by Cathie Linz
There were a few sublets for the summer but they were in buildings so rowdy that the partying started early and never seemed to end. Marissa knew this because the beer cans were already flying between balconies when she arrived at nine in the morning. Most of the students left for the summer but enough stayed to make things noisy.
She was running out of hope of ever leaving her parents’ house when she finally came across a promising possibility. The ad listed it as a one-bedroom apartment in a quiet and secure building.
She called and spoke to the building manager, Sally Parelli, who sounded very nice. It wasn’t a huge complex. There were only sixteen apartments in the building.
She made an appointment to see the place first thing the next morning before work. It was plain and basic, with a small kitchen but a walk-in closet in the bedroom. And it faced west. Plus, the rent was reasonable.
“I’ll take it,” she immediately said.
She filled out the renter information form and promised to stop by after work to sign a lease—providing her references checked out. “Which I’m sure they will,” Sally said. “Your dad has been a professor at the college for as long as I can remember. Everyone knows him.”
Did they really? Because despite living at home for a few weeks, Marissa had yet to feel like she knew him. She knew things about him, sure. Like the fact that he loved quoting Terry Pratchett’s novels. But that was different than really knowing him.
She was no Pollyanna. She realized that lots of parents didn’t tell their kids that they were proud of them. Her work with young adults had told her that. Many came from single-parent households where the struggle to get from paycheck to paycheck took every ounce of energy the family had.
“Your mom and I share the same hairdresser,” Sally was saying. “And the same manicurist at Liz’s Nails.”
Marissa hid her hands in her tote bag as she dug for her car keys. She hadn’t had a manicure in more than a year. When it came down to a choice between food and good nails, she’d gone with food. Her sister, Jess, would most likely have gone with the good nails option. Just one of many ways they were different.
“Plus you’re working at the library here now,” Sally said. “Your boss, Roz, and I are in the same book club group. We’re also in the same knitter’s group. Do you knit?”
“No. I’ve done some crocheting but that’s about it.”
“You should try knitting. It’s not that hard. Anyway, I’m sure everything will check out. And I’m willing to have you pay the deposit over the next few weeks.”
“I really appreciate that.”
“Hey, I went through a divorce myself a number of years ago. I know how hellish it can be.”
Marissa just nodded.
“I still get angry about it sometimes,” Sally admitted. “When I do, I put on that Carrie Underwood song ‘Before He Cheats’ and dance. It makes me feel better. You might want to try that when you move in.”
“I don’t play my music loud,” Marissa assured her. “I usually listen with headphones.”
Sally laughed. “I never thought you’d be rowdy.”
“I’m not.”
“I believe you.”
“I’ll be back later today to sign the lease.”
“That’s fine. Unless you want to sign it now?”
“Really?”
“I’m a good judge of character and as I said, I know your parents. You’re a local.” Sally nodded. “I don’t need to check your references any more than that. If you want to sign the lease now…”
“I do.”
Marissa didn’t even read it before signing, she was in such a hurry to get things finalized. Finally a place where she could put her own things and not live in days gone by.
“Great.” Sally added her signature on both copies and gave Marissa her lease while keeping the other for herself. “It’s a safe building.” Sally said. “You couldn’t find a more secure place because the sheriff lives here. Next door to you, in fact.”
Marissa’s stomach dropped. “The sheriff?”
Sally nodded. “Connor Doyle.”
For a second, Marissa wanted to grab that lease back and rip it in shreds. How was she going to manage having Connor as her neighbor? She should have recognized the building from that Sunday morning when she’d been out walking and he’d confronted her, but she hadn’t. After all, he’d appeared out of nowhere and she’d walked away. It never occurred to her that he might have an apartment right here.
Sally said, “The college kids aren’t eager to live near the local law for some reason. But you’re different. I’ll bet it will make you sleep easier at night.”
Marissa seriously doubted that.
Chapter Four
“Are you okay?” Sally put a hand on Marissa’s arm. “You’ve gone all pale.”
“I’m okay.”
“Do you need a glass of water or something?”
Marissa shook her head.
“Look, here he comes now,” Sally said.
Marissa didn’t have time to run for it. Besides, that would be the cowardly thing to do. Appealing but cowardly.
“Good morning, ladies.” Connor was irritatingly cheerful.
Marissa hadn’t seen him much since that early morning when he’d called her Rissa. She’d welcomed the break from his company in the interval but she’d always been on her guard against running into him. One time she’d waited in her car when she’d seen him walk into the Kroger until he came out a short time later. Luckily, no one had knocked on her car window the way they had a few days later in the library parking lot.
“Having car trouble?” Roz had asked.
“No.” Marissa had started the rust-bucket VW, whereupon the sound of Copper’s “Heartbreak Lullaby” began to blare out of the demented sound system. She’d turned the demon lime car off again. “It won’t even let me eject the darn CD.”
