Lucian: Has anyone told you that you’re annoying? I’m the eleventh person today? Not surprising.
27
Special Delivery Electrosexolytes
Sloane
Valentine’s Day rolled into Knockemout with four inches of snow and a wind chill that was best not mentioned. The library staff and I had decked the stacks with a variety of Valentine’s Day decorations from handmade pink and red hearts with handwritten affirmations in the children’s section to book displays of romance novels and the St. Valentine’s Day massacre on the second floor complete with a tape outline of a body on the floor. We’d covered our bases for our patrons, both the romantic and the grumbly.
Things were pretty damn good. We were all set up for the evening’s special event. My interview with the local paper about Mary Louise had been posted and had seen a positive reaction, which had led immediately to a second interview with the bigger, more important Arlington Gazette. And I had a sex date with Lucian Freaking Rollins.
“Just…one…more…inch,” I groaned as I stretched as far as my muscles would allow.
“Get your ass down here right now, Sloaney Baloney,” a familiar authority figure ordered.
I stopped what I was doing and glared down at Chief Nash Morgan. “Don’t make me shush you. You’re on my home turf, buddy,” I shot back from the top rung of the ladder.
“Your turf is about to be splattered with your pretty face when you fall,” he admonished.
I climbed down the ladder and slapped a purple, glittery heart to the man’s chest. “Since you’re so manly, you finish hanging the heart garland.”
Nash mounted the ladder in a warning-sticker-abiding kind of way and made quick work of the garland. I felt no shame in joining the rest of the female patrons in admiring his superior posterior.
“Did you come in here just to show up my decorating skills?” I asked when he climbed back down.
“I might have an ulterior motive,” he said, scanning the folding chairs we’d arranged facing a podium. “What’s going on here?”
“We’ve got a guest author coming in tonight. Cecelia Blatch. She writes dark and dirty paranormal romance. The book club has been obsessed with her since we picked up her series. We’re hosting her for a book wining.”
“A book whining?”
I grinned. “It’s like a book signing but with wine.”
“Nice. But shouldn’t you have a Valentine’s date?”
“Me? Why? What did you hear?” Did he know about Lucian? Had Lucian told him? Of course not. Lucian never told anyone anything.
Nash’s gaze sharpened. “Now that’s an odd reaction to me askin’ you how your dating life is going. With all those dates you’ve been goin’ on, I figured you’d have a hot date tonight.”
Oh, those dates. Not the secret kind that involved my downtown being invaded by Lucian Rollins. Great. Now I was thinking about Lucian’s penis. That wasn’t good. Had I waited too long to respond to Nash? He was looking at me strangely. Was I being weird? Was Lucian’s penis making me make things weird? Did every woman who ever slept with Lucian act like this?
I imagined a legion of penis-hypnotized women wandering like a herd of zombies behind Lucian as he went about his day.
“Ah. Yes. Well. I’ve had this event on the calendar for a while, and I didn’t want to miss it, so no date for me,” I said, sounding like I was being strangled.
Nash peered down at me. “You okay? You’re turning red.”
“It’s, uh, hot in here.” To illustrate my point, I whipped off my cardigan, accidentally dropping it on Ezra Abbott, the cherub-cheeked four-year-old ladies’ man.
“Look! I’m a thuperhero,” Ezra announced, lisping adorably through the space where his front teeth once had been. He zoomed off with my sweater flying behind him like a cape.
“I’ll get that back later,” I said, watching him disappear into the cushion fort. “Let’s get back to talking about you. What are your plans for tonight?”
“That’s one of the reasons why I’m here,” Nash said, looking sheepish. “I got Lina a present, and I wanted to run it by someone first. It’s our first Valentine’s Day, and you know Angelina.”
“She’s not a candy and flowers kind of girl,” I said.
He grinned. “Exactly.”
If it was possible for a man to have cartoon hearts in his eyes, Nash Morgan looked as if he’d been struck by Cupid himself.