she noted morosely—in hues of gold and copper and ebony, her own boring blond hair—dishwater, her mother had always called it—was clipped back at her nape with a simple barrette, performing no significant billowing to speak of. And instead of heavily lined, mascaraed eyes of exotic color, Miriam’s were gray and completely unadorned.
No, the women on this particular Web site certainly were not what one might call usual, she thought with a sigh. Nor were they what one might call realistic. Of course, she reminded herself, the site was called hotwetbabes.com, so she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised to find all those photos of, well, hot, wet babes. Still, she did wish someone would try to impose some measure of…of…of accuracy on existing Internet businesses.
There. That wasn’t advocating censorship, was it? Who in his or her right mind would object to accuracy, after all? Accuracy was a very good thing. The world needed more accuracy. And in Miriam’s opinion, it was high time the Internet became more accurate.
Yes, indeed.
She positioned the mouse to close the program with a convenient click—clearly this filter wasn’t the one the Marigold Free Public Library would be using, if sites such as these found their way through—but her hand, and therefore the mouse, must have just missed the mark. Because she accidentally—and she was absolutely certain it was indeed an accident—clicked instead on an announcement. An announcement which read, of all things, Visit our brother site! Hotwetbods.com! And before she had a chance to correct her mistake—drat these fast new modems, anyway—a different screen opened up. And she suddenly found herself looking at—
Oh, my.
More half-naked, glistening bodies appeared on the screen, only this time they weren’t female bodies. And this time they weren’t naked from the waist up. Instead they were—
Oh, dear.
“Ah. Miss Thornbury, there you are.”
Oh, no.
The only thing that could have possibly made Miriam’s current state of abject embarrassment any more complete would have been to be discovered by a second party while she was gazing—however involuntarily—at hot, wet bods on the Internet. Even worse—which one might have thought would be impossible, all things considered—the second party in question was none other than Professor Rory Monahan, one of Marigold’s most upright, forthright, do-right citizens.
And also one of Marigold’s cutest citizens.
And one of the most eligible, too.
Not that Miriam was necessarily in the market for an eligible man. But she was only human, after all. And she did rather like cute ones. In fact, she rather liked Professor Rory Monahan. But everyone in Marigold—even a newcomer like Miriam—knew that Professor Monahan was far too involved in his scholarly pursuits to ever show an interest in anything, or anyone, else.
More was the pity. Because Miriam would have very much liked to pique his interest. Though, she had to admit, not while she was gazing at half-naked men on the Internet. It could, after all, only lead to trouble.
Guiltily, she shot up from her chair and positioned herself in front of the computer monitor, just as Professor Monahan strode through the door to her office. He looked even cuter than usual, she noted—and even more eligible, drat him—with his round, wire-rimmed glasses enhancing his pale-blue eyes, and his black hair tousled, as if he’d run restless fingers through it as he perused The Encyclopaedia Britannica with wild abandon. He was dressed in a pair of dark-brown, baggy trousers, a cream-colored dress shirt with sleeves rolled back over surprisingly muscular forearms—no doubt from carrying around all those heavy tomes, she thought—and a much too outdated, and not particularly attractive, necktie.
All in all, he looked adorably rumpled and delightfully disheveled. He was the kind of man a woman like her just wanted to take home with her at night and…and…and…
And feed, she realized with much annoyance. Because truly, that was what she wanted to do, every time she saw Rory Monahan. She wanted to take him home and cook for him, for heaven’s sake, then present him with a homemade pie for dessert. And Miriam wasn’t even a good cook. She was an even worse baker. Nevertheless, after she’d plied him with her dubious culinary creations, she wanted to linger over coffee with him, then take a walk through the neighborhood with him—hand in hand, of course—then pop microwave popcorn with him, and then watch a rented copy of an old romantic comedy like The Thin Man or something with him.
In fact, what Miriam wanted to do with Professor Monahan was so sweet and so quiet and so harmless, it scared the bejabbers out of her. The last thing she needed in her life was more sweetness, more quietness, more harmlessness. She was already the safest, most predictable, most boring woman on the planet.
If she was going to dally with a man, not that she had any intention of dallying with any man—even Rory Monahan, honest—then, she told herself, she should at least have the decency to seek out someone who was dangerous and thrilling and outrageous, someone who might, possibly, stir dangerous, thrilling, outrageous responses in her. Because she was truly beginning to worry that she wasn’t capable of a single dangerous, thrilling, outrageous response.
Worse, her desire to pursue such sweet, quiet, harmless activities with Professor Monahan smacked much too much of domesticity, of settling down, of matrimony. Not that Miriam had anything against matrimony. Au contraire. She fully planned to marry and settle down and be domestic someday. Someday, she hoped, in the not too distant future.
But she wouldn’t be settling down and being domestic with Rory Monahan, alas. Because Rory Monahan was, quite simply, already married—to his work as a history professor at the local community college and to his studies and to his research and to his quest for knowledge. When it came to women, he had the attention span of a slide rule. In the six months that Miriam had lived in Marigold, she had never once seen him out on a single date with a woman.
Then again, she herself hadn’t been out on a single date with a man since she’d moved to Marigold, had she? And what was her excuse? She certainly had a longer attention span than a slide rule. And she had been asked out on a few occasions. She just hadn’t accepted that was all. And she hadn’t accepted, because she hadn’t been interested in the men who’d asked her out. And she hadn’t been interested in the men who’d asked her out because…because…because… She gazed at Professor Monahan and tried not to sigh with melodramatic yearning. Well, just because. That was why. And it was a perfectly good reason, too.
So there.
“Miss Thornbury,” Professor Monahan said again now, taking a step forward.
Recalling what was on the screen behind her, Miriam shifted her position to the right a bit, to compensate for the angle at which he had placed his own bod. Uh, body, she hastily corrected herself.
“Yes, Professor Monahan? Can I help you?” she asked, innocently, she hoped. Because the thoughts suddenly parading through her head were anything but innocent. No, they were more of the hot, wet variety.
“I’m in a bit of a bind,” he told her, “and I suspect that you’re the only one who can help me out.”
Well, that sounded kind of promising, Miriam thought. “Oh?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ve looked high and low for volume fifteen of Stegman’s Guide to the Peloponnesian War, but I can’t locate it anywhere. And if there’s one person who knows this library backward and forward…” He hesitated, arrowing his dark brows down in consternation—and
