Lauren Dane - The Best Kind of Trouble

He put a platter out on the low table in front of her. “Some snacky things. I considered taking credit. Once you taste them, you’re going to love them and think I’m awesome. I’m all about that. However, it wouldn’t be nice of me, and eventually you’d find out that my sister-in-law, Mary, is an amazing cook and gives us all food on a regular basis. She made all those little things and gave them to me. I was going to do cheese and crackers or chips. I particularly like those there. The ones that look like little sacks. They have cheese and spinach and other stuff in them.” He pointed.

Natalie popped one of the phyllo bundles into her mouth. “Oh. Yeah, these are really good.” She ate two more and then made herself try the other stuff. Dates stuffed with blue cheese, spiced nuts, cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto.

After Paddy grabbed a few appetizers, he turned and got to work, oiling the grill as she settled on the rather comfortable couch on the deck to watch. He was at ease with himself, clearly at home in his skin.

“This should be done in like five minutes. You don’t need to cook it very long.”

“Want help? Not with cooking because I’d set something on fire. But I can lay out plates and that sort of thing.”

“Nope. Table is set. If you want, you can take the pilaf out of the microwave. There’s stuff in the cooler, but I’ll bring it and the salmon in a minute.”

She made her way down to the galley, guessing—correctly—at its whereabouts and grabbed the stuff he’d asked for and headed to the table on the main deck.

CHAPTER FIVE

PADDY BROUGHT THE salmon and the other things from the galley on a big tray but paused at the sight of her, the breeze playing with the hem of her dress and the hair at the nape of her neck. He wondered if she had any ink beneath the material of her dress.

Wanted pretty badly to see it as the sun rose, as she woke up in his bed.

“Hope you’re hungry.”

She turned, and it was a punch to his gut. The pleased smile, the ease on her face. She was so damned beautiful. Open in that moment, and he craved more with such longing, it alarmed him. There was something so alluring about her manner. Not when she was closed off, that sucked, and he hated it. Natalie was...elegant. Strong, sure, but she moved with a lithe grace.

Natalie padded over in her bare feet. And no, he wasn’t a foot fetishist, but damn, she did have sexy feet, and he liked the way she looked. A little casual, rumpled by the wind. Distracting him with his nonstop imaginings of what was under her clothes. He had been with her before, sure. But that was over a dozen years past.

“I really am. I had a microwave burrito for lunch.”

Snapping away from wondering what color her panties were, he pulled her chair out, and she sat. “I hope this is better than that.”

She laughed, sipping her champagne. “The appetizers alone were better than that.”

“Music. We need some music.” He got up.

“I’ll get started on dinner. You know, take one for the team and all.”

Laughing, he found the remote for his dock and turned it on as he went back to join her.

“Wow, so you just go from zero to John Legend?”

“I’ll take all the help I can get.” He dished up some of the tomato salad.

Natalie had this way of pausing, he’d noticed. She considered her answers so carefully sometimes. Made him want to know more.

Finally, she finished her champagne and locked her gaze on his. “God save me, Patrick Hurley, but you don’t need any help.”

Oh, yes, that felt good. “Yeah?”

She sighed. “Yeah.”

“Is that a good sigh? A bad sigh?”

She chewed her lip. “I don’t know.”

Then she shook her head and forked up some salmon. “I’m a liar. It’s a good sigh. Also, the salmon is fantastic.”

He preened a moment as he grinned before letting her off the hook. “So why are you eating microwave burritos for lunch, anyway? The library isn’t that far from some pretty great little cafés.”

“I’m a horrible cook. Sometimes I can’t get away from work for an hour for this or that reason, and I need something quick. Plus, I eat out. A lot. It’s better than a frozen diet meal, which tastes like tears and loneliness. I hate them. And yet, my freezer is full of them.”

He wrinkled his nose and then gave her curves a covetous look. “Why in God’s name do you need diet meals?”

“I love doughnuts and I hate exercise.”

“Sex is great exercise. I’m just saying.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure it’s a good selling point when you’re trying to get one woman into bed to reference other women.”

He cringed and then caught the twinkle in her eyes. “Oh, my God. You’re teasing me.”

She shrugged. “Some people think I’m funny. Even those of us who shush others for a living know how to laugh.”

He snickered and then paused as he imagined her all stern in a pencil skirt and a button-down white shirt. Maybe with a ruler and some really high black pumps and stockings with the line down the back.

Leading up to those twin red bows.

Clearing his throat, he drained the rest of his champagne and poured them both some more.

“Why libraries?”

“I was in my third year as an undergrad and I went to a job fair. I wandered up and down the aisles, took brochures. Took notes. Asked questions dutifully. And I ended up at the MLIS people—master’s in library and information science—spent forty-five minutes with them. I liked them. I liked what they did. Until that, I’d been considering getting a teaching degree. One of the folks I met that day urged me to apply to the graduate MLIS program, and I did.”

They continued to eat as she spoke.

“So I looked around and kept at it, and he was so helpful and kind and open. I applied and got in.” She paused. “Of course, by the time I was ready to graduate, the economy had changed. With all the cuts to libraries, I wasn’t sure what would happen. I’d been working part-time in a library near campus, so I knew how tight things were. I considered jobs outside public libraries—law firms need librarians, for instance. Colleges, universities, that sort of thing. But...the public library is important. I really wanted to pursue a position that way. This job here in town opened up, and one of my friends told me about it, and that’s pretty much history.”

“You probably could have made a lot more money elsewhere.”

Her eyes lost that teasing light and she got serious. “Libraries are important, Paddy. Libraries are not just a place to check out books. They’re a haven, a safe place for so many kids. You cannot undervalue that. Being a place, a home for people who need to escape their own unsafe places is something libraries provide. It’s a priceless thing. Some kids don’t have any adults in their lives who give a shit about them. They can go to the children’s librarian who does something as simple as holding back a book she thinks that kid would like, and it changes everything. I make enough to pay my bills and fortunately, I have family money, too. That I have the ability to be part of someone’s safe place means everything to me.”

Right then, Paddy fell a little bit in love with Natalie Clayton with her ferocity about kids and libraries.

“Go down a layer or two and you’re a fierce bitch about kids. I like that a lot.”

She shrugged.

“Family money?”

She looked away a moment and then nodded. “Yes. I considered giving it all up, but in the end, I like using it to help other people.”

“What does your family think?”

“Let’s talk about you for a while. Why did you stay here in Hood River instead of heading to L.A. or Seattle or New York?”

“I like all those places. I actually do have a condo in Manhattan and a place in Santa Barbara, where I head when I need the ocean. But my family is here. We have enough land that I can be left alone when I need it, but my brothers and my parents are close enough that I can get on my bike or take a brisk walk and be on someone’s doorstep in a few minutes. I help when I’m around. We built a studio in an old converted barn, and we do all our own production there. I know where everything is. No one bothers us in town, really. I guess at the end of it, this is my home. Everyone should have a home.”