Check Her Out (His Curvy Librarian Book 2) by Frankie Love (the false prince .TXT) 📗

How crazy is that? I’ve known her a couple of months, if you count the emails, and all of five minutes in person, and yet I’ve got this overwhelming urge to get closer to her, to wrap my arms around her and plant a kiss on those plump little lips.

And she’s looking at me like she might feel the same.

Did somebody turn the furnace on, at the tail end of summer? Because damn, it just got warm in here.

“Hey, Mr. P!”

Suddenly, the door is flung open and teens are pouring into the room. School is out and that moment of delicious tension is over.

Probably for the best.

I step away from Brooklyn and take a deep breath, my hands on my hips in a posture of forced casualness. One of the kids, a fifteen-year-old named Jaxon, calls out to me again. “Mr. P, you got a delivery or somethin’ out there.”

“That’s the library van,” I explain. “For our reading corner. This is Miss Hart, the teen librarian.”

I put my hand on the small of her back without even thinking about it, and I can actually see the color rising into her cheeks at that small touch. Damn, I wish school ran long today.

I take my hand away before I can drive myself any crazier, and she says, “Call me Brooklyn—all the kids do.”

“Sup,” one of the other kids, Ty, says.

I just shake my head. How long have I been working with these guys, and they still can’t do me the simple favor of greeting guests with something better than ‘sup’? I don’t comment on that because I know Ty’s just trying to get a rise out of me, like he always is. What I say instead is, “Who wants to help us carry the rest of the books in and arrange the shelves?”

Some of the kids are already going about their usual after-school routines—working on homework together or going into the little kitchenette for a snack—but Jaxon and Ty come outside with Brooklyn and me.

With four sets of hands, it doesn’t take long to finish unloading the truck. I check out the titles Brooklyn selected for us as they’re unboxed.

“The Outsiders, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Paper Towns,” I read off as I hand books to Ty to be shelved.

“Read any of them?” Brooklyn asks, and I can’t help giving her a coy smile.

“All of them,” I tell her. “The Outsiders is my favorite of that lot.”

She smiles back. “What do you know? Me too.”

We finish shelving the books—somewhat haphazardly, but there’ll be time to teach the kids the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System later. I call them all over and Brooklyn introduces herself to the whole group, then talks a little about what the two of us are trying to accomplish with this little collection.

“I know there are a lot of kids your age who don’t like to read, or maybe have problems that are a whole lot more pressing than taking the time to read a book,” she says. “And I get that. It’s how I felt when I was young and my parents barely had enough money to feed us and pay the rent. But then one day I picked up a library book and realized there were whole other worlds just waiting to be entered and explored.”

“Which book?” I asked, and she gave me a rather shushing look. But she answered.

“The Giver,” she said.

“Love that one,” I interjected again. “Love the movie too.”

She put a finger up to her lips—she really was shushing me now, and it had quite the opposite effect. I kept my mouth shut, but something inside me was growling with desire.

“Anyway,” Brooklyn continued, directing her attention back to the teens, “I’ll be here once a week and I can bring whatever books you want from the main library. Please help yourselves to what’s on these shelves—they’re here for you, and so am I.”

By the end of her speech, I think I might be in love.

I can’t relate to not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, like these kids can and like Brooklyn apparently can, but I sure as hell know what it feels like to escape into a book to get away from the ugliness in your real life. And my heart absolutely melts as I stand back and watch Brooklyn interacting with my teens.

Some of them go right back to what they were doing before, like I expected—they’ll warm up to the reading nook eventually. But plenty of others stick around, and a handful walk away with a book tucked under their arms.

I’m just taking it all in, admiring how quickly Brooklyn has forged a connection with kids who don’t open up easily, when I overhear Ty and Jaxon talking off to the side.

“Seriously, total cougar,” Ty is saying.

I stifle a laugh. Only a teenager would think of Brooklyn like that—she can’t be past twenty-five. I do have to agree with the assessment, though. She’s gorgeous, with a personality to match, and I don’t intervene because who hasn’t had a harmless little crush on a librarian?

But then Jaxon lowers his voice, just loud enough for me to hear him say, “I dare you to go talk to her.”

“And say what?” Ty asks.

“Tell her how hot she is.”

“Guys–” I start to intervene, but Ty’s fast—he’s on the varsity football team at just fifteen, and he slips away from me like a pro.

“Hey, Brooklyn,” he says, “Are you sure you’re not a library book? Because I can’t stop checking you out.”

“Ty,” I snap, using the Stern Adult voice I so rarely employ. “Not cool. Apologize to Miss Hart.”

He looks guiltily at me, then back at Brooklyn. “I’m sorry. I was just having fun.”

“It’s okay,” she says, then hands him a book off the shelf. “You can make it up to me by giving Ender’s Game a try.”

He takes the book and I shoo him and Jaxon away, then turn to Brooklyn. “Sorry about that. I