Chapter 20 Belle and the Library
BELLE AND THE LIbrARY
LANEY
It didn’t take long for Ronan’s security detail—who I gathered was actually named Brady MacNamara but went by Mac—to drive us to a part of Boston that was far more charming than anything I’d seen on the internet.
I said so, having spent a good amount of time over the past few weeks researching the city I’d never visited but had somehow committed to living in for at least six months.
“That’s because it’s Charlestown,” Ronan said as Mac turned the Range Rover down a quiet, tree-lined street full of house after brick colonial house.
“I mean, there are plenty of nice parts of Boston, but Charlestown is special. It was actually founded two years before Boston. Paul Revere rode through here. It’s its own thing. ”
“Charlestown, huh?” I turned to him as the car came to a stop in front of a particularly charming brick townhouse. “What about the high-rise apartment in the business district I read about on the internet?”
Mac’s eyes flashed toward me, then shot Ronan a knowing glance through the rearview.
Ronan just looked smug. And maybe a little annoyed. “I see the eminent scholar has been Googling again instead of reading the contract I sent.”
My cheeks flushed immediately. The contract. Oh, the contract.
Had I read the NC-17-rated document that had been oh-so-casually handed to me en route to the airport?
I wasn’t sure “read” was the correct verb. Or tense. More accurately, something had happened to me just by looking through the seemingly innocuous papers. I was a passive recipient of its terms, all of which had pretty much bowled me over like pins.
Said contract was still stuffed in my oversized purse, where it had been since my first read-through had turned my face hotter than an oven.
Seven orgasms per week. I still couldn’t believe he had put that in writing. It was more shocking than the millions of dollars that were promised after just six months of marriage, even if, as he had demonstrated in my apartment, he was more than capable of fulfilling that particular term.
And apparently, the three pages of sex acts that followed it.
“Ari?”
I looked up, conscious of the fact that all of those thoughts had been playing across my face, and I’d done nothing to hide them. Ronan was still watching me while chewing his bottom lip.
God, he looked good. Better than I remembered.
No video chat in the world could render the edges of his jaw sharp enough or present his eyes with the same magnetic spark they always seemed to have.
His hair was tamed back again with gel, and I longed to shove my fingers into those curls, soften them up, and watch them spring to life.
It wasn’t fair. How could someone be this attractive… and this confusing?
Slowly, Ronan leaned in and brushed a gentle kiss on my cheek. “You’re stupidly beautiful when you’re flustered, do you know that?”
I jerked back. “I—we need to—”
“Talk, yeah. I figured. But first, let’s go inside. There’s something I want to show you, and it’s not my so-called ‘home’ in the financial district. Come on.”
He got out of the car, then reached in to guide me out too. “Mac, do you mind grabbing her bags?”
The big man grunted. Clearly, he wasn’t meant to be deployed in that particular manner, but he didn’t argue as Ronan led me up the steps of a little house with blue siding and trim white shutters.
The street was beautiful in a way that didn’t exist in Seattle.
For one, we didn’t have buildings this old.
A nameplate next to the lacquered black door informed me it was built in 1832, and several of the other buildings, sided with both brick and brightly painted wood, bore similar, if unreadable, brass plaques.
The sidewalks were shaded by the maple and chestnut foliage, and the brick underfoot was worn by time.
I looked around, already charmed by the place’s history. It wasn’t four hundred BCE, but I’d take it over tech monoculture any day of the week.
“If you recall from the terms of the contract,” Ronan said as he fiddled with the lock, “I have two homes. One is the public space, known to shareholders, acquaintances, and family members. I only go there when I have to. It’s for business associates. Board members. Family.”
I turned back to him. “So even your family doesn’t know where you actually live?”
“One of them does now, sweetheart. That would be you.”
I watched as he pushed aside some overgrown ivy to reveal a security panel camouflaged into the doorframe. He pressed a few buttons, then pressed his thumb to the panel. Multiple locks clicked open.
“That’s… intense,” I said.
Ronan didn’t argue. “It is. But once you’re inside…” He pushed the door open. “It’s home.”
I followed him into the house. Mac set my luggage just inside the door before tipping his head at Ronan and stepping back out.
Then it was just us.
And I couldn’t speak at all.
