The SEAL's Rebel Librarian

by Anne Calhoun

  “How do I look?”

  “Fine. You chalk up most of it to the weather,” he said. Without answering, she wriggled into her panties, then her slacks, smoothing and fastening and straightening her shoulders to look at him. “Got another sweater?”

  “I leave one at work.”

  “You’ll do.”

  “Dry socks,” she said, and darted back around the corner. Drawers opened, closed, then she was back, avoiding the puddles still drying on her kitchen floor to sit at the table and pull on another pair of argyle knee socks, then worked her feet into her ankle boots. “Sorry about the condoms,” she added.

  He frowned. “What about the condoms?”

  “I should have them. Responsible adult and all that. It’s just, this wasn’t supposed to happen just yet.”

  “There was a timeline?” he asked, fascinated by this glimpse into her mind.

  “Motorcycle, skydiving, then dating slash sex,” she said, and stood up.

  “You want to go skydiving?”

  “Yes. It’s a onetime thing, though. I don’t need another dangerous, expensive, risky hobby.”

  “Pretty brave,” he said, because for most people, it was. Back when his nerves weren’t whipping around like streamers on a kid’s bike, he used to jump out of planes before breakfast.

  “I’m a coward,” she said flatly and pulled on her coat. “A couple of nights on Tinder and I thought a Ducati would do less damage.”

  And that was how he ended up walking away from a quickie hookup with a librarian—chuckling. He held the back door open for her, waited while she locked up, then waited some more while she opened the garage door.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” he said, and slid one arm into his coat.

  She cocked her head and frowned a little. “What’s your name?”

  He gaped at her, then threw back his head and laughed, the first time he’d laughed like that in a long time.

  The frown sputtered through a defensive lift of her chin into laughter. “I can’t remember! Did you tell me yesterday, in the library, and I forgot because I got caught up in finding the books you needed?”

  “No,” he said, half in his coat, genuinely delighted. “I don’t think I told you my name. Should I?”

  “Oh, thank God,” she said.

  It was like being in the middle of a firefight, in all the best ways. “What?” he said, and finished putting on his coat.

  “I was worried you’d say something totally cheesy like Don’t you want to know which name to shout when you come?”

  He laughed again. “Nope. Not going to say that.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m Erin Kent.”

  “I know. Your plate tag was on the desk last night,” he said as he shook her hand with a firm clasp, like a man’s. Was it only last night? It was. God damn. She wanted to go skydiving and ride a fucking Duc, and have sex rather than date. Based on his heart rate, the fluttering in his stomach, his body was also saying yes yes yes.

  “Fine,” she said, her eyes dancing. “Be that way. I can figure it out.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said.

  The correct length of time for a handshake passed, but he was still holding her hand while mist collected on her hair and his. He bit back the words on the tip of his tongue and settled for, “See you around, Erin Kent.”

  Chapter Three

  A few days later he was back at the library, washed up on the tide line of great sex but with nothing for the final paper he had to write. It was a little like coming down from a combat high—exhausted, sleepy, nerves jangling from the rush. If sex with Erin Kent left him as jacked up as storming a hijacked cargo ship, he’d better get to work on this paper. A security firm like Gray Wolfe wouldn’t hire him to answer the goddamn phones in this condition.

  The books she recommended were stacked at his left elbow, one open in front of him, his laptop off to the side for taking notes. PTSD treatment methodologies had come a long way since World War I when it was called shell shock and treated as a weakness in a man’s nerves. A long way … except not in Jack’s brain. In his brain it was still weakness. You couldn’t pump twenty-year-old males full of adrenaline and testosterone then send them off to war, then bring them home and tell them they weren’t weak and their feelings were entirely normal. By definition they weren’t normal. He joined the military, and not for money for dental school. He joined the SEALs. He went to war. He was the best of the best at death and destruction. Taking a bullet through the throat was a distinct possibility. Weakness wasn’t.

  Erin’s presence hovered on the edge of his awareness as she moved around the library, instructing the circulation staff to reshelve books, answering questions, working away at the computer in her office behind the circulation desk. He didn’t look her way but used his peripheral vision to gather details. She looked prim and proper, not like she’d almost bought a Ducati, then had sex with a man whose name she didn’t know.

  He didn’t manufacture a reason to walk up to the desk. She’d answered his questions, pointed him in the right direction; he had no other reason to talk to her. She was a professional, and he wasn’t looking to make trouble for her. He had a paper to write.

  He’d made a list of the various treatments: prolonged exposure therapy, as Colleen had suggested for him, cognitive behavioral therapy, and stress inoculation training were all effective. Then came approaches with less empirical evidence to support them: art therapy, writing programs, even hunting retreats. The literature explained various options and presented cautiously worded success rates for each of them, but if seventy percent of the individuals in a top-notch program saw improvement, then thirty percent didn’t. He’d never seen himself as part of the thirty percent before, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  He’d read all three of the books Erin gave him the first time around, and had re-read two of them. He picked them up and walked over to the circulation desk just in time to see Erin stepping into the elevator leading to the stacks. She was wearing a knee-length skirt so tight he had no idea how she walked in it and a silky blouse open at the throat to expose her collarbones and a fair bit of sternum, and her pale brown hair was waved and curled back from her face.

