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“If I was with Jillian, I’d give her plenty of attention,” Kyle said.
Vance pointed a fat finger at him. “Don’t go there.”
Kyle frowned again and shoved two cards across the table. “I’ll take two.”
When Vance gave him two new ones, he was still frowning, but that probably had more to do with thoughts of Jillian than the cards he’d received.
Jonathan kept his thoughts about women in general and one woman in particular to himself. The last thing he wanted was Bernardo’s pity or Vance’s scorn. Let Kyle take that hit. Jonathan preferred to suffer in silence.
* * *
Saturday morning Jonathan attempted to ease his suffering by going with his sister, Juliet, to the library for the Friends of the Library monthly book sale.
A stranger seeing them enter the musty room in the library basement would never have taken them for siblings. Other than their hair color, they didn’t look at all alike. Juliet Gerard had big, brown eyes and perfect eyesight, where his gray eyes hid behind glasses. He had a long face, while she’d been blessed with a perfect oval like their mother’s. He was skinny and barely five foot eight; she was long-legged and stacked. She’d definitely gotten the looks in the family while he’d gotten the brains. Not that Juliet was stupid, but it quickly became apparent who the family genius was. In the world of kids, that wasn’t necessarily a blessing. When they were younger he’d often wished it was the other way around, but then he’d realized how unfair that would have been. Life was easier for a man who wasn’t all that attractive than it was for a woman. Theoretically.
Their lives were as different as their looks. Juliet was married and trying to get pregnant, a project that was taking much longer than expected. When she wasn’t working at that, she logged in part-time hours at Mountain Escape Books or met with her book club or hosted parties where all her friends had to buy candles or face goop. She was an awful cook, a good dancer and an avid romance reader. And her social calendar was always full.
Jonathan’s, on the other hand, had a lot of open space, and he was stuck in nonswinging single limbo. He couldn’t dance, but he could fix leaky pipes and install dimmer switches, something both his sis and his brother-in-law appreciated. Unlike Juliet, he read real fiction like action adventure or sci-fi/fantasy, and the monthly fund-raiser book sales gave him an opportunity to try out new authors.
He’d just scored big, finding a first edition of The Kingdom of Zoon, when Juliet, prowling the romance section a couple of bookshelves over, let out a squeal.
Hildy Johnson, who owned Johnson’s Drugs along with her husband, Nils, was standing next to her and already had several books in her basket, but she eyed Juliet’s find with envy. “Oh, Vanessa Valentine. I haven’t read that one.”
The woman was married and in her fifties. Why was she reading romance novels?
“I’ll lend it to you when I’m done,” Juliet promised.
Rita Reyes, who’d worked in the bar at Zelda’s restaurant, entered the room. She said a quick hi to Jonathan, then moved to join Juliet and Hildy in their treasure hunt. “I hope you haven’t taken all the good books.”
“We saved you a few,” Juliet assured her. “When’s Zelda’s going to open again?”
“Charley says by June.”
“I hope so,” Juliet said. “I miss those huckleberry martinis.”
“And I miss working there.” Rita sighed. “I’ll be so glad when we’re up and running again.”
A fire in December had forced the restaurant to close; it was now in the process of being rebuilt. Zelda’s was a popular place in town for both families and singles wanting to mix and match. Jonathan hadn’t gone there much.
Rita pointed to the book in Juliet’s hand. “I love that one. James Noble is the perfect man.”
The perfect man, huh? A character made up by a woman? Oh, brother.
“Look! Here’s Surrender,” Rita said, pulling a paperback off a shelf. “I love this book.”
A war novel in the romance section? Jonathan edged closer and sneaked a peek. He saw no scene of carnage on the cover, no white flag being raised—only a woman in a low-cut dress and some muscle-bound guy in tights and a shirt he forgot to button doing a back bend over the kind of fancy bed no man would want to sleep in. Looking at the way the guy was holding her made Jonathan’s back hurt.
“Oh, my gosh, me, too,” agreed Juliet. “There’s a hero to die for. I love the scene where he throws himself in front of her and gets stabbed.”
“And how often does that happen in real life?” Jonathan scoffed under his breath.
The women stared at him as if he’d uttered blasphemy.
Juliet raised a delicate eyebrow. “Probably as often as a giant bubble floats to earth and gives magical powers to the first fool who touches it.”
Rita snickered and Jonathan, properly chastised and feeling like he’d stuck his face in a firepit, moved to a safer corner of the room and perused the home improvement section.
