"What about you?" He nods at the shelves behind me. "This wasn't always here, was it?"
"No." I trace the edge of the desk. "When I took over, the county budget gave me a closet with water damage and a shelfof donated Danielle Steeles. I spent two years writing grants and calling every used bookstore between here and Astoria. The interlibrary system took another year. The children's programs took six months of begging the county board for funding they didn't want to give a library they didn't think anyone used."
"And now Lily can get an Ursula Vernon from Eugene."
My throat tightens. "Yeah. She can."
He holds my gaze for a beat longer than the sentence requires and my skin prickles with heat and I wonder if he can tell, if orc senses pick up things like elevated heart rate, like the flush climbing my neck, like the fact that I chose this dress on purpose and I'm standing close enough to catch his scent for the first time. Leather, ink, and underneath, sharp and alive, not human, and my body registers it before my brain catches up.I've read this before. I've read it a hundred times in the paperbacks I keep in my nightstand drawer. It never once happened to me at the circulation desk.
The front door opens. Sarah Stone comes in with a box of donated school books balanced on one hip and Reeve gnawing on a board book in the crook of her other arm. Reeve drools on the book's cover with the commitment of a baby who has opinions about literature.
"Donation drop-off," Sarah says, and then her gaze moves from me to Colt standing at the counter and back to me. She doesn't say a word. She just gives me the smile. The one that means I'm going to get a phone call later.
"Thank you, Sarah. I'll catalog them Monday."
"No rush." Sarah shifts Reeve higher on her hip. "Take your time."
She leaves. Colt clears his throat. "Sarah's, uh—"
"Yeah."
"Right, anyway, I should get Lily," he says.
"She's in the stacks. Shelf eight."
He pushes off the counter, glances down atMiddlemarch, and walks toward the stacks.
Lily comes out with her backpack zipped and her holds tucked under one arm. Colt steers her toward the exit. At the community board, he slows. Looks at the photograph of himself and Lily one more time.
"Miss Frost." He turns in the doorway. "Thank you. For the books."
"Anytime, Mr. Rivers."
He nods and they leave.
I lock up at five. The library settles into its after-hours quiet, and I stand behind the counter where Colt stood twenty minutes ago and talked about George Eliot like she mattered, about his students like they still sat in the front row, about losing the career he loved with a dry wit that made me laugh hard enough to embarrass myself.
I can still smell him. Leather, ink, and that sharp edge I've never been close enough to register until today. My body responded to it, a low heat that pooled in my belly and stayed, and I'm not going to think about that.
Except I do think about it the entire drive home.
Chapter 2
Colt
I've entered the same number twice.
Line forty-seven. Fuel reimbursements. Two hundred and fourteen dollars, logged on March 9th and again on March 15th, I've been staring at this ledger for forty minutes without catching it because the county librarian wore a green dress yesterday and my scenting won't let me forget.
Cedar and old paper and vanilla. The base notes I've carried over six months of Saturday pickups, stored alongside Lily's hold receipts in a corner of my brain I keep telling myself to shut down. And underneath, the note I caught when I leaned over the circulation desk to look at her copy ofMiddlemarch—the warm, dark shift in her skin chemistry that means arousal. I know what arousal smells like. I spent six years teaching undergrads. I learned to filter it out the way I filter out exhaust fumes and the burnt-coffee smell that follows Dawson from room to room.
Ellie Frost I can't filter out. I've tried. Her scent cuts through everything else, and now I catch it at distances that make no sense. Across the library floor, through a closed door, from the parking lot when the wind turns.
I cross out the duplicate and recheck the column. The numbers add up. They always add up, because that's what I do. I find the money, I balance the books, I make sure Knox's decisions have a budget behind them. Fifteen years of this.
The ledger closes with a snap. I push back from the kitchen table. Coffee's gone cold. Outside the window, March rain turns the yard gray and keeps the puddles by the driveway full. Lily's bike leans against the porch rail where she left it Friday, spokes dotted with mud. The house is quiet enough to hear the fridge hum.
Quiet enough to think about the bedroom down the hall. Second drawer on the left, underneath a folded handkerchief that belonged to my mother. My wedding band. Gold, plain. I took it off six months ago, the indent faded within weeks, which felt like a betrayal and a relief at the same time.
