Chapter Five Ruby
Chapter Five
Ruby
At a pretty pivotal point in my life, I’d learned a few lessons that would take years to undo.
The first being that any sort of unknown could be made less scary with copious amounts of research.
My browser history was probably in some sort of FBI database, for all I knew, especially the last couple months.
There was nothing to be done about that, though. Hiring and vetting an escort required a few private browsers, and no one had shown up to arrest me yet, so I was assuming that I was still safe from legal prosecution.
When I got to work the next day, there was an email waiting for me from the escort agency.
If I wanted, I could reschedule a meeting with Jimmy (now that I knew his name, I’d decided there was no worry of sexual attraction to someone named Jimmy with thin lips and a baby face).
But even though he would be the monumentally safer choice than trying to wade into the dating pool—shudder—I couldn’t bring myself to do it just yet.
The day was still young.
If I didn’t reschedule, Jimmy’s brief visit would go down as a very expensive mistake that I had no intention of making again.
“How was the meeting with the hooker yesterday?”
There was no need to glance up from my computer screen, because Lauren was the only person in the world who’d ask me that. “He’s not a hooker, Lo, he’s an escort.”
“An escort who also gets paid to have sex at his fancy brothel in Vegas, yeah?”
With a sigh, I closed out the browser. My search history had my cheeks going warm, and I prayed Lauren didn’t notice. “Whether he does or doesn’t is not my problem. I didn’t hire him for sex, I hired him for . . .”
“Nonsexual sexual training?” she supplied helpfully.
I gave her a dry look. “Yes.”
“God, when I was in high school, we learned everything from Cosmo.” She plopped down in the chair opposite my desk. “They had the best articles. The day I learned about Reverse Cowgirl was the day my life changed.”
Lauren wasn’t that much older, but on days like this, it felt like she had decades more experience. She also had no filter, a healthy sex drive, and the determination to do her very best to bring me into the same hormonal space she occupied happily. “I don’t think a magazine can fix me, Lo.”
I smiled, but it was tight at the edges. In fact, I’d felt tight and edgy ever since walking away from that bench, leaving Griffin King sprawled on it like it was a freaking throne.
Because I had a healthy sense of vanity, I had managed not to look back until I’d cleared the library doors, finally allowing myself a peek around the corner to see what he’d do.
For a few minutes, he sat there, staring at the creek, that big, muscled arm still stretched along the back of the bench.
Then he stood, unfolding his body with the kind of unhurried grace that you couldn’t fake.
That was a man who was comfortable in his skin, and I watched him walk away with a pinprick of foreboding digging into the back of my mind.
The research started immediately.
For as much as I’d watched those boys when I was younger, I had never really thought about looking them up. Why would I?
But the moment my search engine caught wind of their names, I sat at that computer with my jaw hanging open. Apparently this was the stuff I missed when I delegated the periodicals section to Kenny.
The King brothers weren’t just talented, and they weren’t just successful—they were famous. Article after article had my eyes widening.
Griffin King: The Next Defensive MVP? Behind His Quest to Break the Offensive Streak
Barrett King Retires at 28: The Hidden Dark Side of the League’s Head-Injury Problem
The Brain vs. the Brawn: The Biggest Showdown in Football Happens This Weekend. Which King Brother Will Come Out on Top?
Marital woes overshadow Barrett King’s triumphant second year of coaching. Is his playboy brother part of the problem? Our body language expert dissects their tense on-field exchange.
Sexiest player in the league? Griffin King breaks down why he’s not sure marriage is in the cards.
That last article came with a few photographs—practically indecent photographs that answered at least one of my questions.
Griffin—as one might imagine, if they wanted to imagine such a thing—looked incredible naked.
The first photo, bigger than the other two, featured him standing in a dimly lit locker room, holding a football over his groin.
The rest was skin. Skin and honed muscles and a dangerously attractive facial expression that had me pressing my thighs together.
Honestly, his body should’ve been in a museum somewhere.
The bend of muscles under flawless golden skin, curves over his shoulders, stacked squares on his stomach and the mouthwatering cut of the V-shaped muscles below his abs, the impossibly rounded biceps and the veins roping along his forearm where his big hand held the ball—it was all just a bit much, if you asked me.
