by Olivia Dade
IF THE BOOKMOBILE’S ROCKING . . .
Constance Chen is not the demure kind of librarian. Sure, her highhorsepower ride is Big Bertha the Bookmobile, but Con swears a blue streak, does her own home improvement, and wears steel-toed boots. She has a tight circle of friends, a demanding, beloved sprawl of a Chinese- American family, and a strict hookups-only policy when it comes to men. Her life is just how she wants it. Except for one maddeningly sexy footnote.
Sam Wolcott, her friend’s baby brother and the library’s IT star, has been throwing sparks with Con since he moved to town. To everybody else, he’s a thoughtful, sensitive sweetheart. To Con, he’s a cantankerous pedant, because if they don’t fight nonstop their clothes will spontaneously combust. Sam needs a commitment Con won’t—can’t—give. And neither of them will chance their hard-won bonds for pure lust.
Too bad Con and Sam have a whole week in a very tiny, very private space to sustain their dumb arguments. Alone. What happens in the Bookmobile might take their resistance right out of circulation . . .
“Love is never out of reach for the librarians of the Nice County Library System...Sarah’s charm and humor are perfectly suited to a beach read.”
–Publishers Weekly on Ready to Fall
Books by Olivia Dade
Lovestruck Librarians series
Broken Resolutions
My Reckless Valentine
Mayday
Ready to Fall
Driven to Distraction
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
Driven to Distraction
Lovestruck Librarians
Olivia Dade
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
kensingtonbooks.com
Lyrical Press books are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 by Olivia Dade
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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Lyrical Press and the L logo are trademarks of Kensington Publishing Corp.
First Electronic Edition:
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-797-4
eISBN-10: 1-60183-797-6
First Print Edition:
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-799-8
ISBN-10: 1-60183-799-2
Table of Contents
Books by Olivia Dade
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Ready to Fall Teaser
About the Author
For my mom, whom I love dearly.
Sorry about the graphic sex scenes. But you did give birth to me, so I’m assuming you’re not a virgin? (If I’m mistaken, my sincere apologies.)
Acknowledgments
My husband and daughter love me exactly as I am. I don’t know how to repay that, except to tell them I love them right back and understand the gift they’ve given me.
As always, my wonderful agents Jessica Alvarez and Beth Campbell helped me polish my story. And my editor, Martin Biro (along with his assistant, James Abbate) gave me not only wonderful guidance on the book, but also an extra month to write it. Thank you!
My sincere appreciation for everyone else at Kensington/Lyrical, especially the ever-patient Michelle Forde, Lauren Jernigan, and Rebecca Cremonese. To the glorious person who put the word “pedant” in my cover copy: I LOVE YOU.
Mia Sosa, my critique partner and friend, is amazing and appreciates my jokes about taking her ass to Red Lobster when she writes me something good. She’s the best.
My other writer, blogger, and reader friends also keep me sane and happy: Mia West, Amara Royce, Annison Roy, Soni Wolf, Susan Scott Shelley, Kate Forest, Alyssa Cole, Gwendolen Crane, Cat Sebastian, Sandra Schwab, Alexandra Haughton, Amanda Heger, Ainsley Wynter, Kelly Maher, Suleikha Snyder, Nicole Locke, Margrethe Martin, Willa, Kay, Rose, Cap, and so many others. Special shout-out to the #mfmmclub crew!
I can’t thank Ana Coqui, Emma Barry, and Mindy Hung enough for reading early versions of the book and providing incisive but kind feedback about what I could improve. Ana told me the story made her cry (in a good way, not in an “oh-my-God-this-book-is-terrible-how-am-I-going-to-tell-her” way)—which pleased me immensely, since I’m kinda evil. Emma is the best giver of pep talks on the face of the earth. And Mindy helped me make Constance everything she should be. I now consider you three charter members of the Hussy Brigade.
And finally: My friend Becky, former Bookmobile Wrangler Extraordinaire, provided me with so much important information about my heroine’s job. Also, to Becky’s credit, she didn’t even blink when I asked her, “So…if you were going to, um, get intimate on board the Bookmobile, where…?”
1
Trouble came in a variety of forms, as Constance well knew.
A sobbing phone call from her younger sister, Pru? Obvious trouble.
Diminishing tread on the Bookmobile’s tires? Subtle trouble.
The grave illness of a homebound patron? Trouble that worried her.
An infuriatingly hot IT geek with an attitude problem? Trouble that pissed her off.
The one constant: Trouble came. Always.
