Stephanie Bond (2 page)

CHAPTER Three

“How was the exhibit at the museum?” Gabrielle asked Lewis as they settled behind the Information desk.

“Great. How was your book?”

“Er…long,” she said, unwilling to admit the reason she hadn’t yet finished was because her mind had wandered all evening to a man whose name she didn’t even know. “Lewis,”

she asked carefully, “how would you go about finding a complete stranger?”

Her coworker frowned. “What do you mean?”

Gabrielle squirmed. “I mean if you saw someone…on the street…and you wanted to find them, what would you do?”

“I guess I’d go back to where I saw them in the first place. Are you looking for someone?”

She shrugged as casually as she could manage. “Maybe. I met this…person…on the train and had a nice conversation. I thought it might be interesting to find them again, that’s all.”

Lewis angled his head. “And is this person a woman or a man?”

Gabrielle straightened an already straight stack of papers on the desk. “A…man.”

“Oh. I see.” Her coworker crossed his arms. “Is that a new dress?”

“No,” she said self-consciously, then opened a desk drawer to remove a spare sweater she kept at work for emergencies. Too much cleavage certainly constituted an emergency.

She shrugged into the ugly brown sweater and began buttoning it from the top. Why had she worn the dress in the first place? It wasn’t as if the man was going to walk through the door.

“May I help you?” she heard Lewis ask someone behind her.

“Actually, I think I found what I’m looking for,” said a deep voice that made her stomach bottom out.

Gabrielle swung around to see the handsome stranger from the train standing in the area in front of the information desk. He wore a sharp charcoal-colored suit and stared at her with those wonderful hazel-colored eyes, a small smile curving his mouth.

She felt disoriented. Had she conjured him into existence from her fantasies alone?

Gabrielle blinked, but he was still there and looking so…
substantial
, he couldn’t be anything but real.

“What…how…” Feeling Lewis’s slack-jawed gaze on her, Gabrielle took a deep breath for composure. “I mean…how can I help you, sir?” She was sure everyone could hear her heart pounding.

“I was hoping you could recommend a good book,” the man said easily.

Gabrielle seemed rooted to the spot. A slight push from behind propelled her forward.

“No one tops Gabrielle’s recommendations,” Lewis said cheerfully. “She knows everything about every book you can name.”

“Thank you,” Gabrielle murmured to her friend out of the side of her mouth. “Because that makes me sound
so
interesting.” But at least Lewis’ comment had jarred her out of her trance. She turned to the stranger and forced a casual smile. “What kind of book were you looking for?”

He took his time answering, instead raking his gaze over her, leaving goose bumps in his wake. “I’m willing to experiment.”

Gabrielle wanted to tear off the ugly brown sweater, but at the same time, she was grateful for the barrier. The sensual vibes the man emitted were hazardous. She wet her lips. “Let’s start in classics, shall we?”

“I’ll follow your lead,” he said lightly, but the intensity in his eyes implied he was talking about more than a book recommendation.

With her pulse clicking, she walked toward the elevator. It was one thing to fantasize about seeing the handsome stranger again, but now that he was here, within arms’ reach, she was at a loss as to what was supposed to happen next. As the elevator doors closed behind them, sealing them in the small space, her mind reeled.
Breathe…think. What
would the women in the book club do?

She had nothing…the sultry scent of his cologne had apparently paralyzed her brain.

“So your name is Gabrielle?” the man asked.

She exhaled. “That’s right. Gabrielle Pope.”

“Beautiful name,” he murmured. “It suits you.”

His compliment sent a warm flush to her cheeks. “Thank you. And your name?”

“Henry Wells,” he said, then extended his hand. “How do you do?”

She hesitated for a heartbeat, staring at his big hand before placing her own inside. His thick, warm fingers enveloped hers like a bear hug, flooding her with a mingled sense of excitement and comfort. She sensed she could trust this man.

“I do…fine,” she murmured. Other than the fact that she felt like a tongue-tied teenager and her knees seemed strangely unstable. When he relinquished her hand, she located her voice. “How did you find me?”

“You mentioned you were a librarian, and I assumed you worked in a location somewhere south of where I got on the train yesterday.”

So he’d been doing the same mental gymnastics to figure out how to find her that she’d been doing to try to find him. “There are lots of branches of the public library system.”

He smiled wider. “I got lucky—I was prepared to spend all day looking for you.”

Pleasure infused her chest. “What do you do that gives you so much flexibility?”

