track him down that evening, one way or another. Until then, she was keeping her thoughts strictly on her work.
At four-fifteen, the kids started arriving for Emelda’s story hour, which started at four-thirty. They all gathered around the low round table in the center of the children’s section, where Emelda would keep them spellbound with fairy tales and stories by the best contemporary children’s authors—and sometimes true-life accounts from Montana history.
Cameron Stevenson, one of the two men Katie and Justin had found shoveling out the town hall parking lot on Tuesday, brought his seven-year-old, Erik, as always. Often the parents would leave their kids and come back at five-thirty to collect them.
Not Cam. The tall, athletic auburn-haired teacher was a single dad and he took fatherhood seriously. He stuck around, even though he coached at the high school and would have to rush back there the minute the story hour ended to get his team ready for the evening’s home game. As he waited, he read sports magazines from the periodicals section and browsed the fiction stacks.
After five, as Katie was wrapping things up for the day, Cam wandered over to her workstation at the central reference counter and he and Katie chatted about nothing in particular: how good the varsity basketball team was looking this year and how Cam and Erik had barely made it home Saturday before the snow shut them in.
Cam joked that he’d heard how she and her “groom” had been stuck at the museum alone for the duration. “Some honeymoon, huh?” he asked with an easy grin.
“It was…quite an experience,” she replied in a library-level whisper, mentally congratulating herself on how offhand she sounded. “Poor Buttercup.”
“That old mare of Caleb’s, you mean?”
She nodded. “The old sweetheart was stuck out in the shed all that time, no exercise and nothing but hay to…” She didn’t finish.
How could she? Her throat had clamped tight. Joy and relief went exploding through her.
Justin!
He must have just come in. He stood over by the check-out counter, wearing a sweater that matched his eyes and a gorgeous coffee-brown suede jacket. He was scanning the room.
He spotted her. Her heart froze in midbeat and then started galloping. Somehow, she managed to lift a hand and wave.
He headed toward her, long strides eating up the all-weather gray carpet under his boots. She was vaguely aware that Cam had turned to see what—or who—had stolen the words right out of her mouth.
“I had a feeling I might find you here,” Justin said.
Good gravy, he really was the best-looking man in the whole of Montana! She had to swallow to make her throat relax before she could speak. “Uh. Good guess. And, um, great to see you.”
It was the understatement of the decade.
She collected her scattered wits enough to introduce him to Cam. The two men exchanged greetings and then Cam left them alone.
The second the coach was out of earshot, Justin asked low, “When do you finish here?”
She ordered her crazy heart to stop racing. “Give me a minute. I’m almost ready to go.”
As they passed the check-out desk, Lindy called out, “Have a nice night.” Plump and pretty and very curious, the clerk gave them a big grin and wiggled her eyebrows at Katie.
Katie, getting the message, stopped to introduce them.
“Terrific to meet you!” Lindy enthused. Sheesh. She was practically drooling.
Then again, who could blame her?
Justin made a few cordial noises and at last they were out of there.
They walked down the library steps into a winter sunset. The cloudless sky was shades of salmon above the white-topped mountains and the melting snow at their feet sent rivulets trickling, down the steps, along the parking lot. A hundred miniature streams gleamed in the gathering dark.
She sent a quick glance toward the silent man at her side. He hadn’t touched her—hadn’t taken her arm. She longed to take his, but didn’t feel comfortable enough with him at that moment, with the way he’d popped up out of nowhere, with the strange, shadowed look in his eyes and the hard set to his square jaw.
“Where’s your car?” he asked flatly when they reached the big, black Escalade.
“I walked. It’s only a few blocks and it was nice to get out.” She almost said more. Meaningless chatter. About the warming trend. About how she liked to walk whenever the weather permitted. But she didn’t. His eyes didn’t invite chitchat. “Justin, what—?”
He cut in before she finished. “Who was that guy you were talking to inside?”
Her heart warmed. So that was the problem. He was jealous. “Cam? He’s only a friend. Honestly. A friend…”
His mouth twisted into something meant to look like a smile. “Not that I had any damn right to ask.”
She looked at him levelly. “If you were wondering, then I’m glad you asked. It’s important that we both feel we can say whatever’s on our minds.”
“Is it?” He lifted a dark brow at her.
She blinked. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
Untrue and she knew it. It was very much something. She could see it in his eyes.
But before she could open her mouth to pursue the issue, he spoke again. “Will you have dinner with me?”
There was only one answer to that one. “I’d love to.”
“Where would you like to go?”
He sounded so…formal. As if she was some stranger.
It came to her that she didn’t want to go and sit in a restaurant with him. Surrounded by other people, she wouldn’t feel she could really talk to him. And she needed that, to feel free to talk. This new distance between them scared her a little. She wanted, with all her heart, to bridge it.
And then again, was this feeling of distance really all that surprising? They’d found a rare and thrilling intimacy, just the two of them, in the museum. But she had to remember that they’d known each other less than a week. The attraction had been immediate and the forced proximity had made it possible for them to grow close very fast.
And then he’d returned to his life and she’d gone back to hers.
No. She had to expect that things would be a little awkward, now they found themselves face-to-face again at last.
She intended to eliminate the awkwardness, to break down any and all barriers between them. That would be easier if they were alone.
“Tell you what? Let’s just go to my place. How about fried chicken and oven-browned red potatoes, would that be all right?”
