Checking Out Love (5 page)

Benj, which was such a gentle name, so light on the tongue Jeremy couldn’t stand it, lifted an eyebrow at that, but then tugged on the bag as if a pre-dinner pastry wasn’t unwelcome. “Come on,” Jeremy directed when it looked like Benj would stand there forever debating if he should have a treat or not. He walked to the table with his stuff and left the tray and pastry bag in the center. Then he sat down. “We can clean up every stray crumb,” he promised seriously. “Technically we aren’t breaking any rules.”

“Is ‘not technically’ breaking rules a habit of yours?” Benj loomed for another moment, then sat opposite him after a quick glance around.

“The question is, why isn’t it a habit of yours?” Jeremy countered, and unbent his straw to sip his coffee. The coffee was going to scald his tongue, but whatever, he needed it.

Benj popped the top of his cappuccino and scowled at his cinnamon. “I break plenty of rules. Just not in the library,” he insisted, and took a sip. “Thank you for my drink.” He managed to say that in an even quieter voice, one only for the two of them to hear.

Jeremy drank his coffee, then pulled over the pastry bag to consider two identical cinnamon buns. He took one and shoved the bag over. They ate quietly, Jeremy trying not to shove his in his face, Benj picking his bun apart into six or seven smaller pieces before neatly devouring it.

“You know,” Jeremy began as he wiped his fingers on the outside of the pastry bag. “Usually, by this point in knowing me, people are screaming for me to shut up or go away. I thought you would too, but as long as I keep my voice down, you don’t. It’s nice. I like you. I’m going to keep you.”

He said it right as Benj was enjoying another sip of cappuccino. Caught off-guard, he coughed, and tiny flecks of foam flew out and landed in his scruff.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to steal you away from your library, or your boyfriend,” Jeremy was compelled to add. He was aware that there was far too much regret in his tone, so he lightened it. “You have foam in your beard, Benj.” He smiled smugly and settled into his uncomfortable chair. “Now isn’t this better? I can get a little more work in, and you can go back to what you were doing without all the frowning. Admit it, I made your day. No, no, don’t say anything. It can be our secret.”

Benj wiped at his mouth and gave him that puzzled stare Jeremy was so familiar with, but at least didn’t call him weird. He got up, taking their garbage with him, then shifted his weight to his other foot as if he wanted to leave, but couldn’t.

“I don’t,” Benj announced at last. Jeremy got the impression he’d been debating saying it. He blinked up at him, trying to follow someone else’s jumping conversation for once.

“What?” Jeremy slowly put down his coffee while he watched Benj crumple the pastry bag in one big hand.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” Benj shook his head shortly as if he couldn’t understand why Jeremy would assume he did, but then tightened his mouth in a nervous gesture Jeremy recognized from the mirror. He walked off without saying anything else, leaving Jeremy to stare after him, and his sweet ass, and his fluffy sweater vest.

“Oh,” Jeremy realized after a few minutes. His skin was warm and buzzing. His brain was strangely quiet.

That, of course, couldn’t last. At least, not without chemical assistance. Jeremy spent two days and then the weekend alternating between thinking about his thesis, and wondering what Benj meant by telling him that. Well, and going to work and marking papers for one of his professors.

Jeremy liked knowing things, but knowing things usually didn’t mean having to do anything with that information. This was an entirely original database he had to build. People didn’t do that with him, offer him teasing bits of information after tolerating him, possibly even liking him. He chased them, they had sex, they got annoyed, then Jeremy took the hint. This was new. Did Benj want Jeremy to ask him out? Did he want to ask Jeremy out?

Did Jeremy want to? Benj wasn’t the usual sort of man to set his heart aflutter.

But when Jeremy thought of Benj bending the rules for him, he felt something suspiciously flutter-like in his chest. Jeremy hadn’t even tried to charm him but Benj had done it anyway. It had been nice, sharing a few minutes with him. His only complaint that it was maybe too nice. Benj was not the confrontational type. He worked with the Beast, which was probably how he got away with his occasional bending of the rules, but he still followed them.

Well…. Jeremy tried to be honest with himself. That hadn’t been too bad either. Being a little naughty but not too naughty had its appeal. Jeremy wouldn’t have wanted to damage that beautiful library, which was why he’d stopped eating the candy.

But smart, exceptionally smart, that was what he needed. Jeremy knew himself. He’d walk all over anyone who wasn’t, even if he didn’t mean to. So obviously he shouldn’t return to the Barrett Library, find Benj and push him into some quiet corner in order to slide his hands under whatever knitted wonder he was wearing that day, then lead him to the special collections room when Leland wasn’t there, and suck his dick, taking his time. “This is a humidity-controlled environment,” he’d say, nibbling at Benj’s ear, “please, no heavy breathing.” And Benj would look at him with gentle annoyance and that questioning frown, and Jeremy would finally understand how quiet Benjamin got needy grad students and arrogant professors to be so well-behaved that they’d barely make a peep no matter how many rules he threw at them. One look like that, and Jeremy would push up to kiss his mouth and beg for Benj to take care of him like that, like he cared about him more than anything in the world, more than even the library.

Which was probably why, on his next free evening, exactly one day before he’d scheduled an appointment to return anyway, Jeremy raced to get to Four Oaks before the library closed. He shouldn’t, so there he was, parking by the No Parking sign, being stared at by a judgmental cat. No one seemed to be home in the quirky little Victorian, although the porch light was on.

