Stud in the Stacks

by Pippa Grant

  We work out details to meet for a late brunch on Sunday, and then hang up.

  But not before that low, sexy voice tells me he’s looking forward to seeing me again.

  Watch out, high school reunion. I’m going to freaking own you.

  6

  Parker

  Saturday nights are made for booze, bars, and banging.

  However, this Saturday, I’m out of tequila, our bar is the community room in the basement of a local library, and the last date I had with true potential for banging was six months, three weeks, and two days ago.

  I only remember because I always know how long it’s been since my birthday.

  Okay, fine. Going to the stripper brunch with Sia, Willow, and Eloise didn’t actually produce any potential for banging either. No more than usual anyway, since our waiter did sneak a peek down my blouse when he brought out my birthday cupcake.

  And even though odds are good my date with Tarzan—Knox, I remind myself—won’t bring any banging, I’m totally good with the direction my life is going at the moment.

  We’re grooving in our final set of the evening. I’m rocking out in perfect time to “I Want It That Way” on my Gibson six-string. That’s right—our band covers all the top forty boy band songs of the last three decades. Or as many as we can squeeze into two forty-five-minute sets, anyway.

  Judy—who’s been one of the children’s librarians here at the Richard O’Connor branch of the New York Public Library for years, and who used to hire me to babysit her two boys—has a thing for *NSYNC, One Republic, and Bro Code.

  I honestly had no idea she had great taste in music until she called me out of the blue last month and asked me to do her work farewell party, but who can blame her?

  Them boys got moves. And catchy beats.

  Disagree all you want, but the entire library staff is currently getting their boy band fix on the makeshift tile dance floor under the fluorescents in the basement library while they sing along. Not just Judy—who can work the lawnmower like nobody’s business, you go, girl—but also the other two children’s librarians, the circulation manager, the branch manager, and all the other staff. The middle-aged night janitor is doing the one-legged chicken dance.

  I fucking love this gig, but for the first time in a long time, I’m ready for our show to be over, so I can go home, try to sleep, and have a date tomorrow.

  A business date, but still a date.

  Business or not, I can’t stop imagining Tarzan soaring through the trees, sweat glistening on his solid pecs and eight-pack, his long, corded-steel arms swinging him from jungle vine to jungle vine, those tight, defined hips encased in only a skimpy loincloth, sculpted thighs and calves gracefully sweeping against the backdrop of the leafy canopy, beautiful green eyes frantic but focused while he scans the underbrush, calling out his war cry as he races to save me from the gorillas so that he can ravage me with his—

  Ahem.

  Back to the library.

  Which is suddenly hotter than it was when we switched songs a minute ago.

  We close out “Hangin’ Tough” and switch right into “I’ll Make Love To You,” and the librarians all pair up for the slow dance. A short lady in a green print shirt, puffy khakis, and reading glasses bouncing on the chain around her neck angles to the edge of the dance floor and shakes her booty at Chase, who comes along to most of our shows under the pretense of being both our groupie and our muscle, but really I suspect he’s hoping to sneak a quickie with Sia upstairs in the stacks.

  Because that’s how they roll.

  I sigh to myself. Sia’s getting regular nooky. Willow’s getting married. And Eloise—honestly, I don’t want to know, but I doubt she has any problems like I do.

  Is it so wrong to hope this temporary arrangement with Tarzan—with Knox—can fulfill some of my more womanly needs?

  I’m turned sideways, singing harmony with Willow, when a new guest arrives. I don’t notice at first, but when I turn back to the crowd, a tall guy in a fitted gray-blue polo and ass-hugging jeans is looping his arms around Judy, his back to the stage.

  He lifts her as though she weighs as much as my guitar pick and spins her in a circle, reality clicks, and my breath catches and my heart trips and I suddenly kind of want to die.

  Lean, solid physique. The grace of a cat. Dark stubble thick on a sculpted jaw that belongs in the Modern Museum of Art.

  “Oh, fuck,” I gasp.

  Right into my microphone.

  Shit.

  I’d know that body anywhere, even fully clothed, because it’s spent the last week residing in my fantasies.

