Page 14 of Making It Up

“I’ll go get something else.” I start across the room with my phone light leading the way.

“No, David! You don’t have to,” she protests. “You’ve been up and down taking care of the house, the pets, me ever since we got here. The storm is close enough to knock the power out. You should stay down here!”

But she’s still hungry.

“I’ll just get some chips or something. Donna always has cookies.”

“No.” She pushes up, bracing her hand on the sofa. “Sit down. I’m fine.”

“But—”

“David,” she says firmly. “Sit down.” She points at the recliner. “You need to be safe.” She’s giving me a stern look.

I lift a brow. “Wow.”

“What?”

“Is that your librarian voice?”

It’s…hot.

Dammit.

She grins. “Yeah. I mean, usually my librarian voice is this one. ‘Oh, let me help you with that. Let’s go over here and look for books about trains,’” she says in a sweet, lilting voice. With an equally sweet smile.

That is also hot.

Dammit.

“But sometimes I have to get bossy,” she says, her smile growing wider.

I move back to the recliner trying very hard not to picture her with her hair in a bun with a pencil stuck through it, glasses on her nose, and her wearing a cardigan.

The librarian-hot-teacher-nerdy-girl type is not my type.

So, why do I want to ask her how many cardigans she owns? And why am I hoping the answer is several?

“Of course, I usually use it with adults,” she goes on, settling back against the pillow on the couch again, Murphy against her breasts.

Lucky rabbit.

See, I really have to stop all of this. With another woman, thoughts like that would be okay. With Mia Hansen? It’s so, so fucking bad.

Her long hair spreads out over the patterned pillow and I realize I like it like this too. Bun, under a cap like earlier, long and loose…it’s all good. Beautiful.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

“When you have to use your bossy librarian voice, it’s usually with adults?” I ask, needing a distraction. I turn my phone light away from her. Not looking at her seems like a really good idea.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because adults are way more often assholes than kids are.”

I choke on a laugh. “I can’t argue with that. At all.”

I glance down at my phone to check the radar. “The tornado warning has lifted. Thunderstorm warning still in place for the next hour.”