16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Meg
I didn’t do anything right away, aside from posting a few pictures of La Crosse and friend Jocelyn Klein because I had no idea if she’d friend me back or how long it might take. Otherwise, in typical Margaret Lehn Corley form, I had to enhance my misery by stewing for days. I’d shown up for work when scheduled, but I can’t say I was engaged. I basically went through the motions, doing the easiest chores, checking books in, checking books out, pretending to be a good librarian when all I was doing was staring off into space while a burning swath of anger slowly consumed my soul.
After a very long pep talk standing in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, I decided that today I was going to take action about the Lance disaster once and for all…of course by the time I was dressed, it was time to walk to work.
I didn’t look up when someone entered through the front door, though it was impossible not to notice the whoosh from the glass and the way it sucked the warm air out into the vestibule. The weather had cooled and I’d donned a fall sweater the same day I realized Lance was a backstabbing bastard.
“Hello again,” said a deep voice, one faintly familiar.
I glanced up to see the geeky guy who’d come in last summer. “Hi. Back for some archival work?” I asked, anxious for him to go do whatever it was he’d come in for and leave me alone.
“Actually, no.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking as awkward as Ron Weasley when he was trying to ask Hermoine Granger to the Yule Ball. “Monique put together a very thorough research packet on my house.”
“That’s wonderful to hear. She’s good at her job.”
“Yes.” He didn’t move on but stood there staring as if he might be waiting for me to introduce him to the next bestseller .
Darn it, I really wasn’t in the mood to be congenial today. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“You have DVDs here, right?”
I nodded, my librarian smile waning. “Yes, and audio books.”
“Well, my niece is coming to visit for a few days and I was wondering if the library might have a copy of the complete set of Harry Potter movies.”
“Of course we do, but they’re almost always checked out. You can also stream the movies on Peacock.”
He craned his neck, looking toward my monitor. “Is it possible to see if they’re in the library now?”
“Sure, sorry. I should have done that right away.” I sighed loudly as I quickly logged on to the computer and performed a search. “Oh, dear, they’re out, but they’re due back in three days.”
“Okay, thank you.” He still stood there, though now the dude was scraping his teeth over his bottom lip. Sure, he was cute, but I had donned my armor this morning and was on the warpath.
I pointed to the DVD section. “You might want to take a peek at what we have on the shelf. There are dozens of movies for kids of all ages.”
He glanced in the direction of my finger, then gave me a nod and disappeared, thank God. Determined to end things with Lance in order to reclaim my soul, I left the counter in the hands of another librarian and sought the solace of my office.
I brought up Facebook on my phone. Jocelyn Klein had accepted my friend request. My palms perspired as I deliberated over what I was about to do. Ever since I decided to friend her, I’d written about twenty-five notes to the woman and hadn’t been satisfied with any of them. On one hand, I didn’t want to break up their marriage, but on the other, if I were married to Lance (aka Virgil), I would want to know if he cheated on me.
So, I clicked on “message” and typed: I took a cruise to Bermuda and met a man who said he was Lance Lovell. He told me he was single and he was a doctor who worked in the ER. We hit it off and a couple months later he came to visit me during Octoberfest. Later, I discovered there is no Dr. Lance Lovell anywhere. This led me to dig deeper where I learned that Lance is actually Virgil Klein, your husband. I felt it important for you to know what is happening behind your back. You can find out more on Lance’s Facebook page. I inserted a link to the backstabber’s profile.
Next, I typed a message to Lance, the fake doctor: Hello, Virgil. How Is Jocelyn? Never try to contact me again. You are dead to me .
I waited a few minutes then unfriended fake Lance. I’d make sure Jocelyn saw my message, then I’d unfriend her as well.
There. The ugliness was finished.
I hoped.
But why did I still want to crawl into a hole and die? I grabbed a tissue and dabbed my eyes. I hated being put in this position. For all I knew Jocelyn was a perfectly nice person and I might have just ruined her marriage. But who would want to be married to a scumbag? Maybe I just gave her the impetus she needed to divorce the lying bastard. Was there anything positive somewhere in all this awfulness? Nah, finding anything good in this whole disaster was about as likely as me ever meeting a man who was actually a decent guy.
