Chapter Seventeen
Chapter
Seventeen
Theo
Theo had always wanted to bring Dani to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.
The walls of books were truly a librarian’s dream.
He couldn’t say this was exactly how he imagined their visit would be, but now as he walked beside Dani hand in hand past the canal toward the sharp-angled modern-glass-and-concrete building, he didn’t want it any other way.
“The National Library recently moved its entire collection to this new building,” Theo explained to Dani as they walked up to the library entrance with a wall made of dozens of windowpanes. “This library houses the largest collection of Greek historical texts in the world.”
“If we can’t find the answer here,” Andreas added, “then it doesn’t exist.”
When Theo opened the door, Dani’s eyes lit up like Belle opening the doors to the library in Beauty and the Beast. Floors and floors of books filled the large, open room.
Light filled the area, casting a glow upon the shelves.
Dani entered the space and looked up while slowly turning in a circle.
Never mind that most, if not all, of the books were likely in a language she couldn’t read.
It didn’t matter. She was like a kid in a candy store, staring at the collection in awe.
And Theo was staring at her, unable to hold back his smile.
Dani was in her element. The wide grin on her face brought out the sparkle in her eye. He wished she could spend the next week in this building, scouring the shelves. The Main Library in the old Ryerson Building back in Grand Rapids where she worked was a cool building and all, but this?
This was like working in a zoo and then finally visiting the Sahara. Like eating at Olive Garden and then finally traveling to Italy.
The urge to take her to every library in the entire world came over him to see this wonderment in her eyes again.
“I…I don’t even know where to start,” Dani said, giddy as a schoolgirl.
“I will see if we can get access to their rare Greek collections room,” Andreas said. “That’s going to be the best place to find evidence of Papantonis’s birthplace.”
“What should we do while you’re doing that?” Dani asked.
“Here,” Theo said, pointing to a chair in front of a computer. “Let’s search the catalog.”
Dani sat in front of the computer, but her face instantly dropped. “It’s in Greek.”
“I’ll help you, babe,” Theo said as he reached for another chair and sidled up to her.
“If you see anything that looks interesting, wait here for me,” Andreas said.
Andreas and Theo gave each other the subtlest of nods and then Andreas took off in the direction of the main desk. Theo watched him as he walked away, trying to see where he was going. But Theo could feel Dani’s eyes on him.
“What?” he finally asked, looking her way.
“You’re watching him like a hawk,” she said.
“I just want to make sure we know where he’s going,” Theo said, turning his attention to the computer.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got my eye on him,” Dani said, suggestively.
Theo snapped his gaze to Dani. She wasn’t still interested in him, was she? Not after everything that happened last night—and this morning?
“I’m kidding,” she said, laughing. But Theo didn’t laugh in return. “What? Still jealous?” she asked, smirking.
“No, Juicy, I’m not jealous,” he said with a scoff. Please.
“You sure? Maybe we weren’t convincing last night.”
“We were convincing,” he said point-blank. “I mean, what? Should we be making out in the library? Because if that’s what we need to do, I’m game.”
Dani gasped. “That’s sacrilege!” she said with a playful gasp.
“What? Making out in the library?”
“Yes! You can’t desecrate such a holy place.”
Theo laughed. “Please. Like you’ve never made out in a library,” he said, tossing her an I don’t believe you look.
“Never.”
Hmm. For some reason, this was surprising.
Well, not for some reason. For lots of reasons. Dani was never one to shy away from public displays of affection.
“How is that possible?” he asked. “You spend more time in the library than anyone else I know.”
“Okay, first off, I have to spend my time in the library because it’s my job. But even still, just because I spend a lot of time in the library doesn’t mean I make out with people in it. I mean, I’ve never known someone who spent so much time playing in the dirt on archaeological digs—”
“I’ve done more than make out with someone on a dig, Juicy,” he said, giving her a sly eye.
Her jaw dropped and she covered her mouth. “No, you haven’t,” she said, almost giggling.
“I have.”
He didn’t know why he was telling her this, but it was sort of fun.
“How many times?” she asked.
He ducked his head. “Are you really asking me how many times I’ve had sex on an archaeological dig?”
She nodded like she really wanted to know, and, damn, it sent a quick jolt to his cock.
“Twice.”
