Overview
Opposites attract in the most passionate of ways.
Bookworm Rhys Middleton lives in the idyllic town of Hawks Bridge and spends his days working at the local library, his evenings quietly reading. He thinks it's all about books and even the occasional interruption ‘real life' throws his way cannot change his beliefs.
It's a rude awakening for him when car thief Darren Dewhirst arrives to do his community service, turning Rhys' world upside down. Rhys thinks the man is uneducated, only to find him reading classics. He expects him to behave like the criminal he is, only Darren doesn't. Rhys isn't exactly out and proud, while Darren is in denial about his sexuality and hangs around with the sort of people who wouldn't tolerate a relationship between him and Rhys.
They are wrong for each other on so many levels, yet rejection only makes the need greater...
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781784302061 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Totally Entwined Group |
| Publication date: | 09/19/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 60 |
| File size: | 254 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Rhys Middleton slammed the phone down, breathing heavily, and paced the small area behind the desk, trying not to catch the eye of his colleague Emma, who was regarding him curiously from the Young Adult section.
Mrs Shaw had ruined his day. Was it his fault she couldn't get her books back on time and ran up exorbitant fines he had to chase her for every month? Then she'd go all defensive and be so rude and obnoxious to him. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. He gave one final loud sigh and stalked out from behind the desk just as a timid girl approached with a stack of textbooks. Let Emma deal with her.
Rhys headed for the bathroom, banging open the door before hurrying to the sink to splash some cold water on his face. He took a few slow breaths, staring at himself in the mirror. It wasn't like him to be so quick to anger but really, Mrs Shaw was going to be the death of him. Perhaps he could suggest to his boss, Veronica the crazy cat lady, that it was someone else's turn to deal with her now.
He wondered if the cause of his stress actually wasn't Mrs Shaw at all but the community service kid expected later that morning. The worst part of Rhys' job — some spotty scrote caught shoplifting or car thieving sentenced to community service at his library. What exactly had he done to deserve that?
Apart from Mrs Shaw, his life was so blissfully peaceful most of the time, working five days a week in the small, but cozy local library. Set a few miles outside the seaside town of Whitehaven in the heart of the Lake District, the sleepy town of Hawks Bridge was awash with nature and beautiful scenery. It was an affront to his sensibilities and his sense of propriety to have these vile individuals thrust upon him. Rhys knew he was a nerd. He lived his life closeted by books. When he finished at the library, he went home to his small flat that was overrun by books to the detriment of all else and carried on with his one-way love affair. As long as he could drift away to the fantasy world an author had created for him, he didn't much care about anything else. It was just a shame that once in a while, he got a rude awakening.
He shivered, patted his face dry carefully with some paper towels then headed back outside. Emma was behind the desk, serving an old lady. A tall, gangly woman in her mid-forties with flaming red hair, Emma treated Rhys with fondness, often bringing him home-made cakes and telling him he needed fattening up. Rhys wasn't all that interested in food. When his belly rumbled, he ate something. If it didn't, he didn't bother.
"What are you so cross about?" she questioned him as he slipped behind the desk and grabbed a stack of just returned books.
"What do you think?" he replied, arranging them on the trolley ready to go back to the shelves.
"That you're looking forward to the community service lad?" She winked at him then wished the old lady good day as the customer walked out bowed under with a job lot of Mills and Boon.
Rhys scowled at her. "Might I remind you what happened last time?"
Emma arranged some pens in the holder on the desk. "You mean when you called him an illiterate Philistine for saying Charles Dickens was a boring, old, dead fart, and when he'd found out what you meant, he came back and punched you in the face?"
Rhys reddened and shoved another handful of books on the trolley. "Yes, that's it."
"Well, they can't all be like that."
"Can't they? Have you known joyriding junkies from council estates to be well up on their Shakespeare then?"
Emma shrugged. "Not exactly, but you could teach him. Make him see that reading Macbeth or Bleak House or Jane Eyre is much more fun than leading cops on a ninety-mile-an-hour car chase." She looked thoughtful. "Actually, I'm not sure if it is."
"You're not helping," Rhys said and stomped off.
* * *
He spent the rest of the morning stacking returned books, concentrating as best he could on making the shelves neat and pristine, organizing the spines of those books someone had shoved in hurriedly, often in the wrong place. Not that he had OCD, but he liked his books to look good, attractive to the casual browser, and he prided himself on the tidiness of the library.
A cough came from behind him. He hadn't heard anyone approach. He turned around to see Emma beaming at him.
"He's here." She stepped aside to reveal the man standing behind her.
He wasn't spotty, nor was he a kid — maybe nineteen years old, only four years younger than Rhys, with the freshest, clearest skin Rhys had ever seen, and the palest, greenest eyes like exotic seas. He'd never seen eyes like that before and he found himself staring, wondering if the man wore contact lenses. The offender had dark, closely cropped hair and stood more or less the same height as Rhys — five nine. Despite the fact that his haircut made him look like a thug, he wore jeans and a black duffel coat rather than the usual chav uniform of baseball cap and trackie bottoms tucked into socks.
