SEVEN
Reese
Cyrus could go eff himself.
Oh yeah, I said it.
Okay, so I didn't technically say it.
But I thought it.
With emphasis.
And bold lettering and all caps.
It was a complete one-eighty from where I had been last night. I had gone to bed after a long, unhappy, non-calming bath. I tossed and turned. I woke up in the middle of the night with an oppressive weight on my chest that I couldn't call anything other than genuine unhappiness.
That, well, it sent me walking right down to The Creamery as soon as Daya opened up the next morning.
"This is early for you," she said immediately as the door closed behind me.
"I hate him," I declared, hoping for firm, and failing miserably.
"Of course you do, Ree," she said with a soft, sisterly smile. "Of course you do. What happened?" she asked as she scooped my usual order.
So then I told her, the words bursting out almost uncontrollably, feeling so good to be able to speak them to someone, to purge it all.
"Maybe he has like a micro-cock," Daya suggested as I put a scoop into my mouth, making me choke hard as she smirked at me. "Just kidding. He's got a third leg; I'd bet my life on it. I'm sorry you lost your new buddy, Ree. Seriously. You guys were the cutest 'just friends' that I have ever seen. But, yes, 'fuck him' is the mindset you should be in. Look, I know you're in here all the time. But we are usually just both lost in our own separate worlds and don't talk. But I know you enough to know you're a catch. This is his loss. Truly."
I maybe wasn't going to go that far, but I could definitely get behind the being mad at him idea. If for no other reason, but that I was tired of feeling mopey.
See?
This was why I didn't come out of my books.
I liked the fictional realm of emotions.
Especially in a genre like romance where you knew that no matter what your hero and heroine go through, what wicked twists of fate, or extreme uphill battle, they will always end up happy.
Life wasn't like that.
It didn't matter how interesting a heroine you were, how hot, or sweet-talking your hero was, how well you got along.
Sometimes life simply didn't work out.
Sometimes you felt things.
Sometimes you hoped for things.
And then... nothing.
Sometimes life was like the long, boring ride up on a rollercoaster without the free fall, belly-dropping excitement of tipping over and flying back down.
Which was part of the reason I didn't come out of my castles and highlands and cowboy ranches.
Life was better on the page.
The sooner I got back to that, the better.
"Okay, so, I know you're in scorned-woman mode, but, um," Daya said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
Daya, well, she didn't mumble and fumble and trail off her sentences. As a whole, she had a seemingly unshakable confidence I admired.
"But what?" I prompted when she didn't finish.
"I have them," she offered, not quite making eye-contact.
"Have what?" I asked, watching as she reached under the counter to pull out a manilla folder full of a good four-hundred sheets of paper. "The pages?" I nearly shrieked, beyond excited instantly.
See, a while back, after I noticed for the umpteenth time that Daya was writing what seemed to be a story, I asked her what she liked to write. When she came back with 'erotica,' well, I had to ask and offer.
Ask if she wanted some feedback, and offer to help her with some publishing resources if she decided to go that route.
Apparently, Daya, the woman who had worked behind that counter pretty much since it opened, had been writing erotic fan fiction online for years.
After a little subtle encouragement from me to maybe consider writing something full-length, she apparently had.
That, well, it was beyond cool.
See, I'm a reader. I love books. I love the smell, the covers, the fonts, the page decor, the author pictures, the dedications. And, of course, the stories.
But I knew I wasn't a writer.
That being said, I still envied that ability. To create worlds. To suck people into them.
And I had never actually been able to be close with a writer before. I hadn't read a word of her work, and I was already fangirling so hard.
"Yep. The pages. Don't get too excited," she said, keeping her hand on the stack even as she pushed it toward me like she was struggling with letting it go. "I can't promise it's any good."
"You told me that you have like five-thousand followers on your story blog. You don't get that many followers by being a crummy writer, Daya."
"But I've only ever written short, smutty stories, not a full-length love story."
"Hey, worst case, it needs some revamping here and there. But at least you will hear that from me, not some agent or publisher or mean-hearted reviewers. If there are any issues, we can work out the kinks together."
Her breath exhaled on a relieved sound, her shoulders relaxing, her smile going a little less forced.
"One thing."
"Anything," I said as I picked up the folder. Okay, so maybe I hugged it to my chest a little. Shut up. It's totally normal.
"Don't read it here in front of me."
I smiled at that, the first real smile I had felt in a while. "Deal."