And right now, it was—he was—lounging against the doorway connecting the library’s large garage to the main building. As if she’d summoned him with her thoughts, like the devil or that Justin Bieber song she kept hearing on the damn radio.
When she bent down to inspect a new scratch in Bertha’s paint, the familiar, taunting voice drifted to her ears. “Good morning, Ms. Chen. Kicked any sensitive pieces of library equipment so far today?”
She refused to react to that voice, no matter how provoking she found it. No matter how much she wanted to stand up, get right in Sam Wolcott’s face, and yell at him. Then grab his fine ass and—
Shit. She didn’t have time for another sparring match with him. And even if she did, close contact of any sort only strengthened the reaction he always evoked from her.
Constance peer
ed beneath the Bookmobile. No puddles to indicate a leak. No branches stuck anywhere. And Big Bertha’s back tires appeared fully inflated, as did her front tires.
Rising to her feet, Con continued the daily inspection. No new cracks, dents, or bends, not even on the side mirrors. The awning remained neatly furled against the vehicle. So as far as Bertha’s exterior, a good wash and a new paint job would take care of the obvious problems. The more troubling signs of age would have to wait for a larger Bookmobile Department budget.
Con walked over to the laptop resting on a nearby concrete barrier and tapped out a note to Maintenance:
Bertha’s looking rough from the salt and sand on the roads. Can you wash her today? And buff out and repaint a few scratches before she starts to rust?
Within seconds, she had a response:
No problem. After you bring her back this afternoon, we’ll get on it.
Thanks, she wrote.
Only then did she turn to face Sam. “Did you want something?”
His expression inscrutable, he hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on his olive-green cargos and met her stare. “No. You do.”
And after a closer look at Sam, she had to agree. She did want something. Him.
No use denying that he pushed all her buttons. He was a hair over six feet tall, strong and fit without any unnecessary bulk. He was leaning against the doorframe, at ease in his body in a way she’d rarely seen with other IT guys. The only telltale sign of his job was his pale skin. So pale she couldn’t help but wonder whether it’d taste like cream if she licked it.
Since she’d last seen him, some of that skin had disappeared from view. He’d grown a beard. Reddish-brown, just a shade lighter than the overlong hair he kept sweeping back from his face, only to have it flop forward again every time he inclined his head. Sometimes that hair swung over his deep-set brown eyes and nearly reached his jutting blade of a nose.
The beard suited him, counterbalancing the boyishness of that floppy hair and adding a certain lumberjack-y flair to his usual uniform of cargo pants and superhero T-shirts. Especially with that faded denim shirt he’d thrown on over top of the tee and the loosely tied boots on his feet.
She chose not to address his statement directly. “You stick way too close to me, Wolcott. Like a tick covered in Velcro.”
“Like a…” He looked to the side, and she could have sworn his lips twitched for some reason. But by the time he turned back to her, all traces of amusement had vanished. “Never mind. I’m here because you filed a report about your equipment. We have an IT department meeting later this morning, and I wanted to get up to speed before then.”
“I thought you said you weren’t handling my complaints anymore.”
She hit the button to raise the garage door, and it rattled upward. Climbing the steps into Bertha, she started the engine. The gauges all looked fine, including the fuel level. The air brakes got up to the right pressure quickly too. She should check the oil, but she could do that later. Right now, she had to finish the most pressing morning tasks before heading to her first stop of the day.
When she glanced down at Sam, who’d come to stand outside Bertha’s door, she noticed that his face—so expressive and relaxed around everyone but her—had somehow grown even more unreadable.
He shifted his weight. “We don’t have enough staff for me to shunt your complaints to someone else.”
“Whatever.” She needed to get moving. “Can you check to make sure all the lights are working?”
After a quick circle around the Bookmobile, he returned. “Everything looks good.”
“Move aside.”
As soon as he obeyed, she put the steps up and pulled out of the garage. Once outside, she parked and pushed the button for the generator that supplied their electricity inside the vehicle. If it wasn’t working, she and the other Bookmobile Bitches were pretty much screwed. On a cold day like today, they’d freeze. In the summer, they’d broil. Without the generator’s boost of power, the onboard lights remained dim and drained the battery. And the pair of laptops the staff used to check in and out books, place holds, and do everything else would run out of juice within an hour or two.
The laptops should stay charged for at least an entire four-hour shift. Which was just one of the many reasons she’d filed yet another complaint with the IT department.
