Page 25 of Inked Daddies

She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Would you do the same for me?” I ask, my voice dropping just slightly. “For me and Sam?”

Her breath catches, and for a moment I think she’s going to bolt. But then she swallows hard and nods, her voice barely a sound. “Yes.”

Something tightens in my chest, a mix of satisfaction and something deeper, something heavier. I lean in as if to kiss her, close enough that I see the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Instead of a kiss, I brush my stubble against her cheek and lean close to her ear. Our bodies are pressed together, and damn if I couldn’t get addicted to the feeling.

I growl in her ear, “Good. Tonight.”

She holds utterly still. Waiting for me to make the first move.

I lick her bare earlobe, and she shudders against me. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment she lets me in?—

And then the bell over the door jingles.

Marie jumps back from me like she’s been burned, her face a vivid shade of red as she stammers, “I—I have to go.”

I back off to let her escape, my heart still pounding as I stare after her. She might have gotten away this time, but this isn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

11

MARIE

Under normal circumstances,if I saw Mrs. Wasserman’s mop of white curls skimming just barely over the top of the freestanding shelves in the children’s section, theJawstheme song would play in my head. It always does.

Today is not normal.

In fact, my head is disturbingly empty as I greet her. “Hi, Mrs. Wa?—”

She holds up a hand to silence me. It might be intimidating if she wasn’t four and a half feet tall and weighed less than one of my thighs. The bone-thin woman was my third, fourth, and fifth-grade teacher, like most of us who went to Auclair Elementary School.

She’s in her usual black boots and black dress, buttoned up to the chin and flowing around her ankles. How she can stand it in this heat, I have no idea. But she’s worn an outfit like it ever since her husband died before I was born. “I’m searching for a proper cookbook for cooking Thai cuisine.”

That’s the one area she experiments in. Her food.

“Right this way.” I begin to lead her to the cookbooks—as if she doesn’t know where they are—and as I turn the corner, the faint chime of the front door’s bell lingers in the air. Hugo left. Even though he’s gone, my pulse is racing, my heart thudding like I just ran a marathon.

I swallow and continue toward the cookbooks. They’re near the paltry anatomy section, so I look. He didn’t even take a book.

Not that he needed it. If anyone knows everything about anatomy, it’s Hugo, Sam, and Trick. For that matter, I’m pretty sure Hugo doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do, which means he didn’t come to the library for the anatomy books at all.

He came for…me.

The thought makes my stomach flip, my face heating all over again as I replay our conversation. The way he asked about last night, the way he looked at me when he asked if I’d put on the same show for him and Sam—his voice low, his dark eyes watching me so intently I thought I’d melt on the spot.

Two finger-snaps shock me from my daze. “The books, Marie. You were always a daydreamer, weren’t you?”

I can barely force a smile, but my inner southern girl won’t let me be impolite. “We all have our vices, don’t we? Here we are. I think it’s just the one book, so I hope it works for you. If not, I can order one from another library.”

“That’ll do fine. I’d like something for my roses too.”

“Of course.” Her damn roses. Since she retired, they’re practically her new pets. The books swore up and down she couldn’t get this particular variety to grow in Louisiana, but she made it happen. The woman defied nature to win a contest inNew Orleans, and I wasn’t surprised that she won. If she put her mind to it, she could run the country.

Better to think of President Wasserman than what happened with Hugo.

I manage to pull myself together long enough to help her find a book on gardening roses that she hasn’t read yet. She thanks me three times and spends another five minutes telling me about her plans for a spring garden competition before finally heading out. But it goes in one ear and out the other.

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