That night, I went home, excited for a romance for the first time in a long while, finding myself staying up until three AM, devouring every last word of Daya's book.
It needed some kickass formatting, a quick line edit, and a cool cover, but it was good.
It was really good.
I intended to tell her exactly that as soon as I got out of work the next day.
--
"What's going on?" I asked, walking into the library the next day to find the other two librarians as well as two volunteers standing around the circulation desk, having a whispered, but animated conversation, arms flying, faces contorted.
Quite frankly, I wasn't in the mood to put up with some trumped-up drama. Like the time they threw a fit because someone wrote a naughty haiku in the bathroom stall.
Heck, I praised the effort.
It wasn't bad!
But I worked with much older ladies who had more - ah - delicate sensibilities than I was inflicted with.
Different strokes for different folks, as my grandmother would say.
It was simply that I was in the minority at the library. Which made sense because, well, nobody went into a field as unsteady as library sciences anymore. Unless, you know, you want to get paid pennies to be around old, musty books all day.
Which I did.
But anytime I suggested we do something more progressive to bring people back in again, like a poetry night for teens, or a simultaneous book club for moms of under school-age children where the kids would go do a craft with Marcy, the librarian in the children's section, and the moms would go with me to talk books, well, they shot it down.
No moms read anymore, Reese, I would be told by one.
I don't want to be stuck, alone, with a bunch of misbehaved brats. Kids these days don't have any discipline. That, incredibly, came from the children's librarian.
It was a bit draining to try to keep a dinosaur from dying out when they were just patiently waiting for the meteor to hit.
"Oh, Reese, finally," Barb said, shaking her head at me like I was late. I was five minutes early.
Again, I thanked the fact that three days of the week, I worked the afternoon and evening shift. Alone. With just the volunteers. That was maybe the only thing that kept me sane the other two or three day shifts I worked. Well, that and the idea of 'retirement.' Not for me, for my coworkers.
We all have dreams, right?
"What are you all talking about?"
"We got a donation this morning," she announced, face pinched. To be fair, it might have always been pinched. Whether that was from her pinching it up all the time that, as the childhood adage went, it stuck, or just how she was born, was impossible to tell.
"Oh, great!" I chimed, brightening slightly.
Donations were few and far between these days, making the budget tight. No one thought to give to the local library anymore. Unless cleaning out their bookshelves, and dropping old, damaged, outdated, useless books counted.
It didn't.
And I understood. Especially since the women's shelter opened. Talk about a worthy cause.
We did get a trickling in from older residents of the town who didn't want to see the library disappear in the digital age. But it was usually only, at best, a thousand dollars.
Still, it was generous.
And it helped.
"No, Reese. We got a donation," she went on, looking at me like I was an idiot for not realizing that when she said it the first time, she meant a sizable one.
We never got sizable ones.
"Really? How much? From whom?" I asked, moving behind my desk to stash my purse under it.
"Eighty-thousand dollars," she declared from the other side of the desk.
"What?" I gasped, head shooting up.
My first thought was not the nicest. I figured someone must have died. You know, because who else had that kind of liquid income to give to the local library?
"Yes, right there," she declared, pointing behind me toward a box sitting behind the desk in a corner, one I figured for a shipment of books.
"Wait... in cash? We got an eighty-thousand dollar donation in cash this morning?" I gasped.
"Waiting right outside the door like it was no big thing when I got here," Marcy piped in. Her dislike of children - and obvious misjudgment in career choices - aside, Marcy wasn't my least favorite co-worker. She was the second closest to my age, next to the other night shift girl, at thirty-seven, childless, husbandless, but with a cat collection that made any seventy-year-old spinster jealous. She was short, heavyset, with a pretty face, shiny brown hair, and bright blue eyes.
I was trying to process that, trying to understand how careless one had to be to leave a box of cash outside a library unprotected, when a note slammed down on my desk.
Startled, I jumped back, my head shooting up to see Barb looking at me disapprovingly. Which, well, was her default look when it came to me, so I didn't think much of it.
"What's this?"
"The note that was inside the box," she offered, tone glacial. "Read it," she demanded.
To the Navesink Bank Public Library,
Please accept this donation of eighty-thousand dollars to build the long sought-after teen center.
- Anonymous
The teen center was my dream.
And only mine.
