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"How the fuck is this my fault?" He folds his arms across his chest, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. "I just came in to buy books."
"You distracted me," I mumble, leaving out the part about him distracting me by being hot. He's already got enough dirt on me for a lifetime, and I don't even know his name. Knowing I need to get myself together, I kneel to start gathering up the mess at our feet.
Only he seems to have the same idea because he kneels at the exact same moment. We bump into each other. I'm clumsy on a good day, and today is not one of those. I land sprawled across the bottom step with him kneeling at my feet in a sea of comic books. His dark head comes up, his eyes locked on mine. For a long moment, neither of us moves. I'm not sure I even breathe.
My stomach flips and spins and then does it again, putting on an Olympics-worthy performance. My heart thuds against my breastbone so hard I'm sure he probably hears it.
"The fucking water," he mutters again, those gorgeous green eyes writing entire volumes without a single word passing his lips. "What's your name, pretty baby?"
"Scarlett Crawford."
"Scarlett Crawford," he repeats. "I'm Finn Taylor."
"Cool," I whisper, making him smile.
"You aren't from around here."
"How do you know?"
His lips tip up into a little boy smile that makes my stomach quiver. "I know everything about this town, Scarlett Crawford from Gatsby Books. It's what I do."
"What you do?" Confusion furrows my brows and wrinkles my nose. "What does that mean? Are you a historian or something?"
He laughs quietly. "Not quite. I own a computer security business."
"Oh." I frown as something tickles at the back of my mind. When I moved to town to help take care of my Aunt Ophelia a few months ago, she insisted on telling me everything there is to know about everyone who lives in Silver Spoon Falls. I think she mentioned something about this man. Only, she made him sound like a super-spy who spends all his time locked in a secret lab doing super-secret spy things for ungodly amounts of money. If this is the same man, my aunt left out about five million pertinent details. Because this man is way hotter than I expected. He's also doing crazy things to my insides. And I just assaulted him with tentacle porn.
Awesome.
"Please tell me you aren't the super-spy genius my aunt told me about," I groan.
"Super-spy genius?" He cocks a brow and chuckles.
"You are, aren't you?"
"No," he says, slowly gathering up the books I dropped. I think he does it more to avoid looking at me than anything. He's buying himself time to think through his answer. "Technically, spying entails gathering intelligence or information in secret, generally without permission. My clients pay me very well to hack into their shit."
I groan again, burying my face in my hands. He's definitely the super-spy Aunt Ophelia told me about. And she definitely left out all the juicy bits of information. We are so discussing her gossip when I get home today. If she's going to do it, she should at least be good at it!
"I showed a bazillionaire tentacle porn," I mumble. "I am so getting fired."
"Baby," Finn laughs. "You aren't getting fired."
I peel my hands away from my eyes to peer at him over the top of them. "I'm pretty sure that if we had an employee manual, this would be item number one on the Do Not Do list."
"I think this might be the first time an employee manual ever needed an item for this situation, pretty baby," he says, and then immediately grimaces. "Shit. I'm not helping, am I?"
I shake my head.
"How about I make you a deal?"
"If it involves forgetting this ever happened and never speaking of it again, sold!" I cry.
He laughs loudly. "Fuck, you're cute."
My eyes nearly pop out of my head.
"I said that out loud, didn't I?" He cocks his head to the side and then shrugs. "Fuck it. It's true. You're cute as hell, Scarlett Crawford from Gatsby Books."