Turning his back on Juliet and her fellow romance junkies didn’t shield his ears from their conversation.
“Men,” Rita said disgustedly. “Maybe if they read a few romance novels they’d learn something.”
“Nils could stand to learn a few things,” Hildy said. “Especially in the bedroom,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper that carried across the small, now quiet—since everyone was eavesdropping—room.
Balding, scrawny Nils and Brunhilda Hildy in the bedroom together. That was T.M.I. to the max.
“Oh, they all think they’re such good lovers.” Rita rolled her eyes. Rita was divorced. Obviously, her man hadn’t measured up. “If I found a man who could make love like the heroes in those books, I’d take him to bed in a heartbeat.”
“If a man really wanted to be a good lover, he should read these books,” Hildy continued in her stage whisper.
Rita nodded. “That would guarantee he’d get lucky.”
The women finished making their selections. As they went to pay for their books, two gray-haired men and a teenage boy stampeded to the romance section.
Jonathan paid for his book and then left the room with Juliet, who was now wearing a superior smirk.
“Pathetic,” Jonathan muttered.
“You shouldn’t knock romance novels if you haven’t read them,” she said as they walked out of the library and turned toward Bavarian Brews for their ritual post-shopping coffee.
“I guess,” he said. “But they all seem so, I don’t know, unrealistic.” He held up a hand before Juliet could give him another verbal smackdown. “Yes, neither are my sci-fi/fantasy books. But I know they’re improbable. And at least sci-fi has real science at its roots.”
“And my romance novels have real life at their roots,” Juliet argued. “They’re all about men and women falling in love and working out their problems. People do that every day. And you know what I like best about them? They all have happy endings.” Juliet’s smile vanished. “Sometimes a woman needs a break from real life and a little encouragement.”
His sister was always upbeat. To see her expression suddenly cloudy was disturbing. “Everything okay with you and Neil?” He hated to ask, not because he didn’t care, but because female emotions were scary. He’d tried his best to comfort her when their dad died but had felt hopelessly inadequate.
Right now she was looking at him with teary eyes that made him uneasy. He’d rather face the dragon of Zoon than a woman’s tears.
“I’m never going to get pregnant,” she said.
“You should stop taking those pregnancy tests, Jules.” He got that she wanted a baby, but agonizing over the fact that she wasn’t pregnant probably wasn’t helping.
As if he knew what would or wouldn’t help. She should be talking to Mom, not him. How’d they gotten on this conversational track, anyway? Oh, yeah. Romance novels.
“Well, thanks. That was comforting,” she snapped.
He slung an arm around her. “Hey, sorry. But seriously, stop stressing. It’ll happen.” Dr. Jonathan Templar, fertility expert. Oh, brother.
“Maybe it won’t,” she said in a small voice.
Now he really didn’t know what to say. Don’t give up? Yeah, that’d make her feel better. You’ve got someone who loves you? True but not what she wanted to hear. The only thing she wanted to hear was, “You’re pregnant.”
He shook his head. “Life sucks sometimes.”
Amazingly, that had been the thing to say. She managed a smile and said, “Yeah, you’re right. But not all the time.” She held up her grocery bag full of paperbacks. “At least I scored big today. I’ve got a whole bag full of happiness.”
A whole bag full of happiness, huh? “I guess.”
“These books are full of love and adventure.”
“And perfect men,” Jonathan added, remembering the conversation in the library.
“A woman’s idea of perfect, anyway,” Juliet said.
They got their coffee, then sat at one of the café tables outside to enjoy the sunshine and watch their fellow Icicle Falls residents go about their business. They were almost finished when a woman with a baby in a stroller approached. Jonathan opened the door for her and returned to his seat to see his sister’s eyes looking ready to spill tears.
“Hey, it’ll be okay,” he promised, and hoped he was right. “You’re only thirty. You’ve got plenty of time to have a kid.” They’d been trying for a year or so. Did it bring the odds down the longer you tried?
She nodded, but no smile this time. “I should get going. See you at my place for dinner tomorrow?”
It was Mother’s Day. If he didn’t show up, he’d be toast. “Sure.” He made a mental note to bring some antacids.
She gave him a hug, then hurried off down the street.
Jonathan drank the last of his coffee and went to throw the cup in a nearby garbage can. He passed a table with a woman sitting alone, nursing a drink and reading a paperback. He glanced down and saw a couple on the cover, this pair dressed in contemporary Western attire. Another romance novel. The woman smiled and turned a page.
