Page 428 of Dark Love

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“You can cook dinner for me anytime.” Dahlia sets her chopsticks down on the little rest next to her empty bowl. She might not cook, but she knows how to make a plate of food look beautiful.

“Invitation accepted.” This weekend definitely won’t be the last.

“What do you want to do now?”

Kiss you until you’re dizzy. But since that’s not an option, I want to see her library again. Do women invite strangers into their library? I don’t. I hoard my books like a dragon hoards his gold. “Show me your favorite spot in your house.”

“My favorite,” she squeaks. “It’s embarrassing.”

Now, I have to know which room it is. “Show me.”

“Fine. It’ll just make you realize how boring I am even quicker.” Dahlia stands up and grabs the book off of the bar. “It might take a while if you want to grab a drink to bring with you.” She nods towards my beer.

“Sure.” I follow her up the stairs, keeping my eyes firmly on the stairs. This is it. She’s bringing me into her inner sanctum. The room that makes her feel the safest. It’s going to tell me so much about her. Will it be one of the crafting rooms, her office, or her library? There’s no way she’s going to show me in that safe of hers. And her library is the one room that isn’t finished. For a person as organized and detail oriented as Dahlia, she probably wouldn’t show a room that’s not flawless to a guest.

We stop at the landing for her office and library.

The office it is.

At least that will give me an opening to ask her what she does without her asking any questions that I’m not ready to answer. There’s no way I will ever be able to tell her the truth about my life. Instead of moving towards her office, Dahlia stops in front of her library door.

Is she embarrassed to read books?

“So. Um… It’s just… A mess.” Her shoulders sink down. “I can’t decide how I want to decorate it so… well, everything is everywhere.”

That’s why the room is so different from the rest of her home. “Show me.”

“You aren’t going to—”

I reach out and take her hand. “The only thing that matters to me is why you love whatever is inside that room. I couldn’t care in the least if it’s decorated, or if it’s a mess.”

“It’s a mess. A huge mess.”

“So. Show me your mess so that I can tell you’re a real woman with flaws and not a perfect dream that came to life.”

Her lips form a cute little oh.

I reach past her to turn the knob, but don’t push the door open. That brings our bodies close enough that I could lean down and kiss her bemused lips.

She leans forward… taunting me… tempting me… One little taste of her wouldn’t be so…

Dahlia isn’t ready. No matter how much I want to kiss her, she needs to be ready. “You can open the door now.”

“Door? What door?” Dahlia blinks up at me a few times. “Oh.” She pushes it.

A blush runs up her face, drawing my attention away from the room.

“So… I… um… like to read.”

That’s a bit of an understatement compared to other people. “I see.” But what I want to see are all the spines.

“Every time I start to put them on the shelves, I freeze up.”

“Why?” It seems pretty obvious that books go on the shelves, not all over the floor in boxes or massive stacks.

“Sometimes I want to sort them by color because it looks so pretty. Other times I want to sort alphabetically by author, so it’s easy to find the book I want to read. Then other times I want to have a trophy shelf of all my signed books. Then there’s always the Dewey Decimal System.”

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