At the Billionaire’s Wedding (32 page)

“Are you all right?” she heard behind her.

She swung around to the bearer of the cologne that was too perfect and dreamy for this horrible moment.

“How are you?” He reached out as if to touch her shoulder, then retracted his hand.

She rubbed her head where a big book had connected. “Fine. Mostly. Thank you for grabbing me.” She twisted back to the books. “But… Oh my God.”

“They said thunderstorms today, but it looks like it’s raining books inside.”

A little ripple of pleasure went right up her spine. He had
the sexiest voice
. Low and confident. And he’d read her mind.

She wrenched her attention away from the disaster to look over her shoulder. “I think I broke the bookcase.” Oh,
God
.

“You didn’t. Look. It wasn’t attached to the wall. A light breeze could have toppled it.”

“Are you sure?” Her voice sounded airy. His hand running along the edge of the wall was long-fingered, strong, just as handsome as the rest of him.

“Pretty sure.” He moved around the pile of books, plastic, shelves, and scattered plaster to the next case. He grasped the side and it wobbled. “This isn’t attached either.”

“Maybe they disconnected them for the renovation.”

“I suspect.” He returned to her and stood looking down at her. “Still fine?”

“Yes.” Except that she couldn’t really breathe. Now it was from both the disaster
and
him. She knew he was a corporate shark, that he ate struggling companies for breakfast, and that behind that carelessly tousled hair was a brain that had been summa cum laude at both Stanford and Wharton. But he was just
so handsome
. She’d never hung out with guys this handsome.

But he wasn’t any guy, and it wasn’t just his features. It was the warmth in his very blue eyes and the set of his mouth, like he might be about to smile, but could get really serious really quickly too. It made his classical good looks vibrate with grab-him-and-kiss-him sex appeal.

She wanted to. Now.

Grab him.

And kiss him.

She was
out of her mind
.

“What were you doing in here?” he said, never taking his eyes off her.

“Looking.” Single words seemed to be all she could manage.

“Looking at?”

“Library. Um… Books?”

“Oh, books. Yeah, I’ve heard of those.” He smiled. Her insides did a sharp little clench of pleasure.

No.

Not
this
feeling. Not now, with a pile of destruction at her feet
that she’d caused
. Not
this man
.

“I’m guessing you’re not a big reader,” she said.

“I read the paper.”

“Online news.”

The corner of his very fine mouth crept up. “Pretty dismissive there, huh?”

She wouldn’t be so dismissive if she had a computer at home, and if she hadn’t spent every evening for a month on the library’s public computers helping the grant writer do research for the application that his family’s charitable foundation then viciously rejected.

“No. I just prefer books,” she said. “They’re…” Dust from the crash still floated in the air, in her nostrils, settling on her lips. “They’re tactile.”

“You like to touch what you see?” He seemed suddenly closer. Or maybe it was just because his voice had dropped a few notes. But he couldn’t be flirting. Guys like Piers Prescott didn’t flirt with her. Guys like Piers Prescott didn’t know she existed.

“I like to touch what I read, yes. And smell.”
He
smelled incredible, the way a woman dreamed a man would smell but never actually experienced. “It’s the reason I work in a library. Books have scent.”

“I’d forgotten that.”

“You forgot?”

He was still looking right into her eyes. “I don’t have time to read books.”

“I guess you wouldn’t.” He was too busy dismantling mom-and-pop companies and selling the parts to the highest bidder. “I’m sure you have other priorities,” she said with herculean restraint.

“Other priorities. Right.” Finally he looked away, glancing at the pile of tumbled books. “Any recommendations?”

“In here? You just said you don’t have time to read books.”

He looked back down at her and this time only his eyes seemed to smile. It simply took her breath away. Breaths. Gone. Just like that.

“I’m on vacation this week,” he said.

“You’re not working at all?” This she found unbelievable. “For a whole week?”

“Yeah.” With a relaxed, sexy shrug, he leaned his hand against the wall, effectively trapping her between him and the mound of catastrophe. “This week I’m all about playing.” His gaze slowly slid down her body.

This was
not happening
. It couldn’t be.

“Jane Austen,” she blurted out.

His brow creased beneath the softest, silkiest lock of hair to ever dip toward a man’s eyes.

“Jane Austen?” he repeated.

“The book I’d most like to see from Lord Melbury’s collection. The reason I came in here and enacted this horrible scene.” Her voice wasn’t quite shaking, but nearly. Because of the books. But also because of him. Which was stupid. The ruined books were much more important. He was just a guy. Albeit, a Prescott: patron of all things Influential and Important.

The Prescott Foundation hadn’t funded the bookmobile, but it had given a huge sum to the library for a special exhibition on Great White Dead Men that was opening in a month. Actually titled
America’s Heroes
, the exhibition featured pieces related to a select group of historical figures, all men of power and wealth, like John Hancock’s personal diary and Henry Ford’s earliest designs. Several were loaned from the Prescott family’s private collection. Missing from the exhibition were other heroes who’d made huge marks on American history, like Rosa Parks or Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King Jr. Just men like Piers Prescott’s grandfather, head of Prescott Global, except the men in the exhibit were already dead.

But it didn’t seem to matter to her body that the man before her was the heir to Bad Guys Inc. Her pulse tripped along swiftly. And she found herself dying to respond to the grab-him-and-kiss-him urge. To forget about being careful, responsible, frugal, and uptight. For once she wanted to go a little bit wild.

