by Frankie Love
Check Her Out
His Curvy Librarian
Frankie Love
Kaylin Evans
Contents
Check Her Out
1. Brooklyn
2. Prescott
3. Brooklyn
4. Prescott
5. Brooklyn
6. Prescott
7. Brooklyn
8. Prescott
9. Brooklyn
10. Prescott
11. Brooklyn
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
About Frankie
About Kaylin
Copyright © 2021 by Frankie Love
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Check Her Out
Book Two in HIS CURVY LIBRARIAN series
By Frankie Love and Kaylin Evans
Books saved my life after losing my parents as a teenager.
Now as a librarian, sharing books with teens to get them through hard times is a privilege and joy.
So imagine my surprise when I meet Prescott, a man who values the same things as me. He runs the teen outreach center and is giving his life to make the world a better a place.
It’s like we’re a match made in heaven.
After a whirlwind night where love is at the tip of both our tongues, I learn that maybe we aren’t the same after all…
I wanted him to check me out on a long-term loan, but maybe it’s too good to be true. Maybe we better shelve this romance before both our hearts get broken.
His Curvy Librarian is a new filthy-sweet series brought to you by Frankie Love and Kaylin Evans. It’s full of heat, heart, and literary innuendo.
What’s sexier than a man who loves to read? How about a naked man who loves to read?
1
Brooklyn
It’s early afternoon at Golden Creek Library, about half an hour before the local schools let out for the day, and I impatiently blow a wisp of blonde hair away from my eyes.
My besties, Nora and Cassidy, have formed the book version of a bucket brigade to help me load up the library van, but even with two extra sets of hands, I’m running late.
“Who knew it would take this long to pack up a few books?” I huff as I put another box in the back of the van.
“A few?” Cassidy laughs. “Brooks, what is this, the entire contents of the teen section?”
“Hardly,” I say. “There are still plenty of books in the stacks.”
“Still, are you sure the outreach center needs this many books?” Nora asks. “Heck, do they even have room for this many books?”
“The director told me they’d take anything I wanted to bring,” I say. “And besides, what’s the point in setting up a satellite branch if the selection is no good?”
This project has been a couple of months in the making, although the outreach center director, Prescott, apparently has his hands full over there so we’ve had to coordinate the whole thing via email. Now that I’m loading the tenth and final box of books into the back of the van, a little tinge of worry shoots through me and I wonder if this is what he had in mind after all.
It is a lot of books.
But I’ve loved this idea ever since Prescott came to me with it. Honestly, I wish I’d thought of it myself, because nothing makes me happier than a little matchmaking between a teenager and the right book at the right time. It can save lives, and I know that firsthand.
I shut the van door, then take a deep breath. “Thanks for the help, you two.”
“Any time, Brooks,” Nora says.
“You know we’ve got your back,” Cassidy chimes in.
I really should get over to the outreach center. The idea was to have all the books set up by the time the teens arrived for their after-school programs, sort of a surprise, but the library was crazy busy all morning, and I majorly underestimated how much work it would be to box and carry all these books.
I lean against the van to catch my breath a minute, and Cassidy and Nora keep me company. They’re both librarians here too, and I’m sure they’ve got plenty of work to do, but they look like they could use a minute to catch their breath, too.
“Hey,” I say, “Tell me about the honeymoon, Cookie.”
I use the cute nickname that Cassidy’s new husband calls her by—which her father-in-law, a tenacious library patron, had come up with.
“Yeah,” Nora agrees. “You’re my sister and even I have barely heard any details.”
Cassidy and her husband Chuck had fallen fast and hard for each other, and got married two months after they met. It all happened so fast that my head was spinning, and I was just the best friend cheering her on from the sidelines.
But I’ve never seen her happier, and that’s all I need to know that Chuck’s the one for her.
“Hawaii was absolutely magical,” Cassidy says. “Beautiful, sunny, vibrant…”
“A whole bunch of vague adjectives that tell me the two of you hardly left your suite,” I say with a wink.
“So not true,” Cassidy shoots back, then she blurts out, “We went for a lovely hike and did it behind a waterfall our first day there.”
She clamps a hand over her mouth before she can say any more, and I squeal. “Good for you, girl. Someday, I’m gonna find my own Tall, Dark and Handsome and you better believe we’re not going to see a damn thing beyond our hotel room walls on our honeymoon.”
Cassidy laughs, but Nora just sighs. “And I’ll be here at the library, reading picture books to other people’s kids and slowly becoming an old spinster.”
“No, you won’t,” Cassidy says. “You just have to wait for the right guy to come along.”
