She didn’t go into his office but into the one he’d said was the library. She wouldn’t have guessed he’d have a library—certainly not such a varied one.
‘You have a whole bookcase of children’s books.’ She read the spines. She recognised so many she’d read in her hanging-out-at-the-library days when she’d avoided all the other students. Avoided the teasing. That was where she’d met Lauren—who’d been ripping a page out of a book she could have afforded a million times over.
‘I work for children,’ he answered briefly. ‘I got a bulk lot from a second-hand store.’
Internally she laughed at the way everything was shelved in the ‘right’ place. Clearly he hadn’t been kidding about his library-assistant job. She pulled one from the ‘teen-read’ shelf and flicked it open. Inside the front cover a name had been written in boyish scrawl—Brad Davenport. Second-hand store, huh?
She smiled. ‘That was my favourite for years. I read it so many times.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He took the book off her.
‘Did you cry at the end?’ she asked.
He smiled but didn’t confess.
‘I did every time,’ she admitted with a whisper.
Still he didn’t give it up.
‘You don’t want me to know that you’re a marshmallow inside?’
‘I’m no marshmallow,’ he answered. ‘I have them here for the look of it. Generally the kids only come here to meet and talk with me so they’re not so nervous in court. I’m not their counsellor or anything. I’m merely their legal representative.’
‘But they’re your books.’ And the kids he was supposedly not that close to drew pictures for him that he put on his walls?
His reluctant smile came with a small sigh. ‘I like to read.’
‘And you like kids?
‘Sometimes.’ He drew the word out, his voice ringing with caveats. ‘But I have no interest in having any myself.’ He put the book back. ‘There are enough out there who’ve been done over by their dipstick parents.’
‘You think you’d be a dipstick parent?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
She smiled.
‘I think parenting is one of those things you learn from the example you had,’ he said lightly. ‘I didn’t have a great example.’
‘So you know what not to do.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s never that simple. I see the cycle of dysfunctional families in my office every day. Now—’ he moved back out of the room ‘—the last room is my bedroom.’
Mya hovered in the doorway, really not wanting to intrude as the sense of intimacy built between them.
He turned and saw her hesitating and rolled his eyes. ‘I promise not to pounce.’
She stepped right into the room. He had the biggest bed she’d ever seen, smothered in white coverings. It would be like resting in a bowl of whipped cream. Definitely not a bed for pyjamas; there should be nothing but bare skin in that.
‘Why is it so high?’ she asked, then quickly cleared her throat of the embarrassing rasp that had roughened her voice.
‘I’m tall.’
‘You wouldn’t want to fall out of it, would you?’ If she sat on the edge of it, her feet couldn’t touch the floor. ‘It’s like Mount Olympus or something.’
There was no giant TV screen on a table at the foot of the bed. No chest of drawers for clothing. No bookshelf. No, it was just that massive bed with the billowing white covering demanding her attention.
‘Nice to know I inspire you to think of Greek gods.’
She sent him a baleful look. It was unfair of him to start with the teasing again when she had a whole night of work ahead of her. She was tense enough with unwanted yearning. But she couldn’t resist pulling his string a touch—wishing she really could. ‘What do I inspire you to think of?’
His gaze shifted to the left of her—to that bed. ‘Better not say.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re shy?’ She laughed.
‘I don’t want to embarrass you.’
Oh, it was way too late for that. ‘I mistakenly sent you a picture of myself in a half-see-through bikini. I don’t think I could be more embarrassed.’
‘That was just an image. I couldn’t touch you.’
Her breathing faltered, her pulse skipped quicker at the thought of where and how he was thinking of touching her. And when. Now? Mere words banished the chill she’d felt before as heat crept up her cheeks and across her entire body.
A half-smile curved his lips. ‘You like a little talk, don’t you? For a woman who’s planning to spend the rest of her life counting beans, you have to get your thrills somewhere, huh?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with chasing financial security.’ She chose to ignore the suggestion she might like a little sauce talk.
‘Strikes me you chase all-over safety. Which isn’t something I can give you,’ he warned, leaning close. ‘You’re not entirely safe with me.’
‘Now you tell me, when you’ve got me alone in your house.’ Her insides were melting—that part of her had no desire to be safe right now. It was a dangerous game and one that was so irresistible.
‘In the middle of the night.’
She turned and looked at the pretty design on the lower part of the wallpaper. Not just normal wallpaper, but almost a mural. Good diversion. ‘The room came like this?’
‘No, I chose it.’ He let her pull back from the brink.
‘You did?’ It made the room like a grotto—with that big bed in the middle and the soft-looking white pillows and duvet. ‘Okay
, you chose it with women in mind.’
‘No, I liked my tree house when I was a kid. Remember that?’
She did remember the old hut up high in one of the ancient trees at his parents’ house. She and Lauren had been banned from it. It had been padlocked and everything. His escape from the magazine-spread-perfect house. Lauren had got her escape by banning her mother from her room.
‘This gives me the same feeling of peace.’ He walked towards her. ‘And women don’t sleep in here.’
Yeah, right. ‘Because you have a separate bedroom for your seduction routine? One with boxes of condoms and sex toys?’
‘I don’t need sex toys,’ he boasted with a self-mocking smile. ‘And you’ve already seen the spare rooms. One’s my office, one’s my library.’
‘So what, you’re celibate?’ She let her eyebrows seek the sky.
‘I prefer to sleep-over at their houses. It makes the morning-after escape easier.’
She shook her head but couldn’t help the laugh. ‘You’re bad.’
‘No, I’m good. It’s easier for both of us. Women tend to be more relaxed in their own environment.’
‘Do you even make it to the morning, or do you sneak out while she’s still asleep?’
‘I never sneak out.’ He walked a step closer still. ‘There’s nothing like starting the day with sex. I leave her recovering in bed after that.’
‘And dreaming of another encounter that will never happen.’ Mya desperately clung to some kind of mockery but all she could think about was kissing him, about starting the day with sex—with him.
‘Why ruin a beautiful memory?’ He smiled. ‘One perfect night is all that’s required. More just gets messy.’
She suspected just the one with him would get messy for her. Her one and only one night had been hideous the next day.
‘Now,’ he said softly, so close in her personal space now her pulse was frantic. ‘You can either work in my office or the library. You’ve got your laptop.’ He glanced at the dinosaur beast in her bag. It weighed a ton but still had a word-processing program that worked. That was all that mattered. ‘Let’s go with my office.’ He made the decision for her. ‘I’ll pull up the cases you need while you get reading. And my computer is faster in there than the one in the office. You can type up your assignment on that—be better for you ergonomically.’