Seven Day Loan (3 page)

She let loose a wolf whistle as she entered. The library was far larger inside than the unobtrusive door had presaged and was stocked with row after row, case after case of books. Enough books to start her own bookstore.

“I knew I heard books,” she said to no one in particular.

“You hear books?” Daniel’s lightly sarcastic voice came from the far left corner of the library. “Interesting. Most people actually have to read them.”

“It’s a gift,” she said, shrugging. “What are you doing?”

Daniel stood behind a desk stacked shoulder high with books.

“I am draining all the alphabet soup out of my library.” She raised an eyebrow at him as she walked to the desk. “I thought you were a bibliophile,” Daniel taunted in response to her puzzled look.

“I am a bibliophile. A bibliophiend even. But I still have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Well, as your book knowledge comes from the retail side of the industry then I’ll pardon your ignorance.” He winked at her and she fairly flushed as a sensory memory from last night hit her lower stomach with soft but insistent force. And the light, that certain white light created only by the morning sun reflecting off new-fallen snow rendered Daniel’s handsome features almost luminous. She almost forgot what they’d been talking about. “Let’s see, at your bookstore your books are divided by subject and then alphabetized by author’s last name, yes?”

“Right. With a few exceptions.”

“Well, libraries aren’t allowed any exceptions. The books have to be in perfect order at all times. You can’t do that with just sorting by genre and then alphabetizing.”

“Yeah, that’s what the Dewey Decimal system is for, right?”

“But there isn’t just Dewey. There’s the Library of Congress classification system. Dewey is a clean, efficient system, ten main classes divided by ten and so on. The Library of Congress is alpha-numeric and based on 26 classes, one for each letter of the alphabet. Compared to Dewey it is crude and confusing, and I only had the library that way because of Maggie. It’s what she was used to.”

“Alphanumeric—so that’s your alphabet soup.”

“Yes, and this library has been disorganized soup for far too long.” Daniel shook his head as he wrote out a series of numbers on an index card and slipped it inside the front cover of a book.

“Oh my God,” Eleanor said, sounding utterly shocked.

“What?”

“You’re a nerd.”

Daniel only looked at her a moment before laughing.

“I am not a nerd. I’m a librarian.”

“No way,” she said, recalling again the ferocious passion and the skill he’d demonstrated last night. “Guess they were right.”

“Who?”

“You know, whoever said ‘it’s always the quiet ones.’”

Daniel’s mouth twitched to a wicked half grin. “I’m the quiet ones,” he said, flashing a look at Eleanor that nearly dropped her to her knees.

She coughed and shook herself out of the erotic reverie she’d fallen into.

“Okay,” she said, walking toward him with more gusto than guts. “I can accept that you’re a librarian and a sex god—”

“Well, considering your lover is a pr—”

“Nope. Nyet. Halt. I told you last night—”

“Oh, yes. I had forgotten. Our mutual acquaintance is off-limits to discussion.”

“If you want me to survive this week with what passes for my mental health intact, then yes.”

“Which I do. So I apologize. But as we barely know each other, finding a topic of conversation apart from our mutual friend might be difficult.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she said, sitting on the table next to a stack of books. “We’ve got books in common, sex…” She ticked them off on her fingers.

“All of two,” Daniel said skeptically.

“Well…” She stuck out her foot and tapped his leg lightly. “We’ve got you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I’m curious. You’re a curiosity. As long as you don’t mind answering personal questions—”

“How personal?” Daniel interrupted.

“Unapologetically intrusive, knowing me. Unconscionably so.”

“You have a large vocabulary, Eleanor.”

“And you have a large…” She paused as he gave her a warning look. “House.”

“I do.”

“How does a librarian afford a house like this? That was the first unapologetically personal question, for those of you keeping count.”

Daniel smiled but Eleanor saw the pale ghost of pain pass across his eyes.

“Librarians can’t afford houses like this. But a partner in a Manhattan law firm can.”

“Your wife? She was a lawyer?”

“She was. A very powerful attorney.”

“You married a shark?” Eleanor asked, laughing.

