Unlike a lot of grandmothers, she wasn’t warm and fuzzy. She didn’t fill her house with the scent of fresh-baked cookies, and she certainly didn’t let her grandkids get away with whatever they wanted. But she’d prepared Ronan for the world—she’d loved him in the way she knew how, with her tough attitude and concrete work ethic and her survival mentality. She was the reason he got into Harvard when most were turned away. She was the reason he wouldn’t stop until he’d achieved his lofty ambition for a tenured position at an Ivy League school and gotten his work into mainstream bookstores.
He owed her everything.
Just as Ronan was about to further question her on what exactly made him a “cinnamon roll,” there was a commotion at the front of the store.
And the sound of something distinctly animal.
He swung his head toward Audrey, who’d frozen beside him. “What the hell was that?”
Chapter Six
Llamas don’t bite, but they can spit up to fifteen feet.
“It’s the llama,” she whispered, her green eyes wide.
She said it with the same level of awestruck yet fear-filled reverence as if she’d announced that Satan himself had walked into the bookstore.
“A llama?” He raised a brow.
“The llama.” She sucked in a breath. “We only have one—our college baseball team’s mascot. She’s mean.”
“Aren’t llamas supposed to be all fuzzy and cute?”
Audrey made a scoffing noise. “No. You’re thinking about alpacas, which are sweet-natured little bundles of fleece and eyelashes. They wouldn’t hurt a fly. I love alpacas. But llamas… They’ll cut you.”
For some reason, he had this vision of a llama wielding a butcher’s knife, Psycho style. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”
He walked past the rows of books. There was a startled yelp from the front of the store and something that sounded like a stack of books being knocked over.
“Stay back, Lily!” Mr. Hart yelled.
Ronan glanced back over his shoulder at Audrey, who shrugged as if to say: it’s your funeral. He’d seen llamas before…well, not in person. Only in memes that his colleagues liked to send around occasionally. Then there was his friend who’d gone to South America and posted a bunch of pictures with him and the furry creatures to Facebook. They didn’t look that scary.
“Lily…don’t you dare!”
Ronan exited the aisle in time to see Lily, whom he could only assume was the shaggy beast taking up most of the space in the front of the bookstore—thus blocking the exit—nudge a pile of books, sending them toppling over.
“You confounding animal!” Mr. Hart was shakily getting to his feet. He was protected by a large, heavy banker’s desk, complete with hunter green leather insert and matching lamp. “Go on, shoo! Get out of here.”
But Lily merely looked at him with the disdain of someone who knew they were in the position of power. She stretched up to her full height, and Ronan gulped. Okay, so maybe she did look a little mean. And damn if she didn’t weigh over three hundred pounds. At her full height, he’d guess her to be a hair under six feet tall, meaning she could look him right in the eyes.
Her coat was mainly white, with patches of a warm brown on her face, neck, and hindquarters. For a second, he swore her eyes flashed at him.
“Do they normally get that big, or is she special?” Ronan turned around to look at Audrey, only to find her hiding behind a smaller bookshelf, the top of her blond head poking over the top. “Coward.”
“Coward?” she gasped. “You can see that thing, right? She’s a monster.”
“Audrey, dear. Is that you?” Mr. Hart peered into the bookstore, trying to locate the source of the feminine voice. “Can you call the farm? She’s making a mess of everything again.”
Lily snorted, as though insulted that her “decorating skills” weren’t being admired. As if in retaliation, she lifted her hind hoof and kicked at another stack of books, sending them flying.
“Dammit!” Mr. Hart slapped his hand down on the desk. “Why do you hate me, llama?”
“I’ll see if I can get her to back up and go through the door.” Ronan took a step forward, hands outstretched, and the llama immediately swung her head toward him. “Whoa girl, easy.”
Behind him, Audrey could be heard talking to someone on the phone. But Lily didn’t seem content to wait for her owner to come collect her. Oh no—she seemed determined to destroy everything in her path.
“Stop!” Ronan clapped his hands and immediately regretted it. Lily looked at him, her head slightly lowered, as if she were about to charge him. “It’s okay, girl. We just want you to leave the books alone.”
He used his best teacher voice—the one he’d leaned on many times when a student was crying in his office about how they were going to fail…usually because they’d left things to the last minute, he might add. It was equal parts soothing and steady, designed not to raise blood pressure.
But clearly Lily did not want to be calmed.
Instead, she made the most bloodcurdling sound that Ronan had ever heard. “Uh oh.”
“You made her angry,” Audrey said from behind the bookcase. “It’s not good when she gets angry.”
“Is that what they’re supposed to sound like?” Ronan blinked.
The llama let out the same bleating, hollering sound, which could only be described as Chewbacca on helium crossed with angry cat gurgling. In other words, a sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Lily took a step toward him, her big body squeezing between the bookshelves and Mr. Hart’s desk. The space was cramped, even for humans. But for the llama, if she went too much farther in, she’d risk getting stuck.
That wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Maybe she was scared. Animals were wired to defend themselves, right? If he didn’t treat her like a monster, then perhaps she wouldn’t act like one.
