Book of Love Page 3

  When he came back inside, his smile turned to a frown. Without saying anything to Janice, he handed her the key to her car and the bill.

  It was zero. “W-what’s this?” she asked.

  “There was a short in the ignition switch that I should have caught when I was installing the starter. I apologize for the inconvenience. Your car is ready and over there to the side,” Chris said abruptly.

  Chris didn’t normally have problems with his customers. But Janice seemed to be another matter to him. It didn’t help that he found her beautiful to look at. She was a little too thin, but she had the most gorgeous, long, sunshine-yellow blonde hair that he had ever seen. There was something about her. She had a very cool exterior, but he caught something that sounded like desperation in her voice. He saw the way she dressed, the way she did her hair, and her makeup, and it made him think that she was high-maintenance. Still though, she was beautiful, and he couldn’t help but be attracted to her.

  He turned and walked back to his office as he continued to think about her. He wanted to kiss her, to taste those pretty pink lips of hers. He needed to stop thinking about her. She can’t be much older than my kids, can she? It had been a while since he was last with a woman and looking at Janice had brought his libido to life. She looks so fragile, I’d be afraid I’d break her in half!

  Chapter 3

  The mayor walked into the library and strolled over to Janice’s office. “Hello, Janice,” he said.

  “Hello, Mayor Byerson. How may I be of assistance to you?” Janice asked pleasantly.

  “I’m actually here to see if you would be willing to interview for the head librarian position that Lillian Caldwell has vacated. You came highly recommended by Lillian, and I trust Lillian to know what she’s talking about.”

  “I plan to put my resume in, but haven’t gotten around to it.” Janice observed the mayor, who was a bald man, about five foot seven, and close to three hundred pounds.

  “I’d like to encourage you to submit your resume and fill out an application. The council members meet every Wednesday night, and we’ll be going over the resumes and applications to see which ones we will interview. Then we have to schedule a time when all council members can participate in the interview process, which is challenging since all the members have businesses or jobs.”

  “I’ll draft one up today and submit it. Who should I give it to?” Janice asked.

  “Just take it to my office and give it to my secretary, Helen. She’ll be doing the scheduling.” The mayor seemed pleased that Janice was willing to be considered for the job. “I cannot guarantee you the job without the interview, but from what I’ve been told, and have learned about you, you are, in my book, one of the top contenders.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Janice smiled. “I do have a question though. Since Carly and I are the only ones here now, I think we could really use some extra help.”

  “I can see where you would need that, Lillian also needed assistance. You are authorized to hire one person, full time. I believe Carly is part-time, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s part-time.”

  “Check with human resources, which is next to my office, and see what the requirements and the pay rate are. Tell them that I sent you to them. They should be able to assist you from there.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Mayor Byerson,” Janice replied happily.

  Janice submitted her resume to Helen, Mayor Byerson’s secretary, and then went down to the human resource office to see about hiring another employee.

  Human resources posted the job in the local newspaper. A week later they met with Janice and went through the applications. They selected three applicants and interviewed them. Of the three, Janice picked Robin Middleson, who was Chris’s sister. Janice immediately liked Robin and felt they would make an excellent team.

  Just before Janice closed down for the day on Wednesday, a call came in. “Hello, um, Ms. Meyers?”

  “Yes,” Janice replied.

  “I’m Sandra Jamisen, Chris Jamisen’s daughter, you know, from Colstrip Auto Care?”

  “What can I do for you, Sandra?” Janice asked.

  “I need a couple of books, and I was wondering if you could take them across the street to my brother Aaron so he could bring them home to me?”

  “Um, well...” Janice hesitated. “Okay, what books do you need?”

  Sandra gave Janice the names of the books and she went and got them off the shelf. Janice agreed to take them across the street to Colstrip Auto Care when she closed the library.

  When she left the library, it was raining, so she grabbed an umbrella on her way out. She didn’t see Chris’s truck so she thought it was safe to go there and not run into him.

  She walked inside the shop, but no one came out. She heard a radio in the back, so she walked over to the entranceway to the body shop and said, “Hello!”

  She saw a movement from under the car and a voice said, “Yeah, down here, I’ll be right up.” It didn’t sound like Chris.

  A young man came up the stairs and looked at her.

  “Hello. Are you Aaron?” Janice asked.

  He nodded, and she noted how much he looked like his father.

  “Sandra called the library and asked me to drop these books off so you can take them home to her.”

  “All right.” He held his hands up and Janice noticed he had oil on them. “Could you put them in my truck for me? My hands are dirty, and I’ll forget them if they aren’t already there.”

  “Sure, which is your truck?”

  “The red one there in front.”

  “Okay.” She smiled at him then turned and walked to the door. As she opened it, Chris was about to walk in. When he saw Janice, he stepped aside to let her pass.

  “Excuse me,” she said coolly.

  He was all cleaned up and had on a brown shirt and blue jeans. They were nice and fitted tightly to his body. He looked wonderful.

