Page 64 of Mountains Divide Us

Setting me on the desk, he worked his body between my legs. He was always doing that, like he couldn’t stand to be too far away from me, and it was… sexy. There was that word again. He pushed my skirt over my knees and ran his warm hands up and down my calves. “Well, did he fix it?”

The heat radiating off his body warmed mine, and I sighed. I was doing that a lot when he was around too. “Yes. It wasn’t broken. Someone stuck a knife in the window frame on the outside. Look.” I pulled the offending tool from my handy skirt pocket and held it up for him to see. “And there was duct tape on the lock. Probably just kids being dumb, but it’s been so cold in here. One of my book club ladies asked if we could get a space heater for the reading room.”

Frank’s face changed. He looked very much the serious sheriff’s deputy all of a sudden. “Show me.”

When I led him upstairs, he inspected the room and then the whole freaking library with his sharp eagle eyes, and when we didn’t find anything suspicious, he followed me back to the front desk and plonked his big hands on his hips. “I’m an asshole for not even considerin’ this, but how’ve you been gettin’ to work?”

“I usually catch a ride with Brady. He picks me up if he’s working at the center, but if he’s working in Jackson or out at the reservation, I walk. Gramps’s place is only half a mile from here. Why?”

“Two things,” Frank said. “One, you’re learnin’ to drive. Period. This ain’t a big city. You can’t hop a bus or a train, and with the weather this winter, you need a vehicle. I drive my cruiser usually, but I got an old pickup out behind my house. You can learn in that. And two, let Brady know I’ll be drivin’ you till you can drive yourself. I’ll work my schedule around it, but if there’s a day I can’t, I’ll call him myself.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me right.”

“No,” I said and scoffed. “I don’t think I did, because what I heard were a bunch of demands from someone that sounded eerily like my father, which you definitely are not. You don’t get to make decisions for me like that. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

He nodded once, then fixed this look on his face like he was about to put me in my place—which he did when he opened his mouth. “Someone’s been breakin’ in here at night.”

“I… Wha—?” I sputtered into speechlessness. “How do you know that? I mean, just from one open window?”

“From one open window with a knife jammed into it,” he replied. “And from this big ol’ wad of tape I found stuck to the lock on the back door.”

“What?”

He shoved a bigger crumpled piece of duct tape than Vern had shown me into my hand and dared me with the look in his eyes to argue.

“Okay,” I argued anyway. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It could still be from kids screwing around.” I held the tape up in the air. “This doesn’t mean there’s any danger.”

“Oh no?” he said coolly. “Let’s play a little game, Samantha. A treasure hunt. I want you to go through the library and point out three things to me that don’t belong.”

“Frank, you don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“I’m not tryin’ to be a jerk. I’m dead serious.”

I huffed a breath, rolling my eyes. “I looked when you did.”

“And you didn’t see anything outta place?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

He lifted his hands in front of his chest. “Just do me this favor and look again. Please?”

“Fine.”

He followed me through the first floor. I looked down every aisle, in the bathroom, in the resource center, and in the—

“That wasn’t there a few minutes ago.”

“It was, but you missed it. Now that you’re lookin’ with the knowledge that someone was here who shouldn’t have been, you’re seein’ it.”

Walking to the window facing the back alley in the reading room, I bent to pick the pine-green winter cap off the floor. It was still damp, and the color matched the library’s ancient carpeting, which was probably why I’d missed it. “Okay, but this doesn’t prove anything. Somebody dropped their hat yesterday. Big deal.” Except if someone had lost their hat yesterday, wouldn’t it be dry by now?

Frank nodded, one small lift and drop of his head. “Keep goin’,” he said.

“Frank, this is—”

There was something in his eyes that made me uneasy. “Humor me, please?”

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