“There’s a good llama.” Ronan took a step toward Lily, and she tossed her head, glaring at him. Could llamas glare? It certainly felt like it. “Let’s go outside. It’s sunny outside; you’ll like it better out there.”
“Don’t get too close,” Audrey advised from behind her barricade. “She—”
Audrey’s advice was cut short by the llama drawing her head back and spitting right in Ronan’s face. The moisture hit the side of his cheek, as instinct had made him turn his head, and now it was sliding down to his jaw in a slow, soggy trail.
“She spat in his face!” Mr. Hart shoved his glasses back up his nose and made a sound that could only be classified as chortling. Unabashedly gleeful chortling.
Ronan dragged his hand across his left cheek, unsure whether that made it better or worse, because now his arm was sticky, too. “Score one, llama.”
Lily looked smug as hell, her deep black eyes fringed by white eyelashes trained steadily on him. Her ears stuck straight up, flicking like she was keeping close tabs on everything around her. Her bottom teeth stuck out a little and might fool one into thinking she was cute, if a little derpy.
But Lily was not cute.
“That wasn’t very nice, but I get it. You’re feeling threatened.”
Lily brayed as if to say: no, I’m not! But llamas weren’t inherently aggressive…were they? Ronan held his hand out, allowing her to sniff him. That’s what he’d always done with dogs, and it seemed to work. And really, besides the occasional interaction with a friendly canine on the street, his experience with animals was zip.
“We can be friends,” he said to the llama. She sniffed the back of his hand and tossed her head again. “Please don’t spit on me.”
Thankfully, she didn’t. This time she nudged his hand with her nose and stomped her feet. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He took another step forward, and the llama shifted, her rear knocking into a bookcase so that it
rattled precariously.
“I think she’s stuck.” Ronan skirted into the aisle closest to the llama and tried to see if he could move some of the shelving.
The entire bookstore was made up of single, mismatched bookshelves that looked as though they’d been rescued from charity shops and estate sales and front lawns. That meant none of it was bolted together. Talk about a safety hazard. Between all the paper in this store, the loose shelving, and the dust…this place was a 911 call waiting to happen.
You can worry about getting crushed to death after you’ve avoided being spit on…again.
Bracing his shoulder against one of the shelves, Ronan tried to nudge it forward. The damn thing didn’t budge. Clearly he needed to get back in the gym. Sucking in a breath, he tried again, and this time the unit moved a few inches.
Lily stomped her feet.
“Don’t get mad. I’m trying to help you.” He heaved again and budged the shelf a few more inches.
It was enough that Lily could turn, whereas before she’d only been able to move forward. Or potentially backward…could llamas walk backward? Add that to the list of things he didn’t know. Thankfully, the animal took the opportunity to swing herself around, knocking more books over in the process and heading back the way she’d came. On her way out, she tossed her head and kicked back at the doorframe in some kind of parting shot.
…
Audrey was about to call out for Ronan to keep watch on Lily, because she’d been known to zigzag across the road, putting herself and others at risk. But as Ronan disappeared, following the llama out the bookshop’s only entry and exit, she heard the sound of Lily’s owner out front.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Audrey crept out from behind her protective wall of books. Mr. Hart was standing behind his desk, a frown on his wrinkled old face. “I hope you and your boyfriend are going to clean up this mess, missy.”
“He’s not my…” She sighed and shook her head. “Of course, Mr. Hart.”
There was no point trying to correct the man—most days he didn’t remember anyone’s name, let alone who’d been in and out of his store. Hell, he might not remember Lily being in here, and then he’d wonder if a tornado had blown through. It was sad, really. She remembered the excitable, bespectacled man who somehow knew every single book in this place and the exact person who should read it.
Kneeling down in front of the desk, she started collecting the books and putting them back into piles, having no idea if there was any rhyme or reason to the order. A second later, Ronan walked back through the door. He had a wad of tissues in his hand and was cleaning up his face.
“I met Lily’s owner,” he said with a slight frown.
Audrey stifled a smile and kept about her work. “First impressions?”
“They’re perfectly suited.”
She snorted. “Truer words have never been spoken. Devon Huxley is, uh…efficient in his personal dealings.”
“Meaning he likes dealing with people to be over as quickly as possible?” He shoved the tissues into his back pocket. “Yeah, I got that impression.”
“You were very brave…with Lily.”
“Brave or stupid, it’s a fine line.”
“I’d say stupid,” chimed in Mr. Hart as he settled back into his chair. Audrey and Ronan exchanged amused glances a second later as the sound of snoring filled the bookstore once again.
Ronan shook his head, chuckling to himself, and set about sliding the bookshelf back into place from the opposite side. From her position crouched on the floor, Audrey watched, her hands fluttering uselessly over the books as her heart thumped in her chest. Ronan’s body was…magnificent.
His arms bulged, the muscles flexing and working, as he pushed into the bookcase. The way he was angled, leaning in with his shoulder and bracing his legs, made his ass look like David-esque perfection. Audrey groped for another book to add to her stack, her fingers brushing nothing but air.
