Chapter 13
“I hear it skips a generation.”
“That would explain it,” Trevor said conversationally as the three of them walked around the library, trying to see if any of the structure could be saved and reused in the new building.
“It would definitely explain a few things,” Jason said as he placed an orange sticker on an ornate bookshelf by the wall, marking it as reusable.
Danny ignored them as he’d been doing since they’d arrived an hour ago and focused on the job he’d been hired to do and the little librarian that seemed to be going out of her way to avoid him.
That was fine with him since the Marine in him was more than up for a challenge, and she was definitely a challenge, he decided as he casually tracked her every move.
“Do you want some advice?” Jason asked as he knelt down to check the molding that ran along the edge of the wall.
“No,” Danny said, making a few notes on his iPad as he ignored his cousins.
Trevor sighed heavily from his right. “I’m afraid that you’re going to need our expertise on the matter if you want to win over your future wife.”
Without looking up from his notes, Danny pointed out, “Jason had to kidnap Haley to get her to marry him and even then, she only did it out of pity and didn’t Zoe marry you because she lost a bet?”
He ignored their outraged gasps and watched the object of his desire as she bent over to put together another box and had to bite back a groan. God, she had a great ass. A week ago, he would have been able to ignore her and focus on the job, but that damn shower…
Over the years, he’d seen his fair share of naked women, and while some had left him hard and panting, he’d never reacted this way to any of them.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her or just how good it felt to run his hands over her before they’d eventually gone numb.
Even after he’d lost all feeling in his hands, he’d still enjoyed the experience.
There was just something about watching his hands running over her smooth, soft skin that had left him mesmerized.
Even the pain that came and went in his hands hadn’t been able to take away his enjoyment in touching her.
The pain had kept him from showing her just how much he liked seeing his hands on her, but it hadn’t been enough to keep him from imagining more.
“We need to get this building inventoried before tomorrow,” Danny said, forcing his thoughts away from Tinkerbelle and all the things he would love to do to her.
Jason nodded as he looked over his notes. “I’ll go check the basement and see if they’re ready to start moving everything out.”
“I’ll start taking down the doors and everything else the Council wants to reuse,” Trevor said, giving him a pointed look before he shifted his gaze to where Tink stood, glaring down at the clipboard in her hands as she tried to pretend that he wasn’t there.
Well, he couldn’t very well allow that, now could he?
That cocky, glitter encouraging, parking spot stealing, pizza teasing, kissing bastard was walking towards her again.
All afternoon and most of the morning, he’d been doing everything within his power to drive her out of her freaking mind!
Everywhere she went, he followed. Every time she looked over her shoulder, he was there, watching her with a touch of that smug grin of his that normally made her hands twitch with the need to throttle him, but now…
Now, she had absolutely no idea what she wanted.
He was driving her out of her mind and there was nothing that she could do about it.
It seemed that Danny Bradford was in charge of rebuilding the library, something that she really wished she’d known before she’d agreed to work this summer.
Okay, so she didn’t have much of a choice since she needed the money to pay off the debt the asshole left her with, but still…
A little warning that she was going to be stuck spending the summer with the bane of her existence would have been nice, especially since he seemed intent on driving her out of her damn mind.
She didn’t know what kind of game he was playing, but he was definitely playing with her.
It was the only explanation that she could come up with that would explain how he’d gone from tormenting her to acting like he wanted nothing more than to strip every last inch of clothing from her body and-
What the hell was wrong with her?
She didn’t have time for him or his games. She had a job to do, an insane amount of debt that wasn’t hers to pay off, and absolutely no idea how to handle a man like Danny Bradford. She was definitely in over her head here. She knew that much, at least.
“What are you doing, Tink?” her tormenter asked as he stopped beside her, looking relaxed and incredibly handsome.
Yup, definitely in over her head.
“Looking for my keys,” Jodi said, doubling her efforts to find them.
“Do you want some help?” Danny drawled lazily as he leaned back against the wall.
“No, thank you,” she said, wondering when she was going to catch a break.
Five minutes later, after she’d finished searching her desk and her bag for the third time, she’d decided that today definitely was not that day.
That opinion was only confirmed a minute later when she grabbed her bag, gave Danny a muttered, “Have a good night,” and headed to the front doors only to discover that sometime during her mad search for her keys, it had started to rain.
Well, downpour really was a much more fitting description, Jodi decided as she stepped back inside and pulled out her phone.
Ten phone calls and twenty texts later, and she was cursing all of her friends to hell and back.
They were all either at work or trying to get to work and couldn’t swing by and pick her up.
For a moment, she stared down at her phone, wondering if she should call her father only to decide against it.
With the way things were going right now, it would probably only take one of her father’s warm smiles to get her to breakdown and admit that she wasn’t doing so well.
She didn’t want her father to have to shoulder her responsibilities for her.
He’d been through enough over the past few years without having to add her problems into the mess.
“Need a ride?” the man that she really wished she could stop thinking about, asked.
She glanced outside, looking for any sign that the rain would let up soon so that she could make the five-mile walk home without the risk of drowning, but it didn’t look good.
As she stood there, absently watching as a trash barrel was swept down the street with the rain, she realized that she had to make a decision.
She could either stay here searching for her keys and wait for the rain to stop, call a taxi and hope that he’d accept a smile and a thank you as payment enough since she was broke, call her father, or she could accept a ride from the man that was driving her crazy.
In the end, it was the library suddenly losing power and her phone dying that had her closing her eyes, sighing in defeat and accepting his offer with a mumbled, “I could definitely use a ride,” that sealed her fate.
“Any luck?” Danny asked, biting back a smile as he watched Tinkerbelle try to pick the lock.
For a minute, he considered mentioning the set of keys collecting dust on his bureau that Trevor left with him just in case someone got locked out of their apartment but decided against it when Tink started to mutter the cutest little threats of violence to her apartment door.
The way her ass swayed enticingly as she tried to pick the lock might have influenced his decision to stand there and keep his mouth shut.
“Are you sure that you don’t know how to pick a lock?” Jodi asked, squishing her face up in concentration as she wiggled the paperclip he’d given her in the lock.
“Yes,” he lied, watching as her round bottom swayed back and forth…back and forth…
“This isn’t working,” Jodi grumbled as she stood up and propped her hands on her hips, looking like a sexy little general.
“Do you want to try the phone again?” Danny asked, since he knew that it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
For the night, Tinkerbelle was all his and he was going to use every minute of it to help convince her to take a chance on him, despite the fact that he was an asshole.
First, though, he was going to have to sit back and wait for Tinkerbelle to come to the conclusion that there was nothing and no one was coming to save her from her fate.
She was his.
“No, I’ve already left everyone about a million messages. They’ll call soon,” Jodi said, folding her arms over her chest as she sent the front door a considering look.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Danny drawled, doing his best to keep a straight face.
Her expression became determined as she turned to face him. “I’m going to go see if I can get in through one of the windows,” Jodi said, nodding to herself as though the idea was solid as she turned right back around to do just that.
“That sounds like a good plan,” Danny said, not bothering to point out that it was still downpouring or that his cousin had spared no expense to make sure that all the doors and windows in this building were made out of solid construction with theft-deterrent locks that should be able to hold out one determined, sexy little librarian.
Turning his back on her and going inside his apartment felt wrong, but he forced himself to do it, knowing that it was the only way to get her undivided attention for the rest of the night.
If she thought for even one second that there was a possibility that she’d overlooked some other way to escape her fate, she’d be preoccupied for the rest of the night and that just wouldn’t work for him.
He wanted her undivided attention tonight as he did what no other Bradford had ever done before him, at least not on purpose.
He was going to woo a woman.