What the Librarian Did

by Karina Bliss

  His corduroy jacket-the same soft brown as his eyes-had pizza stains on it and the blue chambray shirt that normally buttoned neatly under his chin flapped open halfway down a pale hairy chest. And the designer jeans…

  Rachel rushed over and jerked up his fly. “You’re drunk!”

  “Are you surprised?” His voice rang loudly.

  “Shush…”

  She tried to drag him into the staff office, but he clutched at the countertop, swaying slightly. “You led me on!”

  Heads began poking out from the aisles of books as readers took an interest. “Paul, please,” she begged. Regardless of whether she deserved this humiliation, he was jeopardizing his job by showing up inebriated. She had to get him out of here. Rachel grabbed his arm again, called over her shoulder, “Trix, help me.”

  He flung them both off with a dramatic gesture, ruined by a loud belch. “When I’ve had my say.”

  Until last night she and Paul hadn’t seen each other in six months because he’d been on sabbatical, studying some obscure Germanic dialect in Munich. Their reunion had come to an abrupt end on the way back to his apartment from the airport, when he’d proposed to her.

  And Rachel had said no.

  Their eighteen-month relationship had come to an even more abrupt end on his front doorstep as she’d desperately tried to explain a decision she couldn’t justify except by describing her feelings. Unfortunately, terms like “panic” and “claustrophobia” didn’t help him take the news any better.

  Paul swallowed. “You broke my heart.”

  “It’s not like you were crazy in love with me,” she reminded him gently. In fact, they’d never been as fond of each other as when they’d been apart and their unremarkable sex life had been supplanted by romantic telephone calls and e-mails.

  He refocused on her with bleary-eyed outrage. “I proposed to you, didn’t I?”

  “Well, yes,” Rachel admitted. “Kind of.”

  “Guess we should think about getting married,” had been his exact words. But their relationship had always been fueled by pragmatism, not passion. Paul wanted an independent, low-maintenance wife to support his brilliant career. And she wanted to start a family with a nice guy. Because Trixie was right, Rachel was running out of time. And her dating pool had always been the size of a goldfish pond. She was too self-sufficient for most guys…and too smart to pretend to be someone she wasn’t.

  Paul seemed to realize she wasn’t reacting as she should. His face crumpled and he started to sob with a drunk’s easy tears. “You really don’t care, do you?”

  Rachel blanched. Had his affections run deeper than she’d thought? “Of course I care.” But much as she hated hurting him, she couldn’t marry him. Even if only her right brain knew why. Seeing their audience growing, she tugged desperately on his arm. “Please, Paul, let me take you into the office, make you some coffee. You’re doing yourself no good here.”

  “No!” He wiped his face with his sleeve and nearly fell over. “I don’t want to.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Devin Freedman appeared from out of nowhere and tipped Paul over one of his shoulders. “Where do you want him?” he asked Rachel.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE SMARTASS LIBRARIAN looked at him with none of the self-possession she had earlier. In fact her big gray eyes were haunted. “In here,” she said, ushering Devin into the office. “Trixie, take over.” With trembling fingers, she pulled the venetian blinds closed, then shut the door and leaned against it.

  Devin dumped the drunk on the couch and ran a professional eye over him. He’d quit bawling and was rolling his head from side to side and moaning faintly. “Some kind of container might be useful,” he suggested. “He’ll hurl at some point.” Rachel looked at him blankly and he tried again. “Barf.” Still nothing. Where was a translator when he needed one? “Throw up…vomit.”

  “Oh…oh!” She scanned the room, then found an empty cardboard box and bent over to pick it up. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed she had a nice ass. Rachel placed the box by the couch and backed away, her expression guilt-stricken. He suspected he knew what was worrying her. “Alcohol makes some people maudlin,” he offered. Particularly those who took themselves way too seriously. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You don’t understand,” she murmured. “He proposed yesterday and I turned him down.”

  “That’s no surprise. There must be a fifteen-year age difference.”