“Might be easier if you were looking at what you’re doing.” Ronan’s voice jolted her back into the present, and she snatched her hand to her chest as though she’d touched something hot.
“I am looking,” she grumbled defensively, scooting along on her knees to the next upended stack of books.
Yeah, you were looking all right.
“I know you can’t keep your eyes off me, what with all the llama spit glistening on my face.”
Audrey grinned. “How could you possibly know that was my personal catnip?”
“I could tell that about you from the moment you accused me of being a scam artist. I thought to myself, she’s a llama-spit woman through and through.”
A deep, genuine laugh shot out of Audrey—so loud, in fact, that there was a startled snort from behind the desk and a brief pause before the quiet snoring started up again. “The professor has a sense of humor, I see.”
“It came free with my elbow patches.”
Okay, so he was hot, strong, sweetly looked for books for his grandma, and had an epic sense of self-deprecating humor? That was an unprecedented combination. So unprecedented, in fact, that it had only previously existed in Audrey’s head, filed in a box marked “perfect men who don’t exist.”
Ronan nudged the bookshelf again, sliding it mostly back into place. How the hell he could move the damn thing when it was packed with books was beyond her.
Well, it wasn’t quite beyond her imagination. Something told Audrey she’d have to make an effort not to imagine it when they were back in class next Wednesday.
“So tell me,” he said, bending down to collect a few books that had toppled off shelves in the move. “What do you know about llamas?”
“Are you going to quiz my knowledge on everything now?” She looked up at him, ready to meet the challenge.
“I’m curious how long it will take before I find a topic you don’t know anything about.”
“Llamas have a gestation period of three-hundred and fifty days. They don’t bite, but they can spit up to fifteen feet.” She shuddered. “Actually, spitting at humans is rarer than people think, and it’s often a sign that the llamas were over-socialized during rearing. Typically, llamas spit at each other, but if they’ve been overhandled as crias—which is what you call baby llamas—then they tend to treat humans as they would other llamas. Hence the…glistening.”
Ronan bobbed his head. “Well, that shut me up, then, didn’t it?”
“The spitting or my facts?” She got to her feet and dusted her hands down the front of her dress.
He served up the most delicious lopsided smile that crinkled the corners of his blue eyes and made him look even sexier than he already did. “Both.”
Why did he have to be her professor? Even if it was only a visiting, temporary thing. Why couldn’t he be some hunky tourist in town for a month…or four? Why couldn’t he be the new owner of a bakery or restaurant or the hardware store?
Why did the universe see fit to constantly tempt her with things she couldn’t have?
Happiness is wanting what you get.
Her mother had told her that once when Audrey was young and crying over the fact that she had old sneakers instead of the cool new ones the other girls wore to school. Her mother was one of those serene people who could always find the silver lining in things. Since she was young, Audrey had tried to emulate her.
It’s better that he’s off-limits, because you know you don’t want anything serious. What would you do, anyway? Invite him back to your house?
The very thought of it sent a shiver down her spine. No way would she ever bring a man home—not with her father causing the house to reek of beer and cigarettes. Especially not with the fact that privacy was a premium she couldn’t afford. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t want him to know she lived in the bad part of town…for some reason, that made her pride cringe.
Therefore, it was
easier not to go there. That was why Ronan was her professor, so she would know that getting close was not only ill-advised but pointless.
“Do you want to grab a coffee?” Ronan asked as they finished up with the bookstore. He was looking delightfully rugged now, with hair mussed and shirt slightly askew. The bookstore was silent except for the quiet snore of Mr. Hart up front.
Audrey could all but hear the pounding of her heart and the fact that she very much did want to have a coffee with Ronan droning like a chant in her bloodstream. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so attracted to a man. He was smart, gorgeous, and hard-bodied. Funny.
Happiness is wanting what you get.
“I have to get home,” Audrey said with a perfectly practiced smile. “Maybe next time.”
But it was a lie. For the sake of her heart, there would never be a next time.
Chapter Seven
The most innings ever played in a Major League Baseball game was in 1920 when Boston played 26 innings against Brooklyn.
Audrey leaned back against the side of Big Red, breathing in the cool, early-morning air. There were only a few cars scattered throughout the parking lot for the Chinnery State Park, signaling she was one of a handful of early birds ready to seek out nature while the rest of the town slept the wee hours of Sunday morning away. Come rain, hail, snow, or shine, she met her best friend, Nicole, every Sunday morning in this very spot.
A familiar car turned into the parking lot, and Nicole pulled up beside her. A second later, she got out of her car, dark hair tied into a messy topknot and a silver thermos glued to her left hand.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Audrey said in an artificially perky voice, because she knew Nicole would hate it. “You’re looking bright as a spring sunrise.”
“We both know that’s not true.” Nicole narrowed her hooded eyes and groped around for the sunglasses perched on her head. She wore a pair of leggings with a baggy sweatshirt that said fries before guys. “And don’t tease the zombie. It’s cruel that you make me get up this early.”
Kissing Lessons (Kissing Creek) Page 6