Chapter Seventeen
“You were amazing!”
Joanna was starting to get embarrassed at the way Toni kept following her around the children’s room, rehashing her favorite moments of the impromptu concert that had happened literally five minutes ago. Fortunately, they were interrupted by frequent hugs and high fives from her new adoring fans. Joanna even signed a few autographs.
This was always her least favorite part of rock stardom—the stardom part that took away from the rock part. Sure, she wasn’t the most famous member of Bunny Slippers—well, maybe now she was—but there was still an element of fan schmoozing and adoration that she just could not get behind. She just wanted to play.
She missed playing.
That was the only way to explain that the most public fun she had had since she’d moved back to Halikarnassus was on a stage taken over by rock moppets singing about fluffy butts. There was something about the innocence of their anarchy that made her nostalgic for when she used to be an actual badass, before her band sold out and then watched that bridge as it burned to the ground.
“You should consider playing children’s music,” Toni said, and Joanna was very proud of herself for not laughing in the poor woman’s face. “A lot of rock stars are doing it now, you know.”
“I think this was just a one-time thing,” Joanna said.
“Even if I get hundreds of requests to have you back?”
“Even if all the kids in the town offer to sell their souls to rock and roll for the chance to hear me play again.”
“See? Even that sounds like a rock song! You have to!”
“No.”
“Fine. At least let me thank you in some way.”
“Oh, Joanna, that was wonderful!” Granny hobbled up from the back of the room, weaving her way around discarded juice boxes. “I knew you could do it.”
“You always knew I could entertain a crowd of toddlers.”
“You can be as sarcastic as you want to be.” Granny leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I’m still proud of you.”
“Thanks, Gran.”
“Now will you convince her to come back?” Toni asked.
Granny snorted. “Honey, if I could convince Joanna to do anything . . .”
“It’s true,” Joanna said. “I’m an adult woman.”
“Can I treat you to lunch?” Toni asked. “I’d say dinner, but we have a deal that while I’m pregnant, my husband cooks, and I want to take advantage of that. I would invite you over, but . . . he’s still learning.”
“Calvin always was such a sweetheart,” Gran said.
“Really, it’s fine,” Joanna said. “It was just a favor. Let’s just . . . let’s just pretend it never happened.”
“I don’t know if you realize the long memory that children have. We’ll be hearing fluffy butt songs for months. And when you invited them onstage? Girl, you made them feel like rock stars. They won’t forget that any time soon.”
“It was amazing.” Liam came up from behind her and joined the group. She stiffened. She didn’t know why. He didn’t make her nervous or anything. “Best accident ever.”
“Yes, I’m so glad Bouncing Bob had a heart attack,” Joanna said.
“Oh, that’s not what he meant and you know it,” Gran said, ruining Joanna’s perfect moment of ruining Liam’s moment.
“Did Toni talk to you about payment? We did budget a performer for this.”
Joanna tried to picture what Gran’s face would look like if she took money from the public library. Then she looked over at Gran, and she didn’t have to imagine. There it was. “No, it’s fine, really. It was just a one-time, volunteer thing that will never happen again.”
“Even though you were a huge hit?” Toni asked.
“Especially because I was a huge hit.” That was how the whole trouble started with Bunny Slippers. They became a huge hit, then they became terrible. Only they didn’t notice because they were too busy being a huge hit.
She was done selling out.
Even if it meant living with her grandmother in a town she hated.
At least she wasn’t playing gigs for kids’ parties.
She wasn’t that desperate.
Yet.
“Let us buy you dinner, at least,” Liam said. “We’re closing in a couple of hours, and I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a beer.”
“Hmm. I could definitely use a beer,” Joanna agreed. A beer or two or six. Even though this wasn’t a real gig, she was starting to feel the post-gig adrenaline crash. Always best to pour a little booze on that.
“No beer for me,” Toni said, patting her baby stomach. “And no dinner for me, either. Calvin’s cooking.”
“I’m wiped out,” Gran said. “You kids go. Joanna can take me home and you can come pick her up?” she asked Liam.