Nonetheless, why did doing the right thing slay me as if I’d been a Judas? I didn’t outright tell Joycelyn that Lance was cheating. I just inferred the bastard was a douche.
A light tap sounded on my door and Mr. Geek popped his head in.
Dammit, can’t I get a moment to myself?
“Hey, did you find anything your niece might like?” I asked, surprised I was still able to conjure my friendly librarian voice.
“Maybe I’ll subscribe to Peacock.” He smiled apprehensively. I’m kind of a sucker for shy geeks, but this one was going to have to focus his cute grin on some other nerdy girl. “Um…you look like you could use an ice cream.”
Suddenly self-conscious, I ran my hand over my ponytail, hoping I didn’t have a gazillion flyaways, which happened whenever I forgot to use hairspray. I loved ice cream no matter if it was fall and chilly out. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes.” He smiled again, a bit bolder this time. Did the dude have to be wickedly hot? Dammit, I didn’t give a whit if his face was hideous. Men were all in the dungeon as far I as I was concerned. “When do you get off?”
I glanced at my watch. “Not soon enough.”
“When?” he persisted.
“Five minutes.”
“Then I’ll see you at the front door in five.”
Before I could refuse, he left. Cripes, I didn’t even know his name. How the hell was I going to get out of this? Elaine thought the dude was cute, maybe he could take her instead.
After finding out that Elaine had left early for the day, I zipped up my sherpa jacket as I looked longingly at the back doors—the ones facing the parking lot. I could make a run for it, but that would be cruel, and I wasn’t cruel. Even if I might have just destroyed a cruise ship entertainer’s marriage. Besides, I needed chocolate. Copious amounts of it.
Geeky Guy was there as I pushed out the front. “You’re here,” I said because I sort of thought he wouldn’t be. I mean, I’d just been strung along by a cheating fiend. Why would a shy geek keep his word?
He glanced at his Tag Heuer smartwatch. “And you’re on time.”
I crossed my arms and faced him. “First of all—”
He offered his hand. “I’m Mike. Mike Reynolds.”
“I’m Margaret Lehn Corley, but please call me Meg.” Of course, I shook his hand—it would be rude not to. “You should know right off the bat that I’m recovering from a hellacious breakup and I don’t think I’ll ever want to date again in my life.”
“Okaaay.” He gestured down Main Street. “You still want an ice cream?”
“I should say no.” But chocolate beckoned, making me bite the corner of my lip. “The Pearl Ice Cream Parlor?”
“Is there any other place in La Cross that serves it creamy and homemade?” he asked, smiling. Damn him for having an enamoring smile.
“All right, then. I’m getting a chocolate dipped cone with two scoops of Mississippi Mud.” There. Judge me by my voluptuous bod and see if I care.
“Only two?”
I gestured to my hips. “I might look like a glutton, but two scoops is my limit.”
“Wait. First of all, even though you’re only doing this out of pity, you most definitely do not look like a glutton. Secondly, if you just broke up with your boyfriend, you deserve more. After all, a standard ice cream scoop is only four ounces. In my book, major heartbreaks definitely qualify for an entire pint.”
I tried to glare at him, but a snigger shot through my nose. “I like how you think.”
“Thank you.” Mike offered his elbow. “Shall we walk, or would you prefer to travel by electric motorcar? ”
Though a voice in the left side of my brain told me to keep my hands to myself, the right insisted it was rude not to. Regardless, I still wasn’t fond of riding in cars and only drove when necessary. “Walking would be nice.”
Once my fingers were gripping his rather well-muscled arm, I relaxed a little. “You have an electric car?”
He shrugged. “A Volt. Doing my part to help combat global warming.”
“Commendable,” I said, recalling how Lance had discarded his water bottle on the floor of the bus in Bermuda. That should have been a major red flag right there.
