What the Librarian Did by Karina Bliss Read Free Book Online Page B

sympathy was this woman.
    “Well, the last ferry from Waiheke leaves at midnight,” Rachel ventured. “So I don’t suppose things got too out of hand.”
    She’d checked the ferry timetable? Her concern for Mark seemed a little excessive. “Oh, I have plenty of room for sleepovers and no one minds three to a bed.” Her lovely mouth tightened. “But it was all pretty tame…some bourbon, coke…” Devin winked to make sure she’d make the connection to the drug, not the beverage. “A hot tub filled with twenty of my closest friends, and rock blasting over the sound system…”
    He noticed as he ran out of rock star clichés that she’d slid almost to the other end of the fountain edge, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek. “It was a spontaneous thing or I would have invited you. We could have done with some classier chicks.”
    Devin had a sudden image of her in a hot tub, incongruous and unexpectedly appealing. It had been too long since he’d had sex, but the months of therapy and rehab had left him feeling like a peeled onion, exposed and vulnerable.
    “Was Mark with you?” she asked bluntly.
    “The kid? Hmm, let me just think…. We started the evening together. So hard to recognize people when they’re naked and wet.” He stopped when he saw the stricken look in her eyes. “I’m kidding.”
    “Please leave him alone.”
    He frowned, puzzled. “Who is that boy to you?”
    For a split second Rachel looked guilty. “No one. I…I just don’t like seeing minors being led astray.”
    Devin’s sympathy evaporated. Ignoring the fact that he’d just given her reasons to be concerned, he got pissed. She was being officious, no doubt basing her assumptions on what she read in the press. Well, if she expected depravity…“If you don’t want me corrupting minors, then give me someone my own age to play with.” Lazily, his gaze traveled down her body, deliberately provocative.
    Angry color flooded Rachel’s cheeks. She stood. “Grow up!”
    “Where’s the fun in that?” Devin stood, too, stretched and yawned. “You know, I like a feisty woman, and this heartbreaker reputation of yours has me intrigued. Any time you want to take a ride with me—”
    “I wouldn’t take a walk with you, cowboy,” she interrupted heatedly, “let alone a drive.”
    “Darlin,’” he drawled, “who said anything about a car?”
     
    B Y W EDNESDAY OF THE following week, Rachel had confronted an unpalatable truth. Mark was deliberately avoiding her. She knew he’d been into the library because his online history showed he’d been taking out books. But he was obviously timing his visits around her shifts.
    She’d blown it, warning him against Devin. In hindsight, it had been a stupid thing to do. But she seemed unable to do anything except react to her emotions where her son was concerned.
    The yearning to see him was terrible, as bad as giving him up had been.
    Fortunately, he’d struck an acquaintance with Trixie—it seemed only Rachel couldn’t make friends with him—so she was able to gather crumbs of information. It was through Trixie that she knew Mark still spent time with Devin. Apparently the rocker had become some sort of musical mentor, which Trixie thought was the coolest thing to happen to Mark, and which Rachel thought was the absolute worst.
    But what could she do about it?
    As she walked to the downtown parking lot after her shift, a thread of music in the city cacophony distracted her from her gloomy musings. Glancing up, she saw Mark strumming guitar with another teenager outside The Body Shop, their voices straining over the blare and honk of rush hour traffic. A meager collection of coins lay scattered in an open guitar case. Rachel stepped into a nearby doorway where she could watch unobserved.
    Mark’s reluctance was evident as he joined in the choruses; he obviously knew he had an indifferent singing voice. She was to blame for that. The other boy’s voice was stronger and