* * *
“I THINK HE asked me out.” Emma paused, then shook her head. “Or maybe I just imagined it. Everything just happened so quickly. The conversation jumped around so much I could barely keep up. But I’m pretty sure there was an invitation in there.”
“What did you say?”
“I can’t remember.” Emma turned to her best friend, Trisha Kelling, and shrugged. “I wish I could rewind the whole thing and listen to it again.”
“Wait,” Trisha said. “Pull over.”
“What?”
“Just pull over. We need your full concentration.”
Emma did as she was instructed, steering the station wagon to the edge of the dusty road. She threw it into Park and faced her friend, taking a deep breath.
“What did he look like?” Trish asked.
“Cute. No, handsome. Really sexy. Dark hair, pale blue eyes. You know like blue denim that has been faded by the sun.”
“Oh, God, I love that kind of blue,” Trisha said. “What else?”
“Straight nose. Not too big. Just right. Nice teeth. And a really nice body, at least, what I was able to see of it.”
“What about the goods?” she said. “Did you check that out?”
“No! Why would I check out his...crotch?”
“All right. Was he charming or just kind of full of himself?”
“A little bit of both. But I think he might have been teasing me. He was clever. He seemed really smart. He quoted Shakespeare at me.”
“Really? What did he say?”
Trish was an English teacher at the high school and knew her Shakespeare. Emma searched her memory for the phrase, but she couldn’t recall the exact words—a sign that Luke MacKenzie had really flustered her. “Something about being tempted and then falling.”
“’Tis one thing to be tempted? Another thing to fall?”
“Yes! That’s it. As You Like It?”
“I should remember where it comes from and don’t you dare tell anyone that I don’t.” Trish pulled out her phone and punched in the quote. “Measure For Measure. What do you think he meant?”
“I’m not sure.” Emma rubbed her face with her hands. “After that he started talking about the authorship controversy, the Oxfordians versus the Stratfordians. It was as if he knew I was fascinated with the subject and he was tempting me.”
“’Tis one thing to be tempted...” Trisha said.
Emma smiled. “This could be it. He could be the one. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“He’s handsome and sexy. He appears to have a brain. And an abundance of charm.”
“And he’s only going to be in town for a short time. Six weeks at the most. That’s perfect,” Emma said. “I can’t believe I’m finally going to rid myself of this awful virginity. I’ll have sex with this man and it will finally be done.”
Emma drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. She’d never intended to remain a virgin for this long. It had just happened. Each year had passed without a potential lover in sight and before she knew it, she’d ended up here, more than halfway to thirty and still as chaste as a nun.
“I shouldn’t have walked out,” Emma said. “I should have flirted with him.”
“You could always go back,” Trish suggested.
“Under what pretense?”
“An apology for being such a bitch?”
“I was a bitch. I just couldn’t believe he was serious. A guy like that...and me. Marian the Librarian.”
“You could take him a book!” Trisha said. “You know he reads Shakespeare. If he likes Whitman, then he’s the ultimate sex machine.”
“Whitman? No, that would seem so...obvious. And a little desperate.”
“But you are desperate,” Trish said. “Maybe it would be best to just admit that right at the top. There is something sexy about a woman desperate to copulate.”
“Copulate?”
“My mother always taught me to use the proper terms for sex.”
“Alice Pettit told me to keep my knees together and my feet on the floor,” Emma said. “Marliss Franks warned me that naughty girls burn in hell and Reverend Kopitsky said that my body is sacred and my virtue worth more than gold. It really didn’t matter, though. Once I got that stupid brace, the boys stayed away.”
Her teenage years had been lonely at best. She’d been diagnosed with scoliosis at age thirteen and had worn a back brace through most of high school. Burdened also with massive orthodontia and a bad case of acne, she hadn’t been the most attractive option for a prom date. Just months after the brace came off, her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and Emma’s attention had turned to nursing her. There’d never been time to date, and without dating—and living in a small town—sex had become an unreachable goal. Now, after all these years of chastity, she felt vulnerable, unprepared for a relationship. She had no idea how to talk to boys or flirt. She still felt like the girl with the back brace and the pimples.
She’d always taken solace in her studies, graduating at the top of her high school class. After high school came college and grad school. She’d lived at home, for both convenience and cost, and so she could watch over her mother’s care.
Four years ago, she’d finished her masters in information sciences and been offered the head librarian’s job at the small library in town. Though she’d always dreamed about leaving town and starting life somewhere new, Emma stayed to see her mother though the last stages of her illness.
The people of San Coronado had always stood behind her and her mother, Elaine. Elaine had been a beloved kindergarten teacher at the local school and everyone had known her. During her illness, there’d been lots of volunteers who’d arranged fund-raisers—spaghetti dinners and bake sales and benefit concerts—all to help with her mother’s medical costs. A prayer circle had spent two hours a week praying for her recovery. How could Emma refuse the job and a chance to return something to the community that had given her mother so much love and attention?
So she’d thrown herself into her work, completely updating the library’s catalog system, rearranging the floor plan and adding new programs for children and seniors. And though her mother had urged her to get out and socialize, it was easier to just work into the late hours and then flop into bed when she got home.
She’d had dreams once. She and her mother had always talked about traveling together, taking the summer to see exotic places. They’d pored over travel books and planned itineraries, keeping their notes in leather-bound journals.
New Zealand, Indonesia, Portugal, Finland, Costa Rica. Lists of things to see and do, places to eat. Even during the worst of her mother’s illness, they’d kept at it, as if the work held some magic cure.
And once it was clear there would be no cure, her mother made her promise that she’d find a way to go on her own. She’d save her money and buy a ticket to one of the places that had fascinated them both.
As for her lack of social life, that had really been her own fault. After her mother’s death, she’d given herself the chance to grieve. It had been easy to shut herself in the house and avoid people. The more time that passed, the more overwhelming getting back out there became. She pushed aside thoughts of a social life