Tell Me a Story (The Story Series Book 1) (3 page)

“
D
id
you get Laura’s number before she had a panic attack?”

“Yep. We’ve been texting a little today. I think we might go out this weekend.” Sarah selected a red pencil from a pack. We were in the bookstore, and I was straightening the items on the counter for the fiftieth time. I couldn’t get the nervous energy out of my system.

Twenty-four hours after my erotically charged evening, I was still thinking of Caleb. I’d been too busy at work to try to find him online, and now it was time for coloring. I’m into that whole therapeutic coloring movement. It’s better than meditation. But pencils and markers probably wouldn’t get my mind off him.

“Poor thing. She looked terrified,” I said.

Sarah looked up from her Zen nature pattern and pushed her purple, cat-eye glasses up her nose. “Yeah. Wow. We were having a really good time, chatting and talking about going to a movie later this week. Then she started to breathe funny. I thought maybe it was asthma, and then she said she was having an anxiety attack. I tried to get her to sit, but she lost her shit and went to find her brother. I meant to ask her where she works, too. I’ll call her later.”

I mumbled something about how she and her brother work together and then scowled, realizing I didn’t even know Caleb’s last name or the name of his company. Unless he returned to Story Brothel the following month, I’d have to forget about him. The thought made me more disappointed than I expected. It wasn’t like I’d been looking for a man. With the exception of the bookstore’s problems, my life was awesome. Fulfilling. Busy with friends and creativity and work.

But Caleb had reminded me that life could be even sweeter, especially if it involved a heavy current of sexual energy. That’s what I’d been missing. I sighed.

A guy in his twenties walked up to the counter, scratching his chest. “Dudes, do you have any animal pages to color?”

I shuffled through a sheaf of papers. It was the first Thursday of the month, which meant it was Color After Dark, a monthly event at my bookstore. Hipsters and retirees and stressed-out artist types who worked as theme park cast members flocked to the store to color with pens and markers and pencils in hopes of clearing their minds. I provided the supplies and some chill tunes; they brought the booze. It was becoming quite the local event in Orlando, and that evening, a couple of dozen people gathered at the tables I’d set up in the back of the shop.

“Here,” I said, offering the bearded guy five different versions of predatory animals. “Take your pick.” He grabbed a lion and sauntered off.

Sarah sharpened her pencil, then shaded in a frog. In addition to being my best friend, Sarah was the bookstore’s manager. The job fit well with her schedule since she was getting a graduate degree in library science.

“Since when are frogs red?” I asked.

She tossed her long, chestnut-colored curtain of hair. “It’s my frog, bitch. Don’t judge.”

I laughed and was scanning the tables filled with focused, de-stressed adults when I heard the bells attached to the front door jingle. A latecomer. I looked up to see a man walking toward the counter, grinning.

Caleb
. Dear God, he was even more gorgeous tonight. Michelangelo would weep at those cheekbones.

Out the corner of my eye, I could see Sarah cock an eyebrow. “Lookie who’s here,” she said under her breath. “Surprise, surprise, surprise…”

“Hey,” he said softly, resting his big hands on the counter. He was somehow more vivid and masculine in the bright light of my bookstore. I stared at him, briefly mute. Tonight he wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, and the combination with his silvery-black hair and bow-shaped mouth was irresistible. So were his biceps, which hadn’t been evident the previous evening under his button-down white dress shirt.

“Hey there,” Sarah said, picking up her coloring supplies and shooting me a pointed look. “I’m going to make myself comfortable at the table. I need to spread out.”

I nodded. Now alone with Caleb, my eyes met his. I tried to steady my wild heartbeat by breathing evenly, but it probably looked more like hyperventilating.

“Emma, I’m sorry about last night. I’d hoped to get your number, but my sister—”

“Its okay.” He looked so uncomfortable and apologetic that I wanted to alleviate the awkwardness. And catch my breath.

“She’s had those attacks for years, but they still freak me out. I feel helpless, you know? I’ve taken her to the hospital so many times, but there’s never anything I can do.”

“I can imagine. Did you take her to the hospital last night?”

He nodded. “Yeah. They ended up give her a tranquilizer and sending her home. Still, I wanted to apologize.”

