The Things We Do for Love by Margot Early

from unrequited love.”
    Jonathan seemed to think back, considering. “Not that I couldn’t get over. No, when I was rejected, I’ve just kind of crawled back under my rock. Actually, that’s not true. I usually got kind of pissed off. Decided I wasn’t in love.”
    “You’re speaking in the past tense,” Graham observed.
    “I’m engaged,” Jonathan said.
    Graham scratched his head. Now he’d heard everything. “You mean—” He tried it out slowly. “Now that you’re engaged, you’re never going to fall in love with anyone else?”
    “I’m in love with Angie,” Jonathan answered simply. “I’m a monogamous creature. End of story.”
    And this man had dodged bullets in a war zone. Graham debated saying more. But he couldn’t not say it. “Jonathan, when you get married, it’s not that you’ll never fall in love with anyone else.”
    The station manager cocked a bemused eyebrow. His expression was assessing, forming judgments about Graham.
    Graham finished, “It’s just that you won’t act on it.”
    Pleased by Hale’s slightly disconcerted look, Graham collected his recording—and on impulse, the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog—and left.

CHAPTER FIVE

    W HEN M ARY A NNE parked her car at the transfer station, the first people she saw were David Cureux and his son, Paul, and Cameron, who nodded at her, suddenly looking uncomfortable. They stood beside a recycling container labeled Mixed Paper—Magazines, Books, Phone Books, Etc. Mary Anne had some mixed paper. But all she could think about was that two of three people in that group knew she’d purchased a love potion, and she did not want the third, not known for his discretion, to find out.
    Someone is going to tell. Then, it would get back to Graham Corbett, which was mortifying, and to Jonathan, which was much, much worse. The single comfort was that only she and Cameron knew for whom the potion was intended—and who had drunk it. In retrospect, it was all so embarrassing that when she thought of it she wanted to shrivel up and never be seen again.
    Mary Anne climbed out of her car, grabbing her bag of paper.
    Paul was punching numbers into a handheld calculator. “For ten thousand paper cranes at one phone book page a piece…Mom will find that wasteful, by the way. Ought to be able to get two cranes out of a sheet—we needeither twelve Charleston phone books or—” he punched in more numbers “—fifty Logan County directories.”
    “Now,” said his father, “once we have them, you take them to your house. I’ll tell her I think you took them to the school. And make sure she can’t get hold of you till tomorrow at noon.”
    “Why?”
    “If she knows we only recovered two boxes she’ll want us to come back and get the rest, so we can supply origami paper to the other forty-nine states. Then make sure you take them to one of the schools before she can get us cutting rectangles into squares.”
    “Right.”
    Mary Anne decided the men were so involved in their scheme, whatever it was, that she might be able to exchange a few words with Cameron and deposit her paper in the container without having to talk to the other two at all.
    She had climbed the metal stairs that gave access to the Dumpster when Paul said, “Who did you buy a love potion for, Mary Anne?”
    Her heart nearly stopped and her face grew hot. She stared accusingly at Cameron, who was glaring at Paul. “What makes you think your mom was talking about Mary Anne?”
    “Well, Mary Anne’s face right now, for a start.”
    What a maddening man. Why had she ever thought for one minute that Cameron should get together with him?
    Mary Anne considered saying that they’d bought it to give to a friend at Marshall University who was majoring in chemistry—so that the friend could have it analyzed. But she felt as if her tongue had glued itself to the roof of her mouth.
    David Cureux said, “Don’t bother yourself about it. They don’t work.”
    Paul gave a small