“Only twice?” she asked, scrunching her face almost like she was disappointed in his answer.
“Oh, okay,” he said with a laugh. “How many times have you had sex in a library?”
“Never. I told you. That’s sacrilege.”
“No, you said you’d never made out with someone.”
“Right. Same thing.”
“No, Juicy,” he said, hanging his head and laughing. “That’s not the same thing.”
She made a face. “How do you expect me to have sex with someone without making out with them?”
“It’s easy.”
She stared at him like she was waiting for an explanation. A tutorial, perhaps?
“It’s called fucking,” he said.
Dani’s mouth dropped into a devilish O. What the hell had come over him? Clearly their little morning rendezvous gave him a boost of sexual confidence.
“My God, Theo, are you a bad boy?” she asked waggling her brow.
“I don’t think the knowledge of fucking immediately gets someone classified as a bad boy,” Theo said, tossing her a telling glance.
“So then, what are you? When it comes to women?”
Theo glanced down at her lap, noticing her twisting her hands together, before returning his gaze to her face. Was she nervous?
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Are you an alpha? A teddy bear? Do you treat your woman like a queen? Are you aloof? It’s kind of hard to tell by girlfriends you’ve had. They’re all so…well-behaved. Good Greek Girls, right?”
Theo laughed. “In comparison to you, maybe.”
Dani waved her hand over her shoulder. “Sorry that I like a little fun, unlike your boring exes.”
“Hey, they weren’t boring. They were intimidated.”
“By who? Me?”
Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“By the whole situation,” he said, trying to play it off. “I mean, you have to admit—Thanksgiving with the Galanis and Guiterrez clans is a lot.”
He’d never actually realized how extra their family gatherings were until he spent one Christmas Eve with his college girlfriend’s family.
It was so quiet. Civil. There were no arguments over whose sugar-dusted nut cookies were better, his sister’s kourambiedes cookies, or Dani’s Mexican wedding cookies (Theo always voted for Dani).
And the food on their plates was so…brown.
Not a dolma or a bowl of salsa in sight.
He missed his and Dani’s families’ amalgamation of cuisine: Grexican, they liked to call it.
There was nothing like his mother’s pork stew with a heaping spoonful of Mrs. Guiterrez’s Mexican rice on top.
Or a shot of raki followed by Carlos’s spicy, cinnamony hot chocolate.
But from the minute you walked in the door until the last good-night of the evening, there was laughter and clatter.
Giorgina hadn’t particularly enjoyed her experience at the Galanis-Guiterrez holidays.
Even though she was a Triple G, a few times she’d mentioned she expected that future holidays would be more…
conventional, as she called it. When we start our own traditions, she’d said.
Theo figured Giorgina needed to warm up to their families, that was all.
Eventually she’d see that what they had was special, and she’d be one of them.
Three years into their relationship, and she still didn’t seem to understand.
Too bad it took Theo three years to realize it himself.
“Well, you’re the one brave enough to bring a guest in the first place,” Dani said. “I’d never bring a guy into that chaos.”
“Ever?”
“Uh-uh,” Dani said, shaking her head.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy that you’ve dated other than the randos you’ve picked up at Palmer’s,” Theo said. “I don’t even know what’s your type.”
“Why would you?”
Theo furrowed his brow. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Um, well, for starters, they usually aren’t around long enough for it to make a difference.
Besides, you live two hundred miles away.
I’m not going to waste your limited time in town introducing you to some guy who probably won’t even be around by the next weekend. So there you go. That’s my type.”
“What is?”
“Guys who don’t stick around.”
There was a sadness to her voice. Like maybe she didn’t particularly like the fact that they didn’t stick around.
“You never answered my question, by the way,” she said.
“Which one?”
“About what kind of guy you are.”
Theo watched her for a moment, considering her body language. She didn’t look at him when she said it, opting instead to stare straight at the computer screen, her finger scrolling slowly on the mouse even though they’d yet to type anything into the computer.
“I’m not sure,” he finally said.
“Well, what would Giorgina say?”
Giorgina would probably say he was an asshole, but he wasn’t about to tell Dani that. Last thing he needed was for her to ask why Giorgina felt that way.
“I’m not sure my ex is the best person to ask,” he said.
“What? No way, your ex is the perfect person to ask.”
“Fine. She’d probably say I’m…” He thought of the first word that came to mind and said, “attentive.”
