The SEAL's Rebel Librarian (6 page)

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The light was on in the front window by the time he rode up Erin's sloped driveway and parked his bike in the shadows between the garage and the trash cans, out of sight from the road. He took the steps to the back door and peered through the curtains that didn't quite close. She was sitting on her sofa, her head tipped back, a glass in her hand; he could hear a throaty, raw female voice and the twang of a banjo coming faintly through the door. The rhythm was low, dark, pierced by the woman's voice. He knocked quietly and watched her tip her head to look at the door, then uncurl and cross the floor.

A deadbolt clicked open. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

She stepped aside to let him in, then closed the door against the chilly night air. “Nice night for a ride,” she said.

“We've got a good stretch of weather coming, sunny but not too hot,” he said. “Perfect weather to learn to ride your new bike.”

She smiled at him, the corner of her mouth curling up, teasing, knowing, then lifted the tumbler to her lips and sipped.
Is it a mystery to live, or is a mystery to die,
the singer wondered, the drums taut and rolling, riding a fine line between foreboding and compelling. “Want that drink now?”

“Sure,” he said, and followed her into the living room. He looked around while she poured him a glass of whiskey from a bottle on top of a polished sideboard. The lines were clean, dark floors, white walls, mismatched furniture pulled together by an Oriental rug in brilliant reds and golds. Art and mementos hung in the spaces between windows. Airy bookshelves spanned the wall across from the sofa and a piano sat at an angle in the corner, sheet music and books of English contradance tunes shuffled haphazardly on the lid.

“This is Australian?” he asked.

“Probably. I think so,” she said as she capped the bottle and held out the glass.

“You're not sure?” he asked as he took the glass.

“It's not my house, remember?”

He'd forgotten. “You're house-sitting,” he said, and mentally shook his head. He was getting slow, soft, forgetful, which seemed like a really good reason to swallow half of the two fingers she'd poured for him. “Is any of this stuff yours?”

“None of it,” she said. “My clothes are in her closet, my toiletries in her bathroom. That's it.”

“He got the house in the divorce?”

“It was an asset he wanted and I didn't. And it was cheaper to buy my share of the furniture from me than to buy new.” The words were simply stated, not emotionally charged, but he didn't miss the fact that she'd sold everything that might weigh her down—house, furniture—to her ex. “Nora will be back at the end of the summer, so I have to start looking for my own place in a couple of months. Until then, I love coming home to this.” She sipped her whiskey. “Do you know what that is?”

“It's a hollow log, a form of aboriginal art,” he said. “I saw some in a gallery when I was on leave in Perth. What does she do?”

“She's a professor of contemporary art at the college,” Erin said. “She's got a grant to study in Australia this semester and is staying through the summer.”

“Is that why you're house-sitting?”

She nodded. “I needed a place to stay after the divorce, and she didn't want to leave her house unoccupied, in case a pipe broke or mice decided to colonize her basement. Australia is too far away to come home regularly.”

Car headlights drove down the street, flashing into the uncovered window. “You should close the curtains,” he said. He wasn't supposed to be here, and he didn't want her getting into trouble because of him. At a more primitive level, he didn't want anyone seeing her like this, a little soft from the whiskey, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. “Anyone can see in, now that it's dark.”

“I was watching the sky change colors as the sun set,” she replied, but moved to lower the shade rolled to the top of the big picture window. He regretted making the suggestion because she didn't come back to stand near him, instead perching on the piano bench and looking around the room. “What do you think she's like?” she asked.

He blinked, caught off guard, then looked around again. “She travels a lot. Reads a lot. Knows how to play the piano. Doesn't watch TV. She likes to garden,” he said. After growing up with Grannie, he knew Queen Anne's lace from yarrow, five different kinds of goldenrod, and the difference between bindweed and a morning glory. “And this is a really nice rug,” he added.

“The house is on the Lancaster Garden Club's tour in a few weeks,” Erin agreed. “She brought the rug home after a summer in Turkey a couple of years ago.”

