Free By the Book by Mary Kay McComas Page B

Joleen.”
    “You cosigned? On a loan application? Yesterday? With your brother?”
    “No. No way. No. I didn’t,” she said, shaking her head as the pieces fell into place. “Yesterday. No. Joleen, I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for the telephone. “For taking up your time. For taking up the Savings and Loan’s time. I’ll call them right now and straighten this out.”
    Joleen straightened up, completely dumfounded. She lingered a moment, then wandered off.
    Ellen was mortified, with a singular craving for blood with her lunch. After settling things with the Savings and Loan—a simple matter of canceling the request she hadn’t made in the first place—she took a few minutes’ refuge in the ladies’ room, locking the door, checking both stalls, then sitting on the counter next to the sink to think of something pleasant ... anything pleasant.
    Naturally, Jonah came swiftly to mind, and she smiled. What a wonderfully strange creature he was. Quiet and reserved was her initial perception, but she hadn’t factored in thoughtful and intelligent, really intelligent. A thinker. An observer.
    She hadn’t realized she was tired of sitting in one position over dinner until he’d suggested they leave—and yet the minute he did, she knew that something in her manner or posture had given her away. He was like that, watching her all the time. Not as if she were a bug under glass, but as if she were a creature he wanted to know in its natural habitat, because it mattered to him. Because he wanted it to survive and thrive in his presence, as if he were an intruder or a foreign organism in a pristine petri dish. Watching her to see if he could fit into her life somehow, without damaging it, without upsetting the natural balance of her existence.
    The derisive noise she made echoed through the restroom. If he knew how unbalanced her life really was, he wouldn’t look twice at her. Well, he might look, but he’d see she was just a too-nice person who couldn’t stop people from walking all over her.
    With more to say and so much more they wanted to know, they had both been reluctant to cut short their first date. It had been a perfect summer evening with a bright half-moon and more than enough stars in the clear night sky. They’d walked up one side of Glover Street and down the other, talking, talking, talking. They were so alone in their own little world, they didn’t notice the change in their surroundings from commercial to residential until the streetlights grew few and far between and she tripped over a piece of uneven sidewalk.
    “Oops. You okay?” he asked, still holding her, a protective arm wrapped behind her after successfully breaking her fall. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come so far without infrared, for night vision.”
    She laughed and held on to him until she was steady ... and for just a little longer after that.
    “You mean you don’t have any special equipment sewn into the lining of your jacket? Or folded into the heel of your shoe?”
    “Sorry. Wrong guy. You’re thinking of James Bond.”
    No, she wasn’t. She was thinking that his arms felt good around her, strong and safe, and that she liked the way he smelled, soapy and male.
    “Oh, that’s right. No British accent. We’re doomed.”
    “Not yet, we’re not.” With his arm still around her, he turned her back the way they’d come. “Here, lean on me. I have super X-ray vision.”
    “That’s Superman.”
    “Oh yeah. Well, I’m surefooted. How’s that?”
    She chuckled and adjusted her rhythm of walking to his. “I think that was the last Mohican.”
    “How about we just stumble back together?”
    “I like that one.” She smiled at him.
    “Me too,” he said, his voice low and soft, the warm pleasure in it heating her blood. “Now, where were we? You have a mother and a married sister and they both live here in town and ... oh yes, you were going to tell me about your brother.”
    “No, I wasn’t.” Not tonight. Not