Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
PRESTON
Preston pulled up the list of active book hold requests, trying not to jam his fingers onto his workstation’s keyboard too harshly, thinking how he’d love to give Harmony Hale a piece of his mind.
His boss, Katherine, had informed him he would not need to address concerns about the library at the next town hall meeting—because a special inquiry was being planned just to give Cheryl Weaver a chance to call his professional judgment into question and get his programming canceled, her list of books banned, and probably Preston fired. It had already sent him into a spiral of anxiety and sleepless nights. If he’d only had a chance to speak at the meeting, if only they’d taken the time to double-check the agenda, maybe, maybe , he could have diverted all this. But no, not when there were festivals to exclaim over and their unnecessarily attractive promoters to march in and disrupt everything. If that woman was here, he’d tell her what he thought of that, forget shutting up, he’d say—
She was here.
Sweeping through the library’s one automatic door, caramel-blonde hair fluttering in its breeze, like the skirt of her teal dress over her swiveling hips as she headed past the art display cases, the carts of discarded books for sale, the flyer-covered corkboards, straight to where Preston stood behind the main circulation counter.
He braced his palms on that counter, feeling somewhat like a giant wave was about to knock him over or a train was about to run him down. “Here comes trouble,” he muttered.
Apparently not as under his breath as he’d thought, because she sang out, “Reporting for duty!” with a jaunty salute.
“ Shhh .” The library wasn’t very busy this early, but that only meant her brassy voice stood out among the patrons quietly reading in stuffed chairs, studying at tables, or working at the computer stations. Not that someone like her would care about others or expectations.
Harmony looked delighted and did not lower her voice. “Did you actually just shush me? Classic.”
Preston didn’t know what to do with that, so he defaulted to his talking-to-patrons script. “Can I help you?”
“You can, and what’s more, I can help you.” There was that wide smile again, spread like butter over her quick words. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, but I really think we could have a mutually beneficial relationship.” She plunked her folio on the counter and leaned forward next to it, grinning up at him.
Beneficial? Was she joking? He resisted the urge to unload on her how she’d already managed to tank his career and doom the bit of good he’d accomplished here so far, not to mention nearly running him over in the street. As professionally as he could pull off through clenched teeth, he said, “That’s the idea here. We have books, you borrow them.”
“I mean the festival. Can we talk?”
He jerked his head toward the next workstation along the counter. “Gretchen’s actually on checkout duty, she’d be happy to help you if you need—”
“But I need you .” Her lips pulled into a pout.
And he needed her to go, needed a chance to calm down. His heartbeat was thrumming through his head so he could barely think, barely hear himself say, “I’ve got to pull requests. I’m at work. This isn’t the place to discuss”—he waved a hand at her and her sexy frown and her job-destroying business offers—“whatever.”
Harmony didn’t miss a beat. “Then let’s discuss your work. I heard you give piano lessons. If you need an extra source of income, leasing land you’re not putting to any use could do the trick.”
That wasn’t what he’d meant at all. “This is the library . There’s a large sign outside saying so if you’re confused.” There were boundaries . But of course she waltzed right past them, like she did stop signs.
She unleashed that laugh, strident as a trumpet, even when he shushed her again. He raised one hand toward her before dropping it back to the counter. What did he think he was going to do, press his hand to her mouth? The mouth that had pulled into a crooked version of her smile, under her glinting eyes. “I like you,” she told him. She gave the back of his hand a pat and let her fingers slide over his briefly as she pulled away. Her skin was like silk, as soft as her persistence was resolute. “I really do want to help you.”
Preston inhaled. Exhaled. Tried to purge the frustration that was still sending his pulse lashing through his blood. “Are you checking anything out?”
“Oh, definitely .” She leaned forward more, which made her back arch as she let her appreciative gaze run up and down over him. Wait— him? Yes, that was him she was fixing with her wolfish grin. She’d looked at him like that after the meeting, as if she’d thought he’d been looking at her like that—
Had he been looking at her like that? No. He hadn’t. Not that time at least. He got his signals crossed plenty. The girl he’d dated in grad school had had to tell him they were on their second date when he’d thought they’d just been in an unusually small study group.
And Harmony might as well have stepped out of a painting by Rubens, voluptuous and lively and oh god he was not picturing her now as the painter’s naked Venus.
So, no, not then, not now, and never again, now that Harmony’s shenanigans had probably cost him his chance to save his job and everything the kids needed the library to give them. Even if—because of his height, and her totally unwarranted leaning —he was fighting to keep his own eyes away from the incredible view down her dress that he was absolutely, definitely, nothing halfway about it, not looking at.
Meanwhile, Harmony wasn’t just rolling past stop signs, she was bulldozing the whole street. She cocked a brow in that practiced way of hers. “And I’ve never in my life said business before pleasure.”
This was outside any script he could throw at a situation. He grabbed the printout of hold requests that had finally finished spewing out behind him and shoved the waiting cart forward from behind the counter. Work. The job he was desperate to keep. He’d do that. He pushed the cart into the stacks.
Harmony’s voice came from right behind him and too loud. “But I do want to do business with you!”