A sharp pang went through him. “I've spent some time in Istanbul,” he said, remembering the reconnaissance trip he took with Keenan back when they were both going to work for Gray Wolfe. “And my sister and grandmother just got back from a trip there. The rugs she bought arrived a couple of days ago. I now know a lot about Turkish rugs.”

“I'm a little jealous of your sister,” she said.

He chuckled. “You're jealous of someone who spent a week chauffeuring my granny on a speed-dating run through the major historical sites in Turkey?”

“I haven't traveled much. Done the speed dating, though.”

“How'd that go?” he asked, his voice obviously amused, like he knew what a disaster it had been.

She tilted her glass to her mouth, then said, “I'm a guppy in a Tinder shark world.” She smiled at him, her legs crossed in the tight skirt, making the hourglass curve of her body that much more pronounced. The gold chain around her neck glinted in the lights. “What branch of the service were you in?” she asked, studying the liquid as it swirled in the glass.

“Navy,” he said.

“What did you do? Your … MOS?”

She knew the abbreviation for Military Occupational Specialty, so she'd done her homework before teaching the class for incoming students who were former military. His respect for her tipped up another notch. “I was a SEAL.”

She tipped her head to the side. “A Navy SEAL.”

One corner of his mouth twitched up. “Yes, ma'am.”

For a moment he saw himself as she saw him, shades of Jack flickering past in her eyes: the younger lover drinking whiskey in her borrowed living room, a SEAL, which was for her a possible research subject. He saw those expressions a lot; women were always curious about SEALs, and men were too, curious, wondering if they'd measure up. But there was something else in her eyes, something he didn't recognize.

“I have a million questions,” she said.

“Fire away.”

“How did you get the scar over your eye?” She was smiling as she asked, head still tilted to the side.

“I was three, sitting in the bed of a Tonka truck my sister was pushing me in. The truck ran into a crack in the sidewalk and stopped. I didn't. Pitched forward. Split my eyebrow open.”

“The sister who just got back from Turkey?”

“Rose,” he said. “She's the only sister I've got.”

“Jack and Rose?”

“We predate the movie
Titanic,
” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a grin.

“Parents?”

“Dad took off when we were kids,” he said, touching it before he realized what he was doing. “Mom was around, but she's an alcoholic. There, but really unreliable. Rose kept me honest.”

“I'd bet she has some stories to tell.”

He huffed out a laugh and gave her a lazy smile. Still sitting across the room on the piano bench, Erin kept one leg tucked under her bottom, the other crossed over her knee.

The liquid trembled in the glass. He set it carefully on a magazine on the coffee table and wove his fingers together, letting them dangle between his knees. The singer's throaty voice filled the silence between them, and he felt his face heat. Two fingers of whiskey shouldn't be enough to make him flush, but he was still wearing his sheepskin-lined bomber jacket, and the room was warm enough for Erin to sit there in her silky blouse and tight skirt.

“I want to make something really clear to you,” she said finally. “Before we … go any further with this.”

“Okay,” he said, suddenly wary.

“I'm not looking for anything permanent. This is just … fun. I haven't had much fun the last few years.” She stopped, then gestured at him, a hand roll that conveyed embarrassed exasperation. “Not that you were expecting anything else, but it's important to me that we both understand what this is about. I'm not looking for anything long-term.”

It was the most precisely framed statement of boundaries and expectations he'd ever heard. “Thank fuck,” he said. “I'm talking to some security companies about jobs out of the country. The last thing either one of us needs is some big emotional mess. Just so you know, if you lead with that on Tinder, your swipe-right rate is going to go through the roof.”

She laughed, a delighted, throaty chuckle. “I'll keep it in mind.” She uncoiled her legs, set the glass of whiskey on the piano bench, and got to her feet, padding over to him. “May I try on your coat?”

He stared up at her. “What?”

“When I buy that bike, I'll need protective gear,” she said. “That one looks nice and warm.”

A bit bewildered, he shouldered out of the coat and handed it to her.

“Oof,” she said, and wandered out of sight, presumably in search of a mirror. Her voice was muffled, distant when she spoke again. “It's heavy.”

