Page 1 of If Books Could Kill
CHAPTER ONE
Mason, otherwise known as the most classically handsome man I’ve laid eyes on outside of a cologne ad, is making intense eye contact with me. His full lips quirk up at the corners, nudging dimples out of hiding, and he dips his head in an almost imperceptible nod. Then he darts for my purse.
“NO!” I shout, wrenching my body away while throwing out a hand to block him. He tries to catch me in a headlock, but I duck out of it and twist his arm behind him, forcing him to the ground. He jerks free and then he’s back on his feet, nimbly grabbing for the turquoise leather crossbody. But I get to it at the same time, forcing him into a fierce tug-of-war. And then, when he least expects it, I hit him with the switch-up—pushing instead of pulling, using the bag to strike at his head until Beyoncé starts riffing from within.
“Oh, shit. Hold on,” I say, out of breath. I fish around for my phone and silence itsBOOK CLUB—FIVE MINUTESalarm. “I have to run.”
“Nice work, Mitchell,” Mason says, high-fiving me. My bare feet stick to the blue-matted floor en route to the doorway, where Uri leans against the jamb. He lets out a low whistle and shakes his bald head at me.
“You realize,” he says in his sandpaper voice, “if you got certified to teach,Iwould payyouto spend all your time here?”
I pat his shoulder as I pass by. “Yes, but then who would put your children through college?”
In the deserted locker room, I’m losing the battle to find my sweater’s armholes when my ever-punctual best friend calls.
“Don’t hate me,” Steph says as soon as I answer. “I thought I was clear for book club, but now I have a ruptured appendix. Well,Idon’t. Some kid has a ruptured appendix, and I have to take it out. Anyway, I only have ten minutes, but Ireallyneed to talk about this book before I have to go deal with that ruptured appendix.”
I theatrically dry-heave into the phone as I rummage through my tote for my pants. Uri’s muffled voice interrupts the nineties rock on the locker room speakers to announce that the gym is closing momentarily. “Crap,” Steph says. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, no, I’m good,” I say, now fighting against my lime-green leggings and knocking over my water bottle in the process. “I just stayed late at the gym. And as long as you never sayruptured appendixto me again, I could never hate you.”
This is typical for us. We can schedule phone calls and FaceTimes to our hearts’ content, but Steph will always be subject to the whims of pediatric surgery, and I will always be racing from one place to the next in a disheveled flurry of scattered belongings. Aside from special occasions and summertime reunions at Steph’s family’s summer cottage, our friendship survives and thrives on a text here and a ten-minute chat there.
“So,” I say, balancing my phone in the crook of my neck while doing up my jeans. “What’d you think of the book?”
The wistful sigh on the other end of the line tells me I picked a winner.Burning Love—along with every other Anna Matthews novel—has that effect on people.
“My logical human brain knows I’m nowhere near ready fora new relationship,” Steph says. “But my lizard brain would throw that all away in a second for a hot, sensitive fireman like Elijah Green.”
“Right?”
Of course, that’s the charm of the whole thing, and the reason I suggested this book club after Steph’s breakup. Youcan’tthrow it all away for a fictional man. Romance heroes stay where they belong, tucked away between book covers, setting your heart atwinkle even when your life is declared a relationship-free zone. You get to sigh and swoon, and your life stays decidedly unruined when it’s over.
And when it comes to romantic escapism, no one does it better than Anna Matthews. Her love stories are contemporary, but in a timeless way—more handwritten notes, feweru up?texts. They give you the same butterflies whether they were written in the nineties or yesterday. My only complaint is that none of themwerewritten yesterday; it’s been three years since her latest release, and I’ve just about worn through my copies of her backlist.
Uri returns to the loudspeaker for a second closing announcement, then a third approximately one second later—“That means you, Roxie.”
I roll my eyes and yell toward the door that I’ll be right out. I swipe my coat and bag from the bench, snow boots trailing shoelaces behind me, then double back when I realize I left my keys in my locker. “How about that love confession?” I say to Steph. “‘Yours is the one fire I can’t seem to fight.’ What real-life guy would say something like that?”
“Someone, I hope,” she sighs. That’s the thing about Steph. Whereas I’m content to put the hopeless in hopeless romantic, she is all ceaseless optimism when it comes to love.
While Steph waxes poetic about the book, I leave the locker room and wave to the sex god at the front desk.
“See you Monday,” he says.
“Night, Mason.”
I immediately regret using his name.
As predicted, Steph gasps over the phone. “Hot Mason?He loves you.”
He does not love me. He once looked intently in my direction as I attempted a frontal attack defense, and it was caught on camera and posted on the Combat Zone Instagram.
The look of infatuation, Steph called it.
The look of trying not to get kicked in the balls, I corrected.
Still, she dubbed him Hot Mason and is unwavering in her assertion that we are soulmates. “Go back and ask him out!”