See, we had a lovely library. Five years running, it was named the best in the state. There had been a grant seven years before which allowed them to completely renovate the space. The children's wing had new carpets, bookshelves, tables, puzzles, computers, a craft room, and a reading nook that had floor-to-ceiling windows. The main part of the library got new beige tile in the lobby, then swirled brown and beige carpets throughout the stacks, new shelves, new modern desks with plug-ins for chargers and even HDMI ports, new computers, a huge new collection of DVDs, books, and another matching reading nook, albeit a bit smaller. But after the landscaping, and paving, and the new roof, and the bathroom renovations, there had simply been no money to put in a proper teen room.
I see no reason why they need their own room, Barb had said when I brought up the idea at a budget meeting. They have shelves in the back behind travel.
Her argument won, of course, because a budget meeting was generally to decide how to cut back instead of genuinely make improvements, so I shelved the idea, even though it was a burning desire of mine.
Teens needed a room.
Teens in Navesink Bank, especially, needed a room. They needed a place where they could go to stay off the streets, away from the bad influences, where they were safe, and could talk with peers without getting shushed by the adults.
I had even, in my excitement over the idea, had Paine and Kenzi draw me up the plans, converting an old, outdated section we used for unusable things such as encyclopedias into said teen room. I wanted it closed in, but with all glass, so we could easily keep an eye on things. I wanted their own shelves full of new and relevant titles. I wanted a separate computer lab. And I wanted a comfortable seating section. And I wanted it to not look like some sixty-year-old who hadn't gone to design school in forty years (ugh, don't get me started on the choices of wall art in the main area of the library) designed it. I wanted it fresh and inviting so local teens would feel comfortable there.
But I had long-since given up hope of getting that dream.
Even if I got a genuine pang anytime a teen came up and asked me if we had the newest dystopian, and I had to tell them no, even though we did, incredibly, have six copies of the newest Grisham.
"There is also this," Barb went on, even though my head was spinning a bit too much already. She slammed down a document on top of the letter. "Which legally binds us to, if we accept the money, use it to build the teen center. If a penny goes to anything else, we could be sued."
It was like Christmas, my birthday, and every single book-mail day all rolled into one.
Because, until I saw that, I knew, I just knew that the rest of my coworkers would gang up, and find a way to use the money without giving me my dream.
Now they couldn't.
I was getting my teen center.
"Who have you been talking to, Reese?" she snapped, eyes shooting daggers at me, but, for once, it didn't even bother me.
Talking to?
Well, I mean, my whole family knew.
My mom, aunts, grandmother, and sister were doing alright in life, but could never afford eighty-grand. Not even if they all chipped in. My brothers, too, had nice lives going, but it was unlikely. My sister-in-law, Elsie, well, she made an obscene amount of money, but she had other things on her mind right then. No way was she giving me the teen center I had talked about a year before.
So that was everyone.
Right?
I hadn't talked about it since then except to... oh.
Oh.
My.
God.
That wasn't possible, right?
After five weeks of radio silence?
After screwing with my feelings more than anyone had been able to in more years than I could remember?
Why?
More specifically, why now?
Was this his form of an apology?
Because, honestly, it wasn't an apology.
It was generous.
It was over-the-top and heart-soaringly awesome.
But it wasn't exactly those words one needed for it to be considered an apology.
Plus, he didn't sign it.
Not even with an initial.
He was anonymous?
Why?
Because, maybe, he felt crummy, but wasn't man enough to show up and say sorry for being a butthead?
I didn't have the answers to any of those questions, but that didn't stop me from rolling them around my head in a never-ending loop for the rest of my workday, making me a bit more absent-minded and jumpy than usual. I actually got shushed by a group of elderly ladies when I had been re-shelving books, and one of the volunteers came up behind me, tapping me on the shoulder, and making me let out an actual, real-life, screech.
It was humiliating.
By the time the end of day rolled around, I was more than sick of my own head, more than frustrated by the endless complaining about how the money would have been better spent elsewhere, and all-together just ready to soak in a bath with about five different bombs, and fall into a good book.
Maybe something suspenseful, something that would keep me engaged, keep me flipping pages until my eyes were too tired to stay open.
Maybe sleep could claim me and put an end to all the winding circles.
"I'm just saying," Barb said as she followed me out into the parking lot. Because heaven forbid I get some peace. "Try to get to the bottom of who sent the money, and get them to change their minds about where it is going."
"I will..."