  “Seven years. I’m thirty-four.” Devin’s age. She didn’t look it. The librarian shook her head. “Not that age matters. The important thing now is that-”

  “He’s acting like a wimp?”

  “No!” She took a protective step toward the drunk. Anyone could see she had a conscience. That must be painful for her. “Paul had every right to expect me to say yes. I meant to say yes, only…” Her voice trailed off.

  Paul sat up and grabbed the box. Rachel retreated and they both turned their backs, but couldn’t escape the awful retching sounds. “Only you realized you’d be making a terrible mistake,” Devin finished. Maybe the vintage clothes were an attempt to look older?

  “I drove him to this.” The librarian’s slender throat convulsed. “And he’s not the first man I’ve let down. I…I’m a heartbreaker.”

  As one who’d been given the description by the world’s press, as one who’d dated and even married the female heartbreaker equivalent, Devin was hard put not to laugh. Only the sincerity in her pale face stopped him from so much as a grin. She really believed it, which was kind of cute-if a little sad. And he thought he was self-delusional at times.

  Not that she wouldn’t be pretty with a hell of a lot more makeup and a hell of a lot less clothes. The fastidious restraint of all those satin-covered buttons and dainty pearl earrings made Devin itch to pull Rachel’s sleek dark hair out of its practical ponytail. Mess it up a little. Understated elegance was exceedingly bland to a man whose career had depended on showmanship.

  He’d deliberately dressed down to fit in today, and thought he’d done a pretty good job until the librarian’s gaze had fallen on his boots. No jewelry except one signet ring and one modest earring…hell, he was practically invisible.

  The sound of retching stopped and they turned around. The drunk-Paul-had pushed up to a sitting position and was wiping his mouth on some copier paper. White-faced and sweating, he glared at Devin. “Who do you think you are, manhandling me like that?”

  Devin shrugged. “Someone had to stop you making an ass of yourself.”

  But Paul had already turned on Rachel. “I hope you’re happy reducing me to this state.”

  “She didn’t force alcohol down your throat,” Devin said quietly.

  The librarian swallowed. “Paul, I’m sorry. I had no idea you cared about me this much.”

  “You think everyone’s as lukewarm as you are?” Paul balled the paper. “I did all the caring in that relationship. All the work in bed. You-”

  “Have really, really bad taste in men,” Devin said, because Rachel was hugging herself and obviously taking this Paul’s rant way too seriously.

  The librarian seemed to remember he was there. She straightened her shoulders. “Thank you, but I can handle it from here.”

  “You sure?” She was obviously out of her depth. “He’s likely to get more abusive. I can toss him in a cab for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said awkwardly, opening the door, “but I’ll be okay.” Devin got the impression she wasn’t used to accepting help. Any more than he was used to offering it. For a moment he had an odd sense of his world shifting. But it had shifted so often lately he ignored it.

  Something incongruous about her appearance had been bothering him, and as she bit her lip Devin finally figured out what it was. Her mouth-lush and full-was more suited to the L.A. strippers he’d shared stages with in the band’s early performing days than a prim librarian. He grinned just as Romeo grabbed the box and started hurling again.

  Rachel
stiffened. “I’m glad one of us finds this funny.”

  “Your mouth doesn’t fit your profession,” he explained. “It’s like seeing something X-rated on the cartoon network.”

  He didn’t think to censor himself because he’d been a rock star for seventeen years and never had to. And got a sharp reminder he was no longer in that world when she shut the door in his face.

  “Lucky the librarian fantasy never made my top ten,” he told the door.

  DEVIN WANTED TO BE treated as normal, and yet once his amusement wore off, Rachel’s reaction gave him a profound sense of dislocation.

  She’d looked at him without his fame in the way and hadn’t liked what she’d seen. It was a scary thought, because whoever she saw was someone he was going to have to live with for the next forty plus years.

  He strode across the road from the library into Albert Park, then stopped in a stand of tall palms that reminded him of L.A.-his home before his life depended on leaving it. For a full five minutes he looked up through the fronds to the blue, blue sky, homesick. Then he started walking again, around the quaint Victorian fountain, past oaks and a lot of trees he didn’t recognize.