Forget Rubens, she must have climbed down from a Gentileschi, the way she was so unrelenting. Maybe one with a beheading. He pitched his voice low, hoping she’d take the hint. “I don’t have time . Thanks to your stunt at town hall, I have to prepare for an entire meeting to defend my work.” He didn’t even know when it would be scheduled yet.
“Stunt?” She didn’t sound offended—just confused. Or worried?
“Stunt. Noun. Provocative action used to draw attention.” He tried to focus on the shelves before him, but couldn’t help muttering, “Fear-mongering about video games. Drug deals entirely online?” He grabbed a book and carefully placed the hold slip inside its cover. “How would that even work?” He tucked the book into the cart and scanned the next slip, then went hunting for its book. “Meanwhile, I’m dealing with an actual threat to the kids most at risk. Queer kids, kids whose parents can’t afford fancy after-school extracurriculars, kids whose parents—” His throat closed up over the words. Parents who treated them not like someone to protect but a problem to solve. He’d found the book, and as he turned back to the cart, and Harmony, he held it before him like a shield, one palm flat across its cover. “This is where they can come. This is where they can be safe, and free, and travel, like other kids do every year with their families, without ever leaving their room.”
And he’d failed to speak up for them. He could have insisted the other night. Probably he’d have fucked it up, if he’d been given the chance. Unlike the woman who was at last quiet—a surprised, warm expression on her face, idly drawing a book off a shelf with one finger—who’d had no problem speaking up, no problem getting them to listen and like her.
He shouldered past her and deposited his book in the cart. “And on top of all that—” He grabbed the book she’d discarded on a random shelf and slotted it back into place. “I have my own fourth grader to take care of.”
He turned back around to find Harmony full-on gaping at him. “Huh.”
“What?” His shoulders tightened.
The corners of her mouth turned down as she shrugged. “You have got to share your skin care routine with me.”
“What?” he tried again. He was lost.
She dragged another book off the nearest shelf. “You must be way older than you look. I hope I have that good a glow when I’m pushing forty.”
He blinked, once again at a total loss for what to make of what she’d said, for what to say. How did she keep doing that? Somehow his mouth got its act together, apparently settling on: “I’m twenty-seven.”
“Wow.” She laid down the book, in the wrong place again.
“ What ?” He reshelved it properly.
“Okay, no, I don’t judge, even if you were—” Her fingers were flicking against her skirt. “—the Lothario of—” Was she counting on her fingers ? “Tenth grade?”
Now it was his turn to gape. And sputter. “No, I don’t have—I didn’t—she’s my sister .” He was so used to everyone in town knowing everything about his family, he’d forgotten that she wouldn’t.
“Yeah, that makes more sense.” Harmony nodded slowly, as if something was falling into place. “And you’re her guardian.”
He took advantage of her break from messing up his shelving to grab the next hold. “And it’s her land. It was left to me, my mother saw to all that when she divorced, but it was always meant as something for Lacey, in case she needs the money.” He pushed the cart around to the next aisle.
Harmony was on his heels. “But it’s not making her any money.”
The hold slips crinkled in his hands. “Well—no.” He hadn’t managed to get the town to rezone it yet, and no one wanted it for agriculture anymore, with the plots around it intended for residential development soon. Preston had almost been glad—he wasn’t great with change, and he loved the walnut orchard, its gentle hills and quiet and familiar trees reaching into the open sky. His mom used to take him out there when he was small and overwhelmed at parks with other kids, tell him about how her great-grandparents used to farm there, show him where they’d carved their initials into one tree. Now sometimes he took Lacey, for stargazing, or just to run around not worrying about being too much or too different.
“Why not lease it to the festival and put away actual money for your sister?” Harmony pressed.
Because change, even leasing the land, was like a towering roller coaster to him, and he hated roller coasters. So he hadn’t considered this point overlong. They could really use the money, that was for fucking sure. Especially if he got fired. “But won’t a festival—” He was working automatically, filling the cart with books, while he worried over this idea. “All those people, and stages. Won’t you have to cut down the trees or something?” Most of the aging orchard had long ago already been sold for lumber, in a last-ditch attempt to save the farm amid rising operating costs. Preston had barely kept on the right side of county regulations for upkeep, though he’d managed to make a deal with a neighbor for lawn mowing and general maintenance in exchange for any produce the old trees still gave. And now that neighbor was selling to Travis Weaver, and around and around Preston’s mind went again wondering how he was going to keep things together for Lacey. It couldn’t be as simple as what Harmony was offering. No one was going to just give them money for absolutely nothing.
“No, those great big trees are the best part.” Harmony’s eyes went wide, and she held up her hands as if he could follow the gesture and see walnut branches arcing above the tops of the bookshelves. “Perfect for shade—we can set up the smaller booths and stages among them, keep the main stage to the open field. And we always clean up after ourselves. No litter.” She stepped nearer, filling his vision. This close he could see her hazel eyes had streaks of gold like starbursts around her pupils. “It’ll never look as if thousands of people had been there, I promise you, Preston.” There were more golden flecks in their green, like bubbles in champagne.
