A lightbulb went off. “A heroine can never know the outcome, otherwise why would she bother with the journey? The story would be boring if she just showed up with a mattress strapped to her back in the first chapter, right?”

“I don’t know, there’s something to be said for a quickie. Sorry, Mr. Martin. More coffee?”

“You girls are nutty,” he said, extending his mug.

I walked home, thinking over everything Jessica had said. I didn’t know how much longer I could be around Hank without flat-out pouncing on him. Like a junkie, I was jonesing for a romance novel coupling. I needed a pulsating pillar of passion, a mammoth male member, a cocky cobra ready to tangle with my vaginal mongoose.

I also needed to think about upgrading my reading. My imagery was actually starting to bother me.

When I got back to the house, I saw Hank feeding the chickens. I automatically added a bounce to my step. “Hey there, Hank,” I cooed.

“ ’Sup?”

“I’m leaving to go back to Philly tomorrow. Will you watch over everything for me while I’m gone?”

“That’s my job.” He tossed more feed to the chicken.

I sighed.

“Philly? Is that where you’re from?” he asked, and my heart damn near leapt out of my chest. An honest-to-God question!

“Yes! That’s where I’m from.”

“Oh,” he said, then looked me in the eyes. “I like their cheese.”

Huh? Their cheese? Oh! “Sure, Philly cream cheese. Good stuff. I like it too,” I said, grinning broadly.

“I like it on bagels,” he said. “But not on toast.”

Instantly my mind dreamed up a vision of Hank naked in bed, with a nice big bagel around his—

“Toast with jam is good, though. I like jam,” he said, bringing me back from my daydreams.

Ah. Okay. Still talking about breakfast foods.

“Jam is good.” What was not good was this conversation. How could I turn this into something a bit more sexy, a bit more sensual, a bit more turn-me-around-and-plow-into-me-from-behind, please, and thank you very much.

Talk about things he was interested in, something that might lead to him being interested in how interesting I was. “So. Hank. I was thinking. Maybe when I get back we could arrange a riding lesson?”

“Riding?” he asked, throwing the last bit of the feed to the chickens and heading for the barn.

“Yeah, take the horses out? I haven’t been riding since I was a kid, but maybe you could teach me? Get me comfortable again?”

He paused then, turned, and looked at me. Hard. My heart pounded. We stared at each other across the barnyard, chickens running here and there. They were obviously affected by the animal magnetism pulsing across the space between us, the man finally seeing the woman as she was. His stare was as hard as I hoped he’d be. He opened that perfect mouth to say—

Toot toot!

Dammit. Clark was stopping by this morning to go over the bid from the contractor I liked the best. Also the one who wanted to make the most changes, so I was ready for a fight.

He pulled into the driveway and sprang from the car, a scone in his hand and a smile on his face. Which faltered slightly when he saw Hank and me having a stare-off across some chickens.

When the Cowboy saw the Librarian? He approached, scattering fowl left and right. Slowly but purposefully he strode, even when he trod directly on a dried corncob. He stood right in front of me, his gaze drifting down to my now-heaving bosom, then meeting my eyes again from underneath his lashes. His look was heavy, and pointed, and smoldering. His lips parted, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “You think you wanna ride, huh?”

“Ride?” I whispered, not even able to summon the breath required to make my vocal cords work.

“Yeah. Ride,” he echoed, nodding toward the barn. “When you come back in town? I’ll take you out for a ride. Think you can handle it bareback?”

Sweet merciful God.

I never really understood what it meant when I read the term “my knees buckled.” I now know. Luckily there was a cowboy to catch me. His skin burned when he wrapped his fingers around my biceps, literally holding me up in midair as I struggled to find my footing. I breathed in, his scent filling my nostrils. Sweat. Sweet hay. Heat. Could a man smell like heat? He did.

I took another hit—and sneezed. But this time at least I managed to do it a little more daintily.

 He chuckled as he set me back on my feet, turned me clockwise, and with a tiny push sent me back toward the house. “Hey, Clark,” I heard Hank say with a self-satisfied voice behind me. I floated on a puffy white cloud of dazed hormones to the back door, where Clark was now waiting for me with a frown.

“Hey, Clark,” I echoed, as he held the door open for me and I hovered inside, still a few feet off the ground.

Still in a trance, I drifted over to the kitchen table, where I finally came to rest in a chair. My brain was scrambled, everything south of my navel was clenching a phantom dick, and my ears kept repeating a word that I never knew could be so sensual, so sexual, so full of promise. I repeated it in my head, over and over again, trying it out in different ways.

Bareback.

Bareback.

Bareback.

“Horseshit.”

“What?” I asked, ripped from my fluffy sex cloud.

“Horseshit,” Clark said again, pointing toward my shoe. In my trance, I’d stepped right in it.

“Dammit.” I sighed, lifting it immediately and seeing the tracks I’d made on the clean floor. I started to hop toward the door, but on my second hop I stumbled and pitched forward. I would have gone through the screen door but for Clark, who caught me tight around the waist.

Crushed against his chest, my nose was filled with the scent of Irish Spring soap and paperback books. Immediately I was brought back to the scent of the library back home, that homey scent of sun-touched book spines and thick yellowed paper, a quiet afternoon in the stacks.

He set me down before I could think on it too long, however, and helped me back outside. Hank’s truck was thundering away in the distance, and I set to wiping my shoe off in the gravel. After dragging it around a few times I looked up to the porch where Clark was standing, studying me. I got it mostly clean, but still took my shoes off before starting back for the porch.

“Gross, huh?”

“I’ll say,” he muttered, then looked like he was going to say something else. He didn’t though, and when I came back up the stairs he just held the door open for me.