Reuben pushed these thoughts out of his head as firmly as he could. Whether they were based on truth or not, such ruminations were counterproductive. What he needed to do was fortify the hard exterior of his rakish heart, then turn up his irresistible roguish charm to prove he still had some.
But how was he supposed to be charming and irresistible when he couldn’t even find the object of his desire?
By the time his growling stomach indicated he’d missed luncheon, Reuben was practically despondent. His exhaustive search of the entire town of Marrywell had produced exactly no signs of Gladys. He wasn’t ready to give up, but he didn’t know which hotel she’d chosen to stay in, so there wasn’t anywhere else left to search.
Besides, after six hours of unending disappointment at every turn, Reuben’s current mood was unlikely to be irresistible or charming. He needed food, and he needed something to lift his spirits.
A new book would do. He’d finished the prior one last night, and was in need of a replacement. After consuming a hot cross bun from the bakery, he headed to the Blushing Maid Inn’s familiar lending library. If there was to be no hope of finding Gladys, much less sharing a meal with her, at least he’d have a book to keep him company for an hour.
He strode through the lending library’s open doorway, then came to an immediate stop.
Gladys was right there. Browsing a wall of books, one finger lightly tracing their spines, her back toward the doorway—and Reuben.
He’d recognize that attractive derrière anywhere.
He sauntered up to her and leaned a shoulder against the shelf she was perusing.
Her finger dropped from the spines. She turned toward him, her eyes widening in surprise.
Yet she was not nearly as surprised as Reuben was.
“Are you staying in this same hotel?” he blurted out, with a complete lack of casual rakish nonchalance.
She arched her brows and placed a finger to her lips. “Shh. This is a library. People are reading.”
He cast a chagrined glance around the cozy room—only to realize it was utterly empty. Even the proprietor was off in the storage room behind the counter.
“No one is in here reading,” Reuben said dryly.
Gladys removed a book from the shelves, opened it to a random place, and pointedly directed her full attention to the words on the page rather than the rake in the room.
Ouch.
Very well, then. Reuben would give her the space and the silence she desired.
He crossed to the counter to ring for the proprietor. Not only did Reuben already possess a subscription to this library, he had a book on order. It took the proprietor no time at all to find the promised tome on the influence of ancient Greece on modern roads and societal structure.
When Reuben turned back around, Gladys was no longer along the far wall. She had not fled from the room, however. She was over in the seating area, perched on a sofa cushion on the edge closest to the glow from the fireplace.
Despite the many open seats and tables, Reuben sat on the opposite end of the same sofa, in arm’s reach of Gladys. Not that he reached for her, despite wanting to very much. With heroic effort, he didn’t even look in her direction. He simply opened the book on his lap, turned to page one, and made his best attempt at actually reading the text therein.
Keeping his eyes on his page was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
Try as he might, his focus was drawn inexorably back to Gladys. She looked effortlessly beautiful and wickedly clever as her gaze flew over each sentence of the novel in her hands.
He wished he’d known she would be in here, so that he might have freshened up and maybe even dreamt up a book to read that would be more likely to impress her than his usual dry old tome on topics that only Reuben found fascinating.
Whatever salacious gothic drama Gladys was reading was the opposite of dry and boring. Occasionally her eyes would widen or her lips would twitch, and more than once, she grabbed the book tighter as though she herself risked being carried away with the action.
Reuben had never known how erotic it would be to watch a woman read.
Of course, the more he watched her from the corner of his eye, the less he wanted her attention on that book. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her. He wanted to feel her hands on his—
She glanced at him sharply.
He jerked his gaze back to his own volume and made a show of being fully absorbed in the text. What was he reading? Good God, still the table of contents.
“Enthralling stuff?” she said dryly.