  This must be how refugees felt in a new land…displaced, wary. And yet he’d been born here, was still a citizen, though he’d left for his father’s country when he was two. He breathed in the smell of fresh-mown grass, only to regret it wasn’t L.A.’s smog.

  “Your pancreas is shot to hell. Any alcohol and you’re dead.” The doctor had been blunt, and left him sitting in a private hospital room full of flowers from fans. The band had imploded at the same time as his health… What the hell he was going to do with the rest of his life?

  His car keys fell out of his hand; someone bent to pick them up. Another teenager-shit, this place made him feel like a dinosaur.

  “Are you okay?” Gray eyes, intense in a pale face. Lank blond hair.

  “Of course I am.” The kid stepped back and Devin took a deep breath. “I’m fine…thanks.” He couldn’t rush the ascent, but had to stop and acclimatize, then kick up a bit more. He reminded himself that the surface was there-even when he couldn’t see it.

  “You’re Devin Freedman, aren’t you?” Nervously, the kid hitched up his baggy jeans. “I heard you’d be studying here this year.”

  Living on a remote part of Waiheke Island since his arrival in New Zealand two months earlier, Devin had got used to being left in peace. Something else to give up. “Yeah,” he said grudgingly, “I’m him.”

  In his drive to take control of his life, Devin had started taking online accounting courses to decipher his financial statements. A tutor had suggested university. When Devin stopped laughing he’d thought, why not?

  And already his growing fiscal knowledge had paid off. He’d appointed a new financial advisor who’d found disturbing anomalies in some of Devin’s statements. It looked like someone had been ripping him off; unfortunately Devin suspected his brother. But he needed to be very sure before he acted.

  “I’m a huge fan. Darkness Fell was a work of genius.”

  “Not The Fallen or Crack the Whip?” Rage’s final albums.

  The kid looked at his feet and shuffled. “I really liked the early stuff. I know the others sold well…I mean, not that’s there’s anything wrong with commercial albums…”

  Devin put him out of his misery. “You’re right, they were crap.” By that point the band had barely been speaking.

  “But you still had some phenomenal guitar riffs and-”

  “You play?” Devin asked, cutting short the hero-worship. He gestured to the expensive guitar case slung over the kid’s shoulder.

  “Bass mainly, but also some electric and acoustic-like you.” The next words came in a rush. “Would you sign my guitar for me?” At Devin’s nod, he unpacked a Gibson and scrambled in his bag for a Sharpie.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mark White.”

  Devin hesitated with his pen over the guitar.

  “Your autograph will be fine,” insisted Mark. “I hate phoniness, too.”

  Grinning, Devin signed, then handed back the bass. “See you around.”

  MARK MANAGED A CASUAL NOD but sank onto a bench as soon as Devin disappeared. Mark’s knees were shaking. He clutched the neck of his instrument, looked at the manicured gardens of Albert Park and thought, I imagined that. No one meets a legend, a god among bass players walking through freakin’ rose beds.

  He glanced down at his guitar and for a moment panicked because sunlight was bouncing off the lacquer and he couldn’t see it. But then he adjusted the angle and there it was scrawled across the maple. “To Mark, stay honest. Devin Freedman.”

  And Mark grinned because one part of him wanted to run back to his apartment, jump on his computer and flog it on eBay, and the other wanted to sleep with it under his pillow. You are one screwed-up dude, Mark.

  So what was new?

  Still, he let himself be happy, because it wasn’t every day a guy got to meet his all-time hero. Then he looked toward the campus and his smile faded under the familiar gut-wrenching nausea, anger and terror. She was here…somewhere.

  Mark had seen the University of Auckland envelope at the adoption agency when he’d asked the woman to check his file, claiming he was in an open adoption. Funny how people didn’t care about hiding envelopes. The woman had been very kind, considering he’d been lying to her. “Do your parents know you’re here?”

  He’d lied again. “Sure.”