  He looked at her quizzically, and then, with his mouth in a thin line, he asked, “Looking for me?”

  “No. I’m just dropping some books off for Aaron to take to Sandra, at her request.” She looked into his eyes and felt herself getting lost in them. Her face felt flushed.

  “Your car seems to be running okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, so far,” Janice responded with a small smile.

  She walked over to Aaron’s truck and put the books inside it. She went back across the street to the library and got into her car and drove home.

  Why, why, why does he give me the jitters when I come near him? She’d wanted so badly to reach up and kiss his mouth and stroke his face. She had to stop thinking these things about him. She was somewhat afraid of him after having been physically abused by her ex-husband, but she was also curious about him too. Lillian had told her that he was a Sioux, and his wife died when his children were very young. Lillian also said he was almost forty. Well, I’m thirty-five, so the ages are a good fit. She shook her head. Stop, stop, stop, she scolded herself.

  * * * *

  Chris had a meeting to attend at the mayor’s office. The council members were going to look over the resumes for the librarian position. He looked at the library as he was getting ready to leave. He had left some papers at the office and he’d stopped off to pick them up before going to the meeting when he bumped into Janice.

  Chris sat down in the meeting room, waiting for the others to arrive. I’d love to kiss those pouting lips of hers. But she just seemed to be way too complicated, and he didn’t want complication in his life right now. She had a wall around her that seemed to scream at him to break through, but he liked his life just the way it was. His kids were grown and starting to make their own way. He had a thriving business, a loving family, and a great community to live in.

  It hasn’t always been that way for me. He and Cherie got married and left the reservation for a better life. He started dirt poor. He was seventeen and Cherie was sixteen when they moved to
Colstrip. Shortly after they moved, she had gotten pregnant. He was seriously considering a life of crime to support his young wife and baby, when he met Howie Hauser, the owner of Colstrip Auto Care. Howie took an interest in Chris and taught him the basics about working on cars. He even paid for Chris to attend the local school to study auto mechanics.

  Chris’s wife, Cherie, had gotten pregnant every year for four years straight, and after she gave birth to Sandra, she ran into complications that led to her death. When she died, Chris was devastated. He didn’t know how he was going to go on, raise four children, and support them. His sister Robin and her husband Glen Middleson came to town to help him. They lived with him for five years before they were able to buy a home for themselves. She had helped Chris with his kids, and helped him to rebuild his life.

  Howie passed away about four years after Cherie did. He’d been like a surrogate father to Chris, a father he never had. He and Robin came from an abusive home, and his own father died at a relatively young age due to drinking. Howie didn’t have any children of his own and he willed the shop to Chris. Chris made Glen half-owner of the shop and they both worked hard to turn it around and make it a successful and profitable business.

  Chris tried to be a good father and mother to his children.

  His oldest son, Aaron, had come into the business with them after he had gone to school and got a degree in auto mechanics and business administration. He was now engaged to a young woman named Cathy.

  Alexis was doing okay working for the county, snowplowing in the winter months and doing road work in the summer. Alexis was a bit wild, but thankfully he stayed away from drugs.

  Cheryl, his next child, was dear to his heart and always just like her mother. She was calm, peaceful, and eager to please. She was working part-time at Kellie’s Diner. She always liked helping people, and she had a big heart. She was studying to be a nurse. His son-in-law, Dale, was a drifter looking for a home when he met Chris and applied for a job. He’d eventually fallen in love with Cheryl, and they had gotten married.

  Then there was Sandra, his youngest. She surely tried his patience on many occasions. She was high-spirited and lively, always flirting with the boys. She was taking basic courses at the community college while trying to decide what she wanted to do.

  Yes, his life was good right now, and he was content.

  The city council consisted of himself, Barb Wickman, a business owner, Dr. Shay, Director at Rosebud Community Hospital, and Sheriff Shane Booths.

  The other members of the council showed up and the mayor handed out Janice’s resume and application. Chris didn’t particularly like the mayor, but to keep the balance of power even, he was voted in every four years to serve as one of the council members. Over the past twelve years Chris had served with two other mayors besides this one. The mayor called the meeting to order.

  As Chris looked over Janice’s resume and her application, he was surprised by what he saw. She had practically single-handedly rebuilt two libraries, moving them from old systems to state-of-the-art library centers. One library had burnt to the ground, and she was hired as a consultant to rebuild the infrastructure. The other library she worked at in Aspen was a district library and the work she had done with it was tremendous.

  She was apparently a whiz at database management, software design and development, coding, and developing a streamlined system. She brought in computers and hooked them up with internet capabilities, she categorized the books, magazines, research materials, etcetera into appropriate subsections and set it up so that there was always an accurate account of books checked out, checked in, and overdue. She also tied budget costs and revenues into the library system and the city officials’ system where the accounting was handled. They had all the information they needed to address their budget concerns.