What was it about these books that had women so hooked? He reviewed the conversation he’d heard in the library. There’s a hero to die for.... James Noble is the perfect man...perfect man.
Women wrote those novels and they wrote about perfect men. So if a guy wanted to learn what a woman wanted in a man... Who was that author Juliet and Hildy had been talking about? Vanessa Valentine. Someone with a name like that had to know her stuff when it came to love.
Jonathan tossed his cup, then retraced his steps to the library, hoping the women hadn’t cleared every romance novel off the shelves.
Most of the library patrons were gone by the time he slipped back into the musty room on the lower level, either back to their homes to wash cars or mow lawns, or off to go hiking the mountain trails. A few late arrivals browsed the health and finance sections, and one woman was leafing through a cookbook.
Just his luck, the only other section that was occupied was the romance section, where two teenage girls stood, perusing the books. They were cute and skinny, probably cheerleaders. Darn. He’d hoped not to have an audience.
He hovered over by the magazines and CDs, wishing they’d leave. They didn’t. In fact, it looked like they were going to camp out over there all day, reading and filling their paper grocery bags, emptying the shelves.
What do you care if they see you looking through a romance? They’re only high school kids, he reminded himself. Kids who’d go home and tell their moms about the dork who’d come in looking for love between the covers of a book.
“Oh, my gosh, here’s a Vanessa Valentine,” said one.
No, don’t take that.
She handed it to her friend.
“I haven’t read this,” the other girl said, and dropped it in her bag.
So much for that book. So much for all the books if he didn’t make his move soon. He sauntered casually over. A forty-something woman he’d seen around town had joined them now, and he was aware of both her and the girls staring at him like he was some kind of freak as he studied the titles. He could feel himself beginning to sweat. Just take a book and get out of here.
He snagged a book about a vampire and another with a cowboy on the cover and was about to leave when, suddenly, he saw it. What was this? Two shelves down in the corner, a few inches past the woman’s thighs... Yes! One last Vanessa Valentine.
He bent and made a grab for it just as she leaned over. Oh, no! Boob graze.
“Excuse me,” she said in a tone of voice that told him he was done here.
“Uh, sorry,” he mumbled, and snatched back his hand.
She took advantage of his consternation and plucked the Vanessa Valentine off the shelf. Then she scooped another half dozen novels into her shopping bag.
That left two and one of the teens got them. The woman was right. He was done here. Face still flaming, he walked to the card table where the library volunteer was taking money.
She was somewhere in her twenties and dressed in black. Her fingernails were black, too. She had piercings all over her face, a collection of earrings running up her ears and wore enough eye makeup to give her a head start on Halloween. Not that Jonathan was an expert on eye makeup, but hers seemed like overkill to him. He preferred a more natural look, like what Lissa wore. Liss, always the gold standard.
But this woman was friendly enough. He’d seen her volunteering before. He nodded in response to her greeting of “Back for more?”
She took the books to total them and noticed the vampire on the cover of the top one. “Oh, I love this author. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never read her.”
“You haven’t? Well, you’re in for a treat. Her vampire is really sexy.”
Did she think he was into guy vampires? He opened his mouth to explain that neither guys nor vampires were his thing, but he found it impossible to wedge the words into their conversation.
“He’s right up there with Sookie’s Eric. Gotta love Eric, don’t you?”
Jonathan was aware of the teens tittering behind him. His face began to heat. “Well...”
“I suppose you’ve read all the Twilight books. Are you on Team Edward or Team Jacob?”
“Huh?”
“I say vampires win every time. Werewolves aren’t that sexy.”
More tittering produced more burning on Jonathan’s face. “These aren’t for me.”
“Sure they’re not,” came a whisper from behind him.
“They’re for my sister.”
The volunteer’s face fell. “Oh.”
Okay. She was embarrassed, he was embarrassed. He held up the vampire. “But I’ll have to give this one a try.”
“You should,” she said, nodding her head and making her earrings jingle. “You’ll like it, I promise.”
He paid his buck and got out of there. At least he’d managed to get a couple of books. But what he really wanted was a Vanessa Valentine novel. He wandered upstairs to see if he could find any of her works in the fiction section to check out.
Lo and behold, he discovered a copy of one of the books Juliet had found downstairs. He took it off the shelf. Everlasting Love, the title read, and beneath the cursive script a beautiful couple posed, dressed in the garb of another century. No bed. This pair was standing in a moonlit garden. From the way they were gazing at each other, they wouldn’t be bothering with a bed.
