The Bookworm's Guide to Dating (The Bookworm's Guide 1)

We were gonna need a bigger Band-Aid.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have that, but I did have absorbent gauze and medical tape. That would do for now.

It was more sanitary than paper towels, anyway, and I still needed these boxes moving.

“Trust you to cut yourself right before we’ve even got anything done,” I said, quickly replacing the paper towel with the pad. “Hold that there.”

“I didn’t mean to cut myself,” he replied. “It’s your fault for making me laugh.”

“I’ll remember to add ‘being funny’ as a toxic trait on my dating profiles,” I drawled, tearing off some of the tape. “Thank you for the information.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know, but you should feel bad for blaming me. You were the one laughing at something that wasn’t all that funny.” I finished wrapping his finger. “There. If you bleed through, tell me. Holley will murder you if you get blood on the books.”

“Is that how you’re going to take over the world?”

“I’ve already told you that I can’t tell you.”

“You’ll never take over the world. You’ve got to read one more chapter first.”

That was annoyingly correct. “Oh, shut up,” I muttered, gathering up the Band-Aids we didn’t need.

Josh pushed off the windowsill, bumping into me right as I turned. We both froze, and I stared a hole in his chest as I desperately tried not to let my breathing go out of control.

He was right there.

I think my nose was touching his shirt.

Which was touching his chest.

Oh, God. It was. I was touching his chest. With my nose.

So why the hell wasn’t I moving?

Because I was an idiot. That was the only answer.

I wobbled a little, unsteady thanks to our closeness, but it had the opposite effect on Josh. He gripped my upper arms so I wouldn’t wobble anymore because, let’s face it, I was liable to fall on my ass in the mood I was in.

“Any reason you’re sniffing my shirt?” A hint of amusement tinged his tone.

“Smells like lavender. And coffee. And hot buttered toast.”

Oh, crap! That wasn’t supposed to come out!

I cleared my throat and jerked back, making his hands fall to his sides. “No. No reason at all. Gotta—gotta put this away.”

I shoved the Band-Aids in the medical box in a way that would get my ass whipped next time Holley opened it and walked out of the storeroom a little too quickly.

This was going terribly.

Why, why, why was my mouth so stupid? Why had I said all that? Was there something missing between my mouth and my brain today?

I should have let him bleed on the books and let Holley murder me instead.

This.

This shit right here was why I was single.

I took a deep, steadying breath and headed back out to the storeroom. I couldn’t hang about in the staff room because I knew he’d come looking for me, and that would make this already awkward situation one even worse.

I didn’t need the ground to swallow me up today, thank you.

Josh had his back to me, and his arm moved as if he was slicing something open.

“Should you be doing that with your finger?”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “I cut it open, Kinsley, not off.”

I gave him the middle finger.

Well, at least it was normal now.

“Here.” He whipped a sheet of paper out of the box. “Here’s your inventory slip. Where do you want this box?”

I took the sheet from him and looked at him for the longest moment. When it looked as if he was about to question why I was staring, I shook it off and looked at the note, grateful that he didn’t continue with whatever I thought he wanted to say.

“You sure you want to carry on?” I questioned.

“Again, it wasn’t cut off.”

“Okay.” I handed him back the sheet. “Put it over there, and I’ll mark it up to do after.” I grabbed a Sharpie from the pot on the nearest shelf—we had them all over the place—and uncapped it.

Josh moved the box, and I wrote a shorthand note of the title inside on the side of the box that was facing us.

He frowned.

“So I know what it is,” I explained.

“But what is…” He leaned forward, squinting. “BYCA?”

“Before You Came Along.”

“Right. And what’s that?”

Deadpanning, I said, “A book.”

He blinked at me, looking unfairly hot even though he had no expression on his face. “This is going to be a long day, isn’t it?”

I capped my pen with a grin. “Yep.”

And it was.

We worked steadily for the next two hours. He opened them and moved them to where I needed them, and I marked all the boxes up. The ones with the inventory note at the top were labeled with their shorthand titles and the ones without it got a big fat X on the side and were deported to the other side of the space we were working on.