Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Upstairs was so much warmer.
Not that she’d admit she’d been freezing while they were down in that dungeon of a basement. Nor would she admit that she’d been slightly creeped out, too.
She tugged the sleeves of her sweater over her hands to warm them and then walked toward the cramped office quarters. On the way, she definitely did not think about how sexy Lynx had looked. Even in a creepy basement. Even admiring her ass.
Which…had been sort of flattering. She’d admired his butt in his jeans too while he’d tinkered with the generator.
He followed her into the office, sweeping his phone’s flashlight over the piles of books, folders, and miscellaneous paperwork cluttering Marge’s desk. He let out a long, low whistle. “I take it Marge is not a neat freak.”
Hazel took a hardbound book from his hand and gently replaced it onto one of the stacks. “Don’t move anything. She has her own system, and she’ll notice if anything is out of place. Can you shine that light down here?”
He did, and then Hazel began her careful search for the keys. “My grandpa left us a key to the breaker box in case we blew a fuse. That way if he wasn’t here, we could replace it and go about our day.”
“I take it your grandfather works part time?”
“He’s eighty.”
“I hope I’m not working when I’m eighty.”
“Me too.”
She sifted through the drawers of Marge’s desk, lifting more papers and random items that were stuffed into each and every drawer—except for the sticky one on the bottom right.
Then she thumbed through the two-drawer filing cabinet next to the desk (surprisingly, there were a few papers actually filed), but no keys.
“Last one.” She tugged the stubborn metal desk drawer she’d been avoiding, and it finally popped open with a whine and a…slosh? “The only thing in here is peppermint schnapps.”
“Hell yeah. That’s the good stuff. 100-proof.” Lynx reached for the bottle. “This’ll warm me up.”
“You can’t drink this.” She folded the bottle against her chest like an infant.
“Not me. Us.”
“Well, we can’t drink this.”
“Why not?” He took a step closer. The meager light played on his jaw and highlighted a mouth surrounded by whiskers that she just knew would tickle if they kissed.
“Because.” She shut her eyes against the vision, but it only bloomed brighter on the screens of her eyelids.
“We could freeze to death. The schnapps would help.”
A smile curved her lips without her permission. She opened her eyes as he gently tugged the bottle from her grip. He twisted the cap and sniffed the contents. When he offered her a sniff, the scent of peppermint assaulted her senses.
“We might have cups in the—”
But he’d already tipped the bottle to his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed against his throat as he swallowed. When he licked his bottom lip, she bit hers to keep from whimpering.
“Your turn.” He tipped the neck of the bottle toward her. “Unless you’re about to give me a speech on how you don’t drink on the job.”
“No one is paying me to be here. In case you haven’t noticed.” She snatched the bottle, tipped it back and took a dainty sip. The peppermint was cool at first but soon was burning the back of her throat. “That’s strong,” she wheezed.
“Like I said, it’s the good stuff.”
Unable to hold it in, she coughed, which made her laugh at herself.
Lynx was grinning, but not because she couldn’t hold her peppermint schnapps. “I’m impressed, Stacks. You took a solid drink.”
“Thanks.” And she hadn’t been trying to prove anything. She’d just wanted to do it. “I’m going to text Marge.”
“And confess?”
“No. I am going to ask her where the keys and the fuses are.” Hazel quirked her mouth in thought. “I hate to bother her while she’s on vacation, but this is an emergency.”
Lynx tapped a stack of papers on the desk. “What if they’re buried behind one of these piles? We didn’t check.”
She hummed, considering. They very well might be behind, in, or around one of those piles. The Holy Grail could be hiding under all that paper. “We would have to put each pile back exactly where it was before we touched it.”
“Like you said, this is an emergency.” Lynx gathered a stack and moved it to a neighboring chair. “She’ll understand.”
Twenty minutes later they were no closer to finding the key to the breaker box, but Hazel had started feeling the effects of the liquor. She could tell because she’d laughed way too hard at that last Dad joke that Lynx told.
“You know, I’m reading a book on anti-gravity.”
“Really?” She hadn’t taken him for a physics guy. She was intrigued.
“Yeah. Only problem is that it’s impossible to put down.”
He’d busted out laughing first, but she hadn’t been far behind.
“That was terrible,” she told him, but she was still laughing when she unceremoniously plopped down on the floor.
She checked the basket she’d begun digging through earlier in case she’d overlooked a key.
So far she’d found a roll of stamps, three mechanical pencils, orange sticky notes, a bag of jellybeans from Easter, a tag from a shirt, and other useless bric-a-brac. “No key.”
“We’ll find it.” Lynx shook out his arms and folded them. “It is getting cold in here. You need your sweater?”
“No, I’m okay. I think the schnapps warmed me up.”
“You think Stanley’s okay?”
“He’s fine.” It was sweet that he’d thought to ask her if she needed her sweater—and even to check on her tortoise. She lifted the lid on a small gold box. Empty. “His heating rock was on, so it likely retained some of its heat.”
“Maybe we should climb in there with him.” Lynx shifted another pile of papers to the side. “His terrarium is big enough for at least you.”
“We didn’t want him to be cramped.” She smiled at the memory of Marge referring to Stanley’s home as the “Taj Ma-rrarium”.
“Is this it?”
She heard the jingle of a keyring and looked up to find Lynx grinning, a single key in hand. “Yes! That’s it.”
“Guess what else?”
“What?”
“You have to guess.” Their phone flashlights had provided enough light for their search. His phone was resting facing up, and hers was facing down, hanging over the edge of the desk. The sharp shadows shouldn’t have been doing him any favors.
