Page 26 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“If you’re looking for your young man, I asked him to take a peek at the filing cabinet in my office,” she said, her nostrils pinched so tightly they were all but invisible.

“M-my young man?” Catherine asked, trying to not to look as rattled as she felt. Mrs. Petersknew?About Jasper? About the book?

“I don’t approve of him spending all his free time hanging around the library, but he promised to take care of that sticky lock for me,” she said. Catherine could almost feel the warning tone in Mrs. Peters’s voice reverberate in her bones. “So I’ll let it pass.Thistime.”

Catherine ran her sweat-slicked palms down the tops of her thighs, grateful she’d defied convention and her father’s wishes for the day by wearing a fitted pair of capri pants. If Mrs. Peters had Jasper trapped inside her office, then there was nowhere he could run—and nowhere he could hide.

It was perfect. This was her chance.

“I’ll just see if he needs a hand, shall I?” she asked brightly.

She didn’t wait for an answer, but that didn’t stop Mrs. Peters from calling one out at her anyway. “Keep the door open! One inch for every temptation of the flesh!”

Catherine was careful not to meet Lonnie’s eye as she scuttled past and made her way to the office. She was afraid she might burst into laughter otherwise. She also blamed her distraction for why she spoke up before she got a good look at the man squatting in front of the metal cabinet of Mrs. Peters’s oversized desk.

“Aha! I’ve got you now,” she called in as singsong voice. Then, with a silent apology to Hemingway for the slight alteration, she quoted from their book, “‘We are all cooked. The thing is not to recognize it.’”

The man jumped to his feet, his smile so wide and bright that it shocked her into a state of immobility. Actually, her immobility was due to the smileandthe fact that she wasn’t looking into the ruggedly saturnine features of the man who was rapidly coming to haunt her dreams. Nothing about William McBride was rugged, saturnine, or haunting.

“Catherine!” he said. “You’re here at last.”

Catherine fought to keep her dismayed expression from showing. Years of training in the role of the perfect military daughter helped, but she was no match for the sight ofA Farewell to Armssitting askew on the desk behind him.

“What are you doing with that?” she demanded as she reached for the copy. He stopped her with a neat side step.

“It’s my cover story,” he said with a knowing look at the open door. They could both hear Mrs. Peters tut-tutting to herself on the other side. With a carefully lowered voice, he added, “I had to come up with an excuse to keep visiting the library. Mrs. Peters is starting to catch on to us.”

For the longest moment, Catherine’s heart stopped beating and all of herCyranonightmares came rushing back. William McBride was the one writing her those notes? William McBride was the one who made her heart go pitter-patter every time she walked by that book on a shelf?

“No,” she whispered, but so quietly she wasn’t sure William heard her.

“I can’t say I’m much of a dab at literature, but there’s no rule that says I have toreadthe books I check out, is there?” he said. “This one looked pretty short, so I figured it would give me an excuse to come back in a few days to pick out another one.”

“Wait.” Her heart slowly started pumping again. “You haven’t read it?”

He picked it up and glanced at the spine. “A Farewell to Arms?” He grimaced. “No offense, but I get more than enough military drilling at work. Not that your father isn’t a good commander—he is. A great commander. An even greater man.”

Relief rendered her more careless than usual.

“So you just picked it up at random? Oh, thank goodness. You almost gave me a heart attack.” She held out an imperious hand. “Give it to me.”

William McBride may have been a buffoon, but he was no fool. He immediately stepped between Catherine and the desk. “Why? What’s so special about this book?”

“Nothing. It’s not for you, that’s all.”

He tapped the cover. “Haveyouread it?”

“Of course.”

“And do you like it?”

She took her lower lip between her teeth and considered the question. Truth be told, she’d never been much of a Hemingway fan. In fact, she’d only read this one because someone had told her father it wasn’t appropriate for a young unmarried woman like herself. Nothing piqued her interest faster than a determination to keep her away. She’d immediately converted her mother to her cause, quoting the book’s literary merit and military accuracy until her father had no choice but to give in.

In the end, the book wasn’t nearly as scandalous as she’d been promised. All the love scenes were hinted at rather than shown, and the moral of the story ended up being theexactkind of thing her father approved of.

A loose woman killed in childbirth. A man going on to live a full, active, happy life without any punishment for his half of the sin.Ugh.Give her Bram Stoker’s…tall old man, clean shaven, save for a long white mustache and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere. Range her on the side of Mary Shelley’s…figure hideously deformed and loathsome.

She preferred it when authors had the nerve to give their monsters a physical form.