“There’s no need to at all. I felt awful for her.” I tried to smile. “How did you find me?” A pang of wariness shot through my stomach. It both thrilled and scared me that he’d gone out of his way to find my bookstore.

He grinned.

“Are you stalking me?” I half-teased.

“Um, no.” He reached into his back pocket and extracted a piece of paper, then unfolded it and placed it on the counter. “You were in the paper. With a beautiful photo.”

Chapter One Books to Hold Color After Dark

“Oh, right. I forgot I was in
The Sentinel
today.”

“I opened the paper at breakfast this morning and there you were. It was a very welcome surprise. Serendipity, even.”

“I love that word.” My face flushed hot. “So you came to color.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh.” I stifled a smile.

“I came to ask you to read me a bedtime story.”

My mouth dropped open, and I glanced over at the tables. No one had heard his proposition apparently, because they were absorbed in their coloring. Sparks shot through my belly.

“I don’t read for money outside of Story Brothel.” I grabbed a pack of markers and a page with a dragonfly pattern and shot him a teasing grin.

He laughed. “I wasn’t planning on paying you. I want to take you to dinner, though.” He mentioned a steakhouse, somewhere that I’d read about but had never been, an expensive place in a luxury hotel at one of the theme park resorts.

“I’m a vegetarian.” I slid the markers and the coloring sheet toward him. Of course I wanted to have dinner with him, and of course I wanted to read him a story. But I also wanted to draw this out a bit, see where our flirtation would lead. “Maybe you want to sit and color for a bit?”

He opened his mouth, and by the look on his face, I was certain he was going to make fun of my offer. Then he grinned. “Sure. I’ll color.”

I moved from around the counter and beckoned with my fingers, then took him by the arm. I squeezed his bare bicep and guided him to an empty seat next to Sarah. Wow, I knew I had small hands, but they looked positively tiny when wrapped around his bicep. I imagined being beneath him, holding onto both of his arms while he entered me. A wave of heat rippled through my body.

He sat and slipped an expensive-looking watch off his wrist and set it on the table near his pencils. “I’ll try to stay between the lines.”

Sarah piped up. “You don’t have to. That’s the beauty of adult coloring. You can do whatever the hell you want.”

They laughed and started to chat in low voices. I moved away so I could stare at him from my seat at the counter. He was so delicious, with the little flecks of silver hair on the sides of his head. Instead of making him seem older, they made him look cooler, edgier. I stared, he caught my eye a few times, and I turned away, smiling. This went on for a half-hour or so, and then Sarah shook his hand and rose.

“Say hi to Laura for me,” Sarah called out, then walked to the counter where I was filling out a book order.

“Em, I’m leaving. I got the whole story on his sister,” she whispered. “Call you later.” She gave me a quick hug and then ambled out of the store. I turned the music down, hoping to give everyone else the cue to leave, and then sat in Sarah’s seat next to Caleb.

“Enjoying yourself?” I inhaled, and there it was. The oak-vanilla-mint scent that made me want to feast on his skin.

“Actually, I am. This is oddly captivating.” He shaded the dragonfly’s wings in blue. “I don’t think I’ve colored since first grade.”

“Plenty of people say that. Then they discover it’s soothing. What do you do for stress relief?”

“I run, work out, typical guy stuff.” He shrugged. “Maybe I need to color. Maybe it would calm me down. Whatever I do, it’s not enough. Work takes over and I never feel fully relaxed, you know? But this is cool.” He looked around, nodding.

“I do know that feeling.” I wanted to mention to him that coloring nights and the bookstore might not be around in a few months because someone had recently bought the building. A combination of rumor and a newspaper article that was short on detail revealed that the new owner would raze the place and put up a giant new high-rise filled with condos. There was a meeting soon about the redevelopment of the entire block, and I was organizing all of the indie shop owners into attending and protesting. I opened my mouth to invite him, then stopped myself. No, I didn’t want to sound needy or pathetic. Why tell a guy I just met about my crusade against cookie-cutter development in downtown Orlando?

It wasn’t likely he’d be sympathetic to my woes, considering what he did for a living. I wanted to fuck Caleb, not ask him for advice. My business was my own—I’d made sure of that even before I scrimped, saved, and took out loans to keep the bookstore afloat.

