Page 63 of Hottie on Her Shelf
“Second, why do you think I’m mad at you?”
How to answer truthfully and still spare his male ego?
Then again, why was she worrying about that after what he’d just said? They’d only been driving the winding roads of the coast for an hour. If this all blew up, they’d just turn around, call it an experiment. Not a failed experiment, because there were no such things. Good or bad results, an experiment yielded results.
She rubbed her lips together, sticky with gloss that matched her dress. “Because I more or less eviscerated you at the campaign event.”
Fitz chuckled. “I’d expect a librarian to be more precise with her words, and less prone to exaggeration.”
“You’re right. Eviscerate was over the top.”
“And you’re jumping the gun on the toast I’d planned for tonight. So, there’s no champagne or flowers for punctuation. All you get are the plain words.” But he did gather her hands in his and squeeze. “Hallie, you were magnificent. You wiped the floor with me. You didn’t drag me through the dirt. You used facts and strategy and you sure as hell were not boring. Way to go.”
Little bubbles of satisfaction fizzed through her brain. “Really?”
The crinkles at the corners of his eyes infused an extra hit of warmth in his gaze. “Really.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean, you might’ve laid it on a little thick. Drove your point home with a hammer, then a sledgehammer, and then a pile driver.”
Hallie gurgled with laughter. God, she was just so relievedthey were indeed able to wall off what happened on the dais. “I believe in being thorough.” Then she remembered to truly be his friend and not just his opponent. Because it turned out that Fitz deserved a compliment, too. “When my friends and I finally got into serious opposition research mode, a lot of positive things you’ve done in your tenure as mayor were revealed.”
Fitz rolled his eyes with those gorgeous thick lashes she coveted. “Now you’re just throwing me a bone, out of pity.”
“You champion underdogs, like me.”
“If you’re not the underdog, you don’t need a champion. I like to put my talents where they’re needed.”
Fitz might be downplaying it, throwing up a smokescreen of modesty, but Hallie wouldn’t let him get away with it.
She’d uncovered a lot that she hadn’t even known about his career. She wasn’t a political creature; she kept her head down and focused on the library almost all the time. It was only a few big issues that had stuck in her craw and gotten her to rant that fateful night to Megan.
“You aim for balance between departments, without pitting one against the other or playing favorites. You’re stellar in a crisis. That hurricane two years ago? It was the first one to hit Swan Cove in over a century. Nobody was prepared. You were, quite literally, the calm in the storm. I remember being legit impressed at the time, long before your seductive smile worked its wiles on me.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
Now she was on a roll. “And employee satisfaction has spiked every single year since you were first elected. That’s got to be a direct trickle down from the top. You make people feel cared for, important.”
He shrugged. “I try.”
“I can tell.”
“Then we’re good?” He waved a hand in the air between them.
“I think we’re very good.”
Fitz pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, then pulled back onto the road. “And to answer your earlier question, I don’t feel guilty about the family money. It’s not my money. Not yet. I’ve got a trust, but I do plenty of spreading around to important causes.”
“I saw that from the tax returns you released.” The list of charities he contributed to was both long and thoughtful. And they weren’t all notoriety magnets, either. It’d given Hallie another window into a deeper part of Fitz, one that she admired.
“The eventual bucket of money’s no different from the heirloom silver and the mansion passed down through the generations and, well, the responsibility of caring for the town.”
“Swan Cove isn’t a puppy. Or an herb garden. It isn’t your responsibility.”
“You clearly didn’t sit through the fifty million parental lectures that I did on the topic.”
“How about you bullet point it?”
