He turned back to the shelves and stared at the books in front of him. "Whatever, Evans."
There was something about the way he said it that knocked her off-center for some reason. Was he teasing her? It was just teasing and not flirting, right?
"What's that one?"
"Which one?" she asked.
He nodded towards one of the lower shelves. "That light blue one."
Ryan squatted down next to her and she couldn't help but notice his thick hockey thighs as they flexed underneath him. Lucy recognized it as soon as she saw the front cover as he pulled the book off the shelf.
"Oh, my short stories collection!" she exclaimed.
Ryan's face looked slightly disappointed as he put it back on the shelf.
"What are you doing?"
"What do you mean, what am I doing?" he said.
"You should read that."
He stood back up, the full frame of his hockey body taking up the space she was standing in by the bookshelves. "You acted like it was something you really liked so I won't take it."
"Well, I love it, and you can still borrow it."
"Is it heavy?"
"Physically?" she asked in a questioning tone.
Ryan gave her an exasperated sigh. "No, I mean is it more of, like, some classic about guys burying their enemies in their basements."
She gave him a tight smile, trying to hide her embarrassment from misunderstanding him. "Probably."
Ryan shrugged. "Pass. I can't do that right now."
Lucy tried not to make a big deal out of it, but she understood what was really going on. Ryan didn't want to use his brain to think deep thoughts about deep short stories. Sure, she loved the classics and loved really digging into a story when she was up here, but Ryan didn't need to do any digging right now.
She put her hand on his bicep, forcing herself to not show how much she enjoyed his hard muscles under her fingers. Instead, she gently nudged him down a little until he was in front of her father's bookcase.
"You want something from these shelves."
"What are these?"
"Thrillers, mysteries. Easy stuff for your brain to digest without having to over analyze things."
"Mindless," he said with a bit of a dejected tone.
"Not mindless," she replied cheerfully. "You definitely have to put some effort into figuring out the mystery of what the hell is going on."
Ryan quickly turned and gave her a surprised look. "Did you just swear, Ms. Evans?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Hell isn't a swear word. Anyways, it's a good distraction without making you get too into your brain."
"That sounds like something I need."
Lucy smiled up at him, then pushed herself between him and the bookshelf. She didn't mean to invade his personal space like that, but she also wasn't about to apologize for it. Instead, she just pushed ahead, scanning the bindings of the books for one she thought he might like.
She pulled a James Patterson book off the shelf and held it over her shoulder. "Read the back of that one and see if you like it." The book was gently pulled from her grasp as she went to work scanning the shelves again. "And this one and this one."