“A corporate shark, in fact.”

“Wow,” Eleanor said, duly impressed. “How did you meet her?”

“At the library, of course.”

“She read?”

“She gave,” Daniel said with great emphasis on the last word. “She gave balls, galas, parties, charity events, fund-raisers of every stripe. She actually had a heart and a conscience. She was the human face of an otherwise very imposing old firm. She held a gala one year to raise money for a literary charity at the NYPL—”

“Holy shit, you worked at the NYPL?”

“Fifth Avenue, Main Branch,” he said with barely concealed pride.

“With Lenox and Astor?” she asked, naming the two famous lions that guarded the legendary library.

“On warm days I ate my lunch outside with Astor.”

“Why not Lenox?”

“He asked too many personal questions.”

“I like him already. So you were both guests at the party?”

“Oh no. She was the hostess. I happened to be working late that night in the Map Room. Lowly archivist. Not important enough for an invitation.”

“So you were tucked away in a dusty corner alphabetizing 18
^th
century maps of Tierra del Fuego…”

“Something to that effect—”

“And she slips away from the suffocating crowd of the geriatrically wealthy—”

“Has anyone ever told you that you should be a writer?”

“No one who’s ever tried it themselves. But back to you and her. So you’re up to your elbows in Fuego and she rushes in all disheveled elegance, out of breath, desperate for just one moment of solitude…”

“Actually I was examining a map of Eurasia for signs of wear; she strolled in quite calmly, apologized very politely when she saw me and said she simply wanted to see the library by night.”

“I like my version better. But still that is romantic. You gave her a tour? It was love at first sight?”

“Intrigue at first sight. I assumed she was just a guest at the gala. She was lovely, intelligent, a very young-looking thirty-nine.”

“Ohh…an older woman. I love it.”

“Her age or mine was never a factor. Or perhaps it was. She was older than me, powerful, wealthy…but at night when we were alone…”

“She was your slave,” Eleanor said, finishing his sentence.

“My slave. My property. My possession.”

“Your possession…I know how she must have felt. Pressure to be in charge of the world. So much responsibility. The whole world on her…to let go and just give herself to you, to give up to you…”

“I’m glad you understand,” Daniel said as he started sifting through another stack of books. “Few women do.”

“Oh, they do. They’re just afraid to admit it. Yeah, equal pay for equal work and our bodies our selves and Gloria Steinem and all that jazz…but in that dusty dark little corner of every woman’s heart where we keep our maps of Tierra del Fuego lives the hunger to fetch a powerful man his slippers on her hands and knees.”

Eleanor was pleased to see her words had a similar effect on Daniel as his did on her. His breath quickened just slightly as his hands deliberately stroked the leather binding of the book in his hand.

“So you,” she said, meeting his eyes, “are a librarian. What does that make me then? A seven-day loan?”

Daniel laughed as he set his book aside. He moved toward her and lightly gripped her knees.

“Seven-day loan…I’m not sure I like the thought of giving you back.” He slid his hands up her thighs and took her by the hips.

“But what about the overdue fines?” she asked, playfully flashing her eyes at him.

“I think I can afford them,” he said. Eleanor tried to voice another protest but his mouth was already on hers.

He kissed her with an urgency she hadn’t felt last night. Last night he’d discovered, taken for his own. This morning she felt the need to have her. It wasn’t about her body as a stand-in for his wife. Eleanor had made him laugh, given him a break, if only momentary, from three years of pain. This time he wasn’t conquering. This time he was just grateful.

Daniel pulled her from her seat on the desk. She wondered if he would take her on the floor or take her back to his bedroom. Instead he turned her so she stood with her back to his chest. He laid one slow, possessive kiss along the length of her neck before pushing her forward onto the desk.

Eleanor forced a deep calming breath as Daniel stripped her naked from the waist down. She braced for his entrance, expecting it to be as sudden and fierce as last night’s. But he waited, running his hands over her thighs, across her lower back, slipping a hand between her legs to caress her outer lips until she was so eager for him she stood on her tiptoes in readiness. When he finally penetrated her it was slow and methodical. He gripped the back of her neck as he began thrusting. He didn’t go as deep today as last night either but moved in spirals in and out of her, reaching every corner inside her.

