Stars Over Castle Hill (On Dublin Street 6.6)

I don’t know how long I meandered around the store, my fingertips trailing along the shelves. It must have been a while because I was startled to a stop by a hand on my waist. Braden’s deep voice rumbled in my ear and just like that, the spell the books had cast over me was broken by the visceral one Braden was casting. “It seems it was a bad idea to bring you here.” His lips brushed my ear.

I felt the heat of his body behind mine and a surge of tingles caressed my breasts. The need to lean against him and have him touch me was so strong, I was breathless. What the hell was this guy doing to me?

“I like it here.” I stepped away from him, shooting him a smile over my shoulder.

Braden stared down at me as if he were trying to work me out. “Yes. But I pale in comparison to this, right?”

I smirked and shook my head. “You don’t need me to stroke your ego, Mr. Carmichael. You know you’re interesting enough to hold a person’s attention.” I stopped, staring at an 1843 edition of The Pathfinder.

“Your attention, Jocelyn?”

At the sudden seriousness of his tone, I looked over my shoulder at him. The searching expression in his eyes made my heart speed up. It seemed he was feeling me out, creeping up on me slowly, but with every intention of eventually delving inside of me and discovering all my secrets.

No one had ever shown such interest in me before. It was at once thrilling and scary.

“You have my attention,” I admitted with a shrug. Before he could reply, I gestured around us. “How did you know about this place?”

To my relief, he accepted the subject change. “I’ve lived in this city my whole life. Plus, I used to bring Hannah here.”

“Hannah?”

“Ellie’s sister.”

I frowned. “I thought Ellie was your sister so …”

He laughed. “We have a modern family. Ellie is my half-sister. Hannah is Ellie’s half-sister.”

At my raised eyebrows, he explained, “Ellie’s mum Elodie got pregnant by my dad with Ellie after my parents divorced. Then my dad left Elodie and Elodie eventually married her husband Clark. They have a daughter, Hannah, and a son, Declan. Technically not blood-related to me, but I consider them my brother and sister as much as Ellie is.”

I felt a pang of envy and gave him my back so he couldn’t see. “So Hannah is a reader?”

“Yes. She’s twenty-two now. An English teacher,” he answered, his voice deep with affection. “As soon as Abby was born, Hannah began instilling a love of books in her. She brings Abby here now.”

“What?” I smiled curiously at the way he shook his head, as if in disbelief.

“Sometimes I wonder where the years went. It doesn’t seem so long ago that Hannah was Abby’s age and I was Hannah’s age, leading her around here by the hand.”

“It goes fast,” I agreed, feeling regret and unable to give it a source.

“Still plenty of time to make the best of life, though.”

Our eyes locked.

Braden’s were heated, determined, and they were telling me exactly how he wanted to make the best of life.

With me.

Under him.

Or maybe over him.

But definitely inside me.

Sexual flutters stirred low in my belly and dragged my gaze away. “We will not pollute the oldest secondhand bookstore in Scotland with eye fucking.”

“Well!”

I tensed at the unfamiliar voice and the indignant tone.

Braden stood before me, looking over my shoulder at the owner of said tone, and his lips were pressed so tight, I knew he was dying to laugh.

Slowly, I turned around to face a man around Braden’s age. Half-moon glasses were perched on his long nose, and he glared at me over them.

“Children visit this store, madam. We do not condone that sort of language in here.”

Madam. Ouch.

“I’m sorry.” I winced. “It won’t happen again. I promise.”

“See that it doesn’t.” He harrumphed and disappeared around a bookshelf.

Braden stepped up to me, barely containing his mirth, as he turned to face me. “Naughty Jocelyn.” He grinned cheekily and stepped around the corner.

I hurried after him. “It’s not funny. Now I have to buy something.”

He chuckled. “Says who?”

“My conscience. I dropped the F-bomb in an establishment that is pretty much a sanctuary of the written word at its finest.”

This only made him laugh harder.

“Anyone ever tell you that you need to grow up?” I said with little seriousness. His grown-up mischievousness was extremely appealing.

“And why would I do that,” he bent down to whisper in my ear, “when this is so much more fun?”

I shivered and pressed a hand to his chest. “Stop.”

“Why?”

“You know why?”

“Do I?”

“You’re overwhelming.”

“Good.”

I stepped away. “Let me look for a book without distraction, okay?”

Ten minutes later I tapped the glass front of a locked book cabinet. “Those!”

Braden, who had been perusing the shelves on the other side of the room, eyed the books. “I’m guessing if they’re in a locked cabinet, they aren’t cheap.”

“But it’s Spenser’s Faerie Queene. In six books. 1897. I want.”

“Careful,” he brushed his thumb over the corner of my lip, “you’re drooling.”

I grinned at him and something flared in his eyes. “Would you please just get the assistant?”

“Why can’t you?”

“The F-bomb incident,” I said.

I could hear him chuckling all the way through the store.

A warm feeling filled my chest at his amusement. A feeling I stubbornly refused to analyze.

&n

bsp; “You?” the man with the half-moon glasses said as soon as Braden led him to the cabinet.

“Me. Sorry about before. How much for the Faerie Queene?”

“It’s quite expensive.” He put his hands on his hips. “Why? What do you know of it?”

Amused by his inquisition but not wanting to show it, I kept a perfectly serious expression. “It’s one of the longest poems in the English language, and it is an incomplete epic poem. It was published in two halves at the end of the sixteenth century and is allegorical. The poet Edmund Spenser was shown favor by Elizabeth I because it was thought to be based on her and pretty much describes her as the shi— wonderful. She gave him a pension for the rest of his life because of it.”

The man stared at me a moment and then broke into a wide grin. “A wee bit, then.”

I shared a grin with Braden as the man took a key out of his pocket and opened the cabinet.

“For all six books, you’re looking at fifteen hundred pounds.”

It was a lot of money.

I stared longingly at them. I’d studied the Faerie Queene at university. It was a favorite.

What the hell. “I’ll take it.”

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing as he removed gloves from his back pocket. I watched as he put them on and carefully removed the books from the cabinet. “Let’s take these up front to the cash register.”

After I’d paid and the books were carefully wrapped and boxed up for me, Braden and I left the store without even taking a peek at the art gallery.

We were quiet a moment, and then Braden laughed.

Confused, I stared up at him. Whatever he saw on my face made him laugh harder.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“What?”

“You.” He laughed. “Fifteen hundred pounds to redeem yourself for saying ‘eye fucking.’ I knew a woman who once tripped into the Mac counter at Harvey Nichols and ended up buying every product they had to balance out her embarrassment, but fifteen hundred pound books for a swear word?”

“I love these books,” I defended.

“You’re fucking adorable,” he said.

I wrinkled my nose. “Braden, I’m thirty years old and I’ve never been adorable.”

In answer, he leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose. “You’re adorable. Sexy as fuck. But adorable, too.”