Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) (25 page)

Her turquoise-blue eyes widened with interest. “That sounds wonderful. But let’s make it lunch instead. I’m starved.” She measured him with her eyes to see his reaction at her bold upgrade of their spontaneous date. “It’s only fair that I pay for your lunch after the debacle I caused,” she offered.

He started to shake his head and she interrupted the gesture with a hand to his sleeve. A warm tingle ran up his arm when she touched him. And spread.

Mercy.

“Please allow me to pay, Sam. After all, you paid for the book.”

“
All right. Tit for tat,” he agreed. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever turned down a free lunch with a smart, bookish woman.”

She held up the two ruined halves of
The Princess and the Goblin
.
“I don’t know how smart I am. Greedy and impulsive is more like it, but thank you for the compliment.”

He clucked his tongue over the damage to the lovely old book. “Please put that away in your handbag. I can’t bear to look at it like that. After you buy my lunch—I’ll get the tip—perhaps you can swing by my house so I can mend the spine for you.”

“Really?”

“
Sure.” He scrutinized the book carefully. “I know it won’t be worth as much with a spine repair, but it might be easier to read if it weren’t in two pieces. Alas, with a spine repair, I can’t give it to little Cindy as a gift. So, you may keep it.”

“
That’s kind of you. I’ll take you up on that repair offer, too.” Her eyes twinkled. “I don’t think I’ll ever sell this book. I would like to keep it as a memento.”

He chuckled. “Of what?”

“Of how we met,” she said.

Oh my! Something’s starting here,
blurted the angel in his ear.

A quickening went through him as if he was a young man. He wondered how old she was. There was not one line on that classic New England face. And not a speck of makeup that he could see.
Thirty-two,
he guessed and then inwardly cringed. That was probably about right. Compared to him, she was a baby.

Jessie put away the halves of the book in her handbag, took his arm as if she had known him all her life, and nodded at him to get going.

They set off down the frost-heaved sidewalks to where the warm cafe awaited. The feel of her graceful hand poised on his forearm was a sweet weight. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so hopeful. He even had butterflies cavorting in his stomach.

The angel on his right shoulder whispered again in his ear:
After lunch, then what are you going to do with her?

The truth was, he had
no
idea. Unless she really did come over to get the book mended.

Sam turned to steal a look at her while they were walking, but saw she was not watching where she was going. Her eyes were on him! She was relying on him to steer her safely to the coffee shop. As they walked, she measured him intently with those startling blue eyes, as if he was not the type of man to whom she was accustomed.

Suddenly, he felt a lot warmer and tingling in places that should never be tingling in public. He tried not to look down at himself. How long had
that
been?
Months?
Certainly, he had been alone the last time this had happened.

He turned his eyes to hers and couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. Jessie had a dozen questions in them and a half-smile on those moist, curved raspberry-colored lips that had no need of cosmetics. Her lush red hair bounced like a storybook princess. Her step was so light that it was nearly inaudible on the pavement, compared to the heavy clomping of his giant winter boots.

The angel’s voice said in his ear,
Once you go in the coffee shop with her, you’re approaching the point of no return.

He took the angel’s warning as a challenge, one that could go either way. Sam was intrigued by what was turning into a lucky day. He hadn’t had one in decades.

The two of them almost bumped into a wrought iron light post, so engaged were they in staring at each other as they walked.

“
Whoops! That was a close one. I’m relying on you to look where we’re going,” Jessie teased.

Sam suddenly felt the shards of a cynical life begin to melt away under a cascade of what he identified as
hope
. The possibilities that might extend from lunch with her thudded against the door of his heavily guarded heart as they walked together, arm-in-arm, down the streets of the bustling port city that he loved.

Chapter Two

The delicious aromas of the coffee shop were nearly as intoxicating as his female companion. Suddenly, he was ravenous. They ordered off the lunch specials menu. The server brought steaming bowls of lobster chowder with cellophane packets of hexagonal oyster crackers. Plates of crab cakes were accompanied by cole slaw, tartar sauce and lemon wedges. At the end of the meal, the server brought huge slices of heavily frosted devil’s food cake with French vanilla ice cream,
à la mode
.

He found it a sensual pleasure to watch Jessie eat with deliberate slowness and enjoyment. Sam had never seen a slender girl put away the chow quite like Jessie did. It was like watching food porn. She ate as if every mouthful was decadent and rare. Hopefully, she had a lively metabolism to match her appetite and discerning palate. He found her an engaging lunch companion, with much to say that was absorbed by that brain of his that never forgot a detail.

They talked of places in New England where they had both lived or visited. He found out that she also followed hockey and baseball, as he did. By dessert, he knew that she loved to dress in white and blue, that she dabbled in watercolors and
plein
-air painting of seascapes, and that she loved to cook and someday wanted a decent kitchen to do it in. He learned that she was good at blackjack but bad at shooting pool. She had taken piano lessons as an adult and had played hymns for a small church for two years. She had a little electronic keyboard and enjoyed playing it every day. The strange thing was, the more Sam knew about Jessie, the more he felt he didn’t know. There was something mysterious about the things that she claimed as personal.
They could all be about anybody…
Except for the brief statement about the dead husband of the last century, she didn’t mention any school, family, or friends. Sad little red flags went up.

