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impatient after all her rebuttals during the week. Despite her austere façade Alice enjoyed the attention and playful giggling when she and her co-workers conspired about Luke. She was too scared to let on that she really cared what this stranger thought about her and so she laughed him off and pretended it wasn’t a big deal. She hoped someone else would bring him up first; otherwise she would sound eager and girlish, not like her at all.
    Finally she put her pride aside and convinced herself to march over to Marsha and get the phone number for the mysterious and sexy Elmeran. Only, she couldn’t get to Marsha. It was like a conspiracy. She and Rebecca had been accosted all day by fans of the recent bestseller asking if there were still free bookmarks and if there was a possibility of getting an autograph from the actor who’d play the lead in the movie. Rebecca had to pull Alice away from the last woman because her customer service was threatening to turn into attempted murder.
    Rebecca had stowed Alice with the Children’s Books staff, telling her she had a ‘time out’ to think about her temper. When the Seussian expert wasn’t looking, Alice made a break for it.
    As she rounded a corner to return to her haven amid the classics, a book tower toppled and the culprit ran away like he’d stolen something. She heard Clay let out a war cry and bolt after the presumed thief. Part of her wanted to see his karate skills in action, but she was drawn immediately toward the injured books. She knelt on the floor and gathered up the leather-bound Sherlock Holmes anthologies, feeling like a field medic in war.
    “Man down!” she muttered to herself, examining the fragile binding.
    A pair of legs appeared in front of her. With a smile, she offered up one book. “This one is cleared for duty!”
    And then she gasped.
    “You led me on a merry chase, didn’t you? I hope you forgive me, I did Google you. But none of the results matched. I had just given up but fate and fortune have conspired, have they not?”

Chapter Five- Luke
     
     
    “Is this her?”
    “No.”
    “This one?”
    Luke only glared at Alfred, who laughed and closed the profile of an apparent drag queen, Alice with the Strand. Alfred was finding all this amusing, highly tickled that they couldn’t find Luke’s Alice Strand. Luke was chomping at the bit and frothing at the mouth and having kittens and all those clichés that pertained to anxiety and impatience.
    It was already Friday night. Considered as the start of the weekend, wasn’t it? There was no joviality in Luke but, even with Alfred forbidden to contact the outside world the world managed to find him. Women. A constant barrage of non-Alice women asking for “Alfie”. Word had spread that he was in town, but thankfully no one was asking after Luke. Except for his blessed and long-suffering mother. For the first time in his coddled life, Luke hadn’t been comforted by his mother’s voice.
    Lucilla had noticed. She’d asked if Luke was all right. Luke had said yes. And then he sighed and Lucilla simply knew .
    “Oh, ma povrecariño!” But she’d sounded delighted.
    Fortunately, she hadn’t brought up the subject of... children. Unlike most other matriarchs with a crown and scepter, Lucilla was sensitive toward her son’s independence. But she did warn him that she’d be bringing it up after he turned twenty-eight. As such, he still had two years’ grace.
    How old was Alice? He wondered. But it didn’t matter. She could be a magical creature for all he cared; a hundred years old with a withered portrait in her attic. It would change nothing.
    “I met her in a bar,” Luke told his mother, trying to dampen her hopes for grandchildren.
    “How American!” she cried happily.
    “I only met her once, I don’t know anything about her—“
    “She doesn’t matter that much,” Lucilla said abruptly, “the point is that you met someone , that you are blending and mixing! Was she anything