Cleats!
"Shh!"
"Oh, sorry. I’ll tiptoe."
Will Parker glanced up, scanned Lula disinterestedly and resumed his reading.
The library was U-shaped, wrapped around the entry steps. Miss Beasley’s desk, backed by her private workroom, separated the huge room into two distinct parts. To the right was fiction. To the left nonfiction. Lula had never been on the left where Parker sat now. Remembering about finesse, she moved to the right first, drifting along the shelves, glancing up, then down, as if examining the titles for something interesting. She removed a book bound in emerald green-the exact shade of a dress she’d been eyeing over at Cartersville in the Federated Store. Classy color that’d look swell with her new Tropical Flame nail polish-she spread her hands on the book cover and tipped her head approvingly. She’d have to think up something good to entice Harley to buy that little number for her. She stuck the book back in its slot and moved to another. Melville. Hey, she’d heard of this guy! Must’ve done something swell. But the spine was too wide and the printing too small, so she rammed it back on the shelf and looked further.
Lula finessedher way through a full ten minutes of fiction before finally tiptoeing past Miss Beasley to the other side. She twiddled two fingers as she passed, then clamped her hands at the base of her spine, thrusting her breasts into bold relief.
Gladys tightened her buttocks and followed where Lula had been, pushing in a total of eleven books she’d left beetling over the edges of the shelves.
Lula found the left side arranged much as the right, a spacious room with fanlight windows facing the street. Bookshelves filled the space between the windows and the floor, and covered the remaining three walls. The entire center of the room was taken up by sturdy oak tables and chairs. Lula sidled around the perimeter of the room without so much as peeking at Will. She grazed one fingertip along the edge of a shelf, then sucked it with studied provocativeness. She turned a corner, eased on to where a bank of shelves ran perpendicular to the wall and moved between them, putting herself in profile to Will, should he care to turn his head and see. She clasped her hands at the base of her spine, creating her best silhouette, watching askance to see if he’d glance over. After several minutes, when he hadn’t, she grabbed a biography of Beethoven and, while turning its pages, eyed Will discreetly.
God, was he good looking. And that cowboy hat did things to her insides, the way he wore it low, shadowing his eyes in the glare of the afternoon sun. Still waters,she thought, taken by the way he sat with one finger under a page, so unmoving she wished she were a fly so she could land on his nose. What a nose. Long instead of pug like some she knew. Nice mouth, too. Ooo, would she like to get into that.
He leaned forward to write something and she ran her eyes all over him, down his tapered chest and slim hips to the cowboy boots beneath the table, back up to his crotch. He dropped his pencil and sat back, giving her a clearer profile shot of it.
Lula felt the old itch begin.
He sat there reading his book the way all the "brains" used to read in school while Lula thought about bettering herself. When she could stand it no longer she took Beethoven over and dropped it on the table across from him.
"This seat taken?" she drawled, inverting her wrists, leaning on the tabletop so that her breast buttons strained. His chin rose slowly. As the brim of the cowboy hat lifted, she got a load of deep brown eyes with lashes as long as spaghetti, and a mouth that old Lula had plenty of plans for.
"No, ma’am," he answered quietly. Without moving more than his head, he returned to his reading.
"Mind if I sit here?"
"Go ahead." His attention remained on the book.
"Watcha studyin’?"
"Bees."
"Hey, how about that! I’m studyin’ B’s, too." She held up her book. "Beethoven." In school she’d liked music, so she pronounced it correctly. "He wrote music, back when guys wore wigs and stuff, you know?"
Again Will refused to glance up. "Yeah, I know."
"Well…" The chair screeched as Lula pulled it out. She flounced down, crossed her legs, opened the book and flapped its pages in rhythm with her wagging calf. "So. Haven’t seen y’ around. Where y’ been keepin’yourself?"
He perused her noncommittally, wondering if he should bother to answer. Mercy, she was one hard-looking woman. She had so much hair piled onto her forehead it looked as if she could use a neck brace. Her mouth was painted the color of a chili pepper and she wore too much rouge, too high on her cheeks, in too precise a pattern. She overlapped her wrists on the table edge and rested her breasts on them. They jutted, giving him a clearer shot of cleavage. It pleased Will to let her know he didn’t want any.
"Up at Mrs. Dinsmore’s place."
"Crazy Elly’s? My, my. How is she?" When Will declined to answer, she leaned closer and inquired, "You know why they call her crazy, don’t you? Did she tell you?" Against his will, he became curious, but it would seem like an offense against Mrs. Dinsmore to encourage Lula, so he remained silent. Lula, however, needed no encouragement. "They locked her in that house when she was a baby and pulled all the shades down and didn’t let her out until the law forced ’em to-to go to school-and then they only turned her loose six hours a day and locked her up again, nights." She sat back smugly. "Ah, so you didn’t know." Lula smiled knowingly. "Well, ask her about it sometime. Ask her if she didn’t live in that deserted house down by school. You know-the one with the picket fence around it and the bats flyin’ in the attic window?" Lula leaned closer and added conspiratorially, "If I were you, I wouldn’t hang around up there at her place any longer than I had to. Give you a bad reputation, if you know what I mean. I mean, that woman ain’t wrapped too tight." Lula sat back as if in a chaise, letting her eyelids droop, toying absently with the cover of Beethoven, lifting it, letting it drop with soft repeated plops. "I know it’s tough being new around town. I mean, you must be bored as hell if you have to spend your time in a place like this." Lula’s eyes made a quick swerve around the bookshelves, then came back to him. "But if you need somebody to show y’ around, I’d be happy to." Beneath the table her toe stroked Will’s calf. "I got me a little bungalow just four houses off the town square on Pecan Street-"
"Excuse me, ma’am," Will interrupted, rising. "Got some eggs out in the sun that need selling. I’d better see to ’em."
Lula smirked, watching him move to the bookshelves. He’d got the message. Oh, he’d got it all right-loud and clear. She’d seen him jump when her foot touched his leg. She watched him slip one book into place, then squat down to replace the other. Before he could escape, she sidled into the aisle behind him, trapping him between the two tiers of shelves. When he rose to his feet and turned, she was gratified by his quick blush. "If you’re interested in my offer, I work most days at Vickery’s. I’m off at eight, though." She slipped one finger between his shirt buttons and ran it up and down, across hair and hard skin. Putting on her best kewpie doll face, Lula whispered, "See y’ round, Parker."
As she swung away, exaggeratedly waggling her hips, Will glanced across the sunlit room to find the librarian’s censoring eyes taking in the whole scene. Her attention immediately snapped elsewhere, but even from this distance Will saw how tightly her lips pursed. He felt shaky inside, almost violated. Women like Lula were a clear path to trouble. There was a time when he’d have taken her up on the offer and enjoyed every minute of it. But not anymore. Now all he wanted was to be left to live his life in peace, and that peace meant Eleanor Dinsmore’s place. He suddenly felt a deep need to get back there.