Cole lifted his shoulders. "Can't do anything about the watching. It's a free country."

"Right. You've ignored me for as long as I've been here. Why the sudden interest?"

She was d.a.m.n delusional if she thought any part of his interest was sudden. It had been brewing so long now it was going to explode at any second. His c.o.c.k was permanently hard. Harder than ever before. And that was just from looking at her and imagining how it was going to feel to spread her legs open and plunge into her b.a.l.l.s-deep. He didn't want to think what was going to happen during the actual deeds; he might explode into a thousand pieces.

"I didn't ignore you. I've been waiting." For his mind to reboot, mainly. Before she could question him any further, he lunged forward. "So what do you say? Are you game for going out tonight?"

"No, thanks."

Her words caught him by surprise, especially since her eyes said otherwise. "What do you mean 'no, thanks'?"

"Just not interested," she blatantly lied. Women were as much of a mystery to him as to the next poor f.u.c.ker, but he'd learned some things in his years around females. She was many things; "not interested" was not one of them.

"Are you positive? Because the other day I got another impression." He hadn't caught their conversation, but she'd thrown the ring away and she sure as h.e.l.l had seemed ready to get on with her life. With her s.e.x life, at least.

Something clicked in her head, for her sweet brown eyes darkened almost to black, and her gaze turned hard. "Ah, I get it now. How stupid of me not to realize this before. This is about s.e.x. Let's cut to the chase here; what you're really asking is if I'd be game to jump into bed with you, right?"

Her smile was so strained his neck p.r.i.c.kled. He should tread with care. This was a trick question if there ever was one. "Well, I wouldn't be opposed to that either. We're both consenting adults. No reason why we shouldn't enjoy..."

One second she was dangerously still. The next she was fuming.

She gripped extra hard on the knife and fork.

"Perfect," she mumbled to herself while energetically stabbing the poor baked potato to death. "Just perfect." She recklessly pointed the knife at him. "You didn't lose any time jumping the gun, did you? Just out of curiosity, do you already have a tariff in mind? Do I get a certain discount for being so pathetically desperate? Or is it the other way around? The worse the case, the bigger the bucks? Or am I just a charity f.u.c.k?"

What the h.e.l.l? "What tariffs are you talking about?"

"You're asking me out in hopes of getting laid," she said through clenched teeth.

"No, not just that." If her murderous glare was anything to go by, that was a wrong answer. Yep, definitely not the smoothest guy around. But f.u.c.k it, he'd never been gun-shy when it came to talking s.e.x. He was very up-front about his intentions, about what he had to offer and what he didn't. That was not about to change now.

"The opportunistic pig heard me the other day, and now he thinks I'm easy. And desperate. Just perfect!"

"I don't-"

"I hope you had the decency to keep quiet, or should I expect more propositions from other parties?"

"What? No. Of course not." Easy and desperate? Propositions from other parties? "What are you talking about?"

"Or you thought first come, first served, huh? Or maybe it's a bet." She suddenly stopped as if something had dawned on her. "Oh, wait, this is a prank, right?" she asked, turning her head and looking around. "Where's the camera?"

Camera? f.u.c.k, this whole conversation was getting out of hand. He wasn't sure what he'd done or what exactly they were talking about, but he was f.u.c.king it up. He'd missed a right turn somewhere, and now they were heading toward a wall.

"You're making no sense, sweet thing."

"Don't 'sweet thing' me," she retorted. "You heard all that stud-for-hire talk, and surprise, surprise, here you are, ready to do humanity a favor, sure I'll open my legs for you at the word go."

Cole's jaw went slack. A stud for hire? What the h.e.l.l?

"Listen, Christy..."

She wasn't listening to him, and her voice was rising. "Let me tell you something, Mister... Mister...Hot Pants. Despite whatever conclusions you've drawn about me, I'm-"

"Let's rewind here." He cut off her rambling. Man, asking Christy out was so not going how he'd envisioned it. "Why don't you tell me what you think I heard? So we're sure we're on the same wavelength." Because at the moment, she was in short-range FM and he was in deep-s.p.a.ce transmission for all the sense their conversation was making.

She blushed. "What? Do you get your kicks from hearing me say again that my s.e.x life has sucked big-time up until now? That I don't want to date, that what I want is to get properly laid? That I'll hire an escort and be done with it?"

Wow. She was going to hire a professional escort to get laid? Sure, like that was going to happen anytime soon. Over his h.o.r.n.y dead body.

He felt his anger rising even more. "So why the f.u.c.k are you giving me s.h.i.t for asking you out? For suggesting we could have some fun together?" Women were so f.u.c.king contradictory.

"Why the f.u.c.k am I giving you s.h.i.t?" she repeated, looking incredulously at him. "I can't believe this!"

Neither could he.