Sam was standing outside the door again, his fists braced on his hips as he shuddered a bit in the frigid wind. Reluctantly, she lowered the steps to let him inside, and he climbed on board immediately. The generator was working fine, and welcome heat had begun to flow through the vents. Too much heat, in fact, given Sam’s proximity.
Too close. He was coming too close.
She leaned back in her seat, as far away from him as she could get. “I don’t know why your department can’t seem to find me laptop batteries that stay charged more than a couple hours. And why the hell does my Wi-Fi keep cutting out? I’m not driving around all day for the fun of it, Wolcott. I need access to our catalog and circulation functions. And if a patron has a quick reference question, I should be able to answer it.”
He gritted his teeth. “We know about those problems. You’ve alerted us to them before. Many, many times.”
“So why aren’t they fixed?” She raised her brows. “I thought fixing technical issues was your job. Or was I mistaken?”
“We’ve tried. But we can’t seem to pinpoint what’s causing them.”
“I’m getting tired of having to hand-write information and barcodes like I’m some sort of cavewoman librarian. And in some spots, we can never get service.”
He shoved his hair back from his high forehead, and her eyes followed the movement. That hair… It burned in the sun, turning almost copper. Even on a cloudy day like today, though, its warmth drew her.
Unfortunately, it matched another head of hair almost exactly. A reminder, precisely when she needed one.
He counterattacked, as he always did. “Maybe if you and your staff took better care of your damn equipment, it would function better.”
“Maybe you should take my laptops and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. Like a cave or a well.”
She had no idea why, but he veered from their usual script at that point. He didn’t fire back an insult. Instead, his look of stern aggravation cracked, and he suddenly started laughing.
“You—” He snorted. “You have the worst grasp on figurative language of anyone I’ve ever met.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Nothing.” For once, his eyes had turned warm when they looked at her. “You’re simply very…creative with your metaphors and similes.”
The Bookmobile had become warm too. Stifling, really. She shrugged off her parka and pushed up the sleeves of her thick sweater.
Still way too fucking hot. Lifting her hair from her neck, she coiled it into a loose bun and shoved a couple of nearby pencils through the slippery mass to hold it in place. “Who gives a shit about metaphors?”
“Not you, clearly.” He must have been getting overheated as well, because he unbuttoned his denim shirt. The thin material of the Iron Man tee beneath revealed way too much about the breadth of his chest and the flatness of his belly. “And I salute you for it. I’ll make sure to include your suggestion for the laptops when I report back to the department.”
Her eyes caught on the nimble way he handled each button. No fumbling. Just a sure touch, able to please—
Oh, fuck. No looking at his hands.
But when she met his stare, the close confines of the Bookmobile only became more suffocating. Because those brown eyes, so familiar in such an unwelcome way, had fastened on her with the sort of heat and desire she craved. The sort of heat and desire she was attempting to contain every time she saw him.
Then he blinked and spoke hurriedly. “We should be able to get you new laptops when we win the Department of the Year award.”
Oh, good. He’d taken the initiative this time in dredging up a contentious subject. They’d never discussed it, but they both knew the drill. Sublimate, sublimate, sublimate.
If they were fighting, they weren’t fucking. They weren’t risking their connections with his sister or her best friend. They weren’t making their already-contentious work relationship even more awkward.
But some days, she wondered whether their arguments would continue to do the trick for much longer.
“If you think the IT boys are going to snag the Department of the Year award, think again, Wolcott. The Bookmobile Bitches are taking it.” She snapped her fingers. “Easy as taking a bottle from a baby.”
He stepped closer, right into her space. Until she couldn’t help but breathe in the scent of his body wash, or whatever the fuck he used that made him smell better than chicken wings, beer, and potato chips put together. She couldn’t identify it, but she could identify him by it. No one else smelled like Sam Wolcott. No one else smelled so goddamn delicious.
And it pissed her off for so many reasons.
“I think you mean candy, Ms. Chen.” His eyes heavy-lidded, he crossed his arms across his chest. “Easy as taking candy from a baby.”
Her brow furrowed. “That’s not how my mom always said it. And what kind of shitty parent would feed a baby candy? They could choke on it. That’s not safe at all.”
His lips quirked. “I don’t know much about babies, but I imagine you’re right.”
“I’m the fourth of nine children. My child-rearing days may be over, but trust me. I’m right.” She made the mistake of meeting his gaze again, and this time she didn’t see anyone but him in those brown depths. If she tilted her head up just a smidge…
“Nine?” He blinked down at her, and she had trouble reading his expression. Something combining interest and…sadness? “I had no idea. What was that like? I always wanted lots of brothers and sisters.”