Jesus. Granny was trying to set her up with the librarian.
Probably just so she could look at his legs more often.
Yikes. That was a terrible thought.
Either way, this was decidedly not a date.
“I’ll just meet you,” Joanna said with a pointed look at Gran. “Where?”
“Um . . .” he said, clearly thinking. Smooth guy, this librarian.
Not.
Oh, God, her inner monologue was reverting to her teenage sense of humor.
She needed a beer.
“How about that new place on Main?” Toni asked. “I’ve never been there, but I heard it’s great.”
“Uh . . .” said Liam, clearly trying to think of a way out of it. Joanna tried to think of what the new place on Main was.
“The Wine Bar?” she asked. “I thought we were getting a beer.”
Toni waved away her objections. “You deserve something more fabulous than beer. Besides, you refuse to be a rock star, so you might as well go classy. Right, Liam?”
Joanna tried to ignore the pained look on Liam’s face, but there it was. No matter how much she saved his great ass, going to a fancy wine bar with the town troublemaker was clearly not high on the library director’s list of Friday Night Fun.
Well, screw him. He was going to take her out, dammit. He was going to buy her a damn drink.
“Right,” he said, then turned to face Joanna. “Right.”
* * *
One of the things that Liam loved about upstate New York was the food. He grew up in places where “greasy spoon” meant you sent your plate back to the chef. Here, he could get eggs and hash browns any time of the day, or the best burger in the world, or grape leaves and hummus with a cannoli for dessert, all in the same place.
This was not the case with the Wine Bar.
At the Wine Bar, one could have wine and a small plate of vegetables cut into fancy shapes without taking out a second mortgage on one’s house, but that was about it. He tried not to think about how there was perfect French onion soup at Hallie’s, and Hallie’s also served beer, which he preferred to wine, just like he preferred not wearing a tie, which he would never have to wear at Hallie’s. Ties reminded him of board meetings. This was supposed to be fun.
If the look on his companion’s face was any indication, he was going to have to have enough fun for both of them tonight.
But, no, it wasn’t about fun. It was about gratitude. Joanna had saved their butts totally and completely this afternoon. As they walked toward the bar in the back of the restaurant, several people had stopped him and told him how much fun their kids or grandkids had had at the library party today. He only got one complaint about the repeated use of the word “butt,” and the parent was assuaged by the fact that Liam assured him Joanna would never perform at the library again. Not by Liam’s choice, of course. In fact, Liam had hoped to use tonight to persuade Joanna to give summer music another go. Maybe if she had time to learn some nonanatomical songs . . .
“When I was in Italy, someone told me to always order the house red because it was usually the best. Do you think that will work here?” Joanna said when they finally reached the bar.
“You were in Italy?”
“On tour.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize you toured internationally.”
“Don’t get too excited. It was the same as our tours here, before we got big. Crappy rented van, sleeping on people’s couches, that kind of thing.”
“But still.”
Joanna shrugged. “It was fun.”
“And the house red?”
“Always the best. Of course, I’m no wine snob.”
“Good,” Liam said, with what he hoped was not a ton of enthusiasm. He was the library director, and his pay was okay, but the idea of spending a high percentage of his disposable income on a glass of wine was not appealing to him. No matter how grateful he was to Joanna.
The Wine Bar was the only restaurant in Halikarnassus that had a dress code. No jeans, no hats, jackets and ties strongly suggested. So Liam, not wanting to cause a scene, wore a jacket and tie and non-jean pants.
Joanna . . . well, she wasn’t wearing jeans.
She was, however, wearing leggings with a hole in the knee, a very short black skirt, and motorcycle boots that, while kick-ass, definitely did not meet the unspoken sartorial criteria for the Wine Bar.
She looked really hot.
Not that Liam was thinking about that, of course. This was a professional obligation, a thank-you-for-your-service meal. He did question Toni about her choice of venue—he didn’t take any of the other volunteers out for drinks. But Joanna liked drinks, Toni explained, and she wasn’t a regular volunteer. She was a lifesaver. She deserved a fancy drink.
