Chapter 5 #3
“You’re a regular then?” she asked, gathering the few books he had yet to retrieve.
“You could say that.”
They both stood.
“I’m not,” Selene said, then bit the inside of her cheek. “I mean, I haven’t been here before. I just moved to town.”
“Is that so?” He sounded amused.
His gaze moved over her face before slipping down to skim over her body in an unhurried manner.
He did nothing to hide the fact that he was slowly taking her in.
It should have made her uncomfortable, offended even, but instead she found herself leaning toward him.
As her body canted in his direction, she heard him draw a deep breath.
Did he just . . . smell me?
The stranger’s eyes lifted to meet hers. His gray irises had darkened to thunderclouds. His chest rose as he took another breath and stepped closer, his gaze drifting to her lips. When she felt his warm breath graze her skin, her eyelids drifted shut.
The low rumbling sound came again.
Selene jumped back, eyes snapping wide. “The dog!”
“The dog?” His mouth twitched at the corners.
And then Selene was blinking, dumbfounded, because he was standing a foot away, watching her with a notch between his brows, as if they hadn’t been close enough to share body heat. As if he hadn’t been about to kiss her.
Wait . . . Had she seriously been about to let a complete stranger kiss her in the back of a bookstore? Had she lost her mind?
Flustered and confused, Selene gestured at the shadow-drenched stacks. “There’s a dog somewhere. I heard it growling. That’s why I ran into you. I was rushing out of there, and I don’t know why Betty didn’t—”
“There’s no dog.” The man’s voice was clipped. His expression shuttered. He might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water in her face. “I’ll carry these to the front for you.”
Selene stared in disbelief as he walked away.
What just happened? Had she imagined . . . all of that? The heat, the magnetic attraction?
Damn that romance cover. And the dry spell in her sex life that no doubt was the reason her mind was serving up fantasies of meet-cutes at the back of the bookstore.
Selene squinted into the shadows she’d fled.
The fact that she hadn’t had a date in recent memory might explain misconceptions of her run-in with the hot guy, but not the growling.
It irked her that the handsome stranger had dismissed her fears and walked away, but she wasn’t about to wander through the shelves and get bitten just to prove she had heard something.
And given the true nature of Avondale, she could get lost in the stacks and come face-to-face with something far worse than a dog. That thought made her shudder.
Glancing around the floor to make sure there weren’t any stray books she and Mystery Man left behind, Selene cast one last look at the dark recesses of the store, then made her way back to the counter.
She rehearsed and dismissed a number of things to say to the attractive stranger because in her head they all sounded like awkward attempts to either get his number or insist that something was growling at the back of the store.
None of it mattered because when Selene reached the counter, and a brightly smiling Betty, he was nowhere in sight. The books he’d carried were neatly stacked near the register.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” Betty asked.
“Yes, thanks.” Selene gestured to the stack of books waiting for her. “More than I could carry myself.”
After a meaningful glance toward the store entrance, Selene turned her attention back to Betty. She offered the shopkeeper an inquisitive smile, hoping Betty might fill in the blanks about her erstwhile hot helper. But Betty simply hummed tunelessly as she rang up Selene’s purchases.
Selene sneaked a glance at the door again. Maybe her handsome helper was still nearby. If she caught up with him, she could . . .
I could what? Selene chided herself. Suggest we get coffee after agreeing that I must have imagined some snarling creature in the bookstore?
She huffed out a breath, dismissing the impulse to find the stranger. There were too many changes in her life as it was. Her focus needed to be on getting settled in Avondale and being whatever Allie needed her to be. And she didn’t know where to begin when it came to the werewolf boyfriend.
“I’m throwing in a couple of canvas totes on the house,” Betty quipped. “You’ll need them to get this haul home.”
“Oh!” Selene blushed because Betty was watching her in a way that made Selene suspect she’d been staring at the store entrance for a while. “You don’t need to do that. I’m happy to buy them.”
Betty winked at her. “I insist. Consider it a bribe to lure you back for repeat business.”
“I’d be back without the bribe.” Selene laughed. “But thank you.”
As Betty put the books in the tote bags, Selene chewed on her lip and silently debated one last time whether she should ask who the man was.
Then an unpleasant thought occurred to her: The guy was a local who knew Betty.
What if she wasn’t offering up his name because he’d asked her not to?
Maybe Selene had made that bad of a first impression, bashing into him and freaking out about invisible beasts.
But damn it, she’d heard growling. There was no way those menacing sounds had only been in her head.
If she could talk to him again, she could explain . . .
Ugh, she was being ridiculous. He was just a guy, and she needed to let it go.
It’s not like he was that hot . . . Okay, he absolutely was, but she didn’t need to bring poor Betty into her sudden, embarrassing infatuation.
Instead, Selene made a deal with herself as she walked out of the bookstore.
Avondale was a small town, right? She had no experience with life in a hamlet, but its size did increase the odds that she’d cross paths with him again.
If that happened, maybe she’d take it as a sign.
That’s what you did with magic, right? Look for signs and portents?
What she really needed was a sign telling her whether she needed to get the hell out of this town.