A Profiler's Case for Seduction(10)

By the time she walked into the bookstore, she had rationalized it all in her mind. The first thing she always noticed upon coming in to work was the scent of the store...the smell of paper drifting in the air from all the textbooks on the shelves.

Dora loved the smell of books, the weight of one in her hand. The store sold more than textbooks and research tomes. There were T-shirts and other apparel in the school colors of red and gold, glasses and tumblers with the Darby Gladiators logos, candles and key chains and an entire assortment of candies and snacks.

“How’s it going?” she asked Kathy Taylor, a young night student who usually worked just before Dora came in.

“Slow. I’ve only sold one candle all day long. But, on the bright side, I’ve managed to use the quiet time to write a paper that needed to be done before Thursday,” Kathy replied.

“If it stays quiet, then hopefully I can work on studying for a test we’re having on Friday in my forensics class.” Dora set her laptop on the counter next to the cash register.

“If things go this evening like they have all day then you should have a good five hours of quiet time to study.” Kathy grabbed her bright pink backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Not if I can help it,” Dora replied with a grin. “Tomorrow is my night off.”

“Enjoy,” Kathy replied as she breezed out the door.

Dora settled on the chair behind the register and opened her laptop, intent on reviewing the notes she’d taken that day in her classes.

However, forensic science couldn’t compete with the brilliant blue of Mark’s eyes or those tousled strands of darkness atop his head that begged her fingers to provide some sort of order.

No touching, she told herself. It was bad enough that she’d agreed to have coffee with him a second time. She certainly couldn’t fantasize about how his hair would feel beneath her fingertips. That would be going against everything she’d promised herself.

Her education, that was all that was important to her. She’d tried the marriage route...twice, in fact, and with disastrous results. Men weren’t good for her. She’d made the decision three years ago to get her degree, get a great job, and that would be enough to fulfill her for the rest of her life.

With a new resolve, she began to read the notes she’d taken in her forensics class that day, trying her best to memorize everything she suspected would be on the next test.

She was interrupted only twice by students coming in to browse, but her concentration was broken many more times as she continued to think about Mark Flynn.

Her attention was divided between trying to study and the clock on the wall opposite where she sat. The minutes crept by with agonizing slowness.

She reminded herself that it hadn’t been a man who had gotten Melinda out of the circumstances of their early life...it had been education. Three years ago Melinda and Micah Grayson, a brother she’d only recently learned existed, had given her the same opportunity to make something of herself. As far as Dora knew the two had been estranged since first meeting, but had come together as a united force to save Dora.

When Melinda had been kidnapped, Micah hadn’t come forward because he was working an important undercover case. Although Dora had been terrified for her sister, she also hadn’t gone to the authorities because she had no information to offer them.

Micah had paid for the little house where she now lived just off campus with the understanding that once she was on her feet and had landed a good job, she’d begin to pay him back for his investment in her. He also gave her a small monthly allowance to help with utilities and groceries. Melinda had helped her with financial support and scholarship grants and awards, and had guided her in her choice of classes, but the two sisters had remained virtual strangers.

The last thing Dora wanted to do was misstep and prove to the two people who had done so much for her that the truth was she was just the same old screwup she’d always been.

For a moment she was mired in her past, and her head filled with the scent of cheap booze and sweaty males, of fried food and the sound of her mother’s drunken laughter.

She was back at the Daisy Café on the outskirts of the small town of Horn’s Gulf, Wyoming. The Daisy Café, a cheerful name for the most dismal place on the face of the earth.

She remembered every whack of the belt that her father had wielded as a weapon, the drunken shouts of her abusive first ex-husband and the killing words of her second husband, words that rang with an unadorned truth and had spiraled her down and out of control.