Good Girls Do

by Linz, Cathie

  Angel liked Tyler, too, but for once she was cautious in telling him so.

  “Dog races.” Angel shuddered as she spoke to Julia after work the next day. “Seems barbaric to me.”

  “This from a woman who was keeping two llamas in my backyard.”

  “I wasn’t whipping them in a race.”

  “Trust me, no one was whipping any of the dogs. They were all pampered pooches. But Toni totally messed things up.”

  “She was just playing.”

  “In the middle of the race. Disrupting it completely.”

  “I heard that you kissing Luke did that as well. Disrupted things,” Angel said. “That made me proud.”

  Julia was clearly at a loss for words, so Angel changed the subject. “I found the perfect place for Lucy and Ricky and moved them yesterday to an Amish farm less than an hour’s drive from here. In case you were wondering why the llamas weren’t here any longer.”

  “What was wrong with the dairy farmer’s place?”

  Angel shuddered. “He uses chemicals and growth hormones.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t use them on the llamas.”

  “Ricky and Lucy wouldn’t flourish there. What have you got against the Amish farmers? You’ve never even met them.”

  “I don’t have anything against them.”

  “Some people do, you know. Because they’re Amish.”

  “Well, I’m not some people.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I didn’t raise you to be some people. I raised you to be open to all the possibilities in the world. To realize that the unknown is just another term for creation.”

  Great. Her mother was quoting Deepak Chopra to her. Well, that might be his view of things, but in Julia’s book, unknown simply meant “chaos.”

  And she’d had enough of that to last her a lifetime.

  Or several reincarnated lifetimes.

  “By the way, did I tell you that your neighbor signed up for my yoga class today?” Angel asked.

  “Mrs. Selznick likes taking classes. She’s taken everything from Spanish to tap dancing to introduction to opera everywhere from the park district to the library. If there’s a class offered, she takes it.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing if you’re not the owner of the Candlewick Store. Mrs. S almost burned the place down when she took a candlemaking class there.”

  “She probably lacked a good teacher, that’s all.”

  “And an asbestos vest.”

  “Asbestos is poisonous.”

  “But inflammable. Don’t light any candles around her, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “But you know I like to use aromatherapy in conjunction with my yoga . . .”

  Julia shook her head. “No open flames.”

  “But I could use those tiny hurricane lamp things . . . And I may have to smudge to rid the space of any negative energy.”

  “You’ve already done that once and set off all my smoke detectors.”

  “Yes, well, there seems to be a lot of negative energy around, so it needs another smudging.” Angel paused to study her a moment. “You look tired. Have you been using that herbal remedy I gave you?”

  “No.”

  “How about the sea kelp?”

  “No.”

  Angel sighed. “You always were a stubborn one.”

  Julia was thirty, had a mortgage, and contributed to a 401(k) plan. She shouldn’t have to hide her Pop-Tarts in her own house.

  If she were really stubborn she’d make a stand, lay down the law.

  Problem was, it wouldn’t make any difference. Her mother would just continue doing what she wanted.

  There was no changing her.

  Angel stared at her daughter and wished she could read her mind. Julia had never been an easy one to decipher. Angel could read other people’s auras, the energy emanations of the physical body, but not her oldest child’s. Knowingly or not, Julia blocked her out.

  Angel tried not to be hurt by the barricades, reminding herself that Julia had always maintained a stiff-upper-lip approach to life. Even as a toddler, she wouldn’t cry when she fell down, but would instead set her jaw with determination and simply get up again.

  Angel, who freely admitted to being sensitive and not at all stoic, knew her oldest child hadn’t inherited that toughness trait from her. When a bird hit the window of their apartment last spring, Angel had cried for an entire afternoon. She hated seeing others in pain or upheaval.

  Not that Julia was indifferent to other’s suffering. Not at all. But when Angel “felt your pain,” she showed it. Julia hid it.

  Julia hid a lot of emotions.

  Even so, Angel was fully cognizant of the fact that her daughter was going through a period of upheaval right now. And that Angel was partly to blame. True, Julia tended to take things too seriously while accusing Angel of taking them too lightly.

  And although it was true that Angel was low on monetary funds at the moment, she had come to see Julia for another reason. The guilt of not being completely honest with her oldest daughter was starting to eat Angel up inside.

  Normally, Angel led a very truthful life. That was a cornerstone in her belief system. Except in this case.

  Angel desperately wanted to do the right thing. She just had to figure out what that was.

  The tarot cards and runes were clear about one thing. Angel needed to reconnect with Julia on an emotional level before she could reveal her darkest secret.

  What happened beyond that was anyone’s guess.

  “If you’d rather not talk about it, we won’t,” Patty told Julia in the library staff room.

  Julia looked up from the Library Journal article she was trying to read during her lunch break. “Talk about what?”

  “The Wiener Races.”

  “And the kiss,” Laurie added.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.” Julia took a bite of her salad. She’d decided she was becoming entirely too dependent on junk food as a crutch in dealing with her family . . . or her attraction to Luke. At this rate, she’d soon have health issues to go along with all her other issues.

