“Shoot.”
“Did you know that I was…?” Oh, this was so awkward.
He helped her out. “Rich?”
She gulped. “Yes. Did you know I was a wealthy woman before you got up on that stage at the town hall and ‘married’ me?”
“I did.”
She blinked. “Who told you?”
He chuckled. “Some of those spectators were pretty damn drunk. When they heard I’d be playing your groom, I got a lot of ribbing. You know the kind. How you were not only a cute little thing, you were loaded, too. How, if I played my cards right, I might catch myself an heiress.”
Katie scrunched up her nose. “A cute little thing?”
He shrugged. “Drunk talk. You know how it goes. And you might like to know, I got more than one warning that I’d better be good to you. They were joking—but the look in every eye said I’d pay if I messed with their favorite librarian.”
That brought a smile. “They did? They told you to be good to me?”
He nodded. “So you’ve got backup, in case you were worried.”
She looked him directly in the eye. “I guess I was worried. And scared. The truth is, in the past couple of years, I’ve had a tendency to let fear run my life. But I’ve had a little talk with myself. Fear is not going to rule me. Not anymore. I…well, I like you. And I think you like me.”
“I do. Very much.”
A sweet warmth spread through her. “So then. I’d like to get to know you better.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “And I want to know you.”
Chapter Five
They talked for hours, lying in their separate beds in the central display room.
Katie told him about Ted Anders. She’d met Ted at CU. He was tall and tan and blond, a prelaw student. Interesting to talk to, with a good sense of humor—and charming, too. Extremely so. Ted had lavished attention on Katie. She’d started to believe she’d found the right guy for her—until she went to a party up on “the hill,” where a lot of the students shared apartments. The place was packed, a real crowd scene. She got separated from Ted and when she found him again, he had his arm around a cute redhead.
“He was so busy putting a move on her, he didn’t even see that I was watching,” Katie said. “I heard him tell her how he’d like to, uh, ‘jump her bones,’ but he couldn’t afford to. He had a ‘rich one’ on a string and he wasn’t blowing that ‘til he’d clipped at least a couple of her millions.”
“I hope you reamed him a new one right there and then.” Justin sounded as if he wouldn’t have minded doing that for her.
She laughed—and it felt so good. To think about something that had hurt so much at the time and realize it was just a memory now, one with no power to cause her pain. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m not big on public displays.”
He chuckled. “Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, I did notice. So, what did you do?”
“I went home to my apartment. Eventually, Ted must have realized I’d left. He came knocking on my door. I confronted him then. He started laying on the sweet talk. But I wasn’t buying. Once he saw he couldn’t talk his way back into a relationship with me, he said a few rotten things, trying to hurt me a little worse than he already had. But he knew it was over.”
“And that made you sure every man you met would be after your money?”
“Well, there was another, er, incident.”
“At CU?”
“No. Right here in town, not long after I came home to stay and took the job as librarian. He was a local guy, Jackson Tully. He’d grown up here and gone to Thunder Canyon High ten years before I did. After high school, he’d moved away—and then moved back and opened a souvenir shop on Main. He asked me out and he seemed nice enough. We had several dates and…oh, he was funny and sweet and I started to think—”
“That he was the one.“
She made a face at the shadowed rafters above. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought that we had something good, I guess. That it might really go somewhere.”
“As in wedding bells and happily ever after?”
“That’s right.”
“So then…?”
“Well, he proposed.”
“Marriage?”
“What else?”
He made a low sound. “I can think of a few other things, but I won’t go into them. So the moneygrubbing shop owner proposed and you said yes.”
She pushed the blankets down a little and rested her arms on top of them. “Well, no. I didn’t say yes. I did…care for him, but I wasn’t sure. I said I wanted to think about it. And while I was thinking, his mom came to see me. She’s a nice woman, Lucille Tully is. A member of the Historical Society, as a matter of fact.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“In Thunder Canyon?” She considered. “Well, just about everyone over forty or so is.”
“And Lucille Tully said…”
“That she loved her son, but I was a ‘sweet girl’ and she couldn’t let me say yes to him without my knowing the truth.”
“Which was?”
“Jackson had had two bankruptcies. His souvenir shop—which Lucille had given him the money to open—wasn’t doing well and he’d told his mother more than once that as soon as he married the librarian, she could have her money back. He’d close the store. Why slave all day long, catering to pushy tourists in some stupid shop when he’d be set for life and he could focus on enjoying himself.”
“Spending your money, I take it?”
Katie sighed. “Lucille cried when she told me. I felt terrible for her. It just broke her heart, the whole thing.”
“So you said no to the gold-digging Jackson Tully.”
“I did.”
“And where is he now?”
“Couldn’t say. His shop went under and he left town. So far as I know, he hasn’t been back.”
“And what about the mother?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Katie. I’ve known you for two whole days and I can already guarantee that you took care of her.”
“Well, if you must know, I had Caleb buy the shop.”
“With your money.”
“That’s right. Caleb made sure Jackson paid Lucille back. Then Caleb sold the shop for me. At a profit. Everybody came out all right—financially, at least. And by then, Jackson had moved on. Lucille doesn’t talk about him much, not to me, anyway—and you know, now I look back on both Jackson and Ted Anders, I realize I was pretty darn lucky. At least I didn’t marry them. At least I found out what kind of men they really were before I took any kind of irrevocable step.”
There was silence from the narrow cot on the other side of the room.
She grinned into the darkness. “Justin? Have I put you to sleep?”
“I’m wide-awake.”
“You sound so serious…”