  Abruptly, Mark stood and began walking. Why had his birth mother started out wanting an open adoption, then changed her mind and severed contact? The question had been eating away at him every since he’d discovered he had a different blood type to both his parents.

  He’d searched through his parents’ private papers and found correspondence from an adoption agency. Mom and Dad still didn’t know he knew…and Mark tried not to blame them because it was clear she’d made secrecy a condition of adoption.

  But his anger…his alienation had spilled over into his misbehavior. It had been a tough twelve months on everybody. He’d only talked his parents into letting him enroll at a university four hundred kilometers away because “honest, Mom and Dad, I see my future now and it’s all about getting an education and being normal like you want me to be.”

  Like I used to be. When I knew who I was. But Mark had another agenda. He would confront his birth mother. She would sob an apology and beg his forgiveness. He would say, “You had your chance,” and walk away. Just like she had.

  He’d worked out that she’d been seventeen when she had him. That made her thirty-four now.

  It shouldn’t be too hard to find her.

  THE FADED BLUE SEASIDE cottage was one of Waiheke Island’s first vacation homes, and unlike its newer neighbors, it was tiny and unpretentious. Not for the first time, Devin thought how well it suited his mother. He jumped the seaman’s rope fence and strode down the white shell path, giving a cursory pat to the concrete seal balancing a birdbath on its nose. Then he caught sight of the front door and frowned.

  It was wide open and a gardening trowel lay abandoned on the doorstep. His pulse quickened, and though he told himself not to panic, he shouted, “Mom!”

  Three heart-stopping seconds of silence and then a faint reply. “I’m out back.”

  Devin walked through the dim interior to the rear garden, a sprawl of crunchy grass, lichen-covered fruit trees and roaming nasturtium. “How many times do I have to tell you to shut your damn door? Anyone could walk in.”

  Holding a red bucket, his diminutive mother looked down from the top of a stepladder leaning against the peach tree. “And how many times do I have to tell you this isn’t L.A.?” She dropped a handful of small white peaches into the half-full bucket, then ran a hand through her short gray bob. “Any leaves in my hair?”

  Devin put his hands on his hips. “Should you be doing stuff like this?”

  “I’m not going to have another heart
attack, honey.” Katherine held out the bucket. When he took it, she climbed sedately down the ladder. “Not now they’ve replaced the faulty stent.”

  He reached out and helped her down the last couple of steps, and her hand seemed so frail in his. Briefly, her grip tightened, reassuring him with its strength.

  Still, Devin said gruffly, “Is it any wonder I’m paranoid after two emergency flights in two months? If you’d listened to my advice earlier and got a second opinion-”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Reluctantly, he laughed. “Stay with me another week.” He owned the adjacent headland, sixteen acres of protected native bush shielding a clifftop residence.

  “I’ve only just moved home. Besides, you cramp my style.”

  “Stop you doing what you’re not supposed to, you mean,” he retorted.

  “Dev, you’re turning into the old woman I refuse to become. I’m sure I wasn’t as bossy as this when you were in recovery.”

  “No,” he said drily, “you were worse.”

  She ignored that, instructing him to pick some lemon balm for herbal tea on their meander back to the house. “How was your first day at school?”

  “The other kids talk funny.” Ignoring the kettle, he turned on the espresso machine he’d installed.

  “Make any friends?”

  He gave her the Devin Freedman glower, the one that Holy Roller magazine had described as the definitive bad rocker look. Being his mother she simply waited. “No, but then I don’t expect to.”

  “You know I’m on the mend now, darling, so if you want to go back to L.A.-”

  “I don’t,” he lied. “Got anything to eat?”

  “There’s a batch of scones cooling on the counter.”

  He burned his fingers snatching a couple, but feeding him distracted his mother from the subject of his future.

  Five years earlier, when he’d quit rehab for the second time, she had told him she wouldn’t spend her life watching him self-destruct, and had moved back to her native New Zealand. It had been a last-ditch effort to snap him into reality. Devin had felt nothing but relief, then added insult to injury by minimizing contact. It hadn’t stopped Katherine from being the first person at his hospital bed.