Page 52 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts

“We don’t care,” Theo said with a mulish set to his mouth.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Trixie added with much less belligerence. “I told Chloe what we were going to do.”

That got Jasper’s interest. “And she let you walk out the door? Without a fight?”

“She told us to do our worst.” Trixie grinned in such a wide, engaging way that Jasperalmostfound himself grinning back. “She said there was no way under the sun you’d ever agree.”

18

1960

In his short lifetime, Jasper had read no fewer than three different books on etiquette.

The first had been more of a pamphlet than a book, given to him by his mother after he’d been invited to a children’s birthday party where he’d known zero of the guests and even less about the many different forks he was likely to encounter there. The second had been Emily Post’sEtiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, and he’d only picked it up because someone had left it on the train when he’d moved to Colville. The third had doubled as a cookbook, and the only thing he’d gleaned from it was that any and all modern dinner parties required a generous investment of aspic, but he still counted it on his list.

Nothing, however, could have prepared him for the delicate situation of telling a young woman that he was being threatened into helping an up-and-coming lieutenant under her father’s command to win her love.

“Out with it,” Catherine hissed as they sat in the back of the darkened movie theater, carefully separated by a row in case anyone walked in and discovered them. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait for a note inside our next book?”

He glanced over his shoulder to find the flickering lights of the movie casting a brief illumination across her face. The film was one they’d both already seen—Some Like It Hot—and they’d carefully chosen a time when they knew the theater would be empty, but Jasper still wished they could watch it like two people on a real date. Sitting side by side, sharing a bucket of popcorn, her thigh pressed warmly against his… Jasper knew her parents would never allow these things, but he still wanted them.

He still yearned.

“We need to pick a new book anyway,” he said as he settled back in his seat, buying himself time. “I’ve run out of interesting things to say aboutThe Haunting of Hill House.”

Her soft sigh reached him. So did one of the Sugar Babies, courtesy of her surprisingly good aim. It thwacked the back of his head before falling to the sticky floor with a plop. “You’re such a liar,” she teased. “You loved that book.”

He grunted. He’d actually disliked it quite a bit, finding the lack of romance and meandering sentences not to his taste, but he wasn’t about to say so. Not when the book was so clearly her favorite.

“Don’t worry,” she said, still in the teasing tone he didn’t trust. Helikedit, obviously, and was in serious danger of falling irrevocably under its spell, but he trusted it as much as he did a coiled snake. “I have a new one for us to read. I think you’re going to enjoy it.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I can’t divulge the title. It’ll shock your maidenly senses.”

He felt himself stiffening into an upright seated position. “My senses aren’t maidenly,” he said. “They’re…sensitive.”

“You almost passed out when I took off my top the other day.”

“Catherine!” He whirled around, unable to continue the pretense of holding this conversation while speaking to the space in front of him. Sure enough, her face was lit with laughter, her lips parted to show a flash of her teeth. “You can’t say things like that in public.”

“Why not?” she asked. “I’m only telling it like it is. If I hadn’t had the foresight to push you up against the wall of your cabin, you’d have fallen flat on your face.”

He groaned and sank down in his seat, feeling his cheeks flame. While it was true that she’d pushed him up against a wall—and that she’d done it while his hand was cupping the most glorious bit of flesh ever to be crafted by God or humankind—he hadn’t been shocked.

He’d been excited, obviously. Delighted, yes.

But he’d also been aware of a truth more terrible than anything contained in her stupid horror books: there was no way he was getting out of this thing alive. He was in too deep, too fast, so lost in her that he was in danger of drowning forever.

“If it’s D. H. Lawrence, you’re too late,” he said, feeling petulant. “I already readLady Chatterley’s Lover, and my maidenly senses didn’t flutter once.”

A gurgle of laugher escaped her. “It’s not that, but tell me more.Whendid you read this masterpiece of titillation?”

He ignored this and stared at the screen, where Marilyn Monroe sashayed to and fro.

“I’ve read all of Walt Whitman, too, so don’t even try,” he added. “Andthe Marquis de Sade, though the translation was bad, so I didn’t understand most of it.”

Much to Jasper’s surprise, Catherine climbed over the back of the seat next to him. She slid into the empty spot, her eyes sparkling. “Why, Jasper Holmes. You’re a bit of a dirty bird, aren’t you?”