“Lord Melbury’s collection includes an original edition of
Pride and Prejudice
,” she said. “Ever heard of it?”

She looked adorable, dusty and defiant at once as she challenged him to admit his ignorance. Piers didn’t mind it. He’d nothing to prove to this woman—this woman who hadn’t yet given him one of the sparkling smiles she gave him in the park every Friday morning.

She didn’t reserve those smiles for Philly, though. She’d smiled brilliantly at her friends down at the pool. But she was resisting his flirting.

That intrigued him. Women didn’t resist him. Men didn’t in business or anything else. He always got what he wanted, except in one matter, and he was complicit in that: his brother’s escape from Prescott Global. That ten years later he was still sitting at his brother’s destined desk in the family’s skyscraper was the reason he’d first seen this woman.

“I haven’t read it. Should I?”

She twisted up lips the color of every hot fantasy he’d ever had and gave him a clear-eyed assessment.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt.” She ducked under his arm. He pivoted, following her progress to the other side of the bookshelf lying facedown on the pile of books. “It’s not here, of course. I’d kill myself if I’d damaged it.”

She crouched and started straightening the books. For a moment he let himself admire the snug pull of her jeans around her curves. Then he crossed his arms loosely and leaned his shoulder against the wall.

“You’d kill yourself over a book?” She’d nearly done so six months ago, the day he’d first seen her in Green Park, doling out books from a backpack to kids while a pair of dealers eyed her from across the street.

“A very precious book.” She brushed a wisp of dark hair from her face. She always wore it up, hiding the length. He wanted to see it down and flowing around her bare shoulders.

“But really, all books are precious,” she said, focused on the volumes in her hands. They looked relatively new to him, but she seemed truly anguished. “I suppose your family owns so many expensive things, like cars and vacation houses, that mere books seem insignificant in comparison.”

“Not exactly.”

“I feel terrible about this,” she said quietly.

Something else shone in her eyes now. Worry. Serious worry. The destruction meant more to her than the damage to the books.

Money.
She thought she’d have to pay for this.

That couldn’t happen. He wanted to protect her now, the same way he’d wanted to protect her the first time he’d ever seen her.

“If anybody asks, we’ll say I did it.” He gestured to the pile.

“What? No.” She stood up, frowning. “That’s not right. It’s a lie.”

Like pretending he’d just met her yesterday. “But it could easily be the truth. Put me in a library and I’m like a bull in a china shop.”

Her brown eyes that made him want to do things to her—
X-rated things
—swept him up and down again. Assessing.

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t believe you’re ever careless about anything.”

But he’d been careless with her. From the start.
He should tell her.
What was the worst that could happen? She’d tell someone else, the news would get around, and the funds would revert into his bank account. Rather, they’d get tied up in legal knots for months.

Her attention shifted to the doorway and her smile hit him full force in the gut.

“You found her, Piers. Great,” Duke’s fiancé said blithely and looked at the pile on the floor. “What a mess. Mark said it’s still being renovated. I’m glad the rest of the house isn’t like this.”

“I knocked over a bookcase,” he said.

California was staring at him, her honest, expressive eyes very wide, her lips parted.

“Listen,” he said quickly, “I’m going to find someone to clean this up. Careful with those other shelves, California. They’re loose.”

He’d never run from a woman. In his life. Not even his sister when she’d regularly asked him to take her dateless friends to parties. He’d done it. He’d do anything for Amy. And for his brother. Hell, for a decade his life had been about helping out J.T.

Now he ran. At close proximity, California Blake was smarter, sweeter, and a hell of a lot sexier than he’d anticipated. And honest. Her emotions showed so clearly in her eyes. When he told her the truth, he wouldn’t have to guess if she thought he was slime. He would know it. So, according to the provisions of the library grant and his own reliable instinct, he simply wouldn’t tell her.

“Cali doesn’t trust men,” Jane said as she sat down beside Duke, a glass of wine in her hand. She crossed her legs.

Duke turned his head to look at her. “Where’s this coming from?”

Jane speared Piers with a stare. He and Duke had been having a drink. Relaxing for a moment, the kind of relaxation he hadn’t had time for since college.

“Piers is hitting on Cali,” Jane said.

Duke nodded at him. “Nice choice, bro.”

Jane shoved her elbow in her fiancé’s ribs. “Don’t play around with her, Piers. She’s not like the shallow socialites you’re used to. She’s a genuinely good person, and she’s had a really rough time of it since high school.”

“What happened in high school?” He succeeded at sounding casual. Over the past decade he’d perfected sounding casual when he felt everything but.

“Her father was a corporate lawyer. Lots of money. Trips to Vail and Paris and wherever the superrich crowd went. He was a partier. He’d married a waitress at Hooters and it was a wretched mistake. He left her three or four times. Then, when Cali and I were at Penn State, her mom died in iffy circumstances.”

“Suicide?” Duke said.

“Prescription pills. By then, Cali’s dad had been drinking a lot and screwing up. After Cali’s mom OD’d, he lost it entirely. Everything went: his job, the big house, investments, cars, savings. Her sister was still in high school and Cali had to drop out of State so she could carry all three of them. Then, a few years ago, he burned down their house.”