Rhys swallowed. He found himself irked that the interloper was so attractive. It was a closely guarded secret at work that Rhys liked boys. He was sure his colleagues thought he was more interested in books than sex — which was true, of course — but still, he wouldn't have refused any pretty boy who wanted to climb into his bed. Not that pretty boys did. They didn't usually frequent libraries. Rhys' action was limited to his hand and a copy of Jack Saul's Sins of the Cities of the Plain.
He scowled at the bloke. "I'm Rhys. I'll be looking after you while you're here. If you don't want to work, then don't waste my time. I've got better things to do than babysit you."
The man glanced at Emma. Perhaps he couldn't believe how rude Rhys was.
Emma cleared her throat. "Rhys, this is Darren." She leaned close to Rhys' ear. "Be nice." She patted his shoulder and walked away.
Darren and Rhys stared at each other. Rhys turned on his heel. "Come with me. I'll show you where to hang your coat."
Darren followed in silence. He stood looking around the poky staffroom once he'd thrown his coat on a hook behind the door.
"Fridge for your dinner. Microwave. Toaster." Rhys pointed redundantly. "Staff leave their valuables here. I'd prefer it if you didn't steal them."
Darren's eyes narrowed. A dull flush spread over his cheeks but he said nothing, only glared at Rhys mutinously.
"I'll show you around then."
Rhys led Darren to the very back of the library and the Oversized section, the community service guy following at his heels like an obedient puppy.
"Here are all the reference books, so we have the Encyclopaedia Britannica, atlases, dictionaries. On the stands there we have medical and nursing journals. On the other one science and business." He led the way to the books lining the wall.
"Non-fiction is on this side of the library, fiction on the other. Here we have crime, sociology, geography, history, computer studies, economics ..."
He stopped short as he heard Darren stifle a yawn. He turned around. "I'm sorry, am I boring you?"
Darren regarded him implacably. He shrugged.
Rhys' blood started to simmer. "Have you ever even been in a library?"
Darren gave him that cold-eyed glare again. "Yes."
"When? At school?"
"Yes."
"So you went to school?"
A dangerous look flickered over Darren's face. It told Rhys he was going too far and he should back off, but he took no notice. "Well?"
"I went to school." Darren's voice was low and measured with a local accent.
"Did you indeed? Why are you here?"
"I nicked a car."
"Why?"
Darren shrugged. He averted his gaze. "I was bored."
Rhys regarded him with disbelief. "You were bored? Do you know what I do when I'm bored? I read a book. I don't go out and steal someone's prized possession and take it for a ride."
Darren's eyes swung back to Rhys. He stepped forward so suddenly that Rhys was almost pinned to the bookshelf. "I've got my punishment. I've had my lectures. I don't need another one from you, geek."
He made the insult sound like the worst obscenity. For a moment they stood eye to eye, their noses almost touching. His breath played over Rhys' face before Darren stepped back. Rhys hurried on with his cheeks hot and his legs unsteady, pointing out the rest of the subjects as he passed each shelf.
The end of the non-fiction led into the Children's section to the left of the reception desk. This had little desks and miniature chairs and was peopled at the moment by a mother and child, the boy cooing over pictures of zebras and giraffes. Rhys didn't linger here. He'd rather he didn't expose the vulnerable to people like Darren. He hastened past the center display of CDs and DVDs on a rack heading toward the computers. "The public can surf the net or read e-books on here. The printer's at the desk for any documents they want to print."
He walked on, leading Darren deep into the heart of the fiction section, his favorite. He stood facing the back shelf. "This is Literature and Classics — people like Shakespeare, Dickens and the Brontës, in case you didn't know — and then the general fiction starts from A here." He didn't look at Darren as he walked him around the next few corners to the end of the section. "After Z, we have some sub-genres — Crime, Sci-fi, Horror — and then some Large Print texts."
He turned to face his charge. "Any questions?"
"Yeah," said Darren. "What time do I finish?"
Rhys' lip curled. "The library closes at five-thirty on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Twelve-thirty on Saturdays. On Mondays we have late night opening until seven-thirty."
"Fuck that shit," Darren muttered under his breath.
"Excuse me?" Rhys said. "How many hours are you obliged to do here?"
"A hundred."
"Well then, that's two and a bit weeks full-time. Get used to it." Rhys stalked away.
All the way back to the desk he asked himself why the powers that be deemed a library a suitable place for a dangerous criminal to work. Rhys was sure he lost IQ points just mixing with these vile individuals. He glanced up and found Darren hovering on the other side of the desk looking unsure.
"What do you want me to do?" Darren asked.
Rhys piled an armload of books onto the trolley. "Put these back on the shelves."
Darren looked dubiously at the books then at Rhys. "How do I know where they go?"
Rhys huffed. "Look at the book's title, then at the number on the spine." He sat down at the desk and shuffled some papers, bowing his head and making it clear that the discussion was finished.
The wheels on the trolley squeaked as Darren pushed it away, heading for the non-fiction section when most of the books on the cart were fiction. Rhys sighed. He hoped Darren somehow got lost in the bowels of the library and starved to death or something. Anything so Rhys didn't have to see him again.