Probably why I stared at it a little too long, but that was completely irrelevant.
“Whatcha staring at?” Lo asked, leaning closer to my desk.
I snapped the laptop shut. “Nothing. Just doing some research.”
She arched an eyebrow. “So . . . the hooker.”
“Could you say that just a little louder?” I hissed, looking frantically past the door of my office.
It was, quite blessedly, empty. “The escort is probably back at his hotel. It didn’t .
. . the meeting didn’t happen. Someone I knew from when I was younger showed up, and I got all . . .” I waved my hands next to my head.
Lo smiled. “I hate when that happens.”
“It threw me off,” I admitted. “Then I really started thinking about how it looked that I was hiring someone to help me build my confidence around men. Who needs that?”
“You don’t,” she said easily. “Many people live very happily without romantic companionship. It’s only a problem if it bothers you.”
Did it?
There was no one presuming on my time. If I wanted to lie in bed and watch Jane Austen movies all weekend? No one could stop me. If I wanted to read for days or go out to eat with friends and live on cereal for a week straight or . . . or . . .
The thoughts fizzled there.
Yes. It bothered me.
When I lay alone in my bed, nothing but the sound of my own heart to distract me from my thoughts, I wanted to know how it felt. All of it. The sweet parts and the simple parts and the dirty parts too.
I didn’t need it all the time, mind you. The thought of man sounds and smells and . . . everything in my house made my nose wrinkle. He could stay in his own place, thank you very much. It was about possessing the knowledge. A reference point for comparison.
No, I couldn’t hold it in my grasp forever; I couldn’t lock it in a box for safekeeping. But it would still be mine. Those experiences and memories couldn’t be taken away by anyone, no matter what.
If I closed my eyes and thought about what knowledge looked like, it was a tidy stack of shiny gold coins that locked together.
Like building blocks. The more of those coins in your possession, the more valuable they became.
It was a cumulative thing, each one building upon the one before.
In my head, I wanted those coins to build something big and grand and beautiful that I could study and admire.
Right now, there was nothing but a flimsy deck of cards instead—at least when it came to this particular subject of study. A gentle breeze would knock it right over, and there was nothing I could do about that.
Slumping at my desk, I covered my face with my hands. “I’m not cut out for this. For any of it. I’m just going to die alone in my little house. I’ll probably get some cats and learn how to knit and bake myself cupcakes because there’s no one around me to eat them.”
She clucked her tongue. “Well, aren’t we one giant cliché, huh? First, Bruiser would be terrified of those cats, and you don’t like them anyway.”
“I don’t. They freak me out.”
Bruiser lifted his head from where he lay at my feet, letting out a commiserating groan as he flopped onto his side to get comfortable. Lauren smiled.
“You tried knitting once, and you got very angry.”
I sighed. “I did. Making all those little loops made me want to stab someone.” I gave her a meaningful look. “But I couldn’t because I live alone.”
Lauren rounded my desk, giving me a consoling pat on the back. “You’ll get it figured out, shorty.”
At the nickname, I leveled a glare in her direction. All it managed to do was make her laugh, which said more about my glare than it did Lauren.
Before she left my office, she snapped her fingers. “Oh, I got a call from the city offices while you were doing story hour earlier.”
Immediately, I sat up in my chair. “And?”
Her face bent in a grimace. “Not good news. The property will start taking offers in the next couple weeks. Sheila told me there are two real estate developers interested.”
“Damn it,” I whispered, disappointment anchoring somewhere deep in my belly. On the far wall of my office were all the renders I’d had drawn up to present to the board of directors. They loved them. But, as always, it wasn’t a matter of them liking my ideas; it was a matter of money.
For years, I’d been planning what we could do to the land surrounding the library once it went up for sale.
The old man who’d owned it had passed away a few months earlier, and it took a while for his kids to decide what they wanted to do.
I’d reached out more than once, telling them about the nature path, the butterfly garden, how we could highlight Colorado artists with small sculptures and interactive features for kids and families.
Make it something memorable and wonderful. A legacy that would outlive me, that was for sure.