Page 429 of Dark Love

The walls are filled with whitewood shelves and a few haphazard piles of books. “Why don’t you do all of the above?”

“Huh?”

“You use your special edition books as decorations on random shelves. You take all your standalone fiction books and sort them by color. The fiction series can go in alphabetical order. Any non-fiction books go by Dewey.”

Dahlia gapes at me. “That’s brilliant. But what if I forget where a book is?”

“You ask me.”

Dahlia raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re going to remember where every book is on my shelves?”

I’m going to remember every detail about your bookshelves. That’s the gift and the burden of having a photographic memory. “Yes.”

“Seriously?”

Her crinkled nose and brow are awfully cute. “You don’t store your dried seasonings alphabetically. They’re in order of use. The top row is garlic powder, onion powder, paprika…”

“You remember all of that?”

I remember everything about you. “We should get started if we’re going to finish this before you go to work on Monday.”

“You think it will take that long?”

Not if we did just this. We could probably knock it out in a few hours, but that wouldn’t be fun. “We’ll see. Let’s start by sorting and see what you have.”

Dahlia nods.

Now I get to see what your books say about you.

Several stacks later, the picture from before hasn’t changed. She’s sweet all the way down to her dozens of cozy mysteries and sweet romance books. There’s a deeper side to her tastes too… literary fiction and classics are peppered through the standalones. She doesn’t have any first editions of classics, but the number of signed modern books is impressive.

“Do you think I’m a nerd because I read?”

A sexy librarian works for me.

“Never mind, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know the answer. Do you read?” She picks up and sets the same book down.

Part of me had expected her to ask if I could read at some point. People tend to underestimate me because of my size. They tend to think—to their own chagrin—that I’m all muscles and no brain. “Yeah, Dahl, I read. And it seems that I find a nerd to be very attractive.”

Dahlia’s cheeks turn a soft pink.

Maybe one kiss wouldn’t be bad. She knows I’m not a good guy, anyway.

Killer though I might be, a liar I’m not.

Could I stop after a single kiss?

A single embrace?

Ignore her, even though she’s staring. You’re strong enough to ignore her.

I pick up a book off the top of a new stack.

Dylan DuPress. Dahlia reads mystery? I flip the front cover over out of habit more than anything else since Dylan never signs—“How did you get this?”

“Huh?”

The next book in the pile is another Dylan DuPress book. It’s signed too. How is this possible? These don’t exist. And I tried. Boy, did I try to get a signed set, but Dylan doesn’t ever sign his books. “These.” I lift up book after book. Each and every one is signed with a personalized note.

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