Check Me Out
Page 1
Other Proper Romance Novels
Nancy Campbell Allen
My Fair Gentleman
Beauty and the Clockwork Beast
The Secret of the India Orchid
Julianne Donaldson
Edenbrooke
Blackmoore
Heir to Edenbrooke (eBook only)
Sarah M. Eden
Longing for Home
Longing for Home, vol. 2: Hope Springs
The Sheriffs of Savage Wells
Josi S. Kilpack
A Heart Revealed
Lord Fenton’s Folly
Forever and Forever
A Lady’s Favor (eBook only)
The Lady of the Lakes
The Vicar’s Daughter
All That Makes Life Bright
Julie Wright
Lies Jane Austen Told Me
© 2018 Becca Wilhite
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain®, at permissions@shadowmountain.com. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.
This is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are represented fictitiously.
Visit us at ShadowMountain.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wilhite, Rebecca A., author.
Title: Check me out / Becca Wilhite.
Description: Salt Lake City, Utah : Shadow Mountain, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016049611 | ISBN 9781629723273 (paperbound)
Subjects: LCSH: Public librarians—Fiction. | LCGFT: Romance fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.I545 C47 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049611
Printed in the United States of America
LSC Communications, Crawfordsville, IN
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover photo: © Maglara/shutterstock.com
Back photo: © Ivan Kochergin /shutterstock.com
Book design: © Shadow Mountain
Art direction: Richard Erickson
Design: Heather G. Ward
For Scott
Just right for me, inside and out
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
About the Author
Chapter 1
You know that quote people attribute to Confucius? The one that says, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”? I know that quote. I’ve had paper copies of it stuck to various household mirrors. I believe in it. I love it. For three years of college, it was the lock screen of my phone. I’m a fan of Confucius, but I’m a disciple of that quote—whether he said it or not.
Here’s the thing Confucius didn’t mention: Even if you love your job and going to it doesn’t feel like work, you still have to get out of bed on time, brush your hair, and put on pants that weren’t created for yoga. You know—pants with button fasteners.
I checked my phone. It was four minutes before ten, and I was less than one minute away from the library door. In a skirt. Success.
I put my phone back in my pocket as I passed the giant, crooked oak at the edge of the library block. The tree must have been centuries old. It had, throughout my life, starred in all my borrowed book fantasies. When I was a little kid, it was “The Giving Tree.” When I was twelve, it was Hogwarts’ Whomping Willow. Later, it was the tree outside the Radley place. Then Treebeard the Ent.
The tree guarded the old Greenwood house, which was—historically and architecturally speaking—pretty awesome. The brick had worn smooth after decades of weather. It soared up from the lot, looking taller than its three stories, with cool turrets and angles and weathered beams. And if the actual architecture wasn’t interesting enough, consider the rumor that it had been part of the Underground Railroad. I couldn’t count the times I’d wished I’d been brave enough to kneel at the foundation and peek into cellar windows. I never did, though.
If the tree starred in the fantasies, Old Man Greenwood starred in the horrors. He was famously reclusive, sketchy. And he seemed to have never in his life used a garbage can. My beautiful tree, perfect for a romantic-swing situation, was surrounded by a rusting car frame and assorted dumpy garbage. Walking past the Greenwood property, I felt sorry that the library had to sit next to it, like the yard was the dirty little kid in elementary school whose nose is always running and who never bathes.
Poor library. Couldn’t help its neighbors. I took a deep breath of autumn morning air as I turned up the sidewalk. When I climbed the stone steps and unlocked the library’s wooden door, the scents all shifted. Inside, the air smelled like a grandma’s house with a pleasant undertone of dusty books and that puppy-smell that comes from little kids running around.
The light was different, too. More golden, with lines of morning sunbeams cutting through dust in front of every east window. The original Victorian bones of the building made for tall, skinny rooms with windows everywhere. Here on the main floor, several walls had been removed to make an entryway big enough to run the library. The circulation desk—a sprawling, mammoth, wooden monstrosity cobbled together from several sources—was the beating heart of the place. Librarian Julie’s perch, at the center of the desk, faced the door and allowed her to smile at every patron who walked in.
The narrow staircase, leading up to the children’s section, had been widened enough for two people to pass each other with only minimal elbow bumping.
