by Zoe Chant
“I know you're there.”
For the second time that day, Norah jumped, and then she blushed at being caught out.
“I wasn't trying to be a creeper,” she said, coming into the room. “I just wanted to peek in and see how you were getting along.”
He pointed at the depressingly small pile of things he had gone through. It looked absolutely minuscule compared to the rest of the lot that hulked in the back like a …
“Like a dragon,” she murmured without knowing quite why she said it, and Mr. Rychek's head shot up. Suddenly she was looking into his fierce eyes, and something inside her kindled at his gaze, something hot that threw off sparks.
“What did you say?” he asked, and she pointed at the pile behind him.
“Size of a dragon,” she squeaked. “It's big, and um, slightly inclined to eat you and – and, I'm sorry, I don't know …”
He shook his head, looking chagrined.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to – well. Never mind. Did you come to protect me from the dragon?”
“I have a boffer sword at home from when I did foam fighting in college, but I make a pretty bad knight. Sorry.”
She could have sworn that Mr. Rychek muttered the word good before he smiled wryly at her.
“I appreciate the thought, but I asked for this beast. I shouldn't be so angry when I get it and it proves to be too big to swallow.”
“Well, it's okay. You don't have to swallow it all in one go. You can take little bites,” Norah said, aware she was losing the plot. “But I wanted to come back and to let you know that I had closed up the front.”
His face fell, and Norah fought back the urge to tell him no, he could have whatever he wanted so long as he didn't look so sad.
“Closed already?” he asked in dismay. “I was hoping to have some more time …”
“I usually stay for another hour to do any work I couldn't get done while there are people in and out.”
“Then do you mind if I stay? I promise, you won't even know that I'm back here.”
As if I could ignore you, she thought.
“The library pass restricts you to normal patron hours, but I'm happy to let you stay until I lock up. As a matter of fact, I was thinking I could rough sort what you go through for the collection and maybe help you look myself. Would that work for you?”
Mr. Rychek smiled at her, and it felt as if the sun had come out on a cold gray day.
“That would be wonderful, so long as I wasn't putting you out, Ms. Bridger.”
She made a face.
“Norah, please. Ms. Bridger is what the kids try to call me. It's not fun.”
“Norah,” he echoed, and she wasn't sure she had ever heard her name said with such care.
“Er, yes?”
“Then you should call me Val,” he said, and she was struck by how shy he sounded, as if he was offering her something important.
“Good to know you, Val,” she said She felt a blush coming up on her cheeks.
Really, this was getting ridiculous.
CHAPTER FOUR
∞∞∞
Val was still mulling over the delight of learning that his true mate's name was Norah when he realized she was speaking to him.
“I really can't help you if I don't know what we're looking for,” she said, hauling over her own box to sort. “You know that, right?”
He knew she was right, but he didn't have to like it.
“We're looking for mail, letters specifically,” he said reluctantly. “Sent from Valentine Rychek.”
She blinked her large brown eyes at him.
“A great-grandfather or something?”
“Or something.”
“Right. Okay. Any other clues?”
“Just that. All the letters are signed. We're looking for somewhere between seven and ten letters. I forget how many exactly.”
“Got it,” she said, and he was grateful she didn't ask anymore.
That gratitude lasted until she stopped him from placing a set of letters onto his discard pile.
“You're not checking the back?” she asked, and he blinked.
“Should I? This is just a plum pudding recipe from a Mrs. Hardison.”
“Yeah, here, give me those.”
She turned the fragile paper to the back, where he realized there was an entire other letter penned, this one from a Mr. Price.
“People didn't like to waste paper,” she said. “They'll use the backs of old letters to write new ones. Sometimes when they're really trying to scrimp and save, they'll write diagonally across a used page.”
“Then I-”
He glanced appalled at his discarded missives, piled more than a foot high to his left.
“Oh God.”
Norah made a sound that was suspiciously similar to a laugh, and when he looked at her reproachfully, she straightened up and nodded decisively.
“I'm going to start with the pile you've already gone through,” she said, taking her seat across from him. “That way, you won't have to feel as if you're backtracking.”
“You're being very nice to me,” he said, and she offered him a smile that warmed him from the inside out.
“I'm a very nice person when I'm not trying to fend off book thieves,” she said loftily. “And besides, you looked so sad when you saw how big the pile of letters was. How could I leave you back here to work away?”
His dragon crowed at that, and if he had his wings out, he'd be doing cartwheels in the sky.
She wouldn't leave us here, she came to help us!
Val told his dragon very firmly that that only meant that his fated mate was a decent human, which was all to the good, but that didn't mean that he had won her over yet. And he was going to. It was just that first things first, he had to settle this whole thing once and for all. He reached decisively for the next letter on the top of his pile.
Despite his resolution, however, Val found that he couldn't keep his eyes off of Norah. At first he was only sneaking looks at her out of the corner of his eye. Soon, however, it became clear that she was too entrenched in the records in front of her to notice anything short of an explosion, and then he could look without fear.
