“It’s Thomas.”
At the sound of the confident masculine voice, her nearly nonexistent temper exploded. How dare he call after destroying her life. “You! You- You big jerk!” Oh great. Was “you big jerk” the biggest insult she could come up with?
“Listen, Ally,” he said quickly. A strange clinking sound came over the phone. “I need you to get me a lawyer. Like yesterday.”
What had she seen in this guy?
But she already knew the answer to that, painful as it was to admit. He was a gorgeous, smooth, elegant man who’d noticed her. Unlike everyone else in her life, he hadn’t needed her money-little as there was-he hadn’t required her mothering skills, hadn’t wanted anything from her except…her. More than that, he’d given her attention.
How pathetic was that? He’d made plain Ally Wheeler-of average height, average weight, average hair and eyes-feel beautiful.
It’d taken awhile for the stars to clear from her eyes. Only then had she been able to see Thomas for the user and con man that he was, though not in time to save her job, or the library’s classics.
“No, I won’t get you a lawyer,” she said, winding up to let loose some of her pent-up feelings. “And another thing-”
“Officer Daniel here,” a strange voice said in her ear. “Time’s up.”
Ally stared at the phone and for the first time in days let out a genuine laugh. Thomas had called from jail, in handcuffs if the clanking noise meant anything. Wasn’t life just one big excitement after another?
NO JOB CAME THROUGH. Thanks to the ruthless rumors about Ally’s involvement with the priceless missing volumes, no library in the entire state would touch her. And nothing could soften the cold, hard facts. She had little to no savings, three sisters in college counting on her financial help, elderly parents on a fixed income, and she was staring poverty in the face.
She needed a job, any job. Without one, who would rent her a place to live? Her sisters were all settled in dorms. Her parents, who’d had their kids late in life, lived in a senior center. She had no one to turn to.