The main room, spreading out in all directions from the huge desk, wandered into computer cubbies, research stacks, a room full of newspapers and magazines that nobody read, and eventually to the back of the old house where the adult nonfiction was housed. The windows back there were my favorite, stretching in mock-gothic arches to the tall ceilings. And my most favorite of those windows were the replica stained glass, donated by a library patron several generations ago. Four window panels showed local plants in four seasons: tulips and irises for spring, wisteria for summer, oak and maple leaves for autumn, and holly for winter. The windows went largely unnoticed, except by me because it was my job, as the only full-time employee under forty, to climb the tall ladders and clean them every Saturday.
I started up the circulation desk’s three computers and flipped the main
light switches. If I’d been five minutes earlier, I’d have had time to walk around turning on lights in all the rooms. Instead, I took the stairs to the kids’ section two at a time, flipped on the overhead lights and the three lamps by the miniature reading chairs, and was back at the desk with a librarian smile on my face (and possibly panting) by 10:00.
The wooden door creaked open. Bonita Honeycutt, the sweet woman who had been a white-haired assistant librarian my entire life, walked in. “Morning,” she chirped as she opened the book-drop closet and rolled the cart to the desk. “No crowds yet?”
Every day she asked. And every day I made myself smile when the answer was no.
“When I was a girl,” Bonita said, a dreamy, distant lilt in her words, “we loved the library. And the swimming pool. I was dynamite in my bathing suit.” She put her hands on what I could assume was once a waist.
I loved it when Bonita talked like that. Her history fascinated me, in a mild and totally non-stalker-ish way. She hadn’t grown up in Franklin—I knew, because I’d asked—so I wondered about her past. Hearing her talk about when she was a girl, I wanted to ask her, when did you stop being a girl? Why do you consider yourself a girl only in the past? And why were you dynamite only in the past? And did you know it then?
Instead, I pushed the wheeled box away from the night book drop and up to the desk to check in the books.
Within a minute, I heard some of my favorite words. “Greta, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Hi, Boss.” I waved a paperback copy of Anne of Green Gables, read practically to tissue paper, in Julie Tucker’s general direction as she walked in from the back door. “What can I do for you?”
I always asked, even if I was already doing it.
“After you check in last night’s drop, I need these books pulled.” She waved a handwritten paper at me. It looked like there were about ten titles on it. No sweat. I was always pulling books for people who, for one reason or another, couldn’t get in to find their own books. “And I have some new picture books that I need someone to read. You game?” She pretended this wasn’t the world’s biggest perk to this job.
Putting on my serious face, I nodded. “I’m sure I can find some time to take care of that.”
Julie smiled. I’d known Miss Julie Tucker as long as I could remember. She gave me my first job, the job I had all through high school. The job that decided my career. She’d kept me on during summers between semesters at the university, and she hired me as assistant librarian after I’d finished my master’s degree. She had run the library forever.
I reshelved the stack of overnight returns. Moving to the periodicals room, I slid new magazines into their protective plastic covers and placed them on the reading racks. I stacked the older issues, noting that it looked like nobody’d read them at all. There weren’t even creased pages. People didn’t come to libraries to read news or magazines. This was not a surprise. I’d spent all my masters research writing about how libraries should—ought to, needed to—pull themselves into the present so they would stay relevant.
More than anything, I needed my library to stay relevant.
I pulled out my phone and opened up my librarian account on Twitter. As part of my job to keep the library relevant, I was in charge of social media. Some people were surprised to see how much library chatter happened on Twitter. It was a great resource, and I felt zero guilt for checking it at work. After scanning through a few news stories about a big city branch closing due to funding concerns, I wrote the morning tweet: “It’s a perfect day to get lost in a good book. #GetLost #CheckOutTheLibrary”
An extremely old man leaned over a table beside the reading racks. Unfolded in front of him, a newspaper fluttered under the air conditioning vent. He pulled his brown cardigan tighter around his chest.
So, okay, maybe some people still came to libraries for news. I caught his eye and smiled at him.
I headed back to the circulation desk and checked the Card. This was a game I played with Kevin, our high school intern. The Card was short for “Across the Desk without Context” Card. We would write down the weirdest, dumbest, or craziest things people asked us across the desk and leave them for each other. (If it was really a good one, we bent the rules for “Over the Phone without Context.”) There was this gorgeous old Underwood typewriter in the workroom—it had probably been in the library since the thirties—and we used it to type up the Cards on old card catalog cards from storage. This was not a subtle endeavor. You had to hit the round keys like you really meant it. Everyone in the vicinity could hear us when we typed.
Kevin had done two Cards on his last shift. One said, “Do you know much about Europe? Because I have a question about Japan. (Adult male, early 20s).” The other one said, “I’m looking for a book about a guy that has a dog. Do you know that book? (Adult female, late 50s).”