  Listen to your body.

  Heat slammed down his spine, and before he could think about his action he was moving fast and silent, sliding the finished books into the return slot, then taking three long strides to duck between the closing elevator doors.

  She folded her arms under her breasts and gave him a smile. “Hello, John Patrick Powell.”

  He grinned at her. “Jack to my friends,” he said. “Did you look up Professor Trask’s roster?”

  “Too easy,” she said scornfully. “I was pretty sure I’d seen you somewhere before. I finally remembered where.”

  “The library orientation class for veterans.”

  “Exactly,” she said, satisfaction infusing the word. “You remembered I taught it?”

  Once it had been his job to remember that and a hundred other details, after a HALO jump, before an explosion, and all while taking fire from insurgents. “I remembered. But there was one of you and a dozen of us.”

  “I remember the class because you all paid attention,” she said. “Sat up straight, listened, took notes, asked good questions. It was a dream to teach.”

  The doors dinged open. They stepped out into the second-floor stacks, Erin moving with a purpose, him following in her wake. Two seconds of watching her answered his earlier question. The skirt’s hem came together with a bunch of pleats that let her walk. Watching her toned calves in heels and the bounce and sway of the pleats distracted him so much he nearly ran up her heels when she stopped.

  “Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked.

  He scanned the aisle between the wall and the stacks. They’d passed no one on their way from the elevator to this corner, and a quick glance through shelves leading away from the corner showed no one l
urking in the rows. His body hummed the way it did during a firefight, or before a big op, familiar enough that he stopped thinking about it. “You,” he said, low and rough, surprising himself.

  Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and she peered through the stacks. “Are we alone?”

  Her voice was a curl of smoke in his mind, vintage Hollywood screen temptress. “We are,” he murmured.

  Her hand slid along his nape, between fleece and skin, her lips parting as she drew him down to her. He braced one hand on a metal shelf and wrapped the other around her waist, pulling her to him, from breasts to hips. She stumbled a little, up on her heels, until he shifted his weight. Hips and lips aligned and collided at the same time, the pressure enough to bruise and swell until he leaned back slightly. Her soft moan echoed in the space, books and shelving nowhere near enough to muffle the sound, so he shut her up. Opened his lips, parting hers, then slid his tongue into her mouth, stroking, teasing.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered, then bit his lower lip.

  He retaliated, holding her to him, using his other hand to pull the open collar of her shirt to the side and bite her collarbone.

  “Oh God,” she choked out before he kissed her again, felt her lips swell under his. Then her hands were at his shoulders, pushing, her torso straining away from his. “I can’t. Your stubble … I can’t … I can’t go back upstairs looking like I’ve been macking in the stacks!”

  “Shhh. Okay, okay,” he said, and loosened his grip.

  She didn’t step away, though. He expected a ruffled hen and got instead a purring cat. She stroked his throat, his nape, the sheepskin collar of his coat, then slid her hands along his shoulders and brought her face to his.

  “You said we couldn’t kiss.”

  “We’re not going to kiss,” she whispered. “Be quiet. Sound carries down here.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her what they were going to do, with her legs woven with his, her breasts brushing his chest with each inhale, when she touched the tip of her nose to his, then slid it along one side, then the other. Her cheekbone sought, and found, the soft skin of his, above the stubble he stupidly hadn’t thought to shave.

  Yielding to the gentle pressure of her hand on his nape, he bent his head. She went on tiptoe and brushed her lips over each eyebrow, then his forehead. With his face tipped forward, the faint scent of her perfume drifted to his nostrils.

  Her hand skated from neck to throat, then up to the damned scruff where her thumb brushed his mouth, then continued up to the scar in his right eyebrow.

  “What’s this from?”

  “Ask me later,” he said, fighting every instinct that was telling him to hoist her against the stacks. Barring that wildly inappropriate action, he wanted to be sure she wasn’t ticking items off her list with anyone else. Motorcycle. Skydiving. Dating. Especially the dating. No Tinder for sexy sweet Erin Kent. Not on his watch.

  “I’m off at ten. Come over for a drink?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “See you later, Jack Powell,” she said.

  He stood there, hands on his hips, cock throbbing in his jeans, listening as her heels clicked against the linoleum, sharp, precise, listening to the elevator button ding. He read the titles of the books on the shelf until his hard-on subsided, then made the circuit of the stacks to reach the elevator. When the doors opened, another student stood inside. He gave Jack a cursory glance, then went back to his book.

  When he reached the main library floor, he saw Erin sitting in the shared office, lip between her teeth as she typed away. He sat back down and forced himself to bang out an outline for the paper, resolutely not thinking about anything at all. He left thirty minutes before her shift ended and got to her house the long way around, on a long night ride, picking up the interstate, swinging through downtown. And with each red light or stop sign, he lifted his right hand, his fighting hand, from the handlebars and watched his fingers quiver, the entire hand twitch.

