Free Real Romance by Ginny Baird

under the dim porch light, night sounds echoing all around him.
    Marie had planned to ask him in, had straightened the house and whipped up a batch of store-mix brownies. But... Silence In The Trees? Her stomach clenched.
    Marie knew she was supposed to be impartial. And she was, when it came to book store management. She studied demographics, knew her market, purchased what would sell in this little town. But when it came to her personal taste, Marie much preferred works with dialogue in quotation marks and no Nietzsche.
    "Thanks, David," she said, feeling very much like she wanted to be alone.
    "No problem." He smiled and backed into the darkness. "I'll be looking for you at my shop. Stop by and left me know what you think of the book. Oh, and I'll fix those frames."

     
    Marie tossed Silence In The Trees onto the coffee table and sunk into the sofa, removing her glasses. Red flag number two, she thought, massaging her throbbing temples. David just might be a self-proclaimed environmentalist with a pretentious literary bent.
    This was what she had feared was coming. The one-two punch at the end of her long day. The stark reality of life in the not-so-fast lane.
    Well, who had she been fooling anyway? To think there'd be someone out there just like her had been ridiculous. Impossible. And in Covesville, impossible things weren't happening every day.

     
    Marie waited a respectable two days, then decided to return Silence In The Trees to David. She'd read some of it—but she couldn't stand to have the book taking up space in her house one day longer.
    If this was what David was into, he had far more in common with Cecil Barnes than Marie had ever dreamed of. The writer was a whiz at description—including painstakingly graphic portrayals of gruesome serial murders—but didn't care at all about romance. There was potential there. Such great potential, for something heated to develop between lead investigator Mona Malcom and the falsely accused Brad Billingsly. But nothing doing. Each protagonist seemed much too self-absorbed to attempt to peel the clothes off someone else. For heaven's sake! Was this considered entertainment?
    Not in Marie's favorite stories, where good always triumphed over evil and love conquered all. Hey, if she wanted the bad news, she'd read the newspapers. Fiction was supposed to be about feeling better, about forgetting.
    Well, forgetting was exactly what she intended to do. Forget all about those idealistic notions that made her want to believe David was more than a small town stud in tight-fitting jeans. That he—heaven forbid—might actually be the one! The one for what, for goodness sake?
    Just because he pushed her buttons as no other man had, that didn't mean he was the right one for her. The right man, when he came along, would have a whole heck of a lot more going for him than a mesmerizing smile, melting blue eyes and a body to yearn for.
    No! She was doing it again... remembering all the wrong things instead of focusing on the differences between them.
    Despite his protests to the contrary, David was most certainly a ladies' man, one who'd never be contented with a bookworm like her. At least, not for the long term. She knew his game. It was the challenge that was driving him, that was all, but she wouldn't give in.
    And if he actually liked that awful book... well, that was just more proof that David's vision of the world was one hundred and eighty degrees different from hers. Of course, that figured. After all, he'd made a point of mentioning that he came from a wealthy family where his mother had been able to stay home and dedicate herself to charity causes.
    Marie's background had been the complete opposite. Hers had been an upbringing filled with blood, sweat and tears. And yet, despite the hardships, she wouldn't trade her experiences for anything. What she'd gone through had made her strong, capable of standing on her own. And, despite her girlhood fantasies, Marie knew she really