After the rich cake, he excused himself to the men’s room to loosen his belt and re-tuck his shirt. When he came back to the table, she had ordered fresh coffee for them and all of the empty plates and crumbs of the feast had been cleared away.

“Thank you for that memorable lunch,” he said, sitting again. “It was a feast.”

“
I don’t know when I have enjoyed such a delicious meal. Never, I’d say. I’d like to come back here.”

“
Me, too. And to think this little place has been overlooked by me all of these years,” he said.

“
Port Sapphire seems so comfortable, as if I had always known it, this coffee shop, in particular. You, in particular.”

He chuckled. “Jessie? You are both charming and disarming.”

“Thank you, Sam,” she said modestly, color spreading on her cheeks. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“
It was meant as one.”

She kept talking. Her eyes crinkled a bit at the corners when she laughed and her hands moved gracefully through the air as she made this point or that. Her voice grew more and more melodic as her chatter mesmerized him and changed from chatter to deep and introspective conversation about how books affect their readers and how their life paths are forever changed with each book they read. He found her mind as intriguing as her appearance, her scent, her distinctive alto voice.

“Do you sing?” he asked.

“
Yes. Only to keep myself company or to cheer myself. Mostly Disney tunes and kids’ songs.”

“
You’re kidding. Really?”

“
Yes. How did you know I sing?”

“
Just an intuition about your speaking voice. How nice it would sound…”

“
Do you sing, too?” she asked him.

“
I try. If you ever heard me sing, though, your ears might bleed.”

“
I doubt that.”

Their banter was fun for him. He was especially fond of the way she held her coffee mug when dispensing her youthful, but serious observances, with her little finger crooked over the handle in a flirtatious question mark.

The server, hoping for a big tip, he guessed, came yet again with the coffeepot.

His eyes smiled at Jessie over the final steaming cup of coffee that he lifted to his lips and blew across the surface gently, to cool it. Impulsively, she touched his free hand across the table. She let it rest on his, and bravely, he did not withdraw from her touch. It was a lot for Sam to let a stranger touch him.
A lot.

“
Sam
.” She said his name like a prayer—the intensity of it surprised him. “You’re absolutely delightful. Why aren’t you married?”

He was startled at her boldness, but answered anyway. “You’re very kind. I thought I might get married once, a long time ago, when I was more of a civil rights attorney and less of a bookseller. But my intended, a legal secretary who I sometimes hired, couldn’t put up with the small income that my socially conscious cases brought. She thought that marrying a lawyer meant marrying an ATM machine. She also had a crazy idea in her head that I would end up on the Supreme Court when I had no such ambitions.”

“A gold digger and power hungry to boot.”

He nodded. “I straightened her out on that. I make my own career decisions. After she broke our engagement, she set her sights on a married judge. She got him to leave his wife and three kids and marry her. They now live, unhappily ever after, in a posh section of town where people drink too much and sue each other for amusement.”

“There’s a word for women like her. And men like him.”

“
Indeed.”

“
I won’t say those words, of course. Was there anyone after her?” Jessie asked.

He paused, deciding whether to tell her more. “After her, there was a scientist for less than two weeks—we never made it to the bedroom, but we are still friends to this day. She’s my comic relief, my sisterly sidekick for those trips to IKEA and occasional fake dates when either of us needs an escort for some charity event. She’s also my buddy for the peace movement meetings. We usually sit together at them.”

“Oh, that’s sweet. A platonic best friend?”

He nodded. “Yes. She’s a great friend, but we have no romantic spark and she’s a die-hard neat freak who nags me about the way I live.”

Jessie laughed. “I take it you aren’t very tidy.”

“
That’s right. And then, after Linda, I took one other serious stab at a possible marriage partner, a long-term relationship that didn’t work out. She was, at first, supportive of my civil rights activities, but later, as the months wore on, grew tired of my attendance ritual at peace vigils and similar events. I’ve never missed a peace meeting in ten years and hopefully, never will. She also did not approve of a couple of dear friends of mine, of whom I think the world, but they are Socialists, which in her mind meant Communists.”

“
What a shame.”

“
Not that she would have known the difference. Nor was she tolerant of anyone with political or religious views that did not conform to her own.” He shrugged.

“
Narrow-minded woman,” she interjected and nodded for him to go on.

“
Exactly. She closed her mind to them—my dear friends—without ever getting to know them. So now, there’s just me, living day to day, selling fine old books, going to estate sales, and once in a great while, I rescue longtime non-conformist friends from jail or write wills and set up living trusts, things like that. Mostly, I spend a great deal of my time at home among my books—
they
are my friends. I like music, too. All kinds. And fireplaces on a rainy or snowy night.”

He stopped talking, afraid he had said way too much.

“I like those things, too.”

Jessie removed her hand from his and put a slender finger to her chin, thinking. Her face was flushed and he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes as she considered all that he’d said. A brief, but not uncomfortable silence stretched as they regarded each other with greater interest.

“I’m impressed that you haven’t fled from the table yet,” he observed. “Why haven’t you gotten out of here while the getting is good?”

“
Sam…You undervalue your true worth. You’re a wonderful man.”

He felt himself blush. “In that case…may I please see you again?”

“Of course. I do not have one-lunch stands!”

Sam laughed. He had laughed more in the two hours that he had known her than he had in six months.