Life Guards in the Hamptons by Celia Jerome Read Free Book Online Page A

coming. I’d earned his doubts.
    He smiled—in relief?—when I climbed the steps to where he waited, looking over the village green and the stores on either side. The church faced the library, actually the old school building, across the treed and grassy area in the middle.
    “Looking good,” he said.
    “The town square always looks nice in the fall, before the trees lose their leaves and the garden clubs’ flowers have all died.”
    “I didn’t mean the village.” He didn’t wait to see if I blushed—I did, the plaguesome curse of fair skin—simply turned and held open the door to the library.
    A couple of people sat at the computer desks, someone I didn’t recognize browsed the fiction stacks, and one of the high school girls earning public service credit wheeled around a cart full of books to be reshelved. Mrs. Terwilliger sat behind the front desk like the Queen of England surveying her kingdom. Lord knew Mrs. T wasnearly old enough to be Her Majesty’s mother. She’d been here forever, and always had a pile of books waiting for me. Sometimes they were books I’d requested; sometimes they were what Mrs. Terwilliger thought I needed to read. She was usually right. Uncanny, but not unusual for Paumanok Harbor.
    “I’m looking for a book about the rare South American bird that’s—”
    “Oh, no, dear, you want this one.”
    The book she handed me had to do with mythical beasts.
    “I’m sorry, but I’m not doing research for one of my books, just for what’s at Garland Farms.”
    She took another off the stack clearly marked Willow Tate. This one had tropical fish on the cover.
    “But I don’t—”
    “You will.”
    Oh, boy. No one argued with Mrs. Terwilliger, ever. Not unless they wanted their library card permanently lost. Besides, I didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of Matt, or draw attention to one of our town’s minor eccentricities. I took the books. The bestiary looked interesting, at least. The next one, by James Herriot, had always been a favorite of mine.
    “I’m sure I read this years ago.”
    “Yes, but this time you’ll have different eyes.”
    Cryptic but pointed, definitely embarrassing, except that Matt was looking at the poster board to check upcoming events, talks, and movies.
    The last book in my pile had a couple on the cover, in historical garb. Mrs. Terwilliger loved Regency romances and passed on her favorites to everyone. I enjoyed them when I had the time for pleasure reading. Not everyone gave them credit for being intelligent, well written, and entertaining, so I slipped it under the others before Matt could read the title,
The Bargain Bride
.
    “It’s about compromising,” the white-haired librarian told me.
    “A compromising situation?” That was a popular theme in historicals, when the couple was found inflagrante delicto or merely kissing, and had to wed to save the woman’s reputation. As far from modern mores as it could get. Honor meant more then.
    “No, just compromising. You might learn something.”
    Another jab.
    I stepped aside and Matt took my place. Clearly I was dismissed now that I had the books Mrs. T had selected for me. No matter that I really wanted one on Patagonia. I wandered toward the travel section. “Those are all out,” she called after me.
    So I waited while she lifted an encyclopedia-sized tome for Matt, a technical book on heart disease in dogs.
    “I got it through inter-library loan,” Mrs. Terwilliger told him. “I thought you’d like to see this before you spent a hundred and forty-five dollars on it.”
    While he flipped the pages, she told me how her cousin’s dogs in Georgia had both died of congestive heart failure. “That’s not going to happen in Paumanok Harbor, not if I can help it.”
    “Or I,” Matt said.
    I looked at the other books the ruler of the library dispensed to Matt, curious as to his taste and the librarian’s opinions. The new Reacher mystery, two of my books, and
Men are from