  Not that she was about to trade in her Pop-Tarts for tofu or soy milk. Not going to happen.

  But she was a believer in the Socrates school of thought regarding moderation in all things. Even Pop-Tarts.

  “It’s a good thing that Alice is on vacation with her family at Disney World,” Patty noted.

  “They were driving down and stopping in Washington, D.C., so Alice could speak to our representative there. She wants to tell her what she’s doing wrong,” Laurie said.

  “That’s certainly is one of Alice’s specialties,” Julia conceded.

  “It’s sort of sad that she doesn’t get pleasure out of anything aside from being critical.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s sad,” Patty said. “That a library board member wanted to know why we’re carrying ‘those trashy romances’ in our library.”

  “How many of their bones did you break?” Laurie asked.

  Patty scowled. “Believe me, I was tempted. Instead, I gave her my biggest smile.” She paused to demonstrate. “And asked politely if she was referring to the most popular fiction on the planet. I added that those unfamiliar with the genre had a lot of misconceptions about it. Then I handed her a copy of the article in last year’s January/ February issue of Public Libraries on the romance novels’ appeal and suggested she read it.”

  “Did she?” Julia asked.

  “Surprisingly, yes. She came back to me this morning and thanked me for—”

  “Not killing her?” Laurie inserted with a grin.

  “For the information.”

  “That was generous of her.” Laurie took a bite out of the peanut butter cookies Patty had brought for them.

  “She just couldn’t resist your awesome powers of persuasion,” Julia noted.

  Patty grinned and preened at the compliment. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Julia spe
nt the rest of the afternoon at the reference desk. She liked helping people find what they were looking for, and she liked the fact that a library was designed to make finding information easier. No putting a purple book on the shelf by the window just because it looked pretty there. No sticking another tome on the bottom because it had bad energy.

  No, in a library, there was a logical plan. Call her weird, but Julia loved the Dewey Decimal System. At one time she’d considered becoming a cataloger before deciding she preferred working with the public.

  Because the Serenity Falls Public Library wasn’t large enough to have a separate readers’ advisory librarian to deal with fiction requests, Julia handled those as well. Which is how she came to be speaking to Mabel about a mystery she was looking for, one she’d seen in a book display the library had a few weeks ago.

  “It has a red cover.” Mabel fingered the her pink curls as if doing so might prompt her memory. “I do remember that much. And the title had something to do with a place.”

  Julia was able to track it down eventually, thanks to a list of book titles she put on the weekly bookcart display for the past six months. She was in charge of both the fiction and nonfiction new books displays, as well as those spotlight displays she did on topics ranging from animal care to Hollywood bios to natural disasters to scrapbooking.

  Book list handouts were also her responsibility, and she had a dozen of them currently on display. After helping Mabel, she refilled the flyers for an upcoming library program—“Origami with Joy”—and added more “True Stories of Survival” handouts.

  During a brief mid-afternoon lull, Frasier stopped by for a chat. “Walt informs me that the folks who decide this best small town matter look at the local library as part of the package. And they look pretty closely, including investigating how many books we order each year. I’d like to see you up the orders this month to help those figures out some. I’m not suggesting we go over our budget, just that we order now instead of waiting.”

  Julia nodded her understanding.

  Frasier started to walk away but then turned back to her. “By the way, interesting race the other day. Glad to see you did your bit to make the day memorable.” He flashed her a surprising smile, which left her wondering if he’d been mocking her or not.

  And that got Julia thinking about Luke again. She’d been doing so well, too, ever since she’d come up with the idea of punishing herself every time he came to mind—one carrot stick for every “Luke thought.” So far this afternoon the score was Luke and the carrot sticks two, Julia zip.

  She could do better . . . and she would. Or she’d add brussels sprouts to the mix.

  Wait, she was one of the few people on the planet who actually liked brussels sprouts. So she’d have to come up with something else.

  What vegetable did she really dislike? The only one she could think of was bok choy. She wrinkled her nose. Yes, that should do it. Thoughts of Luke were bound to disappear now thanks to that adjustment.

  Maybe all it took were a few adjustments, and Julia would get the rest of her life back to normal.

  The pessimist in her thought that would be about as likely as the Village Hall Tower clock being accurate again for the first time in sixty years.

  Just think bok choy, she reminded herself. Bok choy. Not bad boy. Simple.

  “So you’re kissing librarians now.” Algee issued the statement and then took a huge bite of the famous Maguire’s burger.

  “Only one,” Luke drawled. “I hear the others are married. I don’t have many rules, but I don’t poach on other men’s property.”

  “You do know that she was seeing the banker before he got his trophy wife.”

  “Who was?”

  “The librarian you kissed. She and RJ were an”—Algee paused to do hand quotes—“item.” He reached for a few sweet potato fries and then looked up. “Hey, speak of the devil. There he is now.”

  Luke’s eyes narrowed as he watched RJ approach.

  “I need to speak to you, Maguire.”

  “Go ahead, Brandt.” He could use surnames as well as the next guy.

  “In private.”

  “Algee is a bud. You can talk in front of him.”

  Algee scooted his chair closer so he could drape one his of huge arms across Luke’s shoulders. “Call me Big Al. We’re buds,” he told RJ.