Whatever I’d been expecting from Ronan Black’s home, it wasn’t this.
Even from her honeymoon, Megan had sent me everything she could find about Ronan and his family. There were pictures of him in a pristine penthouse, the kind that was all glass and angles, devoid of color, and mostly consisted of cavernous spaces designed to show wealth and nothing else.
This was the polar opposite.
It was a small space. Cramped even. The foyer—if you could even call it that—was roughly the size of a postage stamp, but a glimpse through into a living room and beyond that a small kitchen, told me it had the same ramshackle charm of the rest of the house, with the battered wood floors, slightly crooked windows, and scuffed millwork that bespoke a different time.
That, however, wasn’t what stole my voice.
It was the fact that every room I could see, from the foyer to the stairwell, to the kitchen, and even a bathroom down the hall, was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. And every one of those shelves was jam-packed to the gills.
Ronan Black didn’t live in a house. He lived in a freaking library.
“Jesus,” I breathed. “You didn’t even ask me to close my eyes first.”
“What?”
I turned to the door, where Ronan was still standing, watching me with an amused expression.
“You know, when Belle gets the library… actually, never mind.” I turned back to the house as Ronan flipped on the lights that illuminated even more shelves all the way down a narrow hall. “How many books do you have here?”
“You know, I’ve never counted. Probably at least three or four thousand. But I’d guess more.”
“Have you read them all?” I had a feeling I knew the answer, but I wanted him to say it, anyway.
“Of course. You think I’m so pretentious that I’d line my house with used books just to make myself feel smarter?”
I chuckled, but already I found myself wandering closer, if just to see what exactly he had read.
Gogol. Pushkin. Tolstoy.
“Have a thing for the Russians, do you?”
“They’re just to deter intruders. No one likes a nihilist.” He grabbed my hand. “Come on, Ari. I want to show you around.”
To my surprise, it didn’t take long. The main floor consisted of little more than a living room, a small kitchen that actually looked used, and an office that looked out onto the street through tinted windows.
Up a set of creaking pine stairs, he showed me one bedroom that was modest, if nicely furnished with slightly battered antiques that fit the slightly worn aesthetic of the home.
Every one of the rooms was equally full of books.
“You’ll like this one the best,” Ronan said as he brought me into a second bedroom.
“Why, because it’s yours?” I joked.
“Because it’s ours,” he corrected me. “And also because it’s where all our favorite stuff is, of course.” He pulled a book off a shelf. “I’ve been rereading Cicero’s speeches. Seemed appropriate, given the role I’m about to take on at the company. Got to learn to be a leader somehow.”
I took the book and flipped it open to find that it wasn’t a translation, as I’d expected. It was the original Latin, the margins lined with small, neat script that had to be Ronan’s writing. “You can read this?”
It was unusual, to say the least. I had studied Latin for several years through undergrad and college, and even now, I wouldn’t consider myself fluent. I could read several forms of Greek with ease, but Latin was never my strong suit.
“Latin, yeah. French and Italian, too. My ancient Greek is so so, but I’m working on it.” He took the book back, placing it carefully on the shelf. “I told you I was a Classics geek like you, Ari.”
“I know, but I didn’t expect…” I looked around the room again. “I didn’t expect this. You’re probably more well-read than I am, and I’m ABD. Hell, you’re probably more well-read than most professors.”
For the first time, Ronan looked bashful as he shrugged away the compliment. “It’s just reading. I don’t do anything about it. I can’t. I never could.”
For the first time, it occurred to me that Ronan’s life wasn’t all easy parties, fast women, free jets, and money everywhere.
There was clearly a lot of pressure to be a member of his family.
A road had been set out for him from the time he was born, but I was starting to wonder if it was less a path and more of a gilded cage.
I reached out to take his hand again and squeezed. “Thank you for showing me this.”
Again, that bashful shrug appeared. He couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “You’re my wife. I want you here. Plus, you deserve to know who you actually married.”
My wife.
“I married a secret scholar. I like it.”
“Don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin my reputation.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He laughed too, and it made my entire body warm.
It also made me very conscious of the fact that I was standing in front of a plush, available bed next to a very attractive man whom I had been dreaming about kissing for two solid weeks. And that my mind had been filled, via that contract, with every possible thing we could do together.