  This is suddenly way more awkward than it has a right to be, because all the pieces are clicking into place. Librarian. Knox. Romance novels. Judy. Judy’s sons.

  Whom I used to babysit.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  Tarzan’s—Knox’s eyes slide to mine, go momentarily wide, and then his expression relaxes into a smile that could ignite a million panties at fifty paces.

  Which it did.

  Last weekend. When this man that I babysat as a boy was shaking his loincloth at the bachelor auction.

  I dimly register that I’ve activated the librarian glare. Nearly all of them—even the janitor—have stopped dancing to study the stage, brows lowered and lips puckered in the classic pre-Ssh! glare, their gazes darting over me and my friends to try to determine which of us interrupted the song. As though Willow and Sia and Eloise aren’t trying their best to not gape at me too. Willow actually stumbles over the lyrics, which she never does. Sia—always the fastest to recover—snorts into her mic over the keyboard.

  And my nipples, damn them—if they could fire sexy-man-snaring missiles, they would. They’re already aimed right. But knowing my nipples, they’d misfire and I’d have to explain to Judy’s now-former boss that I’m not hitting on her, it was a misfire, and yes, she’s a perfectly lovely lady worthy of being hit on, but middle-aged women who wear Christmas sweaters in July aren’t my type.

  Judy smiles and shakes her head in exasperation just like my mom does whenever one of my brothers are up to something. Tarzan—shit, Knox!—gives me the yeah, I know you eyebrow nod, and I wonder if he knows me just from the auction, or if he remembers I used to babysit him.

  Regardless, my panties go damp and my tongue refuses to work. The librarians go back to dancing.

  And I go back to pretending to be a functioning member of this band.

  By the time we finish our set, I’m so nervous I’m afraid I’m going to break out in hives. My awkward just leveled up out of this stratosphere.

  “Who is that?” Willow whispers as we start clearing the makeshift stage. “He’s cute.”

  I zip my guitar into its case. “Judy’s son. I think I used to babysit him.” Only three or four times because he and his brother were so energetic they busted the headgear for my braces and my parents couldn’t afford to keep replacing it, but still, I used to babysit him. I can’t even begin to comprehend what Judy’s going to think when she finds out I bid fifty grand on her son last weekend. “We, ah, met at this thing last weekend, and he might go with me to my reunion,” I add in a whisper. “Cross my heart, I didn’t recognize him at all.”

  Eloise fist bumps me. She’s got this throaty way of talking that sometimes reminds me of Zooey Deschanel and other times makes her sound like she has a smoking frog permanently attached to her windpipe. “He grew up fucking hot. Babysitter Club for Grownups. Yeah, baby.”

  Okay, ew. Now I want my fist bump back.

  “Aww, look at you.” Sia knocks her shoulder to mine, grinning. “I haven’t seen you blush like that since you caught me and Chase in the storage closet at work.”

  “That wasn’t a blush. That was horror at knowing I could never unsee you two pretzeled like that. And thank you. Again. For the nightmares.”

  Chase stops behind Sia, puts his hands on her waist, and says something I don’t want to hear, because undoubtedly it’s about them getting it on i
n the stacks.

  “Go on, you two.” Willow shoos them. “Be quick and don’t get caught.”

  “Willow!” I hiss. Bad enough I’m accidentally kind of hitting on Judy’s son, now Sia and Chase are going to get us double un-invited back.

  “What?” Willow says. “They’re gonna do it anyway, might as well get it over with before anyone else catches on.”

  The disgusting lovebirds sneak off toward the stairs.

  “Are you going to talk to him?” Willow whispers.

  “I kinda have to, don’t I?”

  My phone dings as I finish zipping up my guitar. I check it, half-expecting a rendezvous request from Knox, but—nope. Today’s guilt trip from my mother has arrived.

  Your reunion is in two weeks. Am I ever going to get to meet this man? Or are you afraid we’ll scare him off?

  I punch out a quick reply. I’m terrified you’ll scare him off.

  Except when I hit send, it changes my message to I’m terrible you’ll Ava his owl.