He sat next to her on the floor, one hand behind his back, the other holding the keyring. “Guess correctly, or…”
“Or…what?”
“Uh, let’s see. Twenty bucks?”
“I don’t have twenty bucks. I mean I did, but I spent it at Jo’s.”
“Hmm.” He pursed that incredible looking mouth of his. “I guess I could take a kiss in payment.”
A sound blustered from her throat. A guilty one, since she’d been considering exactly that before he’d suggested it. But she covered by saying, “Kiss you?!”
“On the cheek. Filthy girl. What’d you think I was asking you to do? Make out with me?” Those words were said with a mischievous smile which meant that was exactly what he’d meant.
And damn, didn’t that sound nice.
“I’ll give you three guesses, and if you get it wrong…” Keyring hooked on his middle finger, he spun it in a circle. “Go on. Guess.”
“Um. A piece of chocolate.”
“No. That’s a terrible guess.”
“Is not. Um… A map of the Great Lakes.”
“No, but I did see one of those.”
“I know. She showed it to me last week.”
“You’re cheating. You either hate to lose or really don’t want to kiss me.”
“I hate to lose,” she whispered.
His eyes twinkled. He was onto her, and the funny thing was she didn’t even care. “Last guess. Tread lightly.”
She licked her lips, glanced at his mouth, and secretly hoped she would get it wrong. “An original Barbie in her box, circa 1962.”
“How would I successfully hide that behind my back?” He raised an eyebrow. “Unless you were trying to be wrong on purpose.”
“No way. I just told you I hate losing. Do I kiss you before or after you show me what’s behind your back?”
His expression was priceless. All the humor had drained from his face and every ounce of his attention rerouted to her lips. A zing of excitement swept through her as chills covered her body.
He opened his hand to reveal three fuses.
“That’s quite the treasure.”
“Let’s hope one of them works. I wouldn’t put it past Marge to hold onto the dead ones.”
“Neither would I.”
When Lynx had borrowed Ant’s truck to drive to the coffee shop this morning, he’d suspected that Ant wouldn’t appreciate that Lynx had borrowed the truck.
But it had felt so damn good to be out in the world, unsupervised.
Whenever he visited the Cove, he felt his brother’s watchful gaze.
It was like Xavier expected him to fuck up at any given moment.
Now, with the prospect of kissing a gorgeous librarian in a dark library, he reminded himself not to fuck this up either.
She didn’t move to stand up or back away from him. Instead, she scooted closer, her eyes on his the entire time. He was lost in the shadowy blues of her irises, adrift in her red-sea hair.
He had no idea who leaned in first. He thought it had been him, but he’d also felt frozen in place. He’d imagined kissing her a few times today, but in all his fantasies, none of those kisses measured up to this one.
Her lips moved hesitantly but firmly over his as she fisted his sweater with one hand. He pocketed the fuses, too worried to put them down and lose them forever. Once his hand was free, he palmed her neck, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
She opened her mouth, her tongue teasing the seam of his lips. He went rock hard without his permission. He grunted as he swept his tongue into her mouth, careful not to give in to the attraction surging through him. He was damn lucky to get this kiss, and he didn’t want it cut short.
His other fist clenched around the key as she continued to stroke his tongue with hers. He sucked in a breath, his chest heaving. Shocked didn’t fully describe what he was feeling. That had been more than a kiss from a woman in a dark library. That had been a seismic shift.
She licked her bottom lip and looked up at him.
He had the thought that he’d let every woman he’d ever kissed down in one way or another.
And if he was planning on moving to this town and starting fresh, breaking the heart of the Cove’s librarian would not make a good first impression.
Local Evergreeners might chase him out with fiery torches and pitchforks, Grandpa Tom leading the pack.
But he kissed her again anyway, pitchforks be damned.
God, she tasted good, though. The mint lingering on her tongue from the liquor mingled with her vanilla scent. Her mouth was warm and cool at the same time, enough to make him forget about starting over. He could just live for right now.
In this moment. In this place. With this girl.
When he was about to sweep every paper from Marge’s desk and plop Hazel down onto it, she tugged away.
Wide eyes searched his face. That was a look he’d seen a hundred times.
She wanted to know if she could kiss. She wanted to know if he’d liked it or not.
He opened his mouth to tell her that the kiss had been exceptional.
A++. Five stars. But then she beat him to the punch.
“Not bad, Bad Boy.”
Okay, so she hadn’t been waiting for his approval.
“Not bad?” He thumbed his bottom lip in disbelief. “That was some of my best work, Stacks. What do you mean, ‘not bad?’”
“Your best? Hmm.” She released his sweater and patted his chest. Then she stood up and left the office, lighting the way with her phone.
She was shitting him, right?
“Hey, wait up.” And just like that he was chasing behind her, pocketing his phone as he followed the dim light from hers.
Every single second of that kiss was the most right thing he’d felt in a while, and she’d rated it as “not bad”?
“Hazel, wait.” He caught up with her at the closed basement door.
She turned toward him, her eyebrows raised. “Yes?”
“I was wondering. Is…‘not bad’ good?” He could hardly believe he’d just asked that. He knew how good of a kisser he was. At least he’d thought so. For some reason Hazel’s opinion mattered more than others.
“Not bad is not bad. Don’t overthink it. Come on. We have to have lights and heat if we’re going to last the night in here.”
He didn’t know if she was putting him in his place, or downplaying the kiss for her own sake. He didn’t know much about her, period. But he was intrigued by the idea of getting to know her—of finding out what kind of kiss would earn him a better rating than “not bad.”
That would be a goal worth pursuing.