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Blaze snorts lightly and almost smiles. “Should have known Gigi would find a way to get her claws into you. Sure, come on in.”
I follow her up the short flight of steps and pull the door open for her. “Allow me.”
She walks in. I follow her, almost bumping into her when she stops abruptly in the middle of the foyer.
“What on earth—?”
Standing right in front of her is a life-sized cardboard cutout of me, shirtless, holding Jackie in one hand and a copy of Call of the Wild in the other, one eyebrow arched in an effort to look “smoldering,” as the photographer put it.
It’s easily the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done, and if this doesn’t convince Blaze I’m serious about her, I can’t imagine anything that will.
Blaze stares at the cutout, and then her gaze is drawn upward. Slowly, she spins around, staring at the walls. “What have you done to my library?”
34
BLAZE
Huge posters, each one at least 10 feet tall, hang from the library walls, each one displaying a picture of a very buff and barely clothed fireman. They are all shirtless. Some are pants-less. All cuddle animals and all of them are reading.
There’s Mikey lying on his side in the grass, reading Make Way for Ducklings to an armful of fluffy baby ducks. There’s the red-headed fireman who helped rescue me from the elevator, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, boots, and a fire helmet, reading T.S. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats to three tiny tabby kittens. A dark-haired fireman, his otherwise bare torso set off by suspenders and an alarmingly low-slung pair of turnout pants, is leaning against a horse, who is reading Seabiscuit: An American Legend over his shoulder. And that’s just some of them.
I tear my eyes away from all the bare skin to take in the rest of the library. It should have closed more than an hour ago, but there are dozens of people milling around, many of them holding glasses of wine.
And then I see the firemen.
They’re not just hanging in two dimensions from the walls. They’re milling around in the crowd, passing around drinks and trays of hors d’oeuvres. All of them wear turnout pants, boots, and nothing else. Well, a couple have helmets on. But they are all very, very shirtless, and when I told Jeremy all those weeks ago that they were a decent-looking bunch, I was guilty of serious understatement.
Now that I’m thinking about it, aside from the firefighters, the audience here skews heavily female.
Gigi walks up to us, dressed to kill and smiling like a Cheshire Cat. “Surprise! What do you think?”
I’m still processing the firefighters. “I don’t know what to think, Gigi. Patrons are going to think we’ve opened a male strip club. Please tell me we haven’t opened a male strip club,” I add because with Gigi, you never know.
“Welcome to the Hot Reads Fundraiser!” She gestures around the room. “We’re launching the first annual Welkins Ridge Library Calendar.”
“Sexy firefighters and baby animals,” Jeremy chimes in, somewhat unnecessarily. “Your idea, I might add.”
I look back up at the enormous posters. Shirtless firefighters posing with cute animals are one thing in theory, quite another thing when they’re ten feet tall and hanging from the walls of a respectable library. Not to mention walking around in the flesh. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Jeremy fixes Gigi with a stern look. “And I did not say we would do it annually.”
Gigi gives him an overly sweet smile. “Don’t you need to be somewhere?”
“In a minute,” he grumbles.
Lucky and Joyce appear, both dressed for cocktail hour. Lucky plucks my now-watery latte from my hand and replaces it with a glass of wine, her grin as self-satisfied as Gigi’s.
Joyce hands Jeremy an open bottle of beer. “Nice work getting her here.”
“You were in on this?” I ask.
“We all were,” Lucky answers. “What do you think?”
I peer through the crowd of people. They’re mostly local by the look of it, which means it’s only a matter of time before the town council hears about the oversized beefcake pictures and the fact that somehow we’re now serving alcohol.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Shelly, which means Walden isn’t far behind. Guess it’s a safe bet the council knows.
“I think people should stop asking me that and maybe tell me exactly what’s going on?”
