By the Book

By the Book

Scarlett Parrish

www.loose-id.com

By the Book

Copyright © January 2011 by Scarlett Parrish

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eISBN 978-1-60737-927-0

Editor: Antonia Pearce

Cover Artist: Christine M. Griffin

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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Dedication

For the founding member of Cross Bones—Lia Booke.

Daniel says it’s a shame you’re all the way over there and he’s right here. You should give him a call. And stop sending me filthy texts.

Acknowledgement

With thanks to my editor, Antonia, for being brave enough to take on Daniel and me and for staging an intervention for my addiction to ellipses.

Also with gratitude to Ash Penn for guiding me through some scary paperwork.

Chapter One

Cradling the receiver, I groaned. Another meaningless phone call from another staff member in another department calling the wrong desk about a problem I couldn’t help them with.

Someone cleared his throat on the other side of the counter. “Excuse me?”

Throwing “Just leave your books there and I’ll see to them,” his way, my breath caught for an instant as I looked up. For a moment I believed I’d been accosted by a diabolical visitation rather than a patron.

“I wonder if you could help me.” He slipped off his shades. Unusual to see someone wear shades indoors, and if the glass, mirrors, and white-tiled floors of the library’s reception area didn’t gleam so much, I’d have thought he was a pretentious jackhole.

What I was supposed to make of the narrowest of black lines on his lower lids I didn’t know, but evidently the kind of “someone” to wear shades to the library was the kind of guy who also wore eyeliner.

His lips twitched, probably in response to my raised eyebrows. “I assume the library has Wi-Fi?”

Wi-Fi. Come on, Hutton. You know the answer to this one
. “Yes. Yes, it does.” I’d worked in the city’s Central Library for over six months now; the answer should have come to me a lot quicker than that, but something had done a Ctrl+Alt+Delete on my brain.

“Is there a charge for it?”

“No, it’s free. You just connect to the guest network and you’re in. The reception’s probably best over there—” I’d barely finished pointing when he interrupted.

“I’d prefer to work in this department; much quieter.” He grinned, and I wondered if it was the sterile decor of the foyer to my right, with light streaming in through the glass ceiling, that made his teeth gleam. “Too much foot traffic and too many conversations going on over there.” He gave a short burst of laughter and shrugged. His black leather jacket squeaked in protest, strained by the weight of his laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He pushed a pile of hardbacks toward me and stood back, stroking his jaw.

It was just quiet enough for me to hear the
scritch scratch
of palm on stubble.

“Right, well, I’ll take care of these, then,” I said, averting my gaze. The unflinching nature of his eye contact made me uncomfortable. Wordlessly he said
yes, I wear eyeliner, and I’m confident enough to make unbroken eye contact too
. There was a forceful element to his presence, as if in looking at me, he tried to force me to look back at him. I bet he’d never considered not being the center of attention in his life.

Laughing under my breath at my reaction to a total stranger, I reached for the top book of the pile before glancing up, and
he
flinched. Turned his back and headed for the study area right at the back of General Lending.

I must have run the scanner over the books’ bar codes but didn’t hear the first four beeps, so accustomed was I to the routine nature of the job. I’d changed employers, moving over from the city’s university in search of better pay and more sociable hours. The drudge work wasn’t much different, except now I dealt with members of the public as opposed to students alone. There was more variety to the people I got to speak to each day, and sometimes that was good, sometimes bad.

Lifting my gaze, I looked in the direction the dark-eyed Angel of Death had headed. He wasn’t in my line of sight anymore, but I shivered like a guilty thing surprised.

Hutton, for God’s sake, get a grip.

One more book to return, and when the scanner beeped, I looked at the computer screen. No overdue books in this eclectic collection checked out by Daniel Cross.

So that’s his name.

“Did you see that?” my colleague Katie asked on her return, looking away from me and craning her neck to see the back of the room.

“What?” Feigning disinterest, I gathered Mr. Cross’s books into one pile again.

“That tall drink of…” Slipping behind the counter, she lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “That tall drink of water who’s just set up his laptop.”

“Oh him,” I drawled. “Well, Katie, if I were a woman or a gay guy, I might pay attention. But as I’m not…” I shrugged and pretended I’d never been naked in bed with another man before. “I tend not to notice when other men walk in.”

She tutted loudly—for a librarian. “Ugh. You’re no fun.”

“What you mean is,” I said, backing away, “I’m not a
girl
you can gossip with. Well, I need to put
these
”—I hoisted the books in my arms, shuffling them almost—“back over there.” And I nodded in the general direction of a random shelf unit. “So you’ll just have to man the telephones yourself.”

“Goddamn it, Reece, if I have to deal with another drunk guy who spends half an hour swearing up and down he knew Dostoevsky when he was a lad, I’ll—”

“Have fun.” I winked and turned my back, shoulders shaking with barely suppressed laughter.

This guy was better read than I was, judging by the spines of the novels I reshelved, and I worked here. Still, if he was hanging out in a library with a laptop, perhaps it was in his job description to be a bookworm. A reviewer maybe, or a writer of some sort?

Not expecting to find anything of note, I scanned the
C
shelves, looking for his name, finding nothing. Just because the guy had a laptop didn’t mean he was a writer, and even if he was a writer, that didn’t make him a novelist. Hell, maybe he was just killing time between jobs and the laptop was for playing games. I could always check the computerized catalog later to see if we had anything of his in, but again, that was on the assumption he was a published author and an author of novels at that.

I caught sight—not that I was looking—of someone unmistakably Daniel raising both hands, and I wondered if he was about to run his fingers through his hair. No, just a two-arm stretch. Of course. Those mussed-up strands were obviously designed to look careless and messy, but he’d probably spent an absolute age on getting them right this morning.

Jesus, Hutton. You never notice these things.

But notice them I did, reasoning a man who left the house wearing even the narrowest smudges of eyeliner behind shades was the type to spend ages in front of the mirror arranging each strand of hair with minute precision.

I had no reason to go anywhere near his desk, littered with his shades, a notepad, pens, and, of course, the laptop. No reason at all, but that was exactly what I did.

“Work or play?” I asked, aiming for casual.
Thank God for that. An opening line that doesn’t make you sound like an idiot.

Wait. Opening line?

“Huh?” He clasped his hands behind his head, craned his neck as if working out a kink. “Oh. This. Yeah, work. Deadline.”

“You’re a writer? I wondered.”

“Yep. I usually work at home, but I had to get out. It’s driving me mad, staring at the four walls and a blank computer screen.”

“Writer’s block?”

“Good Christ, no. I don’t believe in all that shit.” He laughed, and from anyone else such laughter would resound with mockery, but from him—this mysterious Daniel Cross—it merely said,
Me? I’m above all that
. “Just an excuse used by lazy gits who prefer talking about
not
writing than actually getting their arse in the chair and fingers on the keyboard.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it takes a bit more work to get the words out, but they’re always there. I shake things up from time to time. Change of scenery. Figured I’d get the chance to do some work here. Who knows?”

“Sorry. I—”
Didn’t mean to disturb you. But I did
. I took a faltering step back.

“No, no. Please.” He waved a dismissive hand and sat forward, leaning in to his laptop. “I wasn’t complaining about your interruption. I’m not in the zone yet anyway. Just kicking a few ideas around.”

“If you don’t mind me asking…” I felt like a nervous schoolboy. “What do you write?”

“Novels. Well, two so far. That is, one’s published and the other’s out soon.” He chuckled, looked down at his hands and up at me again. “Working on the first draft of my next one. Got some short stories out there too. Magazine articles here and there.”

“You’re, like, a published author, then?”