  “Fine. I’ll be blunt then. Stay away from Julia.”

  “Ah. I heard the two of you used to be an”—Luke paused to use the same hand quotes Algee had—“item.”

  “Is that why you were trying to humiliate her in front of the entire town?”

  “PDAs are frowned upon around here,” Algee told Luke.

  “PDAs?”

  “Public displays of affection.”

  “There was nothing affectionate about what he did,” RJ said.

  “True,” Luke agreed. “Nothing lukewarm like affection. Listen, Brandt, does your wife know you’re in here, warning me off your old girlfriend?”

  There was a pause, long enough to make the warning hairs on the back of Luke’s neck stand up, but it was too late.

  “I am not old, and I was never his girlfriend,” Julia said in an icy voice from behind him.

  Chapter Nine

  Damn. This was why Luke usually sat at a table in a corner, so no one could sneak up on him.

  But he’d forgotten that when he’d joined Algee at his table.

  Big mistake.

  Julia had a way of sneaking up on him when he least expected it. Like when he was in bed at night, unable to sleep. She’d come to him then, a man’s X-rated fantasy woman. But she’d also come to him when he was going through the piles of paperwork required to keep a place like Maguire’s going. He’d remember her smile, or the sound of her laughter. And he wasn’t happy about that. It smacked of being sappy.

  “RJ and I went out on a few dates,” Julia was saying, “but that’s it. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Damn, he got hot and hard when she put on that Miss Prim persona. He wondered if she was wearing her daisy underwear today under those nifty jeans. She really did have great legs. Long and curvy. Just the way he liked his women and their legs.

  “I do not appreciate being the topic of conversation over a few brewskis,” Julia added.

  “Brewskis?” Luke repeated.

  She waved her hand at the beers on the table. “Alcoholic beverages.”

  Luke couldn’t resist teasing her as he stood to face her. “So it’s okay if you’re the topic of conversation, as long as we don’t drink when we talk about you?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him in a gesture intended to warn him off. It had the opposite affect on him, however.

  “You know what I mean.” Her voice was as sharp as a barbed wire fence intended to keep out intruders.

  But Luke was an expert at getting past outer defenses. “I know exactly what you mean.” He leaned a little closer with every word he spoke, until his lips hovered just above hers.

  He kept his gaze focused on her eyes, even though he was tempted by her mouth. He wanted to see the attraction she felt for him. He wanted to know he wasn’t the only one in this mess.

  She allowed him just a brief glimpse before shoving him back into his chair. The only reason Luke let her get away with it was because he liked the feel of her hands on his body and because she then turned her ire to RJ.

  “I expected better of you, RJ.”

  “I was trying to protect you from this scumbag.” RJ jerked a thumb in Luke’s direction.

  “I can protect myself,” Julia said.

  “I can attest to that,” Algee added. “She has a mean sucker-punch.”

  Luke shot him a dirty look.

  Undeterred, Algee added, “So you don’t have to worry about the librarian.”

  “I do have a name, and it’s not ‘librarian,’ ” Julia stated. “How would you like it if I called you the Comic Book Guy?”

  Algee shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me a bit.
I’ve been called much worse.”

  “We’re straying from the subject here,” RJ said. “Julia, I need to speak to you privately.”

  “How do you think your wife is going to like that?” Luke said.

  The banker ignored his question and instead cupped Julia’s elbow with his hand. “Come along. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Want me to punch him for you?” Luke asked hopefully.

  Julia glared at him. “Don’t you dare.”

  “A little advice—you might not want to dare a guy like Luke,” Algee said. “Just trying to be helpful here.”

  “You.” She pointed to Luke. “Stay here. I’ll speak with you later.” She turned and left with RJ.

  “Doncha just love bossy women?” Algee noted before munching on a crisp dill pickle.

  Love? That four-letter word was definitely not in Luke’s vocabulary.

  “Let’s go over to the Serenity Cafe and talk over a cup of coffee.” RJ voiced it as an order, not a suggestion. A polite order.

  “I’m paying for my own coffee,” Julia stated. Actually, she could really use a slice of pie about now. Her mother had made her try one of the pumpkin-applesauce-bran muffins she’d baked this morning, and her stomach was still in cement shock.

  Julia noticed the curious looks she was getting from the other customers as well as the waitress, who was Alice’s squeaky-clean eighteen-year-old niece.

  After ordering a slice of today’s special, strawberry-rhubarb pie, and coffee, Julia made sure that no part of her body came in contact with any part of RJ’s. A little tough to do given the tight space under the booths here at the cafe, but Julia worked hard and was successful.

  She wasn’t avoiding the contact because of any lingering feelings she had for RJ but because she didn’t want to “set tongues wagging,” as Edith would put it.

  Of course, if gossip was a real concern to Julia, she should never have returned Luke’s kiss at the Wiener Races the other day.

  He’d taken her by surprise, that was her excuse. A feeble one, granted.

  If RJ had tried to kiss her, even if he had taken her by surprise, she would have pushed him away, no problem.

  Everything about Luke was a problem.