“He’s sure taking his sweet time,” Nora says. She’s two years older than Cassidy, and a year older than my twenty-four years, and sometimes I think that fact eats at her; that her kid sister basically just lucked into meeting the love of her life while Nora is still waiting.
“It’ll happen when it’s meant to,” I say, and I believe that with my whole heart.
My own life hasn’t been easy—far from it—and I’ve never been lucky in love, but things always seem to work out in the end. When I was growing up poor, my family never had much but they always managed to have just enough. And when both of my parents died when I was just fifteen years old, Nora and Cassidy’s parents took me in and treated me as their own.
So I’ve got to believe that when the time is right, love will find me—and the same will be true for Nora.
“Ugh, I should go,” I say, checking the time. It’s a quarter to three and there’s no way I’m going to get all these books back out of the van and set up at the outreach center before the teens arrive.
“You sure you don’t want one of us to ride along and help you unload?” Cassidy offers.
I shake my head. “Nah, you’ve got your own work to do, and at this rate, I can probably just ask the teens themselves to pitch in. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, good luck,” Nora says. “Have fun!”
“Thanks,” I say, walking toward the driver’s side of the van. I call over the hood, “Hey, see you two tonight for the seven o’clock showing?”
“You bet,” Nora answers, and Cassidy gives me a thumbs-up.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Golden Creek is having its annual street festival starting tonight, and the three of us made plans to make it a girls’ night out, starting with a screening of a c
lassic movie that has become a bit of a tradition at the town’s one-screen theater. This year, it’s Casablanca.
I’ve seen that movie at least twenty times and it never gets old, but more importantly, I can’t wait to hang out with my girls. Now that Cassidy has Chuck, I’ve lost a roommate and I’ve been jonesing for some us-time.
I hop in the van and drive over to the outreach center, which is an unassuming cinder block building within walking distance of all the public schools. Unfortunately, it’s not walkable from the library, which is why Prescott reached out to me about setting up a little satellite library.
I’ve suggested ‘field trips’ to the library in the past, but these kids act like they’re allergic to reading, he said in one of his emails. With your help, I’d like to bring the joy of books to them.
If I’d been at all on the fence about this project before, that line had instantly melted my heart.
By some miracle, I actually arrive before the teens, and the building looks quiet for the moment. I pull the van right up to the door to make unloading easy, then kill the engine. I get out and go around back, opening the van door and picking up the first box of books.
“You must be Brooklyn,” a deep, velvety voice says from the other side of the van door. “Can I help you with those?”
“Sure,” I say, turning around.
And I damn near drop twenty pounds of books on both our toes.
Standing right in front of me, arms out to take the box, is Tall, Dark and Handsome incarnate. His dark, nearly black hair is slicked back on top and faded meticulously on the sides. He’s wearing black-framed glasses that make nerdy little me quiver a bit… and is that a hint of a tattoo I see peeking out of the bottom of his tight-fitting T-shirt?
As they say in Casablanca, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“Prescott?” I ask, my belly still quivering.
“At your service,” he says and takes the box out of my hands as if it were filled with feathers instead of books. He takes one more from the back of the van, brushing past me and leaving behind the scent of his cologne—leathery and rich. “Follow me—I’ll give you the grand tour.”
I’m feeling a little lightheaded as I pick up another box and follow him inside.
What was it I was just telling Nora about meeting the right guy at the right time?
Pinch me, I’m dreaming.
2
Prescott
My heart pretty much stopped the first moment I laid eyes on Brooklyn.
Up to now, all our correspondence has been electronic, and I knew from those emails that she has a cute sense of humor, but the picture I’d been building of her in my mind got ripped to shreds the moment she turned around and locked eyes with me.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t imagining some silver-bunned, shushing stereotype of a librarian—but I’m not sure anything could have prepared me for… her.
Wavy golden locks. Dazzling sapphire eyes. Curves for days.
I had to snatch a couple boxes of books and turn around just to keep myself from blatantly checking her out.
Now, inside the outreach center, I lead her over to the little reading nook the kids and I have been setting up this past week. Right now it’s just a soft rug, some beanbag chairs, and a couple of empty bookshelves, but with Brooklyn’s help, I hope it’ll become something really special that the kids grow to love.
I set down my two boxes on the floor, then take the one Brooklyn’s carrying. “Here, let me.”
“Thanks,” she says, looking up through her lashes at me. A smile plays on her soft lips and she asks, “Do you think I overdid it? I wasn’t sure how many books to bring.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to overdo it when it comes to books,” I say. “And I know I mentioned it in an email already, but I really appreciate your enthusiasm about this project. When I first contacted the library, I sort of figured the director would give me a flat-out no.”