She moaned quietly, her hot breath steaming a patch of the cool mahogany of the desk under her cheek.

“You like it from behind,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“God, yes,” she confessed without shame.

“There’s more than one way to enter from behind.”

“If you think that’s a threat, then you don’t know me very well,” she said, smug even while squirming underneath him.

“I don’t,” he admitted, slightly breathless, but still in control. “But that will change.”

As if to prove his point, he pushed down and deep into her, eliciting both a muscle spasm and a sharp gasp.

She closed her eyes. He increased his pace. When she came she came as quietly as she could but still loud enough for Daniel to hear and laugh just before he let himself come with three final thrusts and a muffled grunt at the back of his throat.

Eleanor’s breathing slowly settled. She blinked and raised her head. All she saw were thousands of books stacked and shelved and neatly scattered. Daniel was still inside her.

“God I love a man who reads,” she breathed and laid her head on the desk, spent.

The sex out of their system—for the moment, at least—Eleanor and Daniel made diligent progress on his library. Daniel sorted, reclassified while Eleanor dusted the bookcases in question and reshelved the newly Deweyed books in proper order.

Sometimes they talked as they worked: Eleanor learned about Daniel’s childhood in Canada, the source of his imperviousness to New England winters, and Eleanor confessed her frustration with her lack of ambition. She wanted, in theory, to do more than work in a bookstore but was so happy, most of the time, with him that she couldn’t bring herself to make any sort of profound change.

“Contentment can be the enemy,” Daniel agreed and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. “But don’t worry. Life, death, or an act of God will eventually intervene. Enjoy the contentment while it lasts. It won’t last forever.”

Eleanor shivered at the bitter truth of his words.

“You’ve been content to be alone for three years. So am I the life, death, or act of God sent to shake things up?”

“You,” he said, “are a force of nature.” He slapped her bottom and ordered her back to work.

They worked mostly in silence, companionable silence after that, speaking only about the books and how they should best be arranged. During a back-stretching break, Eleanor wandered into the corner of a windowless alcove. Two dozen or more cardboard boxes were neatly stacked.

“What are these?” she called out to Daniel.

“Discards,” he said, coming to her corner. “Maggie’s old law books. There’s a business college with a paralegal program in town. I was going to donate the books to their little law library.”

“Going to?”

“Well, I still am. I just haven’t quite…”

Eleanor gave him a flat, steady stare.

“How long have these been sitting here in those boxes?”

“A year, I suppose.”

Eleanor continued to gaze blankly at him.

“You do recall I am the dominant in this particular relationship, yes?”

Eleanor wasn’t intimidated. “Then act like it.”

“I will.” At that, Daniel scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, carrying her squirming self back to the case they’d been working on. “Back. To. Work,” he ordered as he put her down, gently but firmly, on her feet.

“Yes, sir.” She turned and climbed nimbly up the library ladder.

“Eleanor,” Daniel said, after a few minutes of actual work had passed.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ll call the college tomorrow.”

Eleanor smiled a smile only the shelves could see.

“Yes, sir.”

Eleanor groaned in unconcealed ecstasy.

“My god…this is so good….”

“I know,” Daniel replied, taking another bite for good measure. “I have a neighbor, an older lady on the property adjacent mine. She made this.”

Eleanor licked her fork and dove into the lasagna yet again. “God bless her. Did you go get this while I was in the shower?”

Daniel’s eyes flashed at her innocent question. After an entire day of dusty library work, Eleanor had spent a solid hour showering and changing into her nightclothes, and when she emerged Daniel had dinner waiting for them.

“No.” His voice was even. Whatever she’d seen had come and gone. “Her husband brought it by. He does some of my property maintenance. And he brought more firewood.” He took another log and threw it on the warm orange fire. The wood crackled and sizzled; Eleanor breathed in the raw smoke with pleasure. She was silent for a long moment. When she was sure Daniel was watching her she said, “I was thinking.”