventions, something he’d been considering himself.
He certainly hadn’t needed the 13,000 or so square feet of the reading room and stacks for living space.
And Callie must have come to the same conclusion herself.
He knew Khaki had considered something similar.
And it had been with that in mind that he’d been renovating the bedroom suites on the first floor.
So on that at least, they were all on the same page.
After the night when they’d found the cloakroom in shambles and the note on Stella’s collar, the pranksters hadn’t struck again.
Maybe they’d found out that the police were involved now and didn’t want to risk getting caught?
Whatever the reason, it had been a relief not to worry about getting woken up in the middle of the night by eerie sounds, or worrying what he’d find the next time he opened a door.
He hadn’t realized just how much he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But now that fear was, if not gone, then at least reduced, he could see how it had loomed over him.
And though Callie hadn’t mentioned it, he knew she was just as relieved by the apparent end to the ghostly hijinks.
He was thinking about all of this and admiring the richness of the stain he’d just finished putting on the old card catalog cabinet when he heard a crash from upstairs, followed by some very salty language from Callie.
Concerned she might have hurt herself, he jogged up the basement stairs into the foyer of the main floor and saw her farther down the hall gathering up a collection of mass market paperbacks that had clearly spilled from the cardboard box lying on its side next to her.
Stella, licking her paw without a care in the world, had helpfully climbed up to sit on a second box nearby.
“What happened?” he asked, moving closer so he could start helping her put the paperbacks into the empty box. “I heard you drop it all the way in the basement.”
Pushing a lock of dark hair out of her face, Callie blew out a frustrated breath.
“I decided it was time I started to unpack some of my boxes. It’s been weeks since we moved them in, but I have a tendency to forget things exist unless I lay eyes on them every once in a while.
I noticed these were still unpacked this morning when I went into the storage room under the stairs to look for my second-favorite pair of sunglasses.
I thought I could handle carrying these on my own, but clearly they were too heavy. ”
“I have a dolly for this kind of thing,” he said, not quite able to stop himself from chiding a little. “I thought you would know better as a librarian. Surely, they don’t allow y’all to just haul books around. That’s a workman’s comp claim waiting to happen.”
Callie’s lips twisted ruefully. “I know. But we usually had book carts at the library. I couldn’t find any of them though, and I didn’t want to bother you.”
“They’re in the storage room in the stacks,” Trey admitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me we’d need them down here, since the books were mainly up there. I’ll put them on the dumbwaiter though and get them down here asap.”
The dumbwaiter had been how books were hauled up and downstairs before the elevator was installed in the ’80s. And since the elevator was dimly lit and like something out of a horror movie, both Trey and Callie had agreed they’d avoid using it as much as possible.
“Thanks,” she said, now with a grateful smile. Then, noticing the cat was on top of her book box, she said, “Move, Stella,” and pushed the little cat off her perch.
Lifting the box Stella had vacated, Callie held it against her chest. “I was just going to put these in my suite for now. Until I decide which of the rooms down here I want to turn into a library.”
“You don’t even have shelves in your suite,” Trey argued with a shake of his head. “Let’s just put them in the room next to yours for now. And I’ll move a couple of the bookcases in there.”
He gave a mock shudder, then added, “I’ll have to use the elevator, but I guess I can endure it if that’s what it means to be a gentleman. It’s what Captain Wentworth would do, I’m sure of it.”
As he’d hoped she would, Callie laughed at the reference.
They’d instituted a weekly movie night—joined sometimes by Bobby and Tricia or some of the other friends Callie had made among the islanders—but more often than not, it was just the two of them.
Once she’d learned he’d never seen her favorite Jane Austen movie, Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman, she’d insisted that he had to watch it or she couldn’t possibly allow him to reside in her library.
“In fact,” she’d told him in exasperation, “you’ll need to watch the trifecta before your sins can be atoned for.”
This had turned out to mean that he also was required to watch the Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen Pride & Prejudice and a version of Persuasion that had no one he’d ever heard of in it.
The latter had ended up being his favorite of the three since the people seemed more realistic.
And Captain Wentworth was a navy man who knew the water.
As an island dweller he could respect that.
As part of his education in the ways of Jane Austen’s world, Callie had explained to him about the rules of gentlemanly conduct by which men of the upper classes and gentry had to abide.
“They didn’t all abide by it, of course,” she’d said with a shake of her head.
“There are all sorts of examples in Austen of gentlemen who were definitely not following the code—Wickham, Willoughby, and of course Mr. Elliot. They were all scoundrels, really.”
Trey had looked over at Callie on the other side of the sofa and couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was when she was talking about a subject she felt passionate about.
And clearly the novels of Jane Austen fascinated her a great deal.
It hadn’t been the first time he’d thought about kissing her, but it was the first time he’d regretted the fact that he couldn’t just ask her if he could kiss her like he would any other available woman he wanted.
Their relationship was complicated. They not only lived together, but he was here at her pleasure.
If she decided she wanted him gone, she could ask him to leave and—because he was a gentleman—he’d have to.
Plus, he was working on renovations to the library, which made him not only her tenant but also her employee.
It couldn’t have been a more tangled situation if he’d shown up with his great-aunt to tour her massive estate while he thought she was out of town.
Yes, he was Elizabeth Bennet to Callie’s Mr. Darcy in this instance.
He was a realist about these things and as the owner of the library she was definitely his superior in this instance.
That had been weeks ago, however, and now, standing in the foyer of the library with a box of her books in his arms, he felt like a golden god because he’d just made a librarian laugh. He was down bad and he wasn’t even mad about it.
“Come on,” he told her now, not wanting to draw any more attention to the fact that he was acting like a fool than he had to.
And without waiting for her to follow, he started walking down the hall toward the room next to her suite where they were going to store the book boxes until he could move the shelves down here.
The room he’d suggested was one of the ones he hadn’t turned into a bedroom with an en suite yet, so it had only been painted in a neutral cream color.
He’d also stuck one of the library tables that had once lived in the reading room in here, thinking it might be a good place for meetings or the like.
He placed the box on the table and watched as Callie lowered the box she’d been carrying to the empty place next to it.
“Are there more in the storage room that you want in here?” he asked her, deciding he might as well get them moved in here while he was thinking about it.
She nodded. “About eight more book boxes. And a few boxes of clothes and stuff I stowed and then forgot about.”
Once he retrieved the dolly from where he’d tucked it away downstairs, they made quick work of moving the boxes from the storage room under the stairs into the room next to Callie’s.
Including a small trunk covered with library-themed stickers—including one that read, get in losers, we’re going to the library.