Page 89 of Hottie on Her Shelf
Chapter Eighteen
“Good event, Ms. Scott.” Fitz shook Hallie’s hand.
She didn’t want him to shake her hand. Even though they were on a dais in front of the fire station bay doors, with a crowd of fifty staring at them, Hallie wanted him to take her in his arms and hug her until she felt whole again.
Since there was zero chance of that happening, she returned his brisk shake. “Same to you, Mayor.” Hallie didn’t know what else to say. Technically, the end of this event was the same as all the ones in the prior weeks, because they’d never been anything but cordial opponents to the watching world.
Butunderneath, Hallie had known she’d see Fitz in a few hours, in private, and be able to tease him about the oceanfront wind tousling his hair and the wolf whistle it elicited from the very recently divorced-and-on-the-prowl Kelley Goss. Or kiss him proudly for the way he’d so skillfully arbitrated the shouting match over whether the fire department should go before or after the police in the Memorial Day parade.
Now Fitz was closed off from her, completely, because she’d slammed the door shut.
Better to have done it now than in a few weeks, when she’d be a few weeks more head over heels for him. It saved Hallie’s heart from, oh, an extra four hundred layers of scabs. It’d been the sensible choice. Sensible like a librarian…or a mayor.
Except Hallie didn’t feel like either of those personas right now. She felt like a woman whose heart had been removed and repeatedly driven over by a thresher. Or whichever specialized tractor cut things up the most.
“Hallie! Thank goodness I found you.” Randall hooked his arm through hers. Today he had three adorable yappers—two terriers and a pug—on leashes twining around his ankles.
“How hard was it to find me? I’m smack dab in the heart of town, with a microphone, and this event is listed on posters and websites.”
“I looked other places first. It was hard.” He pointed down at the panting mutts. “And you are needed, ASAP. A huge crisis that only you can fix.”
Libraries really only had two versions of a crisis: a fire or a flood. It was a beautiful May day without a cloud in the sky—and without any billowing smoke. And why would Randall know about a library crisis? He certainly wouldn’t enlist her to help with a dog-grooming crisis.
But Hallie was a rule follower. The rule was that when the word crisis was used, you dropped everything and helped.
She did take time to slowly remove her sweater from the back of the chair and fold it into her purse. That gave her a few extra seconds to drink in Fitz. The perfect break at the cuff of his tailored pants. The way his shoulders lifted the suit coat into a wide wall of light gray fabric. The little crinkle between his brows as he looked at Randall quizzically.
Being this close to him was both wonderful and horrible, like that first bite of the tip of the pizza that was so fantastic—and scalded both your tongue and the roof of your mouth.
Randall dragged her down the stairs long before Hallie was ready to leave Fitz’s proximity. He hurried her through the milling crowd and around the brick side of the firehouse. There, he gave a sweeping, courtly bow—one that looked very much at odds with his hot pink Bermuda shorts paired with a cream Cuban shirt. “You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“I just rescued you.”
Ohhhhh. That certainly made more sense than an actual crisis, but Hallie planned to make Randall squirm a bit and admit he’d lied to her. “What about your crisis?”
“Oh, it was real. The crisis was you being stuck with Fitz without the cushion of a pre-scripted event. Megan told me I had to evacuate you before any painful small talk got eked out.”
So much for his squirming. The man was unrepentant.
He was also supposed to be uninformed about her very-much-in-the-past…by four days…relationship with Fitz. Trying to channel the snootiness of a Julian Fellowes heroine (what she wouldn’t give to be wearing a shirtwaist dress and a giant hat tied down with a chiffon scarf!), Hallie declared haughtily, “I’m an adult. I can make small talk with my opponent.”
Randall fanned himself with his straw trilby. “Nobody should have to shoot the breeze about the weather with their ex. That’s a crime against humanity.”
Yikes! Hallie shot out her hand to grab his wrist. Probably too hard, since he yelped and dropped the hat. The dogs immediately clamped onto it for tug of war. “You know? How do you know?”
“Megan had a client bring in three grandkids for trims. She got stuck. She’d planned to extricate you but was forced to call in reinforcements. I was happy to help.” Randall’s dark eyebrows drew together into a single caterpillar-esque line as he snatched back his hat. “I’m peevish about you not divulging this delicious secret romance to me from the start, but we’ll save that dressing-down for after you’ve pouted and cried for a week and gotten him out of your system.”
Funny how when you thought you couldn’t feel any lower, Fate took a jackhammer and drove you six feet closer to the earth’s crust. “I’m sorry. We’d promised each other to keep it a secret, because it wasn’t an official thing, which meant it wasn’t just my secret to divulge. Only Megan and Fitz’s friend Everett knew because they were in on it from the start.”
Randall palmed her shoulder in a quick, reassuring caress. “Your reasons—whatever they might’ve been—were, of course, valid. As is my right to have a teensy snit when you’re up to it.”
Ohhh. She dropped to a crouch, petting the pug to have a moment to swallow past the tears clogging her throat. Her friends were amazing. She’d find a way to make it up to him, pre-snit. Ana, too.
It was such a relief to be able to talk about her secret ex-boyfriend. Wow. When her life sounded like a nineties sitcom episode, it meant things had spiraled out of control.
“Fair enough. To reiterate, I am sorry. And as far as the other thing…it’s going to take me a lot more than a week to get Fitz out of my system. I’m not sure I’ll ever do it.” In fact, it was taking a shocking amount of concentration to prevent leaning around the corner, scraping her cheek tight against the crumbling mortar between the bricks, and scanning for another glimpse of Fitz.
