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= Romantic Novel =

A New England Love Story

by Jean-Thomas Cullen

6.

For a moment, confronting the mythological sociopath and New York playboy known as Richard ‘Rick’ Moyer, Marian Charles felt the floor sink beneath her feet. She thought the earth was going to swallow her up.

There, life-sized but not larger than life, stood the man who had saved her life without knowing it. Lillie had painted him as a figure of terror like that giant tomato dressed in a bed sheet that was in one of the Hallow E’en stories she read to the children at Story Hour.

Instead, he looked—as the expression went—like he put his pants on one leg at a time, same as everyone else. He looked rather sweet. Very. And a bit confused. Or lost.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

She had put her wedding band on this morning from old habit. Now she put her hand over that hand so he would not see it.

Why, then, were her legs trembling? Why were her knees knocking together? Why did she feel like a little girl at her first school dance?

"I am lost," he said. "I hope you can help me."

She gathered her wits and her courage, and stepped forward. "Yes?" She hoped he did not hear the faint little yeth in her yes.

He opened his mouth, and out came a voice that sounded like a nice strong coffee tempered with the finest cream. "My name is Rick Moyer, and I was looking for—" His eyes seemed larger than they should be—the whites were showing. He seemed to stop and swallow, as if she were on fire.

Marian stared at him with a mixture of fear and desire. "Yes?"

"A book." He said the word in a higher, strained tone.

"No." It was the irrepressible humor in her, even at a moment of sheer terror.

"Yes."

She raised her arms to encompass the large hall all around them. "Well, here they all are." She added a nervous laugh. The humor was spontaneous, and helped break her paralysis. "Which one do you want?"

He got it. "Yeah." He laughed in a mix of surprise and disarmament. "Now we just have to find the right one." His voice sank back down to its more normal, seductive (at least, she found) tone.

She moved her hands defensively behind her back and stood like a grammar school child. "You have to pick one."

"Maybe you can help me pick just the right one for me." His eyes were not on the books, but on her. He looked flustered, and she wondered if it was a lascivious sense as his eyes roamed up and down her starved figure. His eyes did narrow back to a normal dimension as he apparently found his own wits back as well.

She said: "You are allowed to check out up to four on a cross-library loan."

"I only read one at a time."

"How nice," she said. "A one book at a time gentleman." She was holding her own in the cleverness department, though her knees were knocking together. She hoped he could not hear it—bone on bone, she imagined, just in time for Hallow E’en. At least her teeth were not rattling, and her tongue was under control. She did not believe for a moment that this charming, handsome man could be a one woman at a time guy. He probably had open books scattered all over his mansion.

"I had been thinking about dinosaurs," he said, flicking a gaze toward Rose Otto nearby. His gaze returned to her, roving between her face and her mid-section. Then he looked her squarely in the eyes: "Now I am thinking maybe I should read about something more—warm-blooded."

"You mean like mammals?"

"Yeah. A mammal," he agreed. If gentlemen wore hats these days, he would be jauntily spinning his hat on one finger. "Please, take me to your mammal department." From his eyeballs, it was not hard to figure out that she was the mammal in which he was suddenly most interested.

She had run out of funny things to say, choked up a bit with embarrassment, and turned. With her shoulders, she made a gesture for him to follow, like this way.

Together, they walked down the short, wide hallway from the main lobby, past the children’s rooms, and into the main adult reading room. From the experience of past guided tours, she pointed like an airline stewardess, gracefully to the left and then to the right in one rolling motion. "Fiction on the left, fact on the right."

He stopped and waited. His turn to hold his hands behind his back, like a little boy waiting for story time. "You show the way. I’ll follow."

"Mammals," she said. "This way."

"I am wondering if you have anything about horses."

"Horses?" She felt a jolt of surprise. Coming from Oklahoma, she’d grown around farms with horses.

"I don’t know if there is much interest in horses around Emery," he said, as if preparing to be told they didn’t have such books.

"Let’s go have a look."

"Sure. Okay."

Together, they ambled—not really walked, more like two kids off on an exploration when the adults were not looking—down the aisles until they came to a section titled Nature and Pets. For a second, she was having sheer fun. For a second, too, he touched her back with his hand. It was a playful, gentle touch, lasting just a second, but it sent a jolt through her. For a moment, it was all fun. Then it became awkward. Something in her stiffened, making her afraid. She was afraid to let go, to trust, to really let herself enjoy.

For his part, he reacted in the same instant by pulling back—surprised at his own brashness, perhaps; startled that she seemed to react with such stiffness all of a sudden. He just managed to say: "Thank you" in a voice full of wonder, as she fled away.

"Will that take care of all your needs?" she asked, with mischief in mind. Lillian had so innocently said to take care of the gentleman’s needs.

"For the moment," he said. "My needs are complex."

"You seem like a complex sort of gentleman." As she turned to run, she called busily over her shoulder: "Let me know if you need anything else."

She felt his eyes burning into her back, and it was the kind of heat you got from a warming pad—blissful. Please, look all you want. I hope you like what you see.

Yes, more than anything else, she wanted to explore his needs—and hers. He scared her to death, frankly. She felt doors and windows flying open in her soul, and fresh air blowing in, long forgotten. Could she let him get closer to her? That part would be easy. A woman did not worry about that. But could she let herself get close to him? She’d already had that conversation with her husband in her thoughts falling asleep alone in the king-size bed in her little house by the lake. Tommy would grin and say Go for it…

She remembered Lillie’s admonition to beware of a man this handsome, flirtatious, and self-possessed. She ducked into the Ladies’ Room and washed her face with lukewarm water. Just waiting there, leaning over the sink with her elbows on the cold granite and her wrists dangling under the cold water, waiting for the water to turn warm, she felt a sense of relief. She knew she was not yet ready for that kind of relationship. Maybe she never would be. The idea scared her. But she was grateful that someone—especially that man—had come knocking at her door. So what if they went to a movie or walked by the lake. Maybe they’d hold hands or even kiss. She wasn’t sure if he would turn out to be anything more than a brief flirtation. He seemed like just the type who would enjoy the thrill of conquest, but hold back from anything resembling lunch or commitment. If he was just a fly by night prince, let him fly away. He had already twice brought dawn to her night. Only he did not know it yet.