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revoke your library card!”
    The woman backed away, holding her little boy by the shoulders. “I’m going to report you. I’m going right over and tell your boss.”
    Jazz paced toward her with long, sliding steps. “I am the boss, you stupid twit. Report me to me? That’s an excellent idea. I think I’ll give myself a pay raise.”
    The woman turned and fled, running down the maze of neatly shelved books. Jazz watched her go with satisfaction. In all probability that was the only time those ugly, dirty shoes had actually been worn for running. What gave people the idea that they had a right to come into a library and heap abuse on librarians?
    She looked up at the top shelf where the old, dusty book on the clans of Scotland remained. Why had she even thought about looking at it? All of that was behind her. Gone. No, not gone. Stolen. Stolen by her ex. All of her notes, her genealogy work, the painstaking piecing together of
his
family tree,
his
past,
his
history. All of that work she’d done as she’d begun to weave the strands of fact and fiction, past and present, into the greatest Scottish novel ever written! A book grown out of her love for a man who could lay claim to a burnished coat of arms and a family past that was both savage and glorious. Somewhere in the recitation of his family genetic traits, Mac MacKissock had forgotten to mention lying, cheating, boozing, and stealing—the majority of his personal habits.
    Damn Mac MacKissock. He’d stolen her heart, her car, her savings, and the manuscript of her nearly finished historical. He’d trampled her emotions and her dreams beneath his shipyard boots. Damn his blue-eyed soul to the deepest pits of sulfur-belching hell.
    “Mrs. Dixon?”
    Jazz looked up to see the young assistant librarian standing awkwardly at the edge of the aisle. “There’s a police officer to see you. He’s outside.”
    “I’ll take care of it.” She straightened her back and marched through the library and out into the hot pink and bruised mauve April evening where the woman stood, one fat hip cocked obscenely, as she complained to the police officer.
    “That’s her! That’s her!” The woman pointed at Jazz. “She threatened me and my baby, and all because we wanted more books with talking dinosaurs.”
    The cop eyed Jazz, taking in her upswept beehive. He hadn’t seen a do like that since he was a junior in high school, and the woman was too young to have been part of the original bee-hive movement. The yellow sheath dress followed the lines of her figure. Nice. The matching daisy earbobs were kind of classy.
    Jazz looked through her eyelashes at the policeman. “Officer, this woman clearly has a problem with authority.”
    The woman’s mouth opened, slack. She looked at her little boy, who looked up at her.
    “You’d better beat it, lady.” The cop lowered his jaw to his chest and looked her dead in the eyes. “I can see who the trouble maker is here. Move along, or I’ll take you to jail.”
    The woman snatched up her boy’s hand and turned, dragging him behind her without a word.
    “Thank you, officer,” Jazz said. Her smile was cool, professional. “You wouldn’t believe the types that come into the library these days. No respect for books. None for language. It’s depressing.”
    “Well give her a free bed in the Biloxi ladies’ wing if she gives you any more trouble, Ms …”
    “Dixon.” She liked the sound of her new name. It was a writer’s name. Perfect for her new book and her new life. Not a musty old historical name like Helen MacKissock–a shiny new name to go with a book that exposed the brutality of men and the suffering of the women who bravely loved them. “Jazz Dixon.”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever had dinner with a librarian with a musical name. Would you like to go out tonight? I was thinking of some sautéed soft-shell crabs, a few cold beers.” He smiled.
    Jazz liked his teeth. They weren’t perfect, a little crooked and