“A girlfriend is leaving the country. She was here on a work visa and is heading home. I won’t see her for a long time so we’re going out to dinner. She needs to come back to my house after. I’ve got things I’ve been storing for her. She might stay and just talk for a while.” She answered without hesitation. “After, I’m going to be taking a very long, hot bath. It’s been a long week.”
“I apologize. That was juvenile of me.” Absinthe rubbed the bridge of his nose. She had mixed truth with a lie. And she was—not nervous. Leery. But of what? Was she afraid he might find out who her friend really was? A man instead of a woman? If he—or she—was leaving the country, that wouldn’t make sense. She genuinely wanted to see Absinthe again, he could tell that much was genuine. “I’m showing you a side of me I’ve never seen before. I hate that I’m thrown off a little by the way I feel about you.”
She gathered books together and put them onto a cart, barely glancing at the titles, but seeming to put them in order by memory alone. “Since we’re making fools of ourselves, you could tell me who that really gorgeous woman is, because it was very obvious that you know her, and you weren’t all that happy to see her.”
He sighed. “I made the mistake of telling her about you. Lana and I grew up together. You could say she’s a sister to me. Alena, the one I told you about that is such an amazing chef, grew up with me as well. They were excited when I said I met someone special. I didn’t realize I’ve never done that before, told them about a woman I met. Lana was curious. I wasn’t happy that she came in to spy on you.”
He could see that Scarlet was pleased. “I told her I was going to ask you out tonight but if you said no, I’d take her to dinner and give her a lecture about spying.”
“I’d like to meet her.”
He made a face. “Don’t encourage her bad behavior.”
“You’re taking her out to dinner,” she pointed out. “That might be considered encouraging bad behavior.”
He found himself smiling again. He’d been twisted up in knots because he wasn’t going to get to see her and he knew something was a little off with what she was telling him, but somehow, everything else she said was the truth. She was willing to go out with him the following day on a picnic and she wanted to meet Lana.
“That might be so,” he conceded. “I hadn’t thought of that. Lana and Alena always get their way. Too many brothers.” Shit. Another mistake. He immediately covered it. “I’ll be picking you up early tomorrow,” he warned.
She groaned. “I’m not a morning person. And it’s bound to be cool on a motorcycle in the morning. Come at eleven. If you’re coming from Fort Bragg or Sea Haven …”
“Caspar,” he reminded. He shouldn’t have. It was getting around that Torpedo Ink had bought quite a lot of property in Caspar and had started a few businesses there. Still, he didn’t want to lie to her. He’d already committed the sin of omission and that was as far as he was going to go. He should have told her he was in a club and that club was important to him.
“Caspar. Right. It’s still a long way and you’ll have to get up very early to make it over here by eleven.” She suddenly stopped sorting books and regarded him with mock suspicion. “You’re not a morning person, are you? Like get up at five-thirty, exercise and be all chipper?”
“Chipper?” he echoed. “The librarian uses a word like chipper?”
“It’s a perfectly good word.” She used her snippiest voice. “It means cheerful and lively.”
“I’m well aware what it means, I just thought it was a dated word.”
Her eyebrow shot up. “There aren’t any dated words. They’re all perfectly good if they’re used properly.”
Absinthe found himself wanting to laugh. He couldn’t remember a time when laughter was part of his life. This woman with her cute square glasses—they were purple today, he figured to match the swing skirt she wore. It flowed around her legs and showed them off to perfection. A different look from her tight pencil skirt. He wasn’t certain which one he preferred. This one was flirty and fun. The other was all business and sexy as hell.
The tight prim-and-proper skirt put all sorts of dirty thoughts in his head. He had too many fantasies of bending her over her desk and doing all sorts of wicked things to her. This skirt had him wanting to pick her up, sit her on that desk, scatter those books everywhere, and shove the skirt to her waist, yanking down her panties and devouring her right there. That made him wonder how she would taste.