“I know a good mechanic if you want to get that fixed,” Roz had told her.
Marissa had copied down the info even though she knew she couldn’t afford to pay a mechanic. First she had to get an apartment.
And now here she was, with her lease in her hand and her nemesis a few feet away.
“You’re just in time to meet your new neighbor,” Sally said. “Connor Doyle, meet Marissa Bennett.”
“We’ve met,” Connor said.
Marissa didn’t know which would be worse—him saying they’d been a couple a decade ago or him saying he’d pulled her over for being in the parade. She should have known he wouldn’t elaborate. Maybe he was hoping she’d jump to fill in the silence and stick her foot in her mouth. Not gonna happen. She was learning when to keep her mouth shut and this was one of those occasions.
“Well, that’s great then. You two already know each other.” Sally reached for the vibrating cell phone at her waist. “Sorry, I have to take this. Excuse me for a moment.” She moved away, leaving them alone in the foyer between the four upper apartments.
“So we’re going to be neighbors, huh?” Connor grinned at her as if able to read her tumultuous thoughts. “I’m guessing by the panicked look on your face that you didn’t know I lived in this building.”
“I’m not panicked.”
“No?”
“No.” She was, of course, but she’d rather eat bugs than admit that to him. “Everything is not always about you.”
“Fair enough.” He shoved his aviator-style sunglasses on top of his head so he could fix her with a don’t-lie-to-me stare. “So what were you thinking about to make you look so panicked?”
“My thoughts are my own.”
His grin widened. “That’s the first time you really sounded like a librarian. All prim and proper.”
“Librarians are not all prim and proper any more than cops are all boorish buffoons.”
“Just me, huh?”
“What?”
“You’re calling me a boorish buffoon.”
“That’s not what I said.”
�
�Of course not. But it is what you meant, right?”
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.”
“Was that ex-husband of yours a lawyer or something?”
“Or something,” she muttered. Brad was actually in middle management at a telecom company but he had plenty of lawyer friends.
“Did you pick up a lot of legalese from him?”
“I learned a lot from him. Some of it good. Most of it very bad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” she said. “Why?”
“What are you insinuating now?” Connor demanded. “That I want bad things to happen to you? I don’t. Why would I?”
“Not bad things, no. You’re indifferent,” she said. “You could care less, so why pretend otherwise? It’s too late to pretend to be polite.”
“Hey, I am very polite. Ask anybody.”
“I don’t have to ask anybody. I already know from my own experience with you that you’re not polite or even nice, because someone with either of those sterling character traits wouldn’t have done to me what you did.”
“So basically you’re telling me that I suck.”
“That would be a pretty accurate assessment, yes.”
“That was a long time ago. I could have changed.”
“I doubt that.” She went on the offensive. “Why do you care what I think about you?”
“Who says I do?” he countered.
Marissa bit her tongue and mentally reviewed her options. Could she ask Sally to tear up the lease she’d just signed a few minutes ago? She’d have to have a reason. Cold feet? She certainly couldn’t tell her new landlady the truth.
“Don’t let me scare you away,” Connor said.
His words were a challenge she couldn’t resist. “You couldn’t scare me away if you tried.”
“Oh, I probably could. But I don’t plan on trying, so you can relax.”
Right. As if she could ever relax around him. There was no way she could afford to let her guard down. She had to stay alert, stay aware and stay away.
Well, that last one was going to be more difficult given the fact that he lived next door, but she’d manage it somehow. Because that’s what she did. She managed. She coped. And, yes, she cried. But only between coping and managing, and only for short periods of time and in total privacy.
Actually those crying jags had gotten shorter but it was getting harder and harder to keep them that way, given the stress of living with her parents. Maybe if her self-esteem hadn’t already been in the basement she wouldn’t have been as bothered by the situation at home as she was.
But it was what it was. Her entire life lately was what it was. It certainly wasn’t what she’d planned or dreamed or hoped for.
“You somehow don’t look reassured by my words,” Connor said.
“I wasn’t thinking about you.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No. As I said before, the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“That’s good to know.”
“You should also know that I have no intention of changing any of my plans because of you.” She discounted the one Kroger parking lot incident. “This was my hometown long before you ever showed up and it will continue to be my hometown long after you leave.”
“What makes you think I’m leaving anytime soon?”
“I didn’t say it would be soon. But that is what you do. You leave. You move on.”
“So did you. You left and moved on.”
Yes and look how well that turned out, she thought to herself.
“Just so you know, I don’t plan on leaving Hopeful anytime soon,” Connor said. “What about you?”
“I just got here and already you’re trying to get rid of me?”
“I don’t want to get rid of you. Far from it.” He deliberately eyed her from head to toe. “You liven the place up.”
“Are you saying Hopeful is boring?”
“No.”
“Then why does it need livening up?”
“I didn’t say it needed livening up. I said that you liven the place up. Two different things.”