"Do no such fucking thing," a voice filled in for me, making me stop dead in the middle of the lot, my head shooting in the direction it came from. Which happened to be the side of my car.
Where he was leaning.
Like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Like he hadn't disappeared for over a month.
Like we were still the best of friends.
God, he looked good too.
I mean, he always looked good. It was impossible for him to have a bad day, an off day. Never once had I seen him and thought 'oh, buddy, you need more beauty sleep.'
But maybe, as the saying went, he was a sight for sore eyes. He was the beauty of rain to a farmer in a drought. He was like the swelling sensation you got inside when you put a smile on the face of the person you lov... liked. Platonically. As a friend.
His look was usually the same - dark jeans, white tee, leather cut, boots, full, but neat beard, longish hair, amazing bone structure, a smile to kill for...
Good lord.
I needed to get a grip.
"Excuse me?" Barb asked, clearly put off.
"She will not be going to the person who donated the money - that person is incidentally me," he announced. "She will also not be convincing me of shit. That money is to be used for the teen center that Reese has been wanting since she started here. You don't like that, duchess," he went on, and I would swear, you could see the woman bristle at the word, "then tough shit. I will happily go over your head about it if I need to."
"I don't know who you..."
"I mean, we got a concerned community here in Navesink Bank," he added with a smirk as he pushed off of my car, and started walking to the side. "Lots of concerned parents trying to keep their kids out of the street gangs, the mob, and, well, the one-percent bikers," he concluded, smile wicked, as he moved over to put a palm on the handlebars of his bike that was parked two spots over from mine.
It sounded like a threat.
It was even meant as one.
But I knew, because I knew him, that it wasn't actually one. He was just trying to get his way without having to go over her head, without having to involve town committees and local politicians. Because, well, he and I both knew that the eighty-grand sure as heck didn't come from the tips he made at She's Bean Around on Saturday nights.
That was arms-dealing money.
And he would have a hard time explaining its origins if people started asking.
Barb, unable, she knew, to snap at an outlaw biker, jerked her head to me, chin raising, nose - as it often did - going up in the air. "Interesting company you keep, Miss Washington," she clucked, then turned on her barely-there heel, and stormed away to the other side of the lot where her own car was parked.
"She been giving you shit all day?" Cyrus asked, drawing my attention away from Barb's disappearing headlights - taking with her the only distraction I had from the upcoming confrontation with Cyrus.
And it had to be a confrontation.
There was no way around that, right?
You couldn't just run off, be a jerk for a month, then make a big gesture, and have everything go on like the former things never happened.
If there was one thing my mother had always drilled into me when I was younger - perhaps worried that my shyness, my timidity, my tendency to keep to myself, and allow those around me to do their own thing, would make me susceptible to being walked all over - it was that you teach people how to treat you. If you let something that upset you go without comment, you were inviting the behavior again. And again. And again. And you had no one to blame but yourself.
So if I wanted Cyrus to know that just disappearing without a word was not only hurtful, but unacceptable, I was going to have to do the unthinkable.
I was going to have to say something about it.
That was, well, as you can guess, not my strong suit.
Confrontation was simply not my thing.
Confrontation was Kenzi's thing.
In fact, when the DNA gods were handing out the confrontation genes, I was pretty sure they got jostled, and the whole can of it fell into Kenzi's pool, leaving none leftover for me.
Sure, once in a blue moon, when she was being especially difficult at the preparation of Sunday dinners, I maybe got in her face a little. But she was my sister. We had a lifetime of putting up with each other.
It was completely different.
And maybe you're wondering how I got to the ripe old age I was without having confrontations with a guy.
Well, my brothers treated me like spun gold. We never argued.
And with the boyfriends I had had, few and far between as they were, it had never seemed to get passionate enough, invested enough for either of us to start needing to fight over anything. Things just fizzled out, and eventually I kind of just said something about how they didn't seem happy, which was a roundabout way of saying I wasn't either, and it always led to an amicable end to the relationship.
But it would have likely been easier with my brothers or boyfriends than it was going to be with Cy.
Cy who was not my brother.
Cy who was not my boyfriend, but for whom I had decidedly boyfriend-like feelings for, who I didn't necessarily want to know I had such feelings for, but whom I wanted to know that doing the fair-weather friend thing to me wasn't going to fly, no matter what capacity he was in my life.
In or out.
No in between.
That was only fair, right?
"I know I'm a sexy motherfucker, Ree," his voice said, tone teasing, "but how long are you planning on staring at me?"
