Carnal Innocence. Julie Miller

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      “All right. Call if you need anything.”

      They said their goodbyes and hung up. Caitlin pushed aside her gloomy spiraling thoughts. So she wanted independence and adventure, huh? Without alarming her father or putting half the Marine Corps on her tail?

      Fat chance.

      Maybe she’d best stick to her books.

      Sure, she was doing her part to keep the public schools of Alexandria, Virginia, running smoothly. And her eighth-grade students could reconnoiter a sentence with the best in the country, uncovering subordinate clauses and adverbs long before they infiltrated high school. But what was she doing for fun and excitement in her life?

      Caitlin picked up her roommate’s discarded sweater from the floor of the closet and sighed with fatigue. Today, it seemed, she was destined for nothing more laudable or exciting than cleaning up after Cassie.

      She spotted the sticky residue of fast food on the plate beside the telephone on the entryway table and cringed. The leather-bound book that her roommate had used for a coaster caught her eye next. “Cassie!”

      Caitlin picked up the paper cup and muttered an unladylike oath. The cup had been sitting there long enough to soften up and spring a leak. The book was now marked with a permanent circular tattoo. After trashing the cup, Caitlin thumbed through the pages, bemoaning the damage to one of her favorite stories.

      “Sydney Carton, my hero.” She opened A Tale of Two Cities to the last page and read the final line. “‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done…”’ Caitlin closed the book and hugged it to her chest. “You got a bum deal, Syd.”

      How many times had she rewritten the ending in her imagination? In her version, Dickens’s scoundrel of the French Revolution was rescued at the guillotine by a resourceful American woman. Let Charles Darnay have his sweet, good-girl heroine. Caitlin and Sydney always ended up in a little grass hut on the beach in Tahiti in her happy ending. Sometimes they ended up naked on the beach itself.

      Caitlin returned the book to the hanging shelf above the telephone table. Being an English teacher as she was, the symbolism of closing the book on her fantasy life wasn’t lost on her. Was it really asking too much for fate to break her out of her rut?

      Her gaze traveled down to the table, beyond the trash and burrito remains, beyond the telephone, and lighted on the folded sheaf of flowery notepaper propped up next to a stamped business envelope that contained their rent check. Unmailed. Caitlin jabbed her fingers into the blond hair at her temples and lifted the chin-length tendrils into fluffy disarray. Typical.

      A muscle-tensing sense of impending crisis zipped from the roots of Caitlin’s kinky hair all the way down to her size-nine feet. “Definitely the worst of times.”

      Cassie Kramer had the truest heart in the world, but her impulsive approach to life had left Caitlin in the mop-up and rescue position more than once during the course of their friendship. It looked as if today would be no different. She picked up Cassie’s note.

      Her roommate’s handwriting was as flowery as the colorful daisies on the paper, and had been punctuated by a series of smiley faces. “Sorry about the rent check.” A frowny face added its own apology. Caitlin picked up the envelope she’d addressed before going to her father’s. Dropping their rent into the mailbox had been a simple enough request—one her scatterbrained roommate had somehow overlooked. But Caitlin would take care of it. With the leeway granted by their landlord, she could still get it to him by the fifth of the month.

      Caitlin read on.

      “I know the place is a mess, too. But I got tied up, so to speak.” Smiley face. “Tim and I discovered that panty hose will do the trick.” Another smiley face and two exclamation points.

      Caitlin looked up and frowned. “Who’s Tim?” Despite her roomie’s diminutive height, she was generously proportioned and had a flirty, outgoing personality that men found irresistible. She was small and feminine and spontaneous, and men with sex and fun and adventure on their minds flocked to her.

      Caitlin attracted a different sort. Standing nearly six feet tall in her bare feet, she found that a decent pair of heels left her towering over most men. Adding in the three bad-ass marines she called family, who loved her a little too well, didn’t help set the mood for potential lovers.

      And then there was the problem of being boring to contend with.

      Virginia Is for Lovers.

      Her home state’s old tourism slogan mocked her. Maybe if she was Cassie Kramer…

      Cassie could hang out until closing time at smoky bars on dance night and have her pick of the litter of available men. Caitlin could last an hour, maybe two, before her eyes stung and her lungs congested. There was nothing quite like hacking up phlegm to keep a man from asking her to dance.

      Or to do anything else.

      She was doomed to late nights at the library, with its purified air and rarefied patrons. While she loved her books, the fiction stacks just didn’t draw the kind of men Caitlin wanted to meet. There’d been a few nice ones there—graduate students, retirees, Jimmy the bachelor librarian.

      But not one of them looked the part of the disreputable beast from her favorite fairy tale. Not one bore an air that even hinted at danger. They were all charming and sweet and courteous—and stuck in the same drudgery-filled life that Caitlin was.

      Lucky Cassie. Damn lucky.

      Caitlin read on. Cassie’s note might well be the most interesting part of her evening.

      “Will you be a dear and give my note to Sean?”

      She shook her head, wishing she could keep up with her roomie’s love life. “Who’s Sean?”

      “He’s coming by tonight to pick me up—he called about some sort of weekend get-together. I thought I could go, but I can’t. I tried to call back but couldn’t reach him. It was sort of a mercy date, anyway. He’s a friend of a friend, you know?”

      Caitlin chastised the piece of paper in lieu of her impulsive friend. “You could have just said no.”

      “I’d apologize in person, but Tim came by unannounced and surprised me with a four-day trip to D.C. We might actually leave the hotel and see some of the sights!” Three smiley faces. One of them winked.

      “You’ll take care of it, won’t you? Thanks. See you Monday. Cassie.”

      At the last smiley face, Caitlin’s frown deepened. “You get a weekend of adventure in the big city and I get to be the Wicked Witch of the West to your mercy date?”

      She picked up the Dear John note, hoping Cassie’s explanation would make everything clear to the hapless Sean, who thought he had a date tonight. Minus the smiley faces, this note was even more brief.

      Sean—

      Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this, but something came up.

      Take care,

      Cassie

      “That helps a lot.” Caitlin’s sarcasm echoed СКАЧАТЬ