Victoria pulled away. “We’ll see if any of this actually gets off the ground. Today, I’m supposed to have a meeting with a librarian and he’s already going to be late. I don’t know how that can bode well.”

“Aww, he’s probably an elderly dude who’s just trying to make his way across town,” her friend said with a grin.

Victoria didn’t get the sense that John Donovan was a doddering old man. The tone of his email suggested that he might be closer to her age. Originally, she addressed her email to the library’s aging director, Howard Wegman. She was surprised that it was Donovan who replied to her. He was terribly informal and familiar with his message, making her nervous. What if he doesn’t take the project seriously? What if he is incompetent? “He also informed me of an overdue library book,” she said.

“Stealing books, are we?”

“No, I definitely returned it,” Victoria said absently. She wondered what she had been doing several months ago that would warrant a missing book. “I just find it weird that he would put that in an email regarding our meeting today.”

“Did he sound mad?”

“No,” Victoria said slowly. “He wrote it with a wink face emoticon.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that a good ‘hmm’ or a bad ‘hmm’?” Victoria asked.

Paula shrugged. “Depends on what the book was.”

She sighed and averted her gaze. “For the Duke’s Convenience.”

Paula burst into laughter. “Goddamn, Vicki...”

“I definitely returned it.”

Her laughter had not yet abated as she wiped tears from her eyes. “Oh my god... You are still reading the historical stuff? That’s why the p-word is foreign to your virgin ears!”

“It’s titillating without the vulgarity.”

Paula doubled over. “Oh man, I needed that,” she said, taking a breath. “It feels so good to laugh.”

“You’re welcome,” Victoria said in a dry voice.

“Girl, you were always averse to ‘vulgarity,’ as you like to call it. I’d hate to think that the prim, rule-abiding girl inside you doesn’t want to get her back broke with some great dick. Also, did it ever occur to you that John Donovan might be flirting with you?”

Victoria frowned. The idea had not occurred to her. Paula was just thinking with her romance writer’s brain. To her, there was always something sexy just around the corner. “That’s not professional at all.”

“People get by all the time without being professional. How do you think I got here?”