  And now she knows I’m available for a phone call.

  I shove the phone at Willow, who’s a preschool teacher and therefore trustworthy by default. Or at least more trustworthy than Eloise.

  Because who isn’t more trustworthy than Eloise?

  “Can you hold this for me?” I say to Willow. “I have to pee. And then I’m going to—Shit.”

  “You probably shouldn’t tell him that when you find him,” she replies helpfully.

  “He’s gone.”

  There are lots of librarians taking the remnants of a cake home, and the janitor’s sweeping the floor. Judy’s hugging people, and her sweet little mother—pushing around a walker with a vanity plate that says It was a skydiving accident—is sneaking cake into her purse, but there’s no Tarzan.

  Or Knox. As I should really call him if Judy happens to say anything to me about him.

  Does she know what about the bachelor auction?

  And that I bid on him? And that he went for a hundred grand?

  A librarian who loves romance novels. It all makes sense now. He got it from his mother.

  “Parker?” Willow says.

  “Pee. I have to go pee.”

  I head for the bathroom, eyes peeled for any sightings of the man I both desperately need to talk to and desperately need to avoid.

  Is it a little weird that I used to babysit him and tried to buy him for fifty grand? Yes.

  Okay, maybe not so much the babysitting part. We’re both adults, fully grown adults. Still, what if he remembers me?

  Me and my headgear and my braces and pimples. And that his brother used to call me Parker the Harker because of that time I choked on a piece of macaroni and cheese when I was feeding them dinner.

  Some things, you never forget.

  Maybe that’s why he called this morning. Maybe he knew who I was all along, and maybe he thinks this is hilarious, and maybe the whole thing is a setup to make me feel like an even bigger loser than I was in high school.

  The bathroom door shuts behind me, and oh shit.

  I’m in the men’s room.

  I’m in the fucking men’s room.

  With Tarzan.

  7

  Parker

  I look at Knox tucking himself back into his jeans—holy moly—I look at the urinal, I imagine him in his loincloth and realize he wasn’t stuffing anything, and my nipples try to poke through my shirt and reach out to grab him.

  This is where I should tell you I strike a sexy pose, intentionally lock the door, and wait for him to tell me he’s secretly loved me for years because he saw the real me beneath my skin, tooth, and eye problems.

  But you know me well enough by now that I’m betting you don’t believe I could pull it off either.

  Which is why I’m actually stammering, “Sorry,” and spinning to go and grab the door handle, which won’t turn because my palms are sweaty and the handle’s crooked and fuck, it’s one of those trick door handles that you probably have to jiggle just the right way and I can’t jiggle it. I’m trying and jiggling and turning and twisting and it’s not fucking working.

  Water runs in the sink. “Parker Parker Elliott. Holy shit, I did not recognize you last week.”

  If I could go back and erase that year I wanted to be James Bond, I would. And for a lot of reasons, including that I called myself Parker, Parker Elliott instead of Elliott, Parker Elliott.

  See? I don’t even do female James Bond fantasies right.

  And leave it to Knox Moretti to remember.

  “Whoa, wait, hey, no need to dash off.”

  “I thought half the skirt was missing,” I say as I yank the doorknob harder.

  “Ah…”

  “On the door. Half the stick skirt was missing on the stick figure on the door. But it was one of the dude’s legs, not a skirt. I’m not stalking you. In the bathroom. That would be weird. I didn’t know you were Tarzan. That Tarzan was you. That I used to babysit Tarzan.” My fingers are numb. So is my chest. Why won’t the fucking door open? And why am I blathering like an idiot?

  This would’ve never happened to James Bond.

  Or it would, except he would’ve done it on purpose so he could bang his informant up against the wall, or maybe in the sink, or possibly while swinging from the light fixture to get extra information out of her.

  The faucet shuts off. I yank on the doorknob harder, and it breaks off in my hand.

  I briefly wonder if I were to dive into the urinal and flush it if I could make it all the way out to sea. Or at least to the Hudson.