  She was capable of hiring and working with good people, and she also had set up several reading programs for children, adults, and older adults. She had set up various book clubs, and she had the ability to reach out to the community to garner financial support. Attached to her resume was a comprehensive report she’d written about the infrastructure and development of an integrated library system.

  Her last name had changed, and he assumed it was due to her getting married, but it looked like she wasn’t married now since she listed a relative from out of state as her next of kin for emergency contact and he didn’t recall seeing a wedding ring on her finger. Despite the fact that Chris told himself he didn’t want anything complicating his life, the details of her life interested him and he couldn’t shake the attraction. He also noted that in addition to her Masters in Library Science, she had a Bachelor’s degree in Music. She’d directed various church choirs and played the piano for the church when needed.

  “We have several applications and resumes here to go through, but I’d like to concentrate on one in particular. Her name is Janice Meyers. She’s currently working as a temporary replacement until we fill the position. She came highly recommended by several people, including Lillian Caldwell. Now I support innovations and moving into a system that would better serve the people, but we also know that there isn’t much money to allow for all the expansion we’d like to do. But based on Janice’s previous work in California and Colorado, it seems that she has the knack and ability to bring in public funding, which is a definite plus. I’d like to see if we can have a consensus to at least interview her first, and see if she really does meet all the qualifications before we go outside,” the mayor said.

  “You don’t think she might be overqualified?” Shane asked.

  “I don’t know, but she seemed ready for a different, quieter kind of life,” the mayor said.

  Chris could see by what was in her resume and application that she was more than just a pretty face. She, in fact, was a very intelligent woman. He admired that in her. She just didn’t know a thing about cars.

  “I think that of all the applicants we received, she seems to be the most logical person for the job. She has the appropriate degree in Library Science and none of the others that submitted their resumes do. I’ve taken the liberty of calling her references. She comes highly recommended. I have found that in all the previous jobs she’s had, they all loved her, and gave me lots of examples of what she’s done. I spent at least two hours talking to the people she listed as references.”

  “I agree that she seems to be the most qualified candidate for the job,” Chris said. “However, she’s an outsider, new to this town. I think we need to do a background check on her. We also need to know if she’s going to stay here or if she’ll decide she doesn’t like it here and take off. I think we need to find out why she would settle down here. Why would she come to such a small town and work in a library as just an assistant when the pay doesn’t even begin to match what she is used to making?”

  “I see your point, Chris, and I have to agree with you on this. I can go ahead and do a background check on her. From filling out the application, she is aware that a background check would be required,” Shane said.

  After further discussion, they scheduled the date they would come together and interview the candidates and then went on to discuss other issues needing to be addressed.

  * * * *

  Shane called Chris a couple of days later. “Here’s what I found out about Janice Meyers. She was married to David Banning. His father is Alfred Banning, a state senator from Colorado. It was a messy divorce, and because Janice signed a prenuptial agreement, she was supposed to get nothing from the divorce. She filed a lawsuit against her ex-husband and his family, claiming spousal abuse and family interference in their lives, and asked for four hundred thousand in damages. The family says she’s a gold digger trying to bilk them out of their money.”

  “What was the reason for the divorce?” Chris asked.

  “Irreconcilable differences. However, the parents are claiming that she drove their son insane. They denied him ever being abusive to her and claim the abuse was the other way a
round—she abused him...she steamrolled over him and caused him to do bad things and then he had to be institutionalized.”

  Chris thought back to when he tried to keep her car running for her. He told his son she was a ‘tornado on heels’ and he could see how she could drive a man insane. Now that he knew the story, he could learn from another person’s mistake and stay away from her.

  It had to be a real eye-opening experience for her to have to accept a job in a small town like this, with a small paycheck. He wondered if she might only work there until something better came along or a man came along to help supplement her income. Everything he saw and heard about her confirmed his earlier thought that she was high-maintenance and she wanted money. Well, it won’t be my finances.

  Chris was sitting on the bar stool behind the counter, deep in thought as he looked over at the library.

  Chapter 4

  Lately, Janice had been plagued by nightmares. “No, no. You’re not going to hurt me again. I’ll never let you hurt me again. Get away from me. Get away. No!”

  Janice sat upright in her bed, shaking. It was the same horrible nightmare she kept having—always about her ex-husband coming after her, trying to kill her again. She didn’t know if it was an omen, telling her that something bad was going to happen, or if it was just her mind trying to heal from the torment and pain she had suffered physically.

  She looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, she got up, went to her laptop, and started searching the book databases for new books. Montana was a hotbed for dinosaurs and everyone seemed interested in the subject, so she decided to order books on dinosaurs and the Cretaceous period.

  Later that day the mayor’s office contacted Janice and scheduled an interview for the next week. She wished she knew who the council members were so she could be prepared. She always liked to know who the interviewers were and what they were looking for in an interview. She was enthusiastic about the changes she had envisioned for the library and also about getting involved with the people and the community. She would not let her medical problems keep her from doing what she did best.