Chapter Twelve #2
Or at least she had. And so really what she needed to do was go back through it, and close it up.
Keep everything far away and almost studious, she thought as she bustled around the store, gathering up romance novels that artfully illustrated modern ways people went about getting each other into the sack.
Seduction 101, as she tried to think of it.
But somehow it didn’t feel good when she did.
It felt like she was leading herself to her own doom.
And doubly so when she turned, with a stack of books in her arms, and saw where he’d decided to sit.
Not in the armchair at the front of the store, where people passing by would serve as a sharp reminder that no funny business should go on. But in the back, in the book nook.
The tiny window seat, between two overflowing shelves, with the frosted glass in gold, red, and brown–fringed light, and the cushions that made it all cozy, and the intense lack of space for more than a rather small person. And of course he was not a rather small person.
His thighs practically filled the entire bench.
“What does it say if I suggest you sitting on my knee?” he asked, half laughing. But even a half laugh died down fast, as it seemed to sink in what that would be like. Very uncomfortable for anyone trying to keep a respectful, practical distance between things.
And she suspected that was now his goal, too.
He said it had been the dairy.
But who knew, really? Who knew anything, in a situation like this. All she really understood was that she could not, under any circumstances, sit on his knee. Or even all that close to his knee. Instead, she tried to squeeze the books between her leg and his legs as she sat down.
Like a weird filling in a sweltering, sexy sandwich.
“Okay,” she said, voice shaking just a little too much, hands trembling as she held the book open.
“So my favorite example of a man surreptitiously propositioning a woman has to be in Bound to You . She has an eyelash on her face, and he notices, and he goes to remove it but he doesn’t do it the way you would in ordinary circumstances.
Instead he leans down and kind of blows it. ”
When she dared to look up at him, however, he just looked puzzled.
“That doesn’t seem like anything. I mean, how is that sexy?”
“Well, it’s the way that the author writes it. It’s kind of—”
“Kind of what? Let me see,” he said, and as he did he fished his little glasses out. He perched them on his nose. All of which shouldn’t have made him sexier, at all. But if she was being honest, it kind of did.
It gave him this air of a gentle librarian.
If the gentle librarian sidelined as a bare-knuckle boxer.
None of which she could really cope with.
Though she likely could have coped with it better if he hadn’t immediately started reading the passage aloud.
One of the sexiest things she’d ever read, rolling over his tongue like low, syrup-soft thunder.
Those big hands cradling the book, the heat blooming from him, their knees somehow touching despite all her efforts.
“‘His breath ghosted over her cheek, her lips,’” he said, and it was all she could do to not demand he try it. She had to force herself to snatch the book from his hand and scramble for another. A tamer one. One she didn’t like that much.
“Let’s try the one where he kisses her hand instead,” she suggested.
Only he didn’t even let her get to the passage.
He met her gaze, those blue eyes heavy and soft suddenly, and then he reached forward.
He took hold of her hand. “Oh, I know how to do that one,” he said as he lifted it up, up, inexorably up to his lips.
Ten seconds and there was going to be contact.
Five seconds and there was going to be contact. Four, three, two—
“Hello, is there anybody there?”
Nancy almost yelled, hearing the voice from the front of the store.
Mrs. Twiliger from the dance studio, it sounded like, and oh, was that a relief on several fronts.
First, because it meant she got to snatch her hand away without seeming weird to Jack.
Second, because it gave her a chance to cool her hot cheeks and her hot chest and her hot everything. And third—well, Mrs. Twiliger was nice.
She always bustled into the store smelling of violets and wearing shoes that made Nancy think of dancing in ways she didn’t fully grasp. Usually there was a cloak and a flowery hat. And it was always followed by delight at what Nancy had done with the bookstore.
“My dear, you are a wonder,” she trilled as she gathered up some of the keys from the book cauldron.
Then Nancy got to ring them up and pack them in tissue paper and put them in one of her series of adorable paper bags.
This one had the words I’m at the end of my trope emblazoned on the front, and Mrs. Twiliger cackled like a witch over it.
It helped.
By the time Jack came to see where she was, she had regained her calm. She felt almost sensible as she turned and told him brightly that he was absolutely ready for the next stage of dating. “You’ll be fine,” she said, and he looked as pleased as punch. Case closed , she thought.
Until he said, casual as anything:
“Great. Because I was thinking we could try a drive-in next.”
And she realized. It was her he wanted to go to the drive-in with.
She’d leveled him up. Now it was time to endure exactly what he’d learned.