With a sly look that seemed to send those bubbles fizzing through him, she added, “We can even do a carbon offset. And Rhythmic will—outside of the leasing fee—make a significant donation to a local environmental cause like the kid at town hall mentioned. And I’ll match it. Personally.”
She almost had him. How could he let his own resistance to the disruption prevent all that? Then suddenly Harmony threw her head back, fingers splayed, and, like some kind of carnival barker or game show host or a wrestling announcer starting a fight, practically growled, “Let’s make this happen!”
“Shhh!” It wasn’t Preston shushing her this time—though her volume did make him wince—but a patron in the next aisle. Shit. He was at work, he was supposed to be doing the job he was probably going to lose thanks to her always talking about this festival at the wrong time.
He blinked hard. Sudden noise and his routine thrown off—the kinds of things that would have sent him into a meltdown when he was Lacey’s age. “I need to get back to work.”
“Well, when’s your break?” She was tipping yet another book from its snug place on its shelf, peeking at its cover.
He shoved it back with two fingers to its spine. “We just opened.”
She smiled, already reaching for another book. “Oh, I think you’re worth waiting for.” At his snort, she raised her brows, exasperated. “Why do you have such a problem with someone who just wants to help you?” But she laughed, a gentle huff. As if nothing in the world was too serious.
If only. “You know what I think? I think you’re nothing but trouble.” He snatched the book away from her and shoved it back on the shelf. “You come in, make a mess, and move on.”
She fluttered her lashes, as if taken aback by his grabbing the book. “I’m sorry, I thought this was a library.”
“I—” And where the hell was his mouth now? Besides gaping uselessly?
“There was a big sign outside saying so.”
“You—” He scowled. She was doing it again. Talking her way around anything and everything. “I think you actually only care about what you want. Helping yourself.” He loomed over her, blocking her from any more books. “What do you have to say about that?”
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, he was sure to unleash a tirade at him for being stubborn about the festival, for invading her personal space, for being rude to someone who was technically a library patron—
No. Instead, she released a long, heavy exhalation, fogging up his glasses completely.
“You—” He sputtered again, fumbling his glasses off and glaring.
“There you are,” she said, like she’d just found him at the end of a game of hide and seek. But her voice did something funny, its huskiness catching on some emotion and going thin. Her breath hitched. It smelled like licorice. Sweet and spicy.
“You’re outrageous ,” he told her.
“Thank you.” He couldn’t see shit, but he could hear her pleased smile. And he could feel her fingers on his, gently tugging the frames from his hand where he was doing a crap job trying to wipe them on his shirt. His cleaning cloths were in his bag, way back behind the counter. The blur that was Harmony shifted back, and suddenly he was extremely fucking grateful he couldn’t see shit because there was a flash of pale thigh, as she must have been wiping the lenses on her skirt. He definitely wasn’t disappointed. He was still convincing himself of this when she carefully slid his glasses back onto his face.
He didn’t know why, but as the clear lenses brought Harmony into focus before him, he repeated her words back to her. “There you are.”
She murmured, “Look, I get it. The land was your mom’s. You want to do right by her. My dad, he—” She swallowed, and suddenly for some reason Preston found himself wanting to make it better, whatever was making her voice clot and eyes blink without any artifice. “He was in the music biz. That’s why this is so important to me. I want to make him proud.”
Her hands were still on either side of him, fingers trailing down his hair and neck and brushing over his shoulders as she drew them back.
His turn to swallow. “I appreciate that, Ms. Hale.”
“Harmony.”
“But I really do have to get back to work.” There were others he needed to make things better for: youth patrons and Lacey. People who needed taking care of.
“C’mon, let’s make a deal and piss off the Weavers. I’ve dug into all the real estate holdings in the county, looking at potential sites—you know they’re trying to squeeze that land out of you, right?”
Probably. God, he’d probably end up finally selling to Travis, who’d made several lowball bids over the years, just to cover some of Lacey’s college. And then what if she needed support at any time during the rest of her life? Autistics had sky-high rates of anxiety and burnout and depression. But pissing the Weavers off right now would be irresponsible. Not with Cheryl gunning for him. He reached for the thinning stack of hold requests. Leasing that land held too many unknowns—primary among them the living embodiment of chaos masquerading as a woman who had better not be fucking with his shelving again. “If Travis owns so much, why not just—”
“Okay,” Harmony interrupted from behind him, voice suspiciously bright. But then she only said, “I’ll let you get back to it.”
Surprised at her sudden backing off, he turned to see her walking down the aisle out of the stacks, the fabric of her skirt swinging below her broad hips.
He adjusted his frames, not sure exactly how he’d won a battle of words with Harmony Hale, or if he was entirely certain he’d wanted to.
She grabbed her folio from the counter and, rather than heading for the doors, slid into a chair at the table directly across from his workstation. She flipped open the folio, plucked a pen from within, and tapped it against her lips before lifting her gaze and shooting Preston a look that said, clear as she’d left his glasses, Oh, I’m not going anywhere .
This wasn’t a battle. This was a siege.