“There is no we. There’s a you, as in you are going to get the bat!”

“It’s your house, you should be helping me,” he said. “And for someone who acts so tough, you sure are scared of a little thing like a bat.”

“I’m not scared!”

When he had the nerve to make a bowing gesture, as if to say well then, go ahead on in without me, I grumbled, “Okay fine—I’m a little scared. I’ll help you, but you’re going in first.” I stood up and brushed off my shorts. I now had another scrape to match the one on the other leg. Honestly.

I rummaged in the garage until I found a rake and a bucket, then rejoined Clark on the porch. Stepping over the hole, I huddled behind him as he opened the front door. We went inside, alert and listening.

“Is something burning?” he asked, sniffing the air.

“Dammit, my dinner!” I wailed, rushing past him and into the kitchen. “Motherfucker!”

“Vivian!” Clark exclaimed, hurrying past me to turn off the burners. Smoke billowed from the oven, my chicken br**sts now charred beyond recognition. Rice? Now a cake in the bottom of the pan. And the vegetables? Crust. I started throwing the pots into the sink, probably slamming them a little harder than necessary. I was pissed at the porch, pissed at the house, pissed that my leg hurt, and pissed off that I still had a bat in the house. A bat in the house!

 “Were you expecting someone for dinner?” Clark asked from the doorway to the dining room. His face looked tight—hurt?

I glanced past him and saw the candles burning on the table. “No, that was just for me,” I replied, pushing past him and blowing out the candle.

“You lit candles just to eat alone?”

“Yeah. So?” I asked, turning back to him. I saw the bat. It was perched on the lacrosse stick, just behind his head.

“Oh. Boy. Um, Clark?”

“I think if you want to light candles, even if it’s just you, that’s perfectly okay,” Clark said, nodding at me.

“Right. Agreed. But right now? You need to—”

“I mean, after all, if you don’t think you’re good company, no one else will, right?”

“Totally. Can I just—”

“I eat most of my meals alone too, although I’ve never thought about lighting candles. Not sure a guy doing it would be seen as being quite as empowering as it is for a girl, rather sad actually. But shoot, I’ll try anything once I suppose. So good for you, Vivian. Light a candle why don’t you, you deserve it. Even if it is just chicken or—”

“Duck.”

“Or duck, exactly, even if it’s—”

“Fucking duck, Clark!” I yelled, lunging in with my rake and swatting at the bat.

Clark hit the deck and I knocked the bat off the back of the lacrosse stick. “Bucket! Bucket!” I yelled, and he slid it across the floor. Slamming it down on the bat, I sat on top of it, giving a war cry. “Wahoooooo!” I lifted the rake high over my head in victory.

It caught in the chandelier and damn near ripped the entire thing out. And as it hung from the ceiling, swinging back and forth, I sat on a bucket in the middle of my dining room, with a bat under my butt, and a librarian under the table.

Cue lightning and thunder.

Cue crashing rain.

There was nothing I could do but laugh.

There were no leaks, though—so there was that.

Chapter nine

Clark could rally, I gotta give him that. Twenty minutes later the bat was set free, the windows were all closed against the torrent of rain that was lashing at the house, and I was perched at my kitchen table with one Mr. Clark Barrow at the stove. Wearing an apron he’d found hanging in the pantry, he was scrambling me some eggs and making toast like it was his job.

“Well, what else were you going to do?” he’d asked when he’d first suggested helping me make something else for dinner.

“Order a pizza?”

“You’ve got eggs and bread; how about I make us something to eat? It’ll give the rain a chance to slow up before I head home,” he said, and I agreed. And now here he was, cooking for us both.

I’d warned him about how temperamental the stove was, but he had the hang of it. “My Nana used to have a stove just like this one, I’m used to it,” he said, expertly flipping the burners and lighting it just so.

“I’m impressed,” I said, and I was. Sure, it was just eggs and toast, but I’d punched the guy not too long ago, yet here he was, making me dinner. Nice guy.

I had no idea what to do with a nice guy. I’d never dated a clean-cut, Backstreet Boy type; I’d always stayed in the heavy metal/alternative, dirty, tattooed-boy section. I could appreciate what a Nick Lachey had to offer, sure, but my type was always going to be a Dave Navarro, a Chris Cornell.

A nice guy? Hmmm.

Shaking off the feeling, I sipped my wine. “So, tell me about yourself, Clark.”

“Me? What’s there to know?”

“Oh, I bet plenty. Tell me about the man, the myth, the legend.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, then nodded at the wine. “Pour me another glass and you’ll get all three.”

Yeah, I poured. He talked. Born and raised in Mendocino, he’d gone away to college at Pepperdine, history major, minor in library sciences. His family had always been heavily involved in the area’s historical society, preserving old homes, churches, restoring and repurposing older buildings. He confirmed what Caroline had already told me, that much of the town of Mendocino was in fact a historical site. Most of those efforts were privately funded, although he worked with homeowners to apply for and receive federal grants, like the one my aunt had received. The library was his main job, although hours had been cut steadily over the last few years and there was now a pretty small staff that assisted him.

“No one does pure research anymore, not without the Internet of course. Sure, we’ve adapted pretty well, but for the most part, the library here exists for a pleasure reader. Although with Kindles and iPads, we’re even starting to see those readers begin to slip away. Plates?” he asked, bringing the pan with the scrambled eggs to the table. I helped him butter the toast, and we settled ourselves around the kitchen table. There was still a rake stuck in the chandelier in the dining room and it was raining too hard to go out to the barn for the ladder so, yeah, that was out for tonight.

“Well, I’ll be down for my library card just as soon as I can.” I forked up a mouthful. “Mmm, these are great, Clark. You want some hot sauce?” I asked, sprinkling Tabasco over everything on my plate.