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And yes, curiosity gets the best of me.
Ignoring Joyce’s glare, I follow her a few steps away. “What’s up?”
“The night of the town council meeting, I overheard your brother talking to Chief Wainwright in the parking lot after you left. Walden said he ignored the chief’s request to withdraw on purpose because he thinks you can do better than working in Welkins Ridge.”
I absorb this for a beat. “Walden was deliberately sabotaging me?”
“That’s what it sounded like.” She looks almost apologetic. “For what it’s worth, it sounded like he thought he was doing you a favor.”
I grip the stem of my wine glass so hard it’s a miracle it doesn’t break. “By making my life difficult? Yeah, that sounds like my brother.” Walden’s mind twists in weird ways. I study Scarlett. “Why are you telling me?”
She lifts one slender shoulder in a graceful shrug. “I know what it’s like when your family doesn’t have your back.” There’s a pause. “By the way… you said something about a job-finding program?”
By the tentative look on her face, I can tell her pride is taking a huge hit in the asking, but I’m past gloating. We’re a public institution. We serve everyone. Even bitchy former cheerleaders.
“There’s information on the website, but stop by anytime. If I’m not around, anyone here can walk you through our resources and show you how to use the jobs database.”
“I’ll do that.” She glances over my shoulder and her expression turns sour. “I gotta run.”
I turn to see George Shumaker walking toward us. I turn back to thank Scarlett, but she’s already halfway to the door.
Finding Walden isn’t difficult. He’s holding court near the reference desk, glad-handing members of the voting public.
I march up to him and skip the preamble. “You sneaky son of a bitch!”
Walden’s politician smile doesn’t slip. “Excuse me just a moment,” he says to the small crowd before propelling me in between the nearest stacks. “Language, sis!”
“You’ve been deliberately trying to get me to quit all this time, haven’t you?”
He hesitates but he doesn’t deny it. I cross my arms and give him a death glare.
He promptly caves. “Yeah.”
“Walden, why? I’ve worked my ass off trying to keep this place afloat and you’ve undermined me at every turn.”
“You could do better. You have a master’s degree, for crying out loud. And the library really should be—”
“Under county administration. Yes. Well, thanks to this fundraiser, we’re actually in a position to do that. Or we will be soon.” With the confidence born of three job offers and a hundred thousand dollars in my pocket, not to mention a gambling streak I never knew I had, I go for it. “Right now, I want a raise.”
“What do you need a raise for?” he asks. “You just got all this money.”
My palm itches to smack the supercilious smile off his face. “It’s all going to operations. My salary is paid by the town, as you know.”
“You’ll be in the county system soon enough. They’ll give you a raise.”
“Then this mostly symbolic but still very meaningful gesture won’t even cost you that much. It might even be an incentive for you to do everything in your power to help us get into the county system.”
He considers my words. “Mm, I don’t know…” he demurs. “Might look bad giving my own sister a raise.”
“Walden, Walden, Walden,” I sigh. “The Welkins Ridge library is getting national attention. Lucky is setting me up with interviews even as we speak. Can’t you see how bad it would look if the head librarian quit because she’s getting paid literally half of the national average for her position? And she’s the only town employee who hasn’t had a cost-of-living raise the entire time she’s worked here? That she’s being discriminated against by the mayor himself? And if she made sure the whole world knew it?”
His eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Try me.”
It’s a standoff, like those who-blinks-first staring contests we had when we were kids. I’ve made my decision about what comes next, but as far as Walden knows, I’m a wild card, capable of anything. It’s not even that I care that much about the money, although it would certainly be nice. It’s that tonight I know what I’m worth, and I’m done settling for less.
After a very long moment, Walden blinks first. “Fine,” he relents. “Come see me in my office next week.”