I grinned. I loved my job.
I was carrying a stack of adult fiction back to the shelves just before lunch. As I came around the corner, I saw him. The most perfect looking guy I’d ever encountered in my entire twenty-four years. Standing in front of my favorite stained-glass windows, looking incredibly handsome and a tiny bit lost.
I shifted the load of books in my arms and leaned in, just a little: a completely professional lean. “Excuse me, can I help you find something?”
He turned toward me, and I got the full effect of the messy, curly dark hair, the chocolate-brown eyes, the eyebrows, the jawline. My thoughts immediately melted into Oh my goodness, what am I supposed to be doing?
He wore a button-up plaid shirt layered over a black T-shirt. There were words on his T-shirt, which I wanted very much to read (reading words is a weakness of mine), but I couldn’t seem to drag my eyes away from his face. That face. It was almost too perfect to be real. But here it was, right in front of me, balanced perfectly on a perfect neck that connected to perfect shoulders . . .
“Rilke?”
I shook my head. “Greta.” Shifting the books to my left arm, I stuck out my right hand. For a shake. Because I am an idiot. Then I realized what he’d said. “And you’re looking for Rilke poetry?” Thank goodness for a liberal arts bachelor’s degree. At least I knew Rilke was a poet.
When he nodded and smiled, he looked precisely and directly into my eyes, and I swear I saw our future. It had great hair.
It’s possible I stood and blinked for a minute or three. Then I remembered I was a grown-up. With a job. “Please follow me,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as breathless as I felt. I led him around the stacks to the poetry section. “Here is Rilke in German and French, and in translation if you prefer English.” All of which I read off the spines of the books quickly. And efficiently. I don’t think he noticed I was cheating.
He stopped close to me. Not uncomfortably close. Near enough for me to know that I wouldn’t mind if he stood closer. He wasn’t terribly tall, which was good—sometimes I felt dwarfed by people who were terribly tall. Not that I was tiny or anything. I could smell something vaguely musky, like deodorant or cologne or aftershave. It blended nicely with the dusty book scent of the nonfiction section.
He put his fingers on top of the Rilke books and slid three of them off the shelf and into his hand. He somehow managed to look half at the books and half at me. It occurred to me that he probably didn’t need any more help and I should get back to work.
I didn’t leave.
As he flipped through a slim collection, I pulled a different book from the shelf. Since I knew exactly nothing about Rilke—aside from the fact that he was a poet and what I’d just read on the book spines—I read the back cover copy and discovered that he’d written this whole collection of sonnets in a little over a month. I tried to find a way to use that little gem to start a conversation, but even I couldn’t make small talk about a guy who busted out several sonnets a day.
I put the poetry back and straightened a few str
aggly books. It was possible that nobody had touched some of these books in years, maybe even my entire lifetime.
When it became clear that I was lurking, I asked, “Anything else I can help you with?”
He looked up from the book. Right through his long, thick eyelashes. He had to know that was a trick, and probably that he’d perfected it. His slow smile nailed me to the floor. “I’m new here. What’s good to eat?”
Well. I knew the answer to that question. “Happy’s has the best burgers and fries. Ornello’s for pizza. There’s this little Mexican place by the university that makes the most perfect carnitas. If you’re looking for cold-weather food, there’s this amazing soup-and-sandwich place not far from here. And Brooklyn Bagel, which has bagels, if you can imagine. But I’ve been to Brooklyn, and I ate a bagel, and it was way better than anything I’ve ever eaten in Ohio.”
I must have stopped to take a breath because in that tiny second of silence I realized I sounded like a Franklin Chamber of Commerce brochure. A hungry one.
He was still looking at me and smiling.
I pushed the hair off my forehead and tried to look a tiny bit professional. It was time for me to move. To stop speed-talking about fast food. To do my job. “If there’s anything else we can help you with, just ask.” I turned and started to walk away.
“Wait. Greta, right?”
My heart thudded once and then seemed to stop. He remembered my name? How did he remember my name?
“Greta,” I repeated. “Right.”
He might have tossed his hair a little. “Thank you, Greta.”
“My pleasure.”
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, about the size of a business card. As unexpected as that was, I wasn’t going to reject any piece of paper this guy wanted to give me. He might be giving me his phone number. He handed it over, but when I took it, he didn’t quite let go. We stood there for a couple of Very Meaningful Seconds, each holding on to this little card. Then he let go and took half a step back.
“That,” he said, “is for you.” When he smiled this time, I felt my knees buckle. “He said you’d know why.”