He'd known giving in to his c.o.c.k where this girl was concerned was nothing but trouble.

The atmosphere was quite loud in the diner, but some heads had begun to turn and direct their questioning glances toward them. He didn't care a d.a.m.n bit about being proper, but this was definitely not the place to have this conversation. He flagged Penny.

"I see. Thanks for cluing me in to your plans. Now let me clue you in on mine." He turned to Penny. "Please make my lunch takeout. Hers too," he added, handing her Christy's plate before Christy could protest. "Or what, do you really want to continue this conversation here?" he asked pointedly, looking around at all the curious faces staring at them. Christy blanched. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Let's sit in the park to eat."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she said while standing up, her voice low and hard. "I'm going back to work."

"As you wish. But this conversation isn't finished. I just thought you'd prefer some privacy. If you insist, though, we can have it at work with all my men hovering. It's entirely up to you." Hopefully she wouldn't call his bluff, because he'd have a riot on his hands if his men heard about this stud-for-hire nonsense.

She was furious now, her expression thunderous.

"Jeez, how magnanimous of you! I'm not having this conversation, you arrogant p.r.i.c.k! Not here, not anywhere!"

Cole moved to stop her from bolting, but before he could grab her, he crashed into the waitress, sending a couple of plates falling to the floor. He could do nothing but watch Christy disappear through the door.

He'd butchered the whole thing. Total roadkill.

He was losing his touch. Months dreaming about losing himself in her and f.u.c.king that luscious body ten different ways until Sunday, and he'd blown it at the preliminary. Way to go. Maybe he should start getting pointers from Max. Wouldn't that be a ball?

As he helped the waitress, a glint coming from the table caught his eye. He looked down.

Fantastic. He was stuck with the ring...again.

Chapter Three.

Cole couldn't believe his eyes. What the h.e.l.l was Christy doing teetering on top of that shaky, old ladder, alone in the library's bas.e.m.e.nt at frigging ten p.m.?

He hadn't seen her the whole day after her stormy departure from the diner. He figured she was too p.i.s.sed to come back to work, yet here the AWOL librarian was, pointing the feeble light of her cell at the tags on the boxes on the upper shelves and cursing like a sailor.

Cole clenched his teeth as she went on tiptoes on the rickety-a.s.s ladder, opened the box on her far left, and, aided by the cell light, tried to take a peek inside. He shook his head. She should have brought a proper flashlight. Scratch that. Taking into consideration the s.h.i.tty old lamps in here, a floodlight would have been better.

Christy took the pencil from between her teeth, and after viciously scratching out whatever was written on the box, retagged it and closed it. Then she climbed down, yanked the ladder to her left, and stomped up again, talking to herself all the time, pencil and cell in hand. Jesus, she was going to break her neck-at the very least-while alone in the bas.e.m.e.nt in the middle of the night. Very clever, Christy.

And speaking of clever, what the h.e.l.l was he doing here? Itching for round two? Mental.

Looking at her, he wondered if she was still p.i.s.sed at him. Her body language was jerky and she was grumbling, but maybe all that was due to whatever had her down here, head and arms deep in those boxes. As he considered that possibility, she suddenly muttered a profanity and something much resembling his name while repeatedly banging her head on the box in front of her. Yep, p.i.s.sed still. At him. For whatever he might have done, which he wasn't clear on yet.

Finished with the banging, Christy tried to reach the box on her far right. As she precariously perched on the top rung, the ancient ladder toppled. She dropped all the s.h.i.t she was holding and tried to grab on to the shelf, but it was too late and, arms flailing, she went down.

f.u.c.k.

He rushed toward her.

"This is starting to become a habit," Cole said as she landed in his arms. Not that he was complaining. After the last month of having her within his reach but being unable to touch her, any chance he got to have his hands on her was welcome.

At his words, she stiffened and sucked in her breath.

"s.h.i.t!" she cursed, scrambling away from him as fast as she could.

"You shouldn't be here all by yourself," Cole told her. "Are you all right?"

She ignored his question and glared at him. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here? Haven't you embarra.s.sed me enough for one day?"

He couldn't contain his snort. "What am I doing here? Saving your neck apparently...again."

Christy clenched her cute little fists. She looked like she was going to slug him but decided against it. She'd better. She'd probably hurt herself more than him.

"I had everything under control," she stated.

He tried very hard not to sound condescending but failed miserably. "Yeah, sure. When would that had been, before or after hitting the floor, sweetheart?"

She opened her mouth belligerently, and he sighed in surrender. Egging her on wasn't a sound tactic.

"I saw you sneaking in here while I was in the diner getting some coffee, okay? I thought I'd come to sort things out." Her glare didn't relent. "To apologize?" he tried again with an appeasing tone. That he had no frigging clue what he should be apologizing for was probably written all over his face, because she looked even more belligerent. He so wasn't in the mood for this.