  * * *

  The light was on in the front window by the time he rode up Erin’s sloped driveway and parked his bike in the shadows between the garage and the trash cans, out of sight from the road. He took the steps to the back door and peered through the curtains that didn’t quite close. She was sitting on her sofa, her head tipped back, a glass in her hand; he could hear a throaty, raw female voice and the twang of a banjo coming faintly through the door. The rhythm was low, dark, pierced by the woman’s voice. He knocked quietly and watched her tip her head to look at the door, then uncurl and cross the floor.

  A deadbolt clicked open. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She stepped aside to let him in, then closed the door against the chilly night air. “Nice night for a ride,” she said.

  “We’ve got a good stretch of weather coming, sunny but not too hot,” he said. “Perfect weather to learn to ride your new bike.”

  She smiled at him, the corner of her mouth curling up, teasing, knowing, then lifted the tumbler to her lips and sipped. Is it a mystery to live, or is a mystery to die, the singer wondered, the drums taut and rolling, riding a fine line between foreboding and compelling. “Want that drink now?”

  “Sure,” he said, and followed her into the living room. He looked around while she poured him a glass of whiskey from a bottle on top of a polished sideboard. The lines were clean, dark floors, white walls, mismatched furniture pulled together by an Oriental rug in brilliant reds and golds. Art and mementos hung in the spaces between windows. Airy bookshelves spanned the wall across from the sofa and a piano sat at an angle in the corner, sheet music and books of English contradance tunes shuffled haphazardly on the lid.

  “This is Australian?” he asked.

  “Probably. I think so,” she said as she capped the bottle and held out the glass.

  “You’re not sure?” he asked as he took the glass.

  “It’s not my house, remember?”

  He’d forgotten. “You’re house-sitting,” he said, and mentally shook his head. He was getting slow, soft, forgetful, which seemed like a really good reason to swallow half of the two fingers she’d poured for him. “Is any of this stuff yours?”

  “None of it,” she said. “My clothes are in her closet, my toiletries in her bathroom. That’s it.”

  “He got the house in the divorce?”

  “It was an asset he wanted and I didn’t. And it was cheaper to buy my share of the furniture from me than to buy new.” The words were simply stated, not emotionally charged, but he didn’t miss the fact that she’d sold everything that might weigh her down—house, furniture—to her ex. “Nora will be back at the end of the summer, so I have to start looking for my own place in a couple of months. Until then, I love coming home to this.” She sipped her whiskey. “Do you know what that is?”

  “It’s a hollow log, a form of aboriginal art,” he said. “I saw some in a gallery when I was on leave in Perth. What does she do?”

  “She’s a professor of contemporary art at the college,” Erin said. “She’s got a grant to study in Australia this semester and is staying through the summer.”

  “Is that why you’re house-sitting?”

  She nodded. “I needed a place to stay after the divorce, and she didn’t want to leave her house unoccupied, in case a pipe broke or mice decided to colonize her basement. Australia is too far away to come home regularly.”

  Car headlights drove down the street, flashing into the uncovered window. “You should close the curtains,” he said. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and he didn’t want her getting into trouble because of him. At a more primitive level, he didn’t want anyone seeing her like this, a little soft from the whiskey, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. “Anyone can see in, now that it’s dark.”

  “I was watching the sky change colors as the sun set,” she replied, but moved to lower the shade rolled to the top of the big picture window. He regretted ma
king the suggestion because she didn’t come back to stand near him, instead perching on the piano bench and looking around the room. “What do you think she’s like?” she asked.

  He blinked, caught off guard, then looked around again. “She travels a lot. Reads a lot. Knows how to play the piano. Doesn’t watch TV. She likes to garden,” he said. After growing up with Grannie, he knew Queen Anne’s lace from yarrow, five different kinds of goldenrod, and the difference between bindweed and a morning glory. “And this is a really nice rug,” he added.

  “The house is on the Lancaster Garden Club’s tour in a few weeks,” Erin agreed. “She brought the rug home after a summer in Turkey a couple of years ago.”

  A sharp pang went through him. “I’ve spent some time in Istanbul,” he said, remembering the reconnaissance trip he took with Keenan back when they were both going to work for Gray Wolfe. “And my sister and grandmother just got back from a trip there. The rugs she bought arrived a couple of days ago. I now know a lot about Turkish rugs.”

  “I’m a little jealous of your sister,” she said.

  He chuckled. “You’re jealous of someone who spent a week chauffeuring my granny on a speed-dating run through the major historical sites in Turkey?”

  “I haven’t traveled much. Done the speed dating, though.”

  “How’d that go?” he asked, his voice obviously amused, like he knew what a disaster it had been.

  She tilted her glass to her mouth, then said, “I’m a guppy in a Tinder shark world.” She smiled at him, her legs crossed in the tight skirt, making the hourglass curve of her body that much more pronounced. The gold chain around her neck glinted in the lights. “What branch of the service were you in?” she asked, studying the liquid as it swirled in the glass.

  “Navy,” he said.