"I wasn't staring at you," I immediately denied. Though I totally had been. "I was thinking."
"About me?" he asked, head tipping to the side, watching me with eyes that were oddly unreadable for someone who had always been rather open with me.
Here goes. Ready or not.
"In a way," I agreed, nodding a bit, moving out of the street, but not exactly toward him either.
"Okay," he said, moving to lean his butt on the seat of his bike. "In what way?"
"That wasn't an apology," I blurted, closing my eyes at my words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
That wasn't the way to go about it, right? When you were having a discussion, it was supposed to be 'I' and 'me' words along with feelings.
I felt like my heart took a beating when you left my life.
I wanted that kiss.
That hurt me.
"What wasn't an apology?"
"The money. That money wasn't an apology."
"I know," he agreed.
"You... know?" I sputtered, shaking my head.
"It wasn't meant as an apology."
"What was it meant as then?"
"A... grand gesture," he announced with his trademark boyish smile, all charm, and it was impossible not to be at least a little impacted by it.
I snorted slightly. "I think eighty-thousand dollars would be considered grand," I agreed.
He deflated somewhat at that, shoulders going slack, smile falling. "It wasn't about the money. It was about you getting the teen center you wanted. Fuck the money."
He stood, moving closer to me.
And I did it.
It was knee-jerk.
I didn't even think about it.
I retreated.
And not just a foot or two.
I went back a good ten feet until the side of my car stopped any more retreating. If I hadn't bumped into it, I might have kept going. As pathetic as that was.
She startles like a mouse. I had overheard Tig say that about me once. It wasn't exactly wrong.
And Cy, well, he just kept coming.
He stopped only when his toes were almost touching mine; his body was hardly a hair away from mine. His hand raised slowly, and the flashback to the night in the library was enough to steal my air, to make my belly plummet in a way that was both exciting and terrifying, somehow at the same time.
Because, quite frankly, I couldn't take a round two.
I didn't have it in me.
Maybe that made me sound weak and pathetic, but so be it.
"This," he started as his other hand raised, and both moved up and out to frame my face, settling with a delicateness that a man his size shouldn't have been capable of, but it seemed to come as naturally as his smile, "is my apology," he went on, head ducking slightly, his seaglass eyes on mine. "I never should have just disappeared like that. It was a shitty move, and I know, whether you'd admit it to me or not, it hurt. And I don't think I've ever been sorrier for anything in my life than I am about that. I'm fucking sorry, angel."
The lump in my throat actually hurt. My eyes teared, and I had to drop my gaze toward his beard to avoid that being seen.
"It's okay."
"No," he objected, voice firm, but somehow soft at the same time as his fingers slipped under my jaw to put pressure, and force my head back up, "it's not," he finished as his gaze found mine. And, despite some frantic blinking, one of the traitorous tears slipped to slide down my cheek. His thumb moved out, stroking the wetness away. "This is all the proof I need to know that it wasn't okay."
Then, well, darn but... sweet things made me cry, okay?
It was something I generally managed to keep to myself, except for around family who purposefully bought the sappiest cards they could for me on holidays, just to make fun of the waterworks. And, so what, maybe I totally cried at the happy scenes in books too. But that was in private. No one knew about that.
I got to keep my sappy side to myself.
Until right then when the tears just started flowing.
"Aw, fuck," Cyrus said, voice low as his hands dropped my face, one dropping low, then wrapping tightly around my lower back, the other doing the same thing with my shoulders, pulling me forward, and crushing me into his chest.
We'd been friendly before, pushing at each other. He bumped my shoulders with his, his hips with mine; he'd dropped an arm down on my shoulders, making my body crunch down a few inches under the weight.
But that was it.
For a man so comfortable with physical contact, evidenced by the way he hugged any woman he crossed whom he knew when we had been out together, he'd simply never given me anything even resembling a hug.
And this, well, it was the mother of all hugs.
His arms held me tightly enough to make breathing difficult, but that was fine, because I was pretty sure I stopped breathing the second my body hit his. My face was buried in his neck, his beard a soft, yet scratchy thing on the side of my face. His heartbeat was a steady, strong thing against my chest.
Then, well, it would be impossible not to notice some other things. Some not-so-friendlike things.
Like how my breasts were crushed to his firm chest. Like how his hips were aligned with mine. Like how the fingers on the arm across my lower back were almost touching my butt.