“My whole mission is teen outreach,” Brooklyn says. “Doesn’t matter to me if that happens in the library or somewhere else, as long as they’re reading.”
“I feel the same way,” I say, my body involuntarily swaying a little closer to hers.
We’re alone in the building—at least for the moment—and every time this woman looks at me, with those big blue eyes, I can feel sparks dancing between us.
How crazy is that? I’ve known her a couple of months, if you count the emails, and all of five minutes in person, and yet I’ve got this overwhelming urge to get closer to her, to wrap my arms around her and plant a kiss on those plump little lips.
And she’s looking at me like she might feel the same.
Did somebody turn the furnace on, at the tail end of summer? Because damn, it just got warm in here.
“Hey, Mr. P!”
Suddenly, the door is flung open and teens are pouring into the room. School is out and that moment of delicious tension is over.
Probably for the best.
I step away from Brooklyn and take a deep breath, my hands on my hips in a posture of forced casualness. One of the kids, a fifteen-year-old named Jaxon, calls out to me again. “Mr. P, you got a delivery or somethin’ out there.”
“That’s the library van,” I explain. “For our reading corner. This is Miss Hart, the teen librarian.”
I put my hand on the small of her back without even thinking about it, and I can actually see the color rising into her cheeks at that small touch. Damn, I wish school ran long today.
I take my hand away before I can drive myself any crazier, and she says, “Call me Brooklyn—all the kids do.”
“Sup,” one of the other kids, Ty, says.
I just shake my head. How long have I been working with these guys, and they still can’t do me the simple favor of greeting guests with something better than ‘sup’? I don’t comment on that because I know Ty’s just trying to get a rise out of me, like he always is. What I say instead is, “Who wants to help us carry the rest of the books in and arrange the shelves?”
Some of the kids are already going about their usual after-school routines—working on homework together or going into the little kitchenette for a snack—but Jaxon and Ty come outside with Brooklyn and me.
With four sets of hands, it doesn’t take long to finish unloading the truck. I check out the titles Brooklyn selected for us as they’re unboxed.
“The Outsiders, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Paper Towns,” I read off as I hand books to Ty to be shelved.
“Read any of them?” Brooklyn asks, and I can’t help giving her a coy smile.
“All of them,” I tell her. “The Outsiders is my favorite of that lot.”
She smiles back. “What do you know? Me too.”
We finish shelving the books—somewhat haphazardly, but there’ll be time to teach the kids the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal System later. I call them all over and Brooklyn introduces herself to the whole group, then talks a little about what the two of us are trying to accomplish with this little collection.
“I know there are a lot of kids your age who don’t like to read, or maybe have problems that are a whole lot more pressing than taking the time to read a book,” she says. “And I get that. It’s how I felt when I was young and my parents barely had enough money to feed us and pay the rent. But then one day I picked up a library book and realized there were whole other worlds just waiting to be entered and explored.”
“Which book?” I asked, and she gave me a rather shushing look. But she answered.
“The Giver,” she said.
“Love that one,” I interjected again. “Love the movie too.”
She put a finger up to her lips—she really was shushing me now, and it had quite the opposite effect. I kept my mouth shut, but something inside me was growling with desire.
“Anyway,” Brooklyn continued, directing her attention back to the teens, “I’ll be here once a week and I can bring whatever books you want from the mai
n library. Please help yourselves to what’s on these shelves—they’re here for you, and so am I.”
By the end of her speech, I think I might be in love.
I can’t relate to not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, like these kids can and like Brooklyn apparently can, but I sure as hell know what it feels like to escape into a book to get away from the ugliness in your real life. And my heart absolutely melts as I stand back and watch Brooklyn interacting with my teens.
Some of them go right back to what they were doing before, like I expected—they’ll warm up to the reading nook eventually. But plenty of others stick around, and a handful walk away with a book tucked under their arms.
I’m just taking it all in, admiring how quickly Brooklyn has forged a connection with kids who don’t open up easily, when I overhear Ty and Jaxon talking off to the side.
“Seriously, total cougar,” Ty is saying.
I stifle a laugh. Only a teenager would think of Brooklyn like that—she can’t be past twenty-five. I do have to agree with the assessment, though. She’s gorgeous, with a personality to match, and I don’t intervene because who hasn’t had a harmless little crush on a librarian?
But then Jaxon lowers his voice, just loud enough for me to hear him say, “I dare you to go talk to her.”
“And say what?” Ty asks.
“Tell her how hot she is.”
“Guys–” I start to intervene, but Ty’s fast—he’s on the varsity football team at just fifteen, and he slips away from me like a pro.
“Hey, Brooklyn,” he says, “Are you sure you’re not a library book? Because I can’t stop checking you out.”