Page 8 of The Billionaire Land Baron

Shelby paused outside a closed door down the short hallway. She looked up at him, as though trying to read his face, then opened the door. She did not go in, but dropped his hand and held hers out, inviting him to step inside.

Every wall from floor to ceiling held books. The shelves were cheap and poorly constructed, but clearly had been custom-made for the room. Aside from the shelves, the small room held only two mismatched armchairs and an ottoman between them.

Jake stepped inside and she followed him. He could feel her looking at him as he looked at her. It made him think of Layla and how he loved to watch people admiring her.

“This is incredible. Did your Dad build these?”

“Daddy doesn’t know the difference between a hammer and an Allen wrench. Matt did it. I heard you met him and Slim today?”

Matt. Jake had forgotten all about him. Greg said that Shelby was his girl. Now that Jake had met her, he completely understood Matt’s reaction to him staying here.

“Yeah, he gave me a ride earlier when my car broke down. He’s your boyfriend, right?”

“Matt? No. More like a protective older brother.”

“That’s not the vibe I got from him. Not brotherly at all.”

Shelby sighed. “He’d like it to be more than brotherly. But that’s how it is with us.”

Shelby said the words with a finality that made Jake’s chest soar. Not that he should care. It’s not like he was going to stick around Lucky. He couldn’t fall for Shelby. But his heart seemed to be in disagreement with his head over this.

He walked toward a shelf, trying to distract himself from the sweet smell of her perfume. Scanning the shelves, he looked for how she had them arranged.

“Alphabetical, but sort of by century,” she said, as though she could hear his thoughts.

“Better than by color,” he said.

“Right? Who does that? Gross.”

It was weird, but this room somehow made Shelby even more attractive to him. She’d made a literary joke—okay, so the Twilight books weren’t literary, but still books—and picked up on his Christmas Carol reference. This was the last thing he would have expected from her. Of course, he’d known her for all of five minutes.

“What’s your favorite section?” he asked. “Or do you have one?”

“That’s tough. I collect a lot. I mean, I haven’t read all these. Mostly I like contemporary stuff. But also Shakespeare. The man had humor.”

“People sometimes miss that. They’re so busy revering him and all.” Shelby gave him a long look. “What?” he said.

She shook her head. “It’s just…no one here wants to talk books. This is new. I like it.”

“No one talks books with me either,” he said. “Or movies. I like both equally.”

And it wasn’t something he had minded or realized he was missing until just now. Jake could see himself sitting in one of the armchairs across from Shelby, their feet together on the ottoman, drinking coffee and talking about their favorite books. He could also imagine her here as a girl, curled up in a chair with a stack of books beside her, nose buried in one.

“Did you spend a lot of time in here growing up?” he asked.

“That obvious, huh? Yeah. I’m kind of a nerd.” Nerd was the last word he would have used to describe her. “The shelves are more recent. Matt put them up a few years back. Before that I had some mismatched shelves and mostly just stacks. Stacks and stacks of books. I knew where every single one was, but this is much better.”

“What are your favorites?” she said. “Plural because obviously more than one.”

“Obviously. Well, if I had to narrow it down East of Eden and Franny and Zooey.”

She leaned back against one of the shelves and he tried not to notice how cute she looked talking books with him. “Interesting. Kind of a highbrow taste for someone using a fake name that comes from werewolf in a YA series.”

“Shape shifter.”

“What?”

“Technically, according to the legends, Jacob and the others were different than traditional werewolves. They were shape shifters.”

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