Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)

There’s nowhere to go, no way to put any distance between us, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that I like it. And he knows it.

“Would you like to know what that was?” he teases.

“No.” Heat radiating from my face like it’s spent a long day in the sun, I stare back in hopes it’ll distract him from my blush.

“I can give you all sorts of details. Bet some of them will make you blush more than you are right now.”

My lips part to respond, to tell him he’s dreaming, but the twinkle in his eye stops me. He’d enjoy calling me out if I were to say anything. It’s happened more times than I care to admit. Instead, I deflect.

“You can’t keep coming in here,” I tell him half-heartedly. “It’s an invasion of my privacy.”

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. We have this conversation every week.”

And we’ve had it for so many weeks you could measure it in months. The exact date this began is lost to time, but it seems like it’s always been this way—him working to irritate me, me working to be irritated by him.

Biting the inside of his cheek, he fights a grin. “You’re just mad that’s all I’m invading.”

“You wish.” I wish.

“Not denying that,” he says, a flicker of something I don’t want to name ghosting across his face. “Is that a roundabout offer?”

“Hardly,” I scoff. Totally.

His burst of laughter sounds through the room just like his cologne spices the air as he moves.

“How many women do you talk to? In here alone? Since the beginning of the year, I’m guessing twenty? Thirty? More?”

He cocks his head to the side. “Just talking?”

“Oh my God …”

“Fine. While I find it extremely satisfying you estimate my numbers that high, I would have to disagree with your figures. There are repeats.”

“You do see some of them more than once?” I balk. “That’s surprising.”

“Why is that surprising?”

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I just figured you for a one-and-done kind of guy. Maybe that’s because I figured some of those women would be smart enough to not take your shit a second time, but I could be wrong.”

“For the record, smartass, they’re more than willing to take my shit multiple times,” he winks.

Scoffing, I turn away.

The afternoon sun is poised almost directly across from my office, the streaks of light warming my skin as I face it. Lance moves around behind me, the energy exuding off him and tugging at me from different angles.

Despite my exasperation with his man-whoring, selfish ways, this part of my day is always my favorite. It’s the routine of it all, the mere predictability of his insolence, the sureness of his presence. There’s something steadying about him that I can’t quite put my finger on and don’t try to. Putting my finger on something about Lance, even if it’s in theory, feels like opening a can of worms I can’t afford to unlock.

“What can I say?” he asks. When I turn back around, he’s shoving his phone back into his pocket. “I’m a hot commodity.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Ah, so you admit you eavesdrop?”

I stare at him blank-faced as I stand. “It’s not hard when I walk in here and you’re giving aural.”

His laugh permeates the space between us. The blend of rugged and smooth creates a sensation in the room that I couldn’t ignore if I tried.

“Giving aural?” he chuckles. “Is that a partial Freudian Slip?”

“No.” Sighing, I fall back into my chair again. My shoulder bumps my computer and bring the screen to life. “Will you just go?”

“Let me ask you a question.”

“No.”

“When is the last time you went out on a date?”

“Recently enough,” I reply, not looking up from the computer screen.

There’s no way I’m telling him my last real date was six weeks ago and that I’ve been in a dry spell for almost six months. Someone like him, someone who doesn’t bother with liking, feeling, or loving doesn’t get hurt. People like me, who get our emotions twisted up in a half a second flat, have to guard ourselves constantly. It complicates everything.

Half-sitting on my desk, he stills. “Really? With who?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It’s nothing to me. I’m just curious,” he says, his tone a touch softer than before.

This is what kills me with this man. This is the final move in his little game of chess, the one that captures the king. Or, in this case, the librarian.

It’s his ability to switch from smolder to sweet, from crass to charismatic, that, as much as I would never admit it out loud, intrigues me. I hate that I notice and I wish with every book on the shelves in this library I didn’t, but he makes it impossible.

He’s impossible.

I face him again. This time, folding my hands in front of me only inches from his thigh, I lean forward. He bites; he’s leaning closer to me like I’m about to tell him a secret.