At first glance, she was a small plump woman with a round face and wild curls tamed back with a large silver barrette at the base of her neck. Now that he was looking more closely, he could see how sharp her dark eyes were, observe a splatter of freckles over her nose and the threads of gold in her dark brown hair. Even sitting still, there was something graceful about her, how she handled the delicate papers with a sure touch and how she tilted her head to see them more clearly.
At one point, her teeth sank into her lush lower lip as she made a soft speculative humming sound, and Val actually jumped in his chair at the bolt of heat that went through him.
Norah looked up at him quizzically.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Oh. Yes. Everything is fine.”
“Did I get some ink on my face or something? Some of this old newsprint still bleeds like crazy.”
“Ah, no, nothing like that.”
“Then why are you looking at me?”
He was ready for the statement to be wary or even hostile, but Norah was only looking at him with curiosity in her big brown eyes. Something told him that while she reserved the right to be angry about his answer, she wouldn't start there, and of course she expected the truth.
“You're only so very beautiful.”
Val knew that his dragon couldn't actually seize control of his tongue and speak. He couldn't blame the part of him that wanted to spin circles in the sky over finding his mate, but he dearly wished he could. No, this was all him, and he waited to see what Norah would do.
She simply sat and stared at him for a moment, and then she laughed.
Her laugh was low and husky, perfect so far as he was concerned, and when she went back to scanning the letter in front of her, there was a slight blush on her round cheeks.
“Well, don't you speak nicely, Mr. Rychek,” she said, and Val shook his head.
“Val,” he insisted.
“Val, all right. Short for Valentine, like your ancestor, I guess?”
“Who?”
“Your ancestor? The one with the letters to The Millbrook?”
Tell her, hissed his dragon. She smiled at you, she called you by name, she laughed, what else do you need? She's yours, you're hers, what else is necessary?
Val ignored his dragon valiantly, because time and place. He knew what happened when he didn't remember such things.
“Yes, that one,” he said firmly. “Valentine.”
“We're a few months late for you to be my valentine,” Norah said, studying the paper in front of her. “Maybe. Maybe we could try it next year.”
“I'll remember that,” Val said, smiling. “Are you the kind who likes gold? Or rubies, perhaps?”
Norah blinked at him.
“You do like to move fast, don't you? I guess if you're carrying around a briefcase full of cash, you can afford rubies.”
“I hope you like rubies,” he said half-seriously, and she laughed.
“I'm really more of chocolate and flowers kind of girl when I think about getting anything at all.”
“But you don't mind rubies?” he pressed, because the matter was suddenly very important to him. “Rather than, say, emeralds or blue sapphires or opals?”
She gave him an amused look, and Val made himself take a breath. He was getting away from himself a little, and he needed to stop.
“Sure. I like rubies, and yes, I like them better than the others.”
“Good,” he said. It wasn't that he wouldn't have changed his interest to emeralds or sapphires if that was what she preferred. It was only that they were usually the province of his siblings, and while he would have infringed on their territory to get his mate what she wanted, it would have been –
“What's your interest in rubies?”
“I find them,” he said automatically, and she raised an eyebrow at his words.
“Really? Like a dog finds truffles?”
“Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I'm operating in the United States these days, but in the past, I've been to Afghanistan, Thailand, and Vietnam among others.”
“So that's your job, you just look for rubies.”
“Yes?”
He was suddenly aware that Norah's eyes were very bright, nearly sparkling. Val caught his breath at the change. His mate had gone from being merely beautiful to being something more, something elemental, something that was hungry, and right then and there, he would have given her damn near anything she wanted on a platter.
“So... you do mining. With explosives?”
“When it's called for?” he hazarded. “Do you like explosives?”
“Oh my God, that's the whole reason to watch action movies!” Norah exclaimed. “Explosions, the bigger, the louder, the better! Bobby, who works circulation, her dad is a pyrotechnics expert, and he did the fireworks here in town every Fourth of July, Once she got us onto the blast site, and it was just incredible.”
All right, Val hadn't seen this coming, but now he couldn't imagine having a true mate who wasn't just a little gone over explosives.
“What do you like about them?” he asked curiously. “And how did you even get into explosives in the first place?”
“What's not to like? It's just so big, and overwhelming. You can feel it through your entire body, and when it's over, you're practically worn out, just totally lost in it.”
Abruptly, they both realized what else she could be describing, and Val grinned while Norah coughed, looking away for a moment.
“No, please tell me about how good it is,” he said, and she threw a wad of scrap paper at him, sticking out his tongue.
“Well, it is,” she said. “And as to how I got into it, well. I've been a librarian for a while. It's great. It's my dream job. Literally, when I was a little girl, I had a dream about becoming a librarian, and it's still exactly what I want to be doing. But you know. Even dream jobs have their drawbacks. The library is quiet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But sometimes, well. Maybe you just want something to blow up?”