“I’m a businessman, a venture capitalist. I’m always looking for a new adventure.”

His eye contact was unswerving, but warm and open. Incredibly, Gabrielle felt her body leaning toward him, like a flower turning toward the sun. The
ding
of the elevator yanked her back to the present, reminding her she was at work.

“Right this way,” she said with as much authority as she could manage. “We have a great section on classic literature.” She angled her head at him. “If you don’t mind the inconvenience of an old-fashioned paper book, that is.”

He grinned. “Touché. I’ll make an exception in this case.”

She walked among the shelves, running her fingers over the spines of the books, many of them leather bound. The pungency of the aged paper and wood shelving never failed to comfort her, a promise that books would endure. “How do you feel about Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway?”

“All good,” he said with a nod. “As are Steinbeck, Salinger, and Vonnegut.”

She turned toward him with a smile. “You’re well read in the American classics?”

He shrugged. “I guess, as much as the next college educated person. I’ve always been an avid reader of fiction, although lately I’ve gravitated more toward biographies and history. But…”

Gabrielle arched an eyebrow. “But?”

“I’ve always felt my education was lacking in poetry.”

She brightened. “Poetry?” Her feet were already moving toward the poetry section. “We have so many excellent volumes.”

“Anything adult-themed?”

At the realization he was looking for erotica, awareness flowered in her breasts. She looked over her shoulder to find him skimming her back view. “I find the translated classic poems of India and China especially…enjoyable.”

When he lifted his gaze, his hazel eyes were slightly hooded. “I trust your judgment.”

Gabrielle swallowed hard, then scanned the shelves and removed two volumes that she’d practically memorized. At the thought of him reading the explicit words that had induced her to self-gratification many times, her sex tingled. “Then I suggest you start with these.”

He winced. “There is one slight problem.”

Gabrielle frowned. “Which is?”

“I’m not a resident.”

“You live outside the city?”

“Actually, I live outside the state. I’m from Dallas, visiting this week on business.”

At the news the man didn’t live in the vicinity, disappointment shot through her. “Oh.”

Then she gave herself a mental shake. Had she believed a chance encounter was going to turn into a full-blown love affair? Marriage? Children? “We have a program where visitors can pay a flat fee to access to the library’s services for a year. Do you travel to Atlanta on business often?”

He shook his head ruefully. “No.”

Her heart sank lower. “Oh.”

Henry’s gaze was direct, reflecting blatant interest. “I was hoping I could talk you into checking out the books in your name and meeting me for dinner…or something.”

CHAPTER Four

Gabrielle’s throat convulsed. Henry Well’s proposition wasn’t as innocent as it sounded.

The heat between them was unmistakable…but the situation defied common sense. As their gazes locked, Gabrielle’s pulse rocketed higher. He was being a gentleman and leaving the decision to meet up to her. Her mind leapt ahead, conjuring up snatches of the two of them intertwined…naked…

In some seedy place.

As titillating as the offer sounded, she didn’t know this man. He could’ve given her a fake name—perhaps that was why he didn’t want to fill out the paperwork to get a visitor’s pass. He could be a criminal…or married. Or both. Maybe he did this kind of thing all the time when he traveled. Panic backed up in her lungs, and her nerve fled.

“I’m sorry—signing out books for patrons is against library policy.” Her voice sounded painfully prudish even to her own ears.

Disappointment flashed in his eyes. “I understand,” he said, then reached into his jacket pocket and removed a business card. “If you change your mind, Gabrielle, call my cell.

I’m in town until Friday.”

He stuck the card in one of the poetry books she held. Gabrielle stared at his retreating back, feeling despondent, as if she’d failed some kind of test, that she wasn’t as adventurous as he’d assumed—not as adventurous as she herself wanted to be.

She walked among the towering shelves, stopping here and there to straighten books and return volumes to their proper place, giving Henry Wells plenty of time to leave the library before she returned to the main floor.

Indeed, he was nowhere in sight when she slid in place behind the Information desk. But Lewis’s stare bore into her like a hot laser.

“What was
that
all about?”

Heat climbed her neck. “What?” she asked, buying time.

He scoffed and gestured wildly. “You mention something about trying to find a strange man, and then a big, strapping cowboy shows up looking for you and the two of you disappear into the stacks, that’s what!”

“You heard him,” Gabrielle said mildly. “He needed a recommendation for a book.”

Lewis looked dubious. “And yet he left empty-handed.”

“It turns out he’s only in town on business, and he didn’t want to get a visitor’s pass.”