“Oh.”
Another oh. He really needed to start learning what those ohs meant.
Dani stared at him blankly, clearly trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that.
He could have explained that Giorgina always appreciated how he took care of her and met her needs, especially in the bedroom.
But in reality, the night they broke up, Giorgina called him out on his attentiveness to Dani, rather than to herself. And Theo did nothing to deny it.
Because he knew that even when he was with Giorgina, his mind was often on Dani. And that wasn’t fair to her. To either of them.
“We should probably get to work,” Dani said, changing the subject and scooting her chair closer to the table.
She may have been done with the conversation, but he wasn’t. She couldn’t ask all those questions about him and then not answer any about herself.
“So you really haven’t, then, have you?” he asked. “Made out with someone in the library?”
“No, I haven’t.” She stared at the screen, almost as if trying to pretend he wasn’t talking.
“But would you?”
She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, considering his question.
“I mean…”
Her voice trailed off and that was all the answer he needed. Sacrilege, my ass.
“Go on,” he said. He wanted to know. Needed to know.
“I mean…I suppose it’s always been a fantasy of mine to get railed between the stacks,” she said, finally looking his way and giving him a devilish grin.
Theo choked and then coughed. That was not what he was expecting.
And now his dick was getting hard, picturing himself plunging into Dani’s tight, wet pussy as she held on to a shelf behind her. Dani, muffling her moans. Gotta keep quiet in the library, after all.
Suddenly, Theo found himself with a new library fantasy, too.
“Shhh!” someone shushed them from another computer, causing both of them to jump and then duck their heads like teenagers.
“You know I’ve never been good at…well, you know…
being good,” Dani whispered, lifting her brow as she sat back in her seat and glanced at his lap.
Fuck, she really needed to stop looking at him like that.
Theo adjusted his pants to conceal his hard-on, but not without catching Dani biting her bottom lip.
She looked down once more, noticing the straining fabric that he so desperately tried to hide under the computer table, and she smiled, finally turning her attention to the computer. She stared at it for a moment before again realizing that everything was in Greek.
“Here,” he said, “scooch over.”
She moved her chair a fraction of an inch, and he scooted closer, their thighs grazing each other’s slightly. Thankfully, his dick wasn’t at full attention anymore. But that touch did something else to him, sending a prickling sensation all along his forearms, making the hair on his arms raise.
All this talk with Dani about sex and libraries and getting railed was getting to his head.
“Okay, what am I searching for?” he asked, trying to take his focus off the proximity of Dani’s legs.
“Type in ‘Demetrios Papantonis,’ ” she said.
He typed in “Papantonis,” and a number of results came up in the search.
“Do you want to give me something more specific?” he asked.
“How about ‘Demetrios Papantonis, birthplace’?”
Zero results.
“Let’s try this again,” she said. “This time go with ‘Demetrios Papantonis, biography.’ ”
Still nothing.
“Maybe we should try a different angle. What about ‘native soils of Greece’?”
It was worth a shot. Theo typed in a few different combinations and finally got a hit.
“It looks like they’re all upstairs in the stacks,” he said.
“What’s in the stacks?” Andreas said, standing behind them.
Where had he come from? So much for keeping their eye on him.
“Books on soils,” Dani said.
“Well, I got passes to the rare collections room,” Andreas said, holding up two badges. “Unfortunately, there’s a limit of two at a time.”
“Great,” Theo said. “How about the two of you go there, and I’ll look into the soils?”
Dani put her hand on his forearm. “No, I don’t want to leave you.” The fear in her voice could not be missed.
He didn’t want to leave her, either.
“That’s okay,” Andreas said. “You two go to the rare collections. I’ll look for the soils.”
“Are you sure?” Theo asked.
Andreas smiled. “Of course. I’ll meet you outside the room once I’m finished. But just in case, here,” he said, handing Theo a piece of paper with an address and phone number. “This is the address to Christos’s house and our phone numbers.”
Hopefully, they wouldn’t need it.
“Then shall we go check it out?” Theo asked Dani.
She smiled.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“You know I’ve been dying to check out the books since we got in here.” Even with everything else going on around them, her excitement couldn’t be contained. Her passion was something he’d always admired about her.
He stood up and held out his hand. “Let’s do it.”