Checked out

Chapter 8

Marion was scowling as she got out of her car and began to paw through her purse for the keys to the building. She quickly ran up the walkway, unlocked the door, and punched in the four-digit code that turned off the screaming alarm. Flipping on the lights, she saw there was a man waiting out on the sidewalk reading the library hours on the door. An obese dog paced agitatedly around the man’s feet and kept looking worriedly up at the sky. Surely he saw that they were closed Saturday and Sunday and would go away. She was glad that the glass was tinted heavily so that he could not see her standing in the lobby and assume they were open. The man pulled on the door but luckily it had locked again behind her. He checked his watch and frowned, looking at her car in the lot; then turned and cupped his hands around his eyes and squinted in at her. “Shit” Marian thought with irritation and reluctantly pushed the door open. “I’m so sorry sir, we’re not open weekends.” she said as she leaned out slightly and turned on her most helpful smile, “ I’m only here because the alarm went off and I have to wait here until the police come,” she explained soothingly. “We reopen Monday at eleven o’clock!” She tried to pull the door shut, but the man had his hand on it and was waving something in her face. She leaned back slightly and squinted a little to bring it into focus. Why was he showing her his license? Then she noticed the badge on the left side of the wallet.
“I’m Jim Deacon with the sheriff’s department” the man introduced himself. She took in his khaki shorts and stained golf shirt. His feet were shoved into rubber flip-flops and he had a plastic bag sticking out of his shorts pocket. The dog continued pacing neurotically and occasionally would stop it’s heavy panting to whine asthmatically. “I heard your alarm all the way at my house.” He turned slightly and indicated his head toward one of the houses across the street. “ I was walking old Georgia here in the park when it went off, so I phoned it in and told them not to send a unit, I could wait here until one of you got here to turn it off.”
Marian tried to pay attention to what he was saying, but found she was distracted by the fullness of the man’s lower lip. Jim was short by her standards, around 5’7” or so, and a little paunchy. His gray hair was thin across the top, and could have stood some cleaning up around the sides. Heavy lidded hazel eyes held hers as she took in the rest of his rather uneven features and tried to get a deep breath. He was by no means the type of man she was usually attracted too, but that didn’t really matter right this minute. Nothing mattered. She could not move. The blind urge for this man seemed to come out of nowhere. She wanted to take his face in her hands and suck on that juicy lower lip, run her tongue around his ear and down his neck. She wanted to breathe him in and feel his hands explore her body. She felt an emotional connection so strong it was as if they might have shared a life together already. She knew this man on some level that was beyond reason or explanation. At eight twenty four on this particular Sunday morning, Marian the cynical, sexpot librarian fell in more desperately in love than she ever had been in her entire forty-four years of age and it overwhelmed her.
At eight twenty five she came back into her body realizing she had on a pair of extra large paint stained sweatpants, her old lady glasses, and morning breath tinged with Juicy Fruit gum. Fuck it, she thought. I don’t have on a bra and if he doesn’t notice that, then there is something seriously wrong with him.
Jim stood there awkwardly waiting for some sort of response from her. Damn she was a fine woman, he was pretty sure she didn’t have a bra on. Her hair was bedroom tousled and her eyes behind those sexy glasses had a glint in them that made him suspect she had a hell of a wild side. She had curves and lord he loved a woman who actually felt like a woman. Finally he broke the silence “ We need to go in so I can check the rest of the building.”
Marian nodded and turned to unlock the doors that led into the library. He took her arm and gently moved her to the side so that he could go in first. She could swear his fingers lingered and she could still feel the heat of them burning into her flesh. “Where’s the light switch?” he asked.
“They’re behind the circulation desk” she said and pointed to where he needed to go. He felt around in the dark for a moment and began to flip them on one by one. “Do you see anything out of place?” he said, walking back around to the front of the desk. Georgia stopped panting for a moment and looked around the building curiously from her stunted height.
Marian glanced quickly around the library and was glad to see it looked exactly as it did Friday when she locked up. “Let me check the emergency doors, sometimes the cleaning crew will forget to relock them and that sets the alarm off.” She walked across the library toward the exits. Both doors were solidly locked. They checked the interior closets together, and walked up and down rows of books to make sure everything was in place. Marian’s white tank top was almost completely see through, a fact she was not as aware of as Jim was. He figured there was no reason for concern about the alarm and decided he would fill out the report later. He could come back tomorrow to get her to sign it, which would give him a reason to come back in to see her. And he needed a library card too. He could save that for another trip, and his daughter Erin would need one too. That could be trip three. He hoped she worked every day.
“Its just another false alarm” Marion apologized “I am so sorry you had to come all the way over here to deal with this.” She remembered he said he lived across the street. “ Did you just move in?” She remembered a house being for sale for a while just up from the library.
“ I bought the place a few weeks ago, after my divorce was finalized. It keeps me close to work and to my daughter.” he explained unnecessarily and shut himself up before he sounded completely pathetic to her and to himself.
“I’m sorry”, she said, and it was genuine. Her own failed marriage saddened her, and she honestly felt for others going through the same thing. Marion loved to give the impression of toughness, but in reality was more tender hearted than anyone would know. She wasn’t in the habit of sharing her softer emotions with anyone. “Did you get custody of the dog?” she said with mock seriousness and smiled at him.
Jim laughed. “Georgia belongs to my daughter, Erin. She and her mom are at the beach this weekend, so I got visitation.” He rubbed the dog’s fat belly gently with his shoe and she looked up at him startled and gave a loud wheeze.
Marian bent over to pet Georgia. She didn’t much care for dogs, but knew bent over she could give Jim a peek at her some of her best assets. She stayed bent over, fussing in the dog’s confused face long enough for him to get a good preview. She slowly straightened up, watching his eyes linger with a dazed expression on the front of her shirt.
“Well, I’ll come by in the morning to get you to sign off on the report” he said abruptly. He shifted the weight on to his right leg and reached in his pocket to surreptitiously shift himself over a little. That was a hell of a view down her shirt and he could picture pulling the neckline down even further. He looked intently into her face to focus his thoughts off of her breasts for a moment.
“Anytime” she said. Her instincts told her he was as attracted to her as she was to him. The question was now what to do with that?
“Let me get this place locked back up.” she said, as she dug her keys out of the enormous pocket of her sweatpants. “I’ll call Teresa Derby up this afternoon and let her know what happened. She’s the manager, so if you come by in the morning you’ll meet her. I don’t come in until two o’clock normally, and then I close up at night.” she volunteered.
She flipped off the switches for the lights, and re-locked the door to their break room. Walking around the front of the circulation desk she deliberately brushed against his arm as slowly as she dared, and that was pretty slowly.
Jim felt all reason leave him at that moment. Her scent filled his head and he circled his fingers around her upper arm. Pulling her to him, he hesitated briefly and then met her lips with his own. He sucked her in like oxygen, it had been so long since he felt confident that a woman found him attractive enough to have sex with. He got the leash untangled from around his hand and let go of the wildly panting Georgia; letting his hand trace its way slowly down Marian’s back and over the curve of her hip. They kissed deeply, tasting each other and creating a firestorm between their bodies. Jim put his face in Marian’s neck and bit her playfully, then licked her as he eased down the straps of her tank top. She arched her back and moaned rubbing herself on him like a cat, and reached down desperately for the top button of his shorts. Like an elevator, down came Marion’s shirt and down came Jim’s shorts. They were not even aware of the scratch of the carpet as the rest of their clothes were left behind and they hit the floor.