Page 85 of Hottie on Her Shelf
He didn’t think it was because they were sneaking around half the time. It was Hallie herself. Her quick brain that constantly challenged him. Her sharp wit. The way she gave everything 100 percent effort. How she moaned and melted into him with every stroke and touch…
“Hallie, I want to have sex with you. Anywhere. Everywhere. I genuinely can’t think of a location that would make me turn down that opportunity.”
“The dining room table at your parents’ house.”
After staring at her for a beat too long, he glanced down at his crotch. Slowly, accusingly, he dragged his harsh stare back to her beautiful brown eyes. “Why would you say a thing like that? Why ruin a righteous erection? You just verbally stamped it down like you were trying to stamp out a cigarette.” Fitz winced as if in pain. “You’re a brutal, cruel woman.”
Hallie was giggling, of course.
That had been his intent, always, to make her smile or laugh or ecstatically sigh. Fitz would never forget this moment with Hallie laughing. With the makeup lights putting an angelic glow around her head. It was the moment he realized where all this sappiness was coming from. Why it was gathering in a corner of his heart like tumbleweeds against a fence.
Fitz had fallen for Hallie Scott.
The mayor had fallen for the town librarian.
To be specific, Fitz was certain that he was falling in love with her. That wasn’t supposed to have happened. They were supposed to be having fun, making the best of an impossibly antagonistic situation. This was…so much more. More than he’d planned on, more than he’d imagined.
More than Fitz knew what to do with. Like…what the hell to do next? Tell her? Wait to tell her after the election? Not tell her and wait to see if she said something along the same lines?
No. That wasn’t fair, putting the onus on Hallie. Fitz was the one complicating the situation with all these feelings that refused to be ignored. He’d own them, tell her. And then hold his breath for her response…
“I wasn’t planning on having sex in a green room today.”
“Then you need to think bigger, Ms. Scott. Outside the box.”
She gently tweaked his nose. “Let me finish! I was, however, hoping to have sex with you today, somewhere. So, there’s a strip of three condoms in my purse, in case that information is at all useful to you.”
“Teamwork. We just executed perfect teamwork, which is exactly how I’d describe the fantastic sex we have, by the way.”
“It is fantastic, isn’t it?” Hallie wriggled her eyebrows smugly, then she curled back along his chest. A soft palm flattened right over his heart.
Fitz swallowed hard. Reconsidered.
This wasn’t the time for a romantic revelation, or the place. Not on a couch that probably hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. Not in a room that held the pervasive smell of hair spray and Febreze.
Not when things were humming along so smoothly between them.
Fitz circled back to the simplicity, the safety, of sex. He caressed her leg from her ankle all the way up to where heat pooled at the seam of her pants. “Honestly? I was on the verge of agreeing with you, but then I remembered your strip of condoms. I think we’d better do a test.”
“Three tests,” she corrected.
“Of course. My scientist sister insists that being thorough in data collection is key.”
“Ugh.” Hallie’s head lolled back into the cradle formed by his arm. “Now you’ve reminded me that we’ve got an event at Cygnet Labs in three days. I’m a book girl, the very opposite of everyone up there. I don’t speak scientist.”
Fitz was right there with her. Luckily, he had a solution. “Then don’t.”
“Not your usual top notch campaign coaching—I don’t get it.”
“You know Blake works there. She’s all science, all the time. My mother was horrified when she visited her at grad school and discovered she used a beaker from the lab instead of a measuring cup. Blake had baked blueberry muffins for breakfast. Mom was scared there were some residual killer germs or mouse DNA lurking in them and she was on the brink of transforming into a mutant creature.”
Hallie harumphed. “A scientist would never risk cross-contamination like that. And I’m almost as certain a daughter wouldn’t risk her mom’s life like that.”
“Correct on both counts. Let’s just say my mom has the same lack of interest in science as we do, layered on top of a deep distrust for what happens on the microscopic level.”
“So, once your mom didn’t turn into an aqrabuamelu—”
Fitz cut her off with a double tap on her clavicle. He didn’t want to let her words just wash over him. He couldn’t guarantee he’d memorize all her random references—especially the literary ones—but he did have an intense curiosity, both about the world and what took root in Hallie’s brain. “A what?”