“It would weigh less in your size. It's good for fall and spring riding,” he said absently, falling back on details, specifics, on being helpful. He picked up his whiskey and tossed it back. “Get lightweight leathers for the summer, but loose enough to layer thermals under … neath…”

His voice trailed off, because she was standing in the doorway, wearing thigh-high seamed stockings and his coat, her hair a tousled wreck around her face. The coat all but swallowed her up, but she hadn't zipped the front, so he could see the pale lace of her bra and panties, mostly hidden by the heavy drape of leather and sheepskin.

“Oh,” he said, somewhat stupidly. “Damn.”

“I like it,” she said. “Very warm. What do you think?”

It took a moment for his brain to jerk out of neutral, wheels spinning, no traction, RPMs revving higher and higher, and into sex gear, but when it did, when his rational mind and his primitive brain stem slid into a groove together, a bolt of lust unlike anything he'd ever felt in his life, hot and possessive and raw, pulsed straight to his cock.

He straightened, vision going fuzzy at the edges. Her eyes widened ever so slightly, but she held her ground as he walked up to her. Opening the sides of the coat, he studied her, noting the rapid heartbeat in the quivering flesh of her breasts.

“I need to make a closer inspection,” he said, pleased his voice was so steady.

“Of course,” she said, and turned to walk down the hallway.

It wasn't far; the house was small, but even the few steps she took with the hem of the jacket just barely covering the curve of her ass, were enough to narrow his focus. His body. Her body. A quiet, dim, private bedroom, lit by a floor lamp next to a comfy armchair. The colorful shade threw blue and green and red spots of color on the bed and the walls.

To his surprise, she clambered right up onto the bed, knee-walking to the center, where she turned to face him, sitting back on her heels with her knees slightly spread. Her chin lifted so she held his gaze, then she flipped up the jacket's wide collar.

“It can't be purely functional,” she said, calm and collected, like she wasn't sitting in the middle of her bed posed like a pin-up girl. “I'm done buying things that are practical. I want to love it.”

He stopped at the foot of the bed, taking in details. She moved easily, the fluidity explained by the yoga mat in the corner of the bedroom, but she had the soft, giving body of a person who preferred a book and a cup of tea to a hard workout. The elastic waist of her panties and her underwire pushup bra pressed into her soft abdominal flesh, and while she'd adopted a pose everyone knew from the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue, she wasn't looking at him with a practiced, sexy eye. She was wide awake and vibrantly present in the moment, her eyes a combination of innocence and demand he found utterly captivating.

He kicked out of his motorcycle boots and kneeled on the bed, just a few inches away from her. “What look are you going for?”

She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down the sleeves, luxuriating in the soft leather, then nuzzled into the sheepskin collar. “I'm not sure,” she said, like it was a confession. She shifted on her knees, and the buckle, hanging loose from the waist, clinked as she moved. “Maybe it's about how it makes me feel when I'm wearing it.”

He reached out and fisted his hand in the leather and sheepskin, pulling insistently until she scooted forward to kneel between his spread thighs. He could smell the heat and arousal rising from the open throat of the jacket, and knew that the next time he wore it, he'd smell her skin, the faint remnants of her perfume. Then he slid his hand into her hair to cup the back of her head and pulled not quite gently, exposing her throat and ear. “How do you feel now?” he growled.

Chapter Four

Powerful. She felt powerful, and sexy, and totally unlike herself. Never in her life had Erin pranced around in a man's jacket, wearing nothing but her bra and panties. While Jason was more than willing to spice up their sex life, the attempts had felt awkward, and a little silly. But this … this wasn't just playing. This was coming from some place deep inside her, a place she hadn't known existed until Jack asked her out in the stacks. It was like this was happening to another woman, to the woman who lived in Nora's house and faced down a Ducati salesman. Her heart thudded against her chest as sensory images bombarded her: his shoulders, stretched by the waffle-weave shirt he wore; his legs in the jeans; his hand in her hair, moving her head the way he wanted it to move; his voice, rasping over nerve endings as surely as the sheepskin rubbed against her bare arms and legs and caressed her nipples.