“I can help you blow things up,” Val said, and then before it could come across like a terrible and possibly threatening pickup line, he added hastily, “If you want. I have a job set up for Texas in the next few months. Explosives are almost certainly going to be involved. You could come. If you want.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth, they sounded bad, too forward, too weird. It didn't matter that it was the compromise with his dragon, which wanted to simply carry her away and drape her in gems immediately; he still sounded like a weirdo.
Instead of being put off, however, Norah only smiled at him.
“You're moving kind of fast. Why don't we see about grabbing dinner first before we break out the heavy explosives?”
“I think that would be great,” Val said with relief, and then for a while, there was only the sound of shuffling papers
When Norah stood up, they still hadn't found anything, but if he were being fair, he hadn't been working as hard as he could have been.
“Closing time,” she said, standing up and stretching in the most enticing way. “Come on, I need to lock up.”
He gathered up his things, and when she locked up, he cleared his throat.
“You indicated that perhaps you wouldn't be adverse to the idea of dinner?”
Norah turned from the door, giving him a look up and down.
“Is that your way of asking me to dinner?”
“Yes. Would you like to come to dinner with me?”
“I would, but I can't,” she said with a sigh. “There's a presentation for a future exhibit that I really need to work on. That'll teach me to put off my work. I could be out with you, and instead I need to go shuffle through a box of old lithographs. Can we do tomorrow?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he could come help. He could order food out. He could hire people to do the work for her, he could-
Val reined himself in, because he was beginning to sound like a lunatic even to himself. He smiled instead.
“Tomorrow would be fantastic,” he said. “It'll give me enough time to get properly nervous about choosing the right place and wearing the right tie.”
“Do you really think that there's a single restaurant in this town that requires a tie? I was going to take you to this little Italian place down the street. No ties necessary, they'll just be happy we aren't drunk undergrads.”
“I am indeed not a drunk undergrad,” Val said gravely. “How about if I walk you to your car, and then we'll have pasta tomorrow?”
“That sounds lovely,” she said, and when Val offered her his arm, she took it with a grace that reminded him of another era.
He had been told that there was really no way to describe finding his true mate. His parents said it was like being overtaken by a tide, his aunt and his uncle said it was like flying high into the sky together and never wanting to come back down. His grandparents just giggled a lot.
It occurred to Val, squiring Norah back to her car, that this was like finding a treasure he had never expected. He might have wanted to find his true mate his entire life, but now he could see that he had never expected it. It was incredible, and he realized that he was lost in it when Norah suddenly stiffened by his side.
"Hey, whose car is that?"
"Hm?"
Between one moment and the next, Norah had let go of his arm and was striding across the employee parking lot to the sole car remaining besides hers. Val made a sound that he didn't want to describe as a yelp. He hurried to catch up, but Norah was gaining speed.
"Hey! Hey you, who are you? This is employees only, and –"
The car, details mostly lost to the early spring darkness, suddenly roared to life. The car was already pointed towards the parking lot's exit, and th
e only problem was that Norah was directly between them.
She froze in the headlights, and Val roared in panic. He had always been fast, but he thought he must have broken the sound barrier when he grabbed her out of the car's path, throwing them both to the asphalt as the car drove away.
Norah staggered to her feet, out of his arms before he could stop her and staring after the reckless driver.
"Asshole!" she shouted. "What the hell, I can't – Oh my God, Val, are you all right?"
He wasn't sure he was. He was still recovering from potentially watching the woman he never expected to find get turned into a pancake. Now she was out of his arms again, and he couldn't deal with it.
Norah gasped as Val rolled to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. It helped, somewhat, the fact that she was warm and solid and alive right next to him, that he could feel her heart beating next to his, even that he could smell her, a faint scent of coconut lime lotion, old dry paper, and now parking lot grit.
He held her tightly because he couldn't imagine doing anything else, and now she was hanging on to him as well, holding him just as tightly as he was holding her.
Yes, he thought peacefully. Yes. We live in this parking lot now. This is our home. In each other's arms. In the employee parking lot at the University of Illinois-Everly.
Of course they couldn't live like that, and Norah was the one who broke first, pulling back with a slightly self-conscious laugh.
"That was pretty wild," she said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm tough enough to survive a little fall on the asphalt," he said, covering his disappointment when she pulled away. "Are you all right?"
"Feh, I did worse when I used to roller skate. But that car, I've never seen it before. It could have been the thief, and dammit, the security cameras back here don't work, I'll have to talk to Sayeed in security, and-"
"You thought that was some kind of criminal, and your first reaction was to run right over?" Val asked, appalled, and she gave him a patient look.
"It's not like I tried to stop an armed bank robber. Book thieves aren't known for being too aggressive. It was fine. I just got a little scraped up."
She gestured down at herself for emphasis, and then they both saw that her dress had acquired a few clean rips that wouldn't have been accounted for by a spill onto the ground. Val realized that his claws must have come out, fortunately not enough to hurt Norah, but it was still bad enough. Belatedly he stuck his hands behind his back, and Norah shook it off.