Three Little Words. Carrie Alexander

even herself. Before she’d been dragged into performing with the local theater group a few years back, she hadn’t thought she was the dramatic type.

      Not that a little bit of small-town stage experience had changed anything. She was still only Tess Bucek, a librarian with a private life as unremarkable and familiar as a bowl of oatmeal.

      “‘The green-winged whippersnapper soared from the sky with a rose in its beak,’” Tess read. She turned the page. “‘Princess Ella Umbrella Pumpkinella Fantabuzella—’” the children singsonged the name with her “‘—took the rose and said…’” Tess pointed at Grady.

      The chubby boy went on hands and knees to see the open book she held out. His lower lip stuck out with determination. After a few seconds, he read, “‘Zip-per-zap.’”

      “Zipperzap!” Tess agreed. She allowed Grady to select a children’s tattoo from a nearby basket. She always kept a stash of modest prizes like stickers and cartoon-character pencil erasers handy.

      “Zipperzap,” sighed Lucy Grant, a shy, delicate five-year-old with translucent skin. Her huge blue eyes shone with pleasure.

      “‘Once the magic word was spoken and the rose petals had been flung to the northerly wind,’” Tess went on, finishing up the story with a triumphant flourish, “‘the sun came out from the dark clouds, the flowers blossomed and the creatures of the forest rose from their hundred-years’ sleep.’” She looked up and saw the dark-haired stranger hovering in the doorway, listening to her with an intent expression. “‘Princess Ella Umbrella Pumpkinella, uh, Fantas—’” No, not fantasy.

      “Fan-ta-bu-zel-la,” the children recited in unison.

      Tess had lost track entirely.

      The man saw that he’d disrupted her flow. “I’d like to speak with you after you’re finished,” he said in a low, serious voice that made her nape prickle. He walked away before she could respond.

      Tess swallowed. What was that about? Why did she feel so remarkably different?

      The kids were clamoring for the ending. Tess focused on the page, illustrated with a green-eyed, freckle-faced princess in a pair of bib overalls. “‘And then the, um, princess said, Even though today is beautiful, I know that tomorrow may be even better.’”

      HE COULD WAIT, Tess decided. Parents were arriving to pick up the children and there were gluey planters to be shown off and books to be checked out. When the library had cleared out finally, Lucy Grant was left behind. Her single dad, Evan Grant, was a gym teacher and basketball coach at the high school. Summers, he picked up an extra paycheck with a local builder and couldn’t always get off work to deliver Lucy to her baby-sitter’s house. Usually either Tess or Beth ducked out to take her there.

      Not today. Tess put Lucy’s stick planter on the windowsill to dry and settled the girl at one of the child-size tables with the second book in the Princess Ella series. Today, she’d call Evan at work. Beth would have volunteered, but her house was in the opposite direction—a long enough walk for a pregnant woman without adding a detour. And Tess couldn’t leave the library unattended, whether or not there was a smuggler on the premises. Lucy would have to wait for her father.

      Tess went back to the main desk to call Evan. The stranger loitered near the magazine rack, gazing out the window at the flower garden. Maybe he was conducting a surveillance of traffic patterns. Little did he know that on Timber Avenue, there was no traffic to surveil.

      After hanging up, Tess turned to Beth. “Go on home. Evan can take a break, so he’s coming for Lucy.”

      Beth smiled tiredly. “Good. I don’t want to waddle any farther than I have to.”

      “You can take my car if the walk is too much for you today.” Tess had been urging her assistant to quit her part-time position for the last few weeks of her pregnancy, but Beth said that waiting out the time at home alone in her tiny apartment, staring at her belly button and the movements of Bump beneath it, would drive her bananas.

      “No, my doctor says I should keep walking.” Beth groaned as she hoisted herself off the stool. “I’d like to strap a watermelon to his gut and send him around the block ten times. See what he thinks then.”

      Tess patted her consolingly. “Pour yourself a cold drink and put your feet up as soon as you get home.”

      “I’ll have to pry my shoes off first. My feet and ankles have swollen like bread dough.”

      Tess offered her arm as they walked to the front door, a heavy slab of mahogany inset with leaded glass. She’d left it open to the June sunshine. “Randy’s going to be home tonight, isn’t he?” Beth’s husband drove a bakery delivery truck and was sometimes away overnight because his route was so sizable. From one end of the Upper Peninsula to the other was more than three hundred miles, and he delivered to northern Wisconsin as well.

      “He promised. His boss even promised that Randy wouldn’t have to do any more overnighters, till Bump arrives, anyway.”

      “Good.” Tess gave Beth a gentle squeeze. “You take care. Call me if anything happens. Or doesn’t. Call me if you just want to talk.”

      Beth glanced into the main room of the library, which opened off the small entry hall and had been formed by knocking out walls between the house’s formal parlor and second sitting room. “You call me as soon as he leaves,” Beth whispered. She jerked her head at the lingering stranger. “I want to find out what’s up with him.”

      “He’s probably going to ask me for directions to the lighthouse. Maybe he’s a photographer.”

      Beth’s nose crinkled. “Maybe, maybe not.”

      “Or a reincarnated lighthouse keeper bedeviled by nightmares he can’t explain.”

      “Now you’re talking. But I bet you could come up with an even better scenario if you tried.”

      Tess laughed. Her assistant knew her too well. “Go home, Beth.”

      Beth went, waddling with one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other making a phone shape at her ear. “Call me,” she mouthed.

      Tess waved Beth away, smiling to hide her unmollified worry over Randy’s late hours. His boss wasn’t as accommodating as he might have been, but there was no helping it. The Trudells were struggling to make ends meet. Beth’s parents, an older couple who’d had their only daughter late in life, had recently retired in Florida. They planned to return soon for an extended stay, to help Beth out with the baby, but until then, Randy and Tess were the young mother-to-be’s main support system. Aside from any number of do-gooders in the community who would be glad to pitch in and help in case of emergency.

      Although the two women were primarily best friends, there were times Tess felt like Beth’s older sister, even her mother. If it was possible to be a mother when you’d never given birth yourself.

      Tess frowned, spreading her hands over her flat tummy. Eleven years ago, she was on her way to a life just like Beth’s when—

      Tess brushed off the sad memory. Dismissing the tragedy that had shaped her life had become easier with practice. And distance.

      She walked into the main room, checking first on Lucy. The girl, a dreamy, inward child, not unlike Tess at that age, was completely absorbed in the book.

      Tess’s second glance went to the make-believe pirate. “Sorry for the delay. How can I help you, Mr…?”

      He came forward, not as tall as she’d assumed but still many inches past her five-two. Tall enough to make her tilt her chin up when she looked into his clear hazel-brown eyes.

      “Connor Reed,” he said, offering his hand.

      “Tess Bucek.” His hand was large and cool and dry. Hers was small and warm and moist. And they fit together just fine, for a brief moment that made her feel as if her cells were rushing like a warm river toward him. He let go then, and she