“Oh. Too bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, is he the man who sat next to you on the train yesterday?”

“That’s right.”

“And there was a little something-something between the two of you?”

Gabrielle shook her head. “I was mistaken.”

“Oh. No chemistry after all, huh?”

“None,” she lied.

Lewis pursed his mouth. “Strange, then, that you’d be reading those books again.”

“Hm?” Gabrielle glanced down at the two small sensual poetry books she hadn’t realized she still held. “Um…they’re for the Red Tote Book Club.”

“Of course they are,” he said in a sing-songy voice.

Trying to ignore Lewis’s knowing looks and comments, Gabrielle threw herself into the busy work of answering questions in person and over the phone, although they weren’t as busy as she would’ve liked. Once again, she acknowledged the branch’s foot traffic had dropped precipitously and wondered how much longer the city could afford to support a book-lending system that seemed to be increasingly irrelevant. To make matter worse, the breaks in activity left too much time for the encounter with Henry Wells to become engrained in her mind.

She pulled out his business card several times, as if the little square of stiff paper somehow held the answers to her dilemma.
Henry Wells, President of HW Enterprises,
Dallas, Texas.
A phone number was listed, but no address.

On her lunch hour, Gabrielle found an out of the way computer and performed a web search on Henry Wells of Dallas. When she got no hits, warning flags raised in her mind.

If he was as successful as he appeared to be, wouldn’t she be able to find some mention of him? For the first time in her life, she considered paying for background information from one of those personal information sites on the Internet, but changed her mind when she realized the turnaround time would be longer than the man was going to be in town.

All afternoon she found herself fingering his business card and debating the wisdom of contacting the handsome stranger. On the one hand, it was a dangerous proposition for a single woman to hook up with an out-of-towner she’d just met. On the other hand, hadn’t she been dreaming of this kind of mysterious sexual adventure her entire life?

Gabrielle picked up the phone a half dozen times to call him, but lost her nerve every time. On the train ride home that evening, she kept telling herself she was doing the right thing by being safe. After all, she didn’t want to wind up as a newscast headline, a cautionary tale to single women who foolishly ignored their instincts. She tried to immerse herself in her book, but wasn’t in the mood to read about another woman reaching the heights of physical pleasure with a warm, willing man. She closed the book and curled her ink-stained fingers, wondering where Henry Wells was at this very moment.

Was he thinking about her?

When the train reached her stop, Gabrielle alighted and walked home in a daze. When she unlocked the door to her townhome, she was accosted by Mellors, who purred his intense pleasure at her arrival. She scooped up the lovable cat, but as she pressed her nose to his, she was suddenly struck by the realization that the person who was most happy to see her every day wasn’t a person at all.

Surely that was a cautionary tale in and of itself.

Gabrielle’s heart thumped against her breastbone. Before she could chicken out again, she set Mellors on the floor, picked up the phone, and dialed the cell number she’d already memorized from Henry Wells’s business card.

******************

Even though Henry knew that a watched pot seldom boiled, he’d checked his phone constantly since he’d left Gabrielle Pope at the library in the event he’d somehow missed her call. In the depths of her dark eyes, he’d detected a banked fire. She’d looked so prim in that bulky brown sweater buttoned up to her neck…as if she were waiting for him to free her from its confines.

He had a feeling, given the right situation, the woman would unleash a fire that would singe them both.

When his phone rang, he almost dropped it. At the sight of a local unknown number flashing on the screen, his heart rate doubled. He connected the call, uncaring if he seemed eager or sounded hopeful. “This is Henry.”

After a pause, her melodic voice sounded. “This is Gabrielle.”

He exhaled in relief, overwhelmed by the sheer happiness of hearing from her. A warning bell sounded in his ear that he might be getting in over his head with this beautiful stranger, but he didn’t care. “I’m glad you called.”

“I almost didn’t,” she admitted.

Oh, that voice.
“What changed your mind?”

“I can’t say for sure, only that I’d like to see you again.”

“When?” he blurted.

She paused for so long, he was afraid the call had dropped. Then he heard her inhale, as if she were gathering her nerve. “How about tonight?”

His heart galloped. “Where?”

“I’ve heard the Belvedere Hotel has nice rooms.”

Lust arrowed through his body, giving him an erection so instantly, it bordered on painful. “How does eight o’clock sound?”

She made a rueful noise. “I was thinking seven.”

Henry closed his eyes. “I’ll be waiting.”