Maybe the app was broken. I’d probably missed a button to publish my profile. I’d have to ask Stef or Lina and soon, seeing as how my “quivering sex” was so ready for action it was starting to consider Lucian Rollins as a potential candidate.
“When you’re finished scowling at your screen, I have something for you.”
I backhanded my tumbler off the desk and hurled my phone in a wide arc. I was halfway out of my chair before I came to my senses.
And my senses told me that Lucian Freaking Rollins was standing in the doorway of my office.
“What…why…er, how?” I croaked as I came to my feet.
He crouched down smoothly and picked up the water bottle I’d accidentally assaulted. “Funny, I remember you being more eloquent than this.”
“Don’t start with me, Lucifer,” I warned, snatching the tumbler out of his manly hand. “Why are you haunting my office instead of purchasing blood diamonds and selling stolen internal organs on the black market?”
He tossed a manga novel onto my desk. My manga novel. Well, technically the library’s.
“You left this in my office. I heard the librarian here is a stickler for late fees.”
“You know there’s this thing called the postal service,” I said, liberating my phone from the floor.
“Unfortunately for you, I was already going to be in town.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and prowled my office in a slow circuit, pausing to look more closely at my personal effects.
He was too big to be in here. He seemed to suck all the oxygen and color out of the room until the only thing I was aware of was his presence.
“What has you spoiling for a fight, Pixie? Did another squirrel get stuck in the book return?”
“You’re hilarious. So funny. I’m so glad we had this time together. Why don’t I open this second-story window and assist you out of it?” I offered, rubbing the wrist that had connected with my water bottle.
“Interesting reading material,” he said, tilting his head at the book on my desk.
“It’s for a teenage boy with dyslexia. I figured he’d like all the fight scenes, but I wanted to read it first before I recommended it to him.” I didn’t know why I was explaining myself to him. It wasn’t like he actually cared what I read, and I certainly didn’t put any stock in his opinion of me or my reading habits.
“Nearly every memory I have of you involves books.”
It came out of him sounding like a confession. We stared at each other for a long, silent thirty seconds.
I shook my head. “You know, sometimes I think I imagined it all.”
He put down the framed photo of me and my parents at the ribbon cutting for the library and fixed those assessing gray eyes on me.
“Imagined what?”
“You. Me. The cherry tree. I thought we were friends.”
“We were. Once.”
He layered blame on top of that one syllable until it was all I heard.
“I don’t get you. I didn’t get you as a high school senior, and I don’t get you as a business mogul. And I sure as hell don’t get what happened yesterday.”
His eyes changed. It was an almost imperceptible shift, but I’d spent a lifetime studying him and didn’t miss the glint of silver.
“Let’s add yesterday to the long list of mistakes better left in the past,” he suggested.
“I’ve already forgotten it,” I boasted.
“Which is why you were the one to bring it up five seconds ago,” he pointed out.
I’d forgotten how deftly he played his enemies. He and my father had spent countless hours with a chessboard between them.
“I may have brought it up, but we both know it’s no coincidence that yesterday happened and now here you are, paying me a visit in a place you’ve never once set foot in.”
The air in the room was electric. I could practically see the sparks flying between us. But they weren’t the romantic, will-they-won’t-they sparks. These were the kind that burned things to the ground. The kind that destroyed everything in their wake.
Through my window, the late afternoon sun bathed his face in golden glow and shadows.
“How’s your mother?” he asked before turning back to the next piece of me that caught his eye.
“She’s fine.”
His expression shifted to irritated patience.
“She’s okay,” I amended. “I helped her go through some of Dad’s things yesterday after dress shopping and it was…” What? Excruciating? Heartbreaking? Even though we each set aside favorite pieces, boxing up his clothes added another layer of pain to our goodbye. “Difficult,” I decided.
“I was thinking the other day about Simon’s gardening T-shirt,” Lucian said. “From the one and only 5K he ever completed.”
I was relieved he was looking away from me because I had to bring my fingers to my mouth to keep the unexpected sob inside.
“Knockemout Runs for Breast Cancer,” I said when I’d regained my composure.
It was a hot-pink, double extra-large freebie T-shirt with cartoon breasts emblazoned across the chest. My father’s medium frame swam in it. But he’d been so proud of his accomplishment and the money he’d raised that he turned it into his gardening shirt, knotting it on his hip like he was a teenage girl. I’d spent years in agonized humiliation because of that shirt. It was the only item of his clothing I’d kept.
“The first time I saw him in it, he was attacking that bush in your backyard—the one with the red berries—with electric hedge trimmers and telling your mother that he was Simon Scissorhands.”
My laugh, watery though it was, surprised us both.
His lips curved, and for a moment, it felt like there was no desk between us, no ugly history. He used to make me laugh, and I used to make him smile.
“I don’t know how to react when you’re nice to me,” I announced.
“If you didn’t make it so difficult, I’d be civil more often,” he said dryly.
“It’s probably better this way. You might sprain something pretending to be human.”
The ghost of a smile remained on his mouth.
“About yesterday,” I prompted.
What about yesterday? What the hell was I thinking bringing it up? Again.
“What about it?” There was a dare in his question.
“I met Holly,” I blurted out, going for the first topic that didn’t involve us touching each other. “She seemed very grateful for the job. Lina told us how you hired her. Maybe you’re not a complete asshole.”
“No one gives a compliment like you, Pixie.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, shut up. I’m trying to be nice.”
“The only nice thing you can say about me is that I hired someone to do a job?”
“Maybe I’d have more to say if you’d tell me why my mother is so grateful to you,” I reminded him.
“Leave it alone, Sloane,” he said wearily.
The awkward truce between us was cracking, crumbling. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed.
Lucian turned his attention to the contents of the bookcase.
His gaze landed on the display case containing a bronzed softball. Those lips went flat again.