Neglecting to get buy-in from key stakeholders, Alana thought. This could be a problem.
Tote and purse back on her shoulder she walked through the chilly, damp spring air to the library. A hundred years of traffic had worn depressions into the marble steps leading up to the double doors, and they could be slick when wet. Today several plastic grocery sacks clung to the bottom step. Alana opened the doors, left her bags and breakfast on the circulation desk, hurriedly swallowed a couple of bites of her breakfast. Experience taught her that she’d be on her feet and running the moment the library opened, which meant eating on the run.
She turned to go back to the front door, intending to remove the old wooden book drop box from the door and sort the after-hours returns, but ran smack into a gray sweater. Startled, she gasped and stepped back, hand clasped to her chest.
Stereotypical librarian. You have to stop doing that if you want to go home different.
Behind her stood a boy she’d never seen before in her life. He was caught in that awkward phase somewhere between teen and man, his height exacerbated by a frankly skinny frame, with reddish brown hair and blue eyes. His gray sweater was misshapen from washing and wearing, and his jeans barely skimmed the tops of his sneakers. His face was white with cold.
One eyebrow lifted, and a mocking amusement filled his eyes. “Sorry,” he said.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she said. “We’re not open yet.”
He looked around the building like he’d never seen it before. “I’m not here to check out books,” he said.
Alana composed herself. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for community service.”
“What kind of community service?”
The mocking expression sharpened. “The kind of community service you do when you get busted for stealing. A hundred hours at the library. Ridgeway set it up.”
“Chief Ridgeway, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I bet you don’t,” he said, his gaze skimming her.
Alana drew herself up to her full five feet nine inches in three-inch heels. “I beg your pardon,” she said.
His shoulders crept up toward his ears. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.
She nodded at the wooden book drop attached to the unopened front door. “Remove that and set it on the table while I call Chief Ridgeway and find out what’s going on.”
He slouched off toward the front door. Watching him carefully, Alana picked up her cell phone and considered it. Lucas Ridgeway, her landlord, had given her a cell and a home number, but this was chief-of-police business. She dialed the department’s main number and got the station’s secretary.
“Hi, Mary,” she said. “It’s Alana Wentworth calling from the library. Is Chief Ridgeway available?”
“He just walked in. Hold on a second.”
At the bawled Chief, it’s the librarian, line two, Alana held her phone away from her ear.
“Ridgeway.”
“Chief Ridgeway, did you forget to tell me something yesterday?”
“Why are you calling me Chief Ridgeway?”
Heat flared in her cheeks. “Because this is an official call from the library director to the chief of police,” she explained.
“Said library director and chief of police were officially half-naked on your couch,” he said.
She was no good at this. Was he flirting, or making a simple statement of fact? He made it nearly impossible to tell, his tone of voice, deep, slightly raspy, and yet somehow emotionless. “Tell me you have your door closed,” she hissed, keeping one eye on the kid. After some fumbling, he’d managed to disengage the heavy box from the door and was now carrying it to the wooden table along the windows.
“Okay, but I don’t.”
She drew in her breath.
“I do have my door closed. You’re blushing again. I can hear it.”
“You can’t possibly hear me blush.”
“Sure I can,” he said.
The still unnamed teen dropped the heavy box on the table. The crash rattled the windows and made Alana jump. “There is a young man here who claims he was arrested for theft, and you sent him here to do community service,” she whispered into the phone.
A pause, then a muffled dammit. “I did forget to tell you something yesterday,” he said.
“Who is he?”
“That’s one Cody Burton, caught red-handed stealing from the market. Because it was his first arrest, the judge agreed to counseling and a hundred hours of community service.”
“Here?” she hissed.
“There.”
“What on earth am I supposed to do with him?”
She heard a door slam and the sound of something hitting the desk top. “Put him to work. You said at the town hall the library needed repairs.”