Jeremy dealt with his helmet and dragged his hands through his hair to give it some life. Then he nodded at the cat before heading into the library. He stuck his gloves in his pocket and unzipped his leather jacket. He’d worn plaid again. He had not thought this out.

Ah well. There was always the chance Benj wouldn’t be working tonight. He could have gone home alone, his attention buried in a book as he ate a single chicken breast and wished someone like Jeremy would take him to dinner.

Which was a joke. Jeremy’s finances didn’t go to nice dinners. If he went for his doctorate, then he wasn’t going to be eating nice dinners for a long time. He’d have no money, and barely time to eat. A night home with simple food and a warm boyfriend would seem like heaven.

Was that part of the problem? Did people desire Benj, but his cardigans and quiet nights before the fire with Persephone looked boring from the outside?

Jeremy hesitated outside the library entrance. The plaque was harder to read at night, but he remembered the gist. The library had respectable credentials, was a place for respectable people. Not grad students who imagined things that weren’t there, who still had mixed feelings about knitted sweaters.

He was startled from his indecision by one of the women from the main desk, who pushed the doors open and seemed equally surprised to find him standing in the dark.

“Was looking for a lost backpack,” she explained shortly, then narrowed her eyes. “We’re almost closed. Come in if you’re coming in.” They had a way of giving orders at this library. Jeremy supposed it came with all the tradition. His grandfather had the same way of bossing people around just by speaking.

When she opened the door for him, Jeremy stepped inside. She gave him a sideways glance as she returned to the main desk. The other woman wasn’t there, the one Jeremy had spoken to before. He must have made an impression however, or been very obvious, because this one gave him a once over before jerking her head toward the stairs. “Be careful if you go up. One of his least favorite people is here today. It puts him in a foul mood.”

“He’s here?” Jeremy wondered in excitement, and used up all of his dignity in not dashing up the stairs for his chance to finally check out the Beast. He reached the top, then stopped in astonishment at the quietly furious voice carrying through the empty space.

“You come into my library with this attitude?” The husky whisper was whiskey-sharp, or maybe that was how the air itself seemed to have stilled in awe. Jeremy curled a hand around the strap of his bag and continued carefully forward. The epic,
sotto voce
verbal thrashing seemed to be taking place near the special collections library.

A hushed snarl was the initial answer to whatever the guilty party had said in response. “I don’t want to hear it. You knew the rules. You chose to break them. You’re no longer welcome here.”

Jeremy’s heart thudded against his ribs, because he knew that voice. He slowed down, blinking rapidly as Benj came into view. Standing straight, he managed to tower over another man who was probably about the same height he was—or would have been if he hadn’t hunched in on himself. He looked like he was trying to argue stubbornly, but when he raised his chin, he appeared defensive.

He was in his forties or fifties, white, and wearing a long, fawn-colored coat that could have been cashmere for all Jeremy knew. He was trying to argue while shoving his laptop into a briefcase.

“It’s ridiculous that you’d make me wait for official scans. I don’t have time to keep returning here to look at one journal. You know who I am.”

Benj drew his eyebrows together and swept one scornful, devastating look up from the man’s pointy-toed shoes to his face. He snorted. “I know who you are. You’re like every other local big name who comes in here and thinks my rules don’t apply to them. You wait for those scans because that journal is over one hundred and fifty years old, and delicate. You wait out of respect. But you don’t have any, so you took a picture.” Benj lowered his voice even more, transforming his next words into the epitome of quiet fury. “You used the flash.”

Jeremy put a hand to his mouth.

“It was necessary—” the man started to insist, stupidly because he probably saw that lavender cardigan and saw a pushover instead of the guardian of an entire family’s legacy.

Benj took one step forward and the man shut up. Benj, or whoever he was, Leland Barrett, IV, lifted one eyebrow. “You didn’t have time to wait? You should make time. It would improve your writing. I read your last book, a feat that took all of three hours, with breaks. At least when they make it a movie, the actors will have a chance to breathe some life into your cardboard characters. You spent all your energy on pointlessly elaborate mysteries and clues, and no time on making anyone care what happens to the people you write about. In ten years, copies of your books are going to take up entire shelves at thrift stores and garage sales. They’re forgettable, no matter how much money you make.”

Every word was complete and utter, ice-cold, white-hot brutality. Take no prisoners, leave no survivors, honest truth. Anyone dumb enough to risk damaging an antique book with a flash for his personal benefit probably did write terrible characters.

Bad Writer seemed to disagree. “I’ve been on the Bestseller List. I’m a regular patron here. You can’t ban me.”

“Watch me.” Benj pushed up his glasses the way some a movie cowboy would have fingered his trigger, and Jeremy came close to expiring on the spot.

The other guy sputtered. “You think because your family owns this library you can do what you want.”

“I know I can,” Benj responded, after raising his other eyebrow. His eyes were so green they were practically lasers. “In addition to owning it, I’m the one in charge of the Canales library. You’re not to set foot in it again. Now get out.”

All the cool snark and intelligence. That scathing book review. Jeremy felt his legs go weak and stumbled into the corner of one of the bookshelves. Both men turned toward him. One too embarrassed and furious to do more than make objecting noises and then storm past him. The other going very still.

Jeremy wondered if Benj was going to blush at being caught, then considered the idea with real pleasure. He had no clue what it meant that he wanted a blushing Benj and a meanly clever Leland but, God, he did. He wanted the total package. They’d move in together while Jeremy worked on his doctorate, and then get married the following May or June. Maybe June, when the kids were out of school and Benj would have more free time.

He realized he was breathing hard and closed his mouth.

Benj put his shoulders back. Then he