Like how if I raised my head, maybe, just maybe, he would drop his slightly. And seal his lips over mine.
The tears dried as a newer feeling took over the sentimentality. It was the jumping pulse points in my temples, throat, wrists, lower. It was the swelling of my breasts; it was the hardening of my nipples; it was the heavy weight on my lower stomach; it was the way my panties were getting wetter by the second.
His arm moved from my shoulder to allow his hand to start sliding comfortingly up and down my spine. Well, it was meant to be comfortingly, but for me, it was really just erotically.
Because I needed more logs on that fire.
"I know I'm not supposed to ask," he said, voice oddly deeper than it usually was. "But are you gonna forgive me?"
I felt my lips curl up slightly at that. "I'm thinking about it," I offered with a warm, swelling feeling in my chest.
"Yeah? Maybe want to think about it some more over a cup of coffee? Or you got a hot date to get to?" he asked, tone teasing, but I oddly felt myself stiffening both inside and out.
Because, maybe, just maybe, a part of me had still been thinking we'd be picking up where we left off. That maybe we were on the way to being more than friends. That the apology and donation were part of some big, grand, romantic gesture.
Like in my books.
But life, I kept finding out over and over and over again, was nothing like my books.
When was I going to just accept that and move on?
Apparently, not tonight.
And better sense was telling me that I had to get a rein on things - namely, my emotions - before they got out of hand again.
No more crushes on guys who wanted to be just friends.
"Can I raincheck on the coffee?" I asked, untangling from him even though every inch of me felt like it was reaching out for him.
I was proud of how strong my voice sounded.
It seemed that Cyrus was taken aback at the turn-down, his brows moving together, his shoulders stiffening. "Raincheck? Since when do you ever raincheck coffee? Especially after having to deal with Barb all day?"
He had come to know me too well. Which wasn't making this whole lying to him thing any easier.
"It's just that I, ah, I promised my aunt to help her with her resumé."
There.
It wasn't even a lie.
I totally did promise my aunt to help her with her resumé.
That weekend.
At Sunday dinner.
But he didn't need to know that.
There was no point in him knowing the truth, that I was going home to mentally beat myself up until I was too mentally and emotionally drained to stay awake one more minute.
"Bad timing, huh?" he asked, tone a bit guarded. "Alright, well, how about ice cream tomorrow afternoon?" he offered, knowing I was working the night shift the next day.
I knew there was no way to put it off again without him getting suspicious since he knew me well enough to know that I wasn't someone who kept a full social calendar.
"Yeah, that should work. Three?" I suggested, knowing I had to be at work by four-thirty, so it wouldn't leave time for me to get too wrapped up in Cy, as I was sure was bound to happen again if we spent too much time together.
Again, his brows lowered, but he nodded. "Alright. That works. I'll see you tomorrow then."
They were parting words, but he wasn't moving away.
"Um, are you..."
"Going to wait to make sure that piece of shit of yours turns over before I leave?" he asked, giving me a smile, but it didn't seem to meet his eyes. "I sure as fuck am."
"Oh, erm, okay. Yeah, see you later," I told him, offering him a wave. A wave. When he was like three feet in front of me. Would my awkwardness never cease?
That question was answered with a resounding no a second later when I unlocked my door, slid in, then promptly got my darn hair stuck in the door as I closed it.
Cheeks heating, I reopened the door slightly, hoping he didn't see what actually happened, that maybe it just didn't close properly the first time.
I turned over the car which, blissfully, didn't fight me for a change, then buckled up, offered him a small smile, and drove off.
I made it home on pure autopilot, not seeming to take in any of the sights, the roads, heck, even the traffic lights, until I was pulling into my spot, realizing I had been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn't even remembered to turn on my headlights.
Good going, Reese, I chided as I grabbed my keys and bag, then climbed out of the car.
I was slinging my purse over my shoulder when a voice interrupted me.
"Did I just see you in the library parking lot with a man's arms around you?" Kenzi asked, stepping out of the shadow cast by one of the trees flanking the path toward the front door. "A Henchmen's hands all over you?"
Oh, boy.
This was not good.
Suddenly, I wished I had taken Cyrus up on the offer for coffee. Even if it did mean falling just a little bit more in love with him.
Because Kenzi was closing in on me, perfectly groomed brow raised, chin set to stubborn.
She wasn't going to give in until she got all the dirty details.
I had some serious explaining to do.