“I’m done trying to decipher your words. I have to get to work.”
“Me, too.” With a sweep of his hand, he indicated that she should go first. “After you.”
Was he? Was he “after” her? Trying to get her interested in him again? Because there was no way she was going to do that. He could tease and tempt her all he wanted. He could bat those memorable eyes at her and flash his bad-boy grin and she would remain immune.
She had to if she wanted to survive.
* * *
By the time Connor arrived at police headquarters, word had already gotten out about his new neighbor. “Hey, I heard the new librarian in town just moved in your building.”
The comment came from his administrative assistant, Ruby Mae Rivers, otherwise known as the department’s version of TMZ without the videos of the stars. But her contacts made her a woman constantly in the know about everything there was to know.
Ruby Mae’s short salt-and-pepper hair never changed from day to day. Nor did her raspy voice. In her mid-fifties, she was a mother of five and grandmother of ten. She ruled them, and the people in the department, with an iron fist.
“News travels fast,” Connor said as he poured himself a cup of coffee. Some of the employees got their daily dose of caffeine from the Cups Cafe but not him. He liked his coffee hot and strong. None of that fancy frappucino shit for him. His family already didn’t approve of him working in a small town. If he started lining up for fancy coffee, they’d be sure to disown him. He wasn’t sure how they’d know, but somehow they would.
Sort of the way his mom could always tell when Connor and Logan were roughhousing in the living room, using her pillows as footballs to launch across the room, occasionally knocking over lamps and smashing them.
Growing up, Connor had spent time split between two worlds. The one his mom and grandmother created, and the more dysfunctional one his dad had.
“The mayor wants to see you ASAP,” Ruby Mae said.
Connor thumbed through his messages. “Anything going on that I should know about?”
“Not really. The hottest news is about you and your new neighbor.”
“What’s hot about that?”
“I just meant it’s the latest news.” Ruby Mae shuddered as he took a gulp of his coffee. “I don’t know how you can drink that dredge.”
“My granddad used to tell me that cop coffee put hair on your chest.”
Ruby Mae’s laugh was as deep as her voice. “A good reason for me to avoid it. How’s your granddad doing?”
“He’s doing great. In his mid-seventies and as ornery as ever.”
“I suppose you’re going to say that’s because of the cop coffee.”
“Nah. It’s because of good genes.”
“Oh.”
“And cop coffee.”
She returned his grin before reminding him, “The mayor is waiting.”
The village hall municipal offices took up the other half of the building.
“You wanted to see me?” Connor said.
“Yes. Thanks for coming.” The mayor indicated Connor should take a seat across from his massive desk. “I spent the morning with the school board and administration regarding your at-risk youth program.”
“What about it?”
“They want you to work with another program. You know, sort of join forces.”
“What other program?”
“One suggested by Marissa Bennett. Apparently she had a lot of experience with young adults in her previous library job.”
Connor was really pissed off. This program was special to him. He didn’t need Marissa messing it up for him. “What does she plan on doing? Having them read a bunch of books to turn them around?”
“She wrote up a proposal for the board.” Mayor Bedford handed it to him. “I suggest you read
it and then the two of you should work together to make the new program work.”
“There was nothing wrong with the old program. With my program.”
“Nothing is so perfect that it can’t use a little improvement. Why don’t you go on over to the library now and meet with Marissa?”
He’d rather poke bamboo shoots beneath his fingernails. “I have a prior engagement.”
“Oh, right. You’ve got that presentation at the Hopeful Meadows Senior Center today. What’s the topic again?”
“Avoiding scams and identity theft.”
“Right. My aunt Gert is a resident there. She’s really looking forward to the presentation. Well, you’ll have to schedule your meeting with Marissa for another time then.”
“Yeah.”
“The sooner you two get together, the better.”
Connor had no intention of getting together with Marissa. He’d done that once back in college and it hadn’t worked out well.
“I hope you don’t take this as an insult against all the work you’ve been doing in the outreach programs,” the mayor said. “Two heads are better than one.”
Connor doubted that. Especially when one of those heads belonged to Marissa. He didn’t think clearly when he was around her.
Connor arrived at the senior center in a bad mood that got worse when the conversation immediately turned to his private life. He started his presentation professionally enough with the line, “I’ll be giving you some tips to help you avoid scams and ID theft issues.”
The mayor’s aunt Gert interrupted him “I heard that you and the new librarian are moving in together.”
“You heard wrong.”
“Is that why she was driving in the parade?” Gert continued. “Was she trying to get your attention?”
“No,” Connor said. “She just made a mistake.”
“Trying to get your attention is a mistake?”
“She doesn’t want my attention.”
Gert frowned. “Why not? You’re a good-looking fellow. She’s single now that she dumped that no-good husband of hers. What’s the problem? It’s not like there are a lot of choices for a divorced woman.”