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that?”
    Marissa nodded, trying to look confident even as a little voice in her head was shouting “Danger Ahead!”
    “Good.” Roz smiled and turned her attention to a pile of papers on her desk. “I’m glad we got that settled.”
    Marissa knew when she’d been dismissed. She headed out of the office, her mind swirling with any number of ways this entire project could go wrong.
    She ruthlessly cut those doomsday thoughts off at the knees. She could do this. She’d just bragged to Connor that she wasn’t going to change any of her plans because of him. This was her chance to prove that. Or it was her chance to get rid of him…
    No, she knew he’d never surrender his program and let her begin hers instead. She’d have to collaborate. Andif she was being honest, he’d had some good results with his ideas. Not great, but good.
    She was determined to be professional enough to work with him, no matter how difficult that might be. She could and
would
do this. She had no choice.

Chapter Five
     

     
    The minute Connor walked in the library, he was confronted by an angry female glaring at him. He’d just left a senior center full of angry females. He didn’t need more aggravation.
    “You keep doing that and you’ll get wrinkles,” he said.
    She glared harder and growled, “I hate you.”
    Hearing laughter behind him, Connor turned to find Marissa standing there with a smile on her face. “Charming the ladies, are you?”
    The five-year-old little girl who’d proclaimed her hatred for him stomped off to where her mother stood beside the circulation desk, horrified by her child’s behavior.
    “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” the mom said in a harried voice. “She’s having a bad day today.”
    He smiled. “No need to apologize. Bad days happen to all of us at one time or another.”
    He sure as hell was having one today. He refused to let that get him down. He could handle bad days with one arm tied behind his back. He couldn’t handle the memories of the kids back in Chicago that he hadn’t been able to save. Especially Hosea.
    Connor clamped that line of thought shut and focused his attention on Marissa. “I assume you heard about the plan to merge our programs.”
    She nodded.
    “So how do we get out of this? I’m open to suggestions.”
    “What do you mean, ‘get out of this’?” She frowned. “There is no getting out of it.”
    “I don’t need you butting into my program.”
    “Ditto.”
    “So how do we fix this? How about you let me keep doing what I’m doing and just make a show on the surface of being involved,” he said.
    “You are delusional.”
    “I didn’t expect you to agree. Not right off the bat. But once you’ve interacted with these kids you’ll back off.”
    “What makes you think that?” She didn’t bother telling him she’d already met a half-dozen kids and had enlisted their input in her program. She sensed from the way that Connor had marched into the library that he was carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder.
    “You’re a librarian.”
    “Your point being?”
    “These kids are tough. You’re not going to turn them around by sticking a bunch of books in their hands.What are you going to do, have them read Dickens or Shakespeare?”
    “Shakespeare knew a thing or two about gang violence. The Capulets versus the Montagues. And don’t try telling me we don’t have gangs in Hopeful. Gangs are everywhere.”
    “I know how to reach these kids. You don’t.”
    “How do you know?” she countered.
    “You have no experience.”
    “Yes, I do. At my former library I created a number of programs for at-risk teens.”
    His expression clearly indicated he wasn’t the least bit impressed by her statement.
    “If there’s no way out and we’re forced to work together then we need to set some ground rules.”
    “I agree,” she said. “I’ve already made up a list.” She led him to the reference desk, where she’d left her file, and opened it up.