  I can give a four-hour presentation on organic produce marketing strategy to a packed auditorium at work. I can even force myself to give a guy my phone number in the name of a business transaction, but I’ve masturbated to images of him every night for seven nights and I used to babysit him.

  His mother would die. Mine’s probably already saying a million Hail Marys, and she doesn’t want to know why, just that it’s necessary.

  He steps beside me, and even though he’s in jeans and a polo, I swear he smells like a jungle man. Earthy and sweet and spicy and hot. Like eating mango salsa on a salty summer beach. Or—you’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?—like he’s been swinging through the jungle hunting the fruits of paradise.

  Even if I hadn’t seen him nearly naked on stage, I’d know every inch of his six-foot-two frame is solid muscle. His forearms are corded masterpieces, his shirt sleeves strangling his perfectly-proportioned biceps and that tattoo on his right arm, and his jeans are so tight they’re practically painted around his taut waist and rock-hard thighs.

  And damn him and that warm, amused smile that’s making my hooha tingle and my nipples pebble and my brain short-circuit. “Hey. It’s just me. Nothing to panic about.”

  “I used to babysit you and I was such a dork and there was that thing with Randy Pickle and I just wanted to look good and have a hot piece of ass on my arm to show them all that I’m not some dweeb loser anymore so I blackmailed my boss into giving me money to buy a bachelor and then you were dressed like Tarzan—Tarzan—and you have an eight-pack and a sexy tattoo and butt dimples and the only six-pack I’ve ever laid hands on are the kind you get in the refrigerator section of the liquor store and now your mother probably knows I tried to buy you.”

  Yep.

  I just confessed to that thing with Randy Pickle. Which almost always leads to—

  “Do I want to know what a randy pickle is?”

  That.

  Mentioning Randy Pickle always leads to that. Above and beyond the rest of my ramblings, he narrows in on that. The best part of my brief and quickly-annulled-because-it-wasn’t-actually-legal marriage? I never changed my name to Parker Pickle. “Shut up.”

  He leans a shoulder against the door. “I don’t remember you being a dorky loser.”

  “The glasses? The braces? The headgear?”

  His brows scrunch together. “That cool thing that made you look like an extra in a Terminator movie?”


  “Not helping.”

  “Weren’t you the one who played hide-and-go-seek with us that one time?”

  “If by that one time, you mean the time you ran away and I almost had to call the police and tell your mother you were abducted.”

  “You were. Man, that was fun. We were blowing bubbles and pretending they were space aliens invading earth, so Troy and I went on a secret hide-and-seek mission. You got all into it, screaming like you couldn’t find us, and—”

  He stops.

  Probably because now I’m glaring at him like the librarians glared at me when I fucked into the microphone.

  “You really thought we ran away.”

  It was all a game to him. He and Troy honestly had no idea how terrified I was that I was going to have to tell their mother I lost them.

  I clutch the popped-off door handle so tight I’m afraid my knuckles are going to crack and squeeze themselves into dust.

  He puts a warm, sure hand to my lower back, below where my short boy band T-shirt falls, to nudge me out of the way, and sparks explode all over my skin. His breath audibly catches as though he feels it too.

  I risk a glance at him.

  He’s studying me.

  Surprised. Wary. Intrigued?

  No way.

  “If I’d known you had superhuman strength and could’ve kicked our asses, I wouldn’t have run away,” he says.

  “Very funny.”

  “And if I’d recognized you, I would’ve called sooner.”

  Now I’m snorting in disbelief.

  His brows dip lower. “You have no idea, do you?”

  “About what?”

  His lips part, but just when I think he’s about to enlighten me, he shakes his head. “I have about eighteen romance novels I want to recommend to you right now.”

  I wrinkle my nose.

  “You don’t read romance novels?” There’s a teasing lilt in his voice that actually makes me smile.

  “Oh, I don’t read in general.”

  He gasps and puts a hand to his heart. “Parker Parker Elliott, say it isn’t so.”

  Despite all the lingering weirdness, I laugh. “I can read,” I tell him, though notice I’m not confessing to reading his blog this week. Go me. “I’m just too busy for much more than marketing or business books. Which usually put me to sleep.”