Chapter 11

Henry spotted Mary Beth right away, even though she was sitting at a table tucked away in the corner of the Daily Drip. She was hard to miss, what with her waving frantically at him. Her big, hulking police chief of a husband sitting at the table with her didn’t hurt, either.

“Hey,” Henry said as he took the only unoccupied seat. He shoved his laptop bag under the table. After Mary Beth said whatever she had to say, he hoped to stick around and get some grading done, fueled by the smell of coffee.

Because he knew he wouldn’t have time for grading tonight.

Because he had a date with Helen.

Not a date, he reminded himself. A research meeting.

He was probably getting himself into trouble, feelings-wise. He’d spent a lot of time not thinking about Helen in a sexual way before. He knew she was beautiful—he wasn’t blind, just clueless. But they’d met in a professional setting, so he’d automatically put her in the colleague category. And then when they became friends, well, Helen dated a lot, so even if he’d wanted to think of her as more than that, it had never really seemed appropriate.

Obviously, he was an idiot.

The more he thought about it, the more wonderful Helen became, and the dumber he felt for not seeing it sooner. She was smart. They didn’t always agree, but she expressed her opinions with such boisterous good humor that he never felt annoyed. She was loud. Very loud for a librarian. But she helped him challenge stereotypes, and she made enough noise that he didn’t have to, not unless he wanted to. He could go on being his nerdy, introverted self. And her dogs loved him.

So it was a good thing he hadn’t thought about it before. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was ruin their friendship. It was one of his favorite things about living in Willow Springs.

That, and the dilapidated brothel that no one seemed to believe had actually been a brothel.

A best friend and a brothel. What more could a guy ask for?

“Thanks for meeting me,” Mary Beth said, passing a mug of something hot his way. “Two sugars, right?”

“Thanks,” he said, adding two more sugars. Whatever Mary Beth wanted to talk about was probably pretty serious. One does not just get a guy coffee for a regular old meeting. “You sounded so mysterious on the phone. Do you expect violence or something?” he said, nodding toward Chief Brakefield.

“I just had a minute, so I’m meeting my beautiful wife for coffee,” the chief said. “But if you do get violent . . .”

Mary Beth rolled her eyes at her uber-alpha husband. “Don’t you have some patrolling to do?”

Chief Brakefield stood up and kissed his wife. “No, baby, I’m the chief. I get to do the paperwork.”

He nodded at Henry and left.

Mary Beth watched him leave. Henry thought she might have forgotten that he was still there, and that she had something important to tell him. He cleared his throat.

“Oh! Hi. Sorry. He’s, um, distracting.”

“That seems to be going around,” Henry muttered, thinking about the four times he’d walked past the library today, even though it was clear across campus from where he needed to be. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“How’s your drink?”

Henry didn’t know Mary Beth very well, but he recognized a stalling tactic. Had Helen said something to her? Had he imagined the wonderfulness of last night, and now Mary Beth was here to spill ice water on his sexual prowess?

He obediently took a sip of his coffee and gave a thumbs-up. It was good. Too sweet, just the way he liked it. The impending sense of doom he felt did nothing to diminish that.

“Good. The reason I wanted to talk to you . . .” She took a deep breath. Henry braced himself. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you about this, but we’re friends, right?”

“Friends of friends,” Henry said, then winced. Even he knew that was not a very polite thing to say, although it was true.

“Sure, friends of friends. But I respect you, Henry, and I know how strongly you feel about the Wood Street property.”

Henry’s stomach dropped to the cold café floor, too-sweet coffee and all.

“You know I helped broker that deal for Pembroke.”

Henry nodded.

“And I’ve been involved in the plans the college and the town are making for it.”

Henry nodded. He was turning into a bobblehead.

“It’s all part of the downtown revitalization project, which I am fully in support of. I grew up in this town, and I love it. And it seemed like Pembroke’s purchasing the Wood Street house would solve two problems: deal with a public eyesore, and increase the cooperation between the college and the town.”

“Seemed like?” Henry asked. His voice hadn’t squeaked, had it? That was surely just in his head.

“That was the goal. That still is the goal. And the committee really loved your presentation and vision for restoring the house. And you know I support any house restoration project.”

“Sure.” Henry knew that Mary Beth’s brother, Jake, made his living pulling old houses out of their dilapidated graves. It was one of the only things Henry liked about Jake. Everything else about him was just overwhelming masculinity and simmering resentment. But old houses; that, they bonded over.

“Well, it seems the committee has gone with a different plan.”

“Different how?” Henry asked, though he was pretty sure he knew.

“They want to tear it down.”

Once, when Henry was a kid, his grandparents took the whole extended family to a resort on a tropical island. It was Henry’s first plane ride, and his first time seeing the ocean. He remembered being surprised at how loud it was. Then, later, in a gift shop, his grandfather had put a giant conch shell up to his ear, and Henry couldn’t believe that he was hearing the ocean inside what was really just a big pink bone. It scared him, hearing the ocean inside his head like that, and he couldn’t hear anything else, as if he were being swallowed by the ocean right there inside the gift shop.

That was exactly how he felt now.

He saw Mary Beth’s lips continue to move, and he vaguely heard things like “archive” and “spirit of the architecture” and “cost-effective.” But he didn’t hear anything properly after “tear it down.”

Then the ocean turned into a boiling pit of rage, and his whole body felt fever-hot. How could they do that? How could they just tear down a house that meant so much to the town? And to him, yes, but there were so many stories that house had to tell. The college wanted to tear it down before he even had a chance to discover them?

He barely registered Mary Beth patting his hand, then leaving. He might have said good-bye, or he might have just continued to stare blankly at the pastry case behind her. The only thing he knew was that he had worked his butt off to save the brothel, and he had failed.

And that his coffee had gone cold.