“How long have you owned this store? I love the feel of it,” he said in a hushed voice. “It also smells good. Like paper.”

I shifted my chair close to his, then picked up a pencil and started coloring one of the dragonflies on his paper. His hands looked even larger with a thin pencil in between his fingers. I inhaled sharply, trying to ignore the fantasies dancing in my mind.

“Five years. Are you from Orlando? I’m surprised I’ve never seen you here.”

He winced. “You know, I live right down the street. And I walk by here all the time. But I usually buy books online.”

“Hush,” I whispered, attempting a mock seriousness. “You should be punished for that.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of some way to punish me.”

I grinned. “You’re a flirt.”

“And you’re not?” His grin was even wickeder than mine, and the energy between us was tangible.

I didn’t respond, instead biting my lip and trying to quell the urge to rub myself on him like my cat does with the coffee table. I imagined his mouth trailing down the back of my neck, then down the column of my spine, his fingers reaching around to stroke me to orgasm. I shivered a little, and his eyes flickered down my face.

We colored on the same paper, a delicious silence between us. At one point, we shaded the same dragonfly, him doing one wing in green, me coloring the other wing in blue, stopping to glance up at each other. Tonight his eyes seemed an even deeper sapphire color, and I wanted to hold his face in my hands and simply stare into them. And the touches of gray hair made him look more distinguished and masculine, probably because his body was hard and tight.

I reached for the black pencil the same time as he did, and he rested his fingers on the back of my hand, sending sparks up my arm. Picking up the pencil, I turned my hand over and offered it to him. He wordlessly took it from me with graceful precision.

It was nine o’clock, the time when Color After Dark normally wound down and people began gathering their things and shuffling out. I said goodbye to everyone, then got up and locked the door after the last person left. Caleb and I were alone now, and I shut the music off. He rose and stood next to me at the counter, the silence surrounding us. For the first time that evening, I felt awkward and needy and not like myself. I was usually in control of my feelings around men.

Not this man.

“So I was thinking,” he said. “How about I make you a vegetarian dinner at my place tomorrow night?”

I grabbed my purse. Why didn’t he ask me over
now
? “You’re willing to cook vegetarian for me?”

“You sound skeptical of my cooking abilities.”

“Maybe I am, since you suggested a steakhouse.”

“I figured you’d want to go to the hottest restaurant in the city.”

“Doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve never been.”

“Usually that’s where men take women to impress them. Women like flashy restaurants.”

I shrugged. “The last time I went out to eat was Taco Bus, three weeks ago.”

“Taco Bus?” He looked a little lost, and I laughed as I fixed my black, patent-leather purse over my shoulder.

“Is it a…bus?” he asked.

“It is. I would take you, but you don’t seem like a Taco Bus kind of guy.”

That made him lick his bottom lip. “Try me.”

Maybe he was more open-minded than he appeared. Still, I wasn’t expecting anything more than a dinner-date and a one-night stand from him. Didn’t need anything more than that. Didn’t want it. I just needed his mouth and his body—then needed to forget about this little obsession with him.

“Can I walk you to your car?”

I smiled at his old-fashioned manners and motioned for him to follow me through the back storeroom. The bookstore’s rear door led out to the parking lot, and from there, it was only a few steps to my beat-up Honda. We paused at my driver’s side door, and a few light raindrops landed on my face. I hate getting caught in rain, but for some reason, I wasn’t concerned tonight.

I considered asking him to my house, but I liked that he was planning an evening for us. It made the hookup less raunchy and more erotic.

I could wait. Waiting was making my stomach flutter and my heart crash against my chest, like I was a teenager and not a grown woman.

“Text me your address,” I said, digging in my purse for my card, then handing it to him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night. Don’t bring anything. I’ll handle it all.”

“No wine?” I murmured, feeling a couple more raindrops. They were cool on my warm face, and for the first time ever, I liked how they felt.

“Nope.”

“Dessert?”

He laughed. “I could say something really cheesy and totally inappropriate, but I won’t. So no, don’t bring dessert. I’ve got it covered.”