Page 16 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

Images of Arthur McLachlan flashed through my mind, each one more alarming than the last. Passed out on his bed, his legs hanging over the edge. Crumpled in a heap at the foot of the stairs, his cane well out of reach. Crawling slowly toward the door, desperate for someone to come to his aid before it was too late.

That last one accounted for why I climbed up the steps and pulled open the door without knocking. I’d always been useless in emergencies for this very reason; instead of keeping a cool distance and appraising the situation for what it was, I let my imagination—and yes, okay, myemotion—run wild. In this instance, it ran right into Arthur McLachlan’s house without regard for how intrusive I was being.

The moment I swung open the door, it was to find myself facing a toppling heap of books that went flying across the parquet entryway. I had no doubt that if I were to scoop a few of them up, they’d have revealed themselves to be the modernist fire hazard that had caused the last nurse’s flight from this house.

“Mr. McLachlan?” I called, tentative at first. “Mr. McLachlan, are you in here?”

When I didn’t get an answer except for the ticking of an ancient timepiece that sat mounted, askew, above the fireplace, I became more frantic.

“Mr. McLachlan… Arthur. Arthur, please say something. I don’t know where—”

I cut myself off as I ran into yet another stack of books. The huge, dusty tomes were stacked near the foot of the stairs. As they went flying, I realized that several of them were actingasthe stairs themselves. The bottom step had long since been eaten away by termites or mildew or both, leaving a scraggy hole plugged by—what else?—Arthur’s old standby, Schopenhauer.

“Seriously?” I said as I kick the books into a more seemly pile. My sympathies, which had been roused in Arthur’s favor, were starting to strongly lean toward the nurse. “What happens if someone has to come down these steps at night?”

That was when I heard it. At first, I thought it was the groaning of a house falling apart under the weight of its extensive and poorly organized library, but it took a decidedly human turn. A humanandirritated turn.

“Arthur?” I called again, peeking my head around a corner.

A low, muttered curse that I knew all too well greeted my ears. It was the curse of an incredibly erudite man. I’d have recognized it anywhere.

“I’m coming in,” I said to the oak-paneled door that seemed to be the source of the noise. There was no handle, just a metal panel where the knob should have been, so I pushed my way through. “I hope you’re decent.”

Technically speaking, Arthur McLachlanwasdecent—and by that I meant all his requisite body parts were covered. To anyone with a brain in her head and a heart in her chest, however, he was a wreck. A bloodstained, blood-spattered wreck who looked as though the first strong breeze would send him toppling over.

“You poor thing.” I rushed forward. In the library, Arthur McLachlan had always seemed like a solid man, his frame carried along not so much by strength but by decades of practice and an ironclad will. Inside this pink-wallpapered kitchen, one hand clutching the sink and his knees starting to buckle underneath him, I felt as though I towered over him. “Let’s get you into a chair. Is there someone I can call? A nurse? A friend? 911?”

That last suggestion imbued Arthur with the strength he’d been hitherto lacking. With a withering stare, he straightened to a standing position and waved a hand at me.

It was a mistake for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the waving hand was the source of all that blood. And I, already deemed useless in emergencies, felt myself starting to falter.

“I don’t need an ambulance, you fool. Or a chair. What I want is—”

“Pressure, some antibiotic, and probably a stitch or two. But superglue will work in a pinch. You’d be surprised how many of my daughter’s childhood wounds I sealed up that way.” The sound of Maisey’s bright, unfaltering voice from the doorway brought so much relief thatmyknees were the ones in danger of buckling. “Why don’t you help Arthur to the table, and I’ll go grab my first aid kit.”

“If I wanted your help, I’d ask for it,” Arthur muttered, but I noticed he didn’t eschew the offer of a first aid kit. Seizing the opportunity, I pulled out a chair and gently guided him down into it, careful to keep my eyes averted from the wound on his finger. A quick glance at a cutting board on the counter, where a few jagged slices of apples and a knife looked like a horror movie gone right, was enough to set the scene. The way he lurched as he lowered himself to the chair told the rest.

“Hold tight,” Maisey said as she handed me a wad of paper towels. “I’ll be right back.”

The door swung to a close somewhere behind me, but I didn’t take my eyes from Arthur’s face as I stanched the bleeding. He looked…unwell. I was no medical expert, but the library staff was required to get a CPR certification every year. His heavy, rattling breathing and the way his eyes didn’t quite fix on anything weren’t good signs.

“Typical,” Arthur muttered as I continued applying pressure to his wound. “I can’t go one day without running into you. Everywhere I turn, you’re right there, trying to get me to read a romance novel.”

“Um, it’s been a few more days than that,” I said, really starting to worry. If he was losing track of time on top of everything else, then he was in a much worse state than I’d imagined. “And when have I ever suggested a romance novel to you?”

His head started to droop.

Since I had no idea how long it was going to take Maisey to track down her superglue—or if that was even going to save this man from passing out in my arms—I did the only thing I could think of to revive him.

“Of course, it wouldn’t kill you to pick up something with a love story in it.Wuthering Heights, maybe, or anything by Nicholas Sparks. People love Nicholas Sparks.”

His harrumph of outrage started to restore the color to his face, so I kept going.

“Me? Now, I prefer my romance to have a true happily ever after. Give me Nora Roberts and Beverly Jenkins or give me death. I think you’d like Jenkins. She’s got a real flair for love scenes.”

“Now, see here.” Arthur’s head snapped up, his eyes glittering as they struggled to focus on mine. “I don’t need you to tell me aboutromance.”

“Is this where you remind me that my life has no value outside of the library? That my naivete and—what was it?—Pollyanna outlook make it impossible for me to understand how the real world works?”