If Liam was a suspicious kind of guy, he might have thought that Toni was trying to set him up with Joanna.
Good thing he wasn’t a suspicious kind of guy.
Besides, even if Toni was playing matchmaker, Liam didn’t think his fragile ego could take another rejection from badass Joanna Green.
Despite how much that short skirt made him want to try.
Good thing this was work-related. Otherwise he would really make a cake of himself, as Georgette Heyer said.
“Thanks again for this afternoon.”
“Seriously, if you thank me one more time, I’m going to pour this overpriced glass of wine over your head.”
“Please don’t do that.”
“I won’t. It’s delicious.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Well, I’m a really good person, it turns out.”
“You keep saying stuff like that,” Liam said. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why should I be surprised that you’re a good person?”
“Wow. Maybe my reputation doesn’t precede me.”
“Oh, it absolutely does. Did you know I was encouraged to bar you from the library?”
“Dang.”
“I think that had more to do with the defacement of a book by Rush Limbaugh.”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that.”
“What was it about? All I know is that, when you returned it, it could never be checked out again.”
“Listen, this guy was arguing that women shouldn’t play music, that they should just focus on being groupies. He was gross.”
“I know his work. He is gross. Still . . .”
“So I may have cut the page every time he used a misogynistic term.”
“Oh . . .”
“It turned into quite the beautiful snowflake of a book.”
Liam tried very hard not to laugh. Defacing library property was no laughing matter. But picturing young Joanna practicing civil disobedience with safety scissors . . . it was quite an image.
“I returned it,” she said.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Anyway, I don’t cut up library books anymore.”
“That’s what I told the person who wanted to bar you.”
“Do I want to know who it was?”
“Nope.”
“It wasn’t Granny, was it?”
“No, and if your grandmother had been there, she probably would have kicked this woman’s ass.”
“Kicked her fluffy butt.”
She laughed, and he did not point out that she looked beautiful when she laughed since she didn’t like that. He just admired her silently.
“Liam, what are we doing?”
“What?”
“This.” She waved a hand between them.
“I’m just thanking you for helping us out today.”
“Oh. So this isn’t . . . more?”
“Do you want it to be more?”
“No!”
Well, that was great for his ego.
She sighed. “Sorry. That came out wrong. I just mean . . . I mean, less than twenty-four hours ago you had your tongue down my throat.”
That was true. It didn’t sound quite so romantic when she said it, but technically, she was right.
“I was just following your lead,” he explained. “You didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“I don’t.”
So . . . no chance for a repeat performance, then.
“It’s just . . . I hate this place.”
“Yeah, it’s not great. A little too rich for my taste.”
“No, I don’t mean this place, I mean this town. Halikarnassus. I hate it.”
“So you’ve said.”
“And I don’t plan on sticking around. Once Granny’s better . . .”
“I know.” She’d leave town and never look back. It was a bummer, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Probably.
“Here’s the thing,” she continued, leaning over the table. “I . . . oh, God, okay. Listen. Don’t laugh.”
“Okay.”
“I want you.”
Well. He didn’t know why she thought he would laugh at that. Spit his wine out in surprise, maybe. But definitely not laugh.
“But I’m leaving.”
“O . . . kay?”
“So I don’t want you to get too attached.”
“Okay.” There seemed to be something wrong with his vocabulary.
“You seem like a nice guy, that’s all.”
“Thanks?” he said, because that sure didn’t sound like a compliment.
“And despite what people say, I’m not a total monster. I don’t want to hurt you. But . . .”
“But?”
“But I can’t get over this urge to climb across the table and jump you.”
“Check, please.”
“Liam—”
“Listen, Joanna. Listen to me. You’ve just said that you want me. That’s very convenient, because I am having a hard time keeping my hands off you. I understand that you’re not here to stay. I get it. I’m not trying to change your mind. But . . .”
“But?”
The bartender came over with his card. Liam signed the receipt, leaving way too much for the tip, but he did not care. He was on a mission.
“Let’s go.”