Rhys worked hard at the desk stamping out customers' books until Emma rang the bell, signaling ten minutes until closing time. She flitted about making last-minute returns, while Veronica was in charge of turning off all the computers. Rhys tidied away his work for the day and shut down his PC. Then he rose from the desk and glanced around him, straining his ears for the squeaky sound of the book cart.
Nothing.
With his temper simmering, he headed toward non-fiction. After circling the shelves, he found Darren in the reading area in the middle of the books, his feet up on the desk, a book open on his lap. Somehow he'd managed to find a photo of a naked woman in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Rhys moved swiftly, approaching behind him on silent feet then wrenching the book from Darren's grasp.
"You can read then," he snarled before he shoved it back in its precise spot without needing to look.
Darren glanced over his shoulder. He pushed his chair back and stood. "Nah, I just look at the pictures." His pale green eyes glinted as if in warning.
Rhys looked around. "Where's the cart? Have you finished?"
"I've finished," Darren said and started to walk off. "See you tomorrow."
Rhys caught sight of an uneven row of books right in front of him. The spine of a large hardback protruded incongruously from among the others, upside down. "Hey," he called, "just a minute."
Darren ignored him, heading toward the desk. Rhys lunged forwards and pulled the book free. Staring in horror, he saw the title, Advanced Knitting, and knew without glancing up to the marker that it was in the Economics section.
"What the hell!" he cried, chasing Darren to the desk, but a further row of books on his left caught his eye and made him stop, another hardback shoved into a gap willy-nilly. A book about sexual love in with World War One histories. Rhys was apoplectic. Never had he dealt with such disorder and willful disobedience. He reached the desk carrying the two books just as Darren appeared, pulling on his coat.
"Hey!"
"Blow me," Darren told him, sidestepping him then heading toward the exit.
Rhys followed, carrying the books, chasing, not sure what he was going to do when he got hold of Darren, just knowing that he had to catch him.
"You can't just ..." Rhys pitched wildly through the security barrier and instantly alarms started to shrill.
Darren looked back once, gave Rhys a wink then disappeared through the main doors into the drizzly afternoon.
"Oh God!" Rhys raced to the desk, tried to leap over it and landed in an undignified heap on the ground, pulling a shelf-load of books down on top of him. A stick-thin arm reached for the alarm silence button above him.
"Rhys, what are you doing?" asked his boss.
"I'm going to kill him," Rhys muttered, fighting through Young Adult fiction and cookery books. "I'm going to kill him."
* * *
Emma and Veronica didn't seem to have all that much sympathy for Rhys. They were happy to go home while he stayed, searching every shelf for inappropriate books and finally locating the cart abandoned half-full near the men's toilets.
His rage knew no boundaries and he had to sit down at last in the fiction section and take some deep breaths for fear that he would stroke out. He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, willing calm to descend. He opened his eyes and looked around, listening as he did. The only sound he could hear was the low hum of the central heating and this caused a slight smile to cross his face. It was so nice to be here alone when everyone had gone. Just him and the books and no one to bother him. Sometimes he wished he lived here. A bed upstairs and the books waiting for him downstairs. What else would he need? He decided that no matter what Darren had done, this was a pleasant way to spend his evening and he would perhaps stay a little longer.
Then he glanced up and saw a Twilight book shoved in with the Classics and he almost combusted.
CHAPTER 2The next morning dawned gray and grim and Rhys made it to work with the bottom of his pants wet and his umbrella blown inside out. Cursing under his breath he pushed open the staffroom door then stopped, dripping and bedraggled, when he saw Darren sitting with his feet on the table drinking a cup of tea.
Rhys dropped his umbrella and eyed him suspiciously. The man was ten minutes early. Could a truce be in the offing? Darren opened his mouth and ruined it.
"You look like something the cat dragged in."
Rhys shrugged off his coat violently. He pulled off his steamed-up glasses and polished them on his sweater, waiting until he had put them back on and could actually see before he threw Darren a filthy glare.
"Tell me why I shouldn't phone your parole officer after yesterday's stunt."
Darren looked uneasy. He took his feet off the table. "I didn't know where the books went," he said.
"Liar. It's not rocket science." A drop of freezing water ran down Rhys' face and he swiped it away.
"Yeah, well, if you weren't such an arsehole ..."
Rhys drew himself up. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Stop treating me like shit."
Rhys curled his lip. "Your very demeanor and reputation don't call for any respect."
"Christ, how old are you?" Darren flung back. "You talk like the fucking prime minister."
Rhys objected to the comparison, seeing as the government was ruining the country and dragging the NHS into disrepair. "There's no need for profanity."
"There you go again. Swearing, fucking swearing, already! You're like something from Antiques Roadshow with your glasses and your sensible haircut and your shitty sweaters!"
Rhys glanced down at the Christmas jumper Aunt Ruby had bought him that perhaps shouldn't have lasted until January. He was deeply, deeply offended. "One more word and you can leave."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Don't Judge a Book"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Scarlet Blackwell.
Excerpted by permission of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
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