Along the way, I discovered that Mike Reynolds wasn’t only a techie guy, he was the Chief Information Officer at UW La Crosse. He grew up in Madison and had an older sister who still lived there. His niece was seven and wasn’t coming to visit until her Christmas break, but he needed an excuse to pay a visit to the library.
Damn. Why did the dude make it totally impossible not to like him?
He had the most beautiful pair of gray eyes I’d ever seen—deep, soulful, maybe a little guarded as if he’d been hurt before. Interestingly, he didn’t yammer on and on about himself. He just answered my questions, then he asked one in return.
“Do you have any family in town?” I asked as we slid into a booth, me with a pint, him with a waffle cone.
“Nope. How about you?”
“My mom just moved here. We found a nice assisted living facility for Grandma, too. Like you did, my mother bought an old Victorian except hers needs a lot of work.”
He licked his cookies’n cream. “Who said mine didn’t?”
“Oh, no. You bought a fixer, too?”
“It’s not horribly run down, but there are a few things I’d like to do to modernize a bit.”
“You’re not restoring back to the olden days?”
“Nope. I’d have to gut the place. It already has wall-to-wall carpeting and conventional heating and air conditioning.” He licked his lips, making them shiny. “What about your dad?”
“He lives in Queensland, Australia.” I loved him, but as the years passed, I saw him less and less. Now that I paid my own airfare, I couldn’t afford to fly as much as I did when I was a kid.
“Whoa, that must be a story. ”
I took another bite of Mississippi Mud and savored it. “A tale of woe and too many winters.”
I ended up glossing over my childhood and the fact that I’d been born down under, quickly moving on to more interesting topics—La Crosse and how much he loves it here. We talked about football and how well my beloved Badgers were doing this year. It was refreshing to learn he was an avid fan—not an Ohio State follower like the asshole who must no longer be named. Mike had actually read all of the Harry Potter books as well as all of the Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games series. He liked to fish and putter in the yard. He had made it his quest to hike all the trails around Grandad’s Bluff. And this winter, he thought he might give skiing a try.
He took a bite of his crunchy waffle cone. “Do you enjoy classical music?”
“Love it. I played the oboe in my high school orchestra.”
“Played? What about now?”
“No time, I guess.” Also, by the time I hit college, blowing on a double reed instrument gave me a dizzying headache and I’d had to quit. But that sounded lame even if I didn’t care about impressing any man at the moment.
He used a pink napkin to wipe a dab of ice cream from the corner of his mouth. “I’ll bet you’re amazing.”
I was passable. “Definitely not a protégé. I’m a far better librarian.”
He chomped another bite of his cone and a big piece dropped onto the table which he cleaned up with his napkin. “Well, I know you’re not wanting to date or anything, but there’s a Bach recital at Christ Church—across from the library. It’s Saturday at seven.”
“So you’ve discovered things to do in La Crosse?” I asked because I’d been the one to tell him about the events website.
“Yep.” He popped the last of his cone in his mouth. “So, you want to be my sidekick?”
“I love Bach,” I replied before I could catch myself. What was it about this guy? First he buys me the best ice cream in town and now Bach?
“Then you’ll go?”
Did the man’s eyes have to be so tempting, so difficult to ignore? “I can’t.”
“I mean it’s not a date or anything,” He leaned his chin on his hand, reminding me of the brainiac coach of the Miami Dolphins, and totally pulling off the sexy-nerdy-I’m-into-sports-but-not-a-jock look.
Why now? Why today after I finally got up enough nerve to eighty- six Lance?
Mike seemed like a real sweetheart—a prime catch. The problem was me. I didn’t trust myself to ID a nice guy in a room full of them. After all, I’d thought Lance was a decent human being—a doctor who wanted to chill and be scruffy while he was on vacation. At the moment, I was too wounded and too discouraged to let Mike Reynolds charm me no matter how much my ovaries disagreed.
I opened my mouth to refuse when he gently touched my arm, making tingles skitter all the way up to the back of my neck. “Please?”
My head swam. It seemed the word “no” had escaped my vocabulary. “How about if I meet you there?”