Before she could begin sputtering G.o.d only knew what, he interrupted. "Please, can we bury the hatchet? Just temporarily? I brought some drinks as a peace offering," he said, lifting two beers and a couple of cans of diet soda. "Please?"

She studied him for a long second, lips pursed as if ready to pick a fight, but then she threw her arms up. "Okay, why the h.e.l.l not? I may as well go along and keep my mouth shut. Besides, this"-she waved between her and him and shook her head in dismay-"is just too humiliating for words." And she sat down on the crate by her side. Good, because her legs were trembling-from the near miss with the concrete floor or from being p.i.s.sed, he didn't know. Whatever the reason, he was glad for the reprieve.

Cole sat near her and handed her a can. "Diet soda for you, right?"

She looked at him, surprised. "How do you-"

He chuckled softly. "How could I not know, baby? You drink huge amounts of diet soda."

"I do," she admitted, turning red, her lips tilting into a slow smile that he felt all over himself, like a soft, loving caress over his hard, needy, weary body.

"And you chew gum all the time. And eat cherry lollipops. Actually I have those too," he added, reaching into his pocket and leaving two lollipops, her favorite brand, on the crate. Sugar-free lollipops. Who would have guessed such an oxymoron existed? "These were my backup plan in case I couldn't tempt you with the soda."

"I see you prepare for all contingencies."

"Yep, winging it isn't my style. So," he continued, quickly glancing around, "what are you doing here?"

A sigh escaped her throat, blowing at her bangs. She looked...disheveled. Lovely disheveled, with her beautiful dark hair in disarray and smears of dust on her face.

"Penance, apparently, for whatever huge sins I've committed."

"What?"

She waved her hand around at the bas.e.m.e.nt. "I'm cataloging frigging boxes. This, let me tell you, is a screwed-up system to store books. Rows and rows of shelves full of boxes. No indexes anywhere. No order, no logic. All this is Mrs. Wilkinson's doing. Of course she doesn't need annoying, pesky little things like legible tags or indexes. That would be too d.a.m.ned easy. Besides, she probably knows where every single book is. She could probably pinpoint its location in the blink of an eye. By smell alone."

Cole laughed. That pretty much described Mrs. Wilkinson.

His eyes focused on the boxes. "So the tags..."

"Decoy. Mrs. Wilkinson used a code I haven't been able to crack yet. I'll probably need the Enigma machine for that. It's not stenography, not Morse code. Not Sanskrit. I frigging checked."

He smiled. "Tough cookie, Mrs. Wilkinson."

"Tell me about it. This is turning out to be a h.e.l.luva lot more work than what I'd antic.i.p.ated at the beginning," she said, looking around desperately. "I can't wait to be done with this low-tech part of the operation so I can concentrate on unpacking the computers we already got delivered and get them up and running. And I want to get cracking at installing the library's new operating system and setting up the digital platform needed for the electronic collection."

"We're getting digital collections?" Mrs. Wilkinson hadn't even liked computers. The only computer on the premises had been a first-generation, humongous specimen, the kind that worked with a lever.

"You are now. And e-readers too. I convinced the board of trustees this place needed more than a layer of paint and new furniture to enter the twenty-first century, so I got more funding. Anyhow, before I get to the fun part, first I have to deal with the basic nitty-gritty librarian task of managing the actual books...if I can find them, that is.

"I should forget the whole adventure. Ask the guys to bring all the boxes upstairs when the entire floor is clear, open them up, and have a free-for-all."

"Or you could have asked my men to come to catalog the boxes."

She shrugged. "I didn't expect this mess when I came down here."

Sure, that plus the fact that none of his men were around because it was the middle of the f.u.c.king night.

Which brought him to his next question, never mind how rhetorical it was. "Why are you working this late?"

She gave him the evil eye. "Your fault. And my p.r.i.c.kly conscience's, which wouldn't allow me to stay at home."

He sighed. Time for damage control.

"Listen, about this morning. I'm very sorry we got off on the wrong foot." She opened her mouth, but he forestalled her. "No, wait, listen to me. You may not believe it, but I can a.s.sure you I didn't factor any of that stud-for-hire s.h.i.t into asking you out."

She gave him a deadpan stare, and he pushed on. "Last Friday I only saw a beautiful woman getting rid of her engagement ring and vowing to the skies she was getting on with her life. Nothing else, I swear. I never meant to imply anything or insult you. h.e.l.l, I didn't understand half the conversation we had at the diner. Cameras? Pranks? You didn't make sense. Please, can we start over?"

She studied him for a long moment, mistrust still marring her expressive eyes. "Start over as in wipe the slate clean, draw a thick veil over it?" He said nothing, and she nodded. "I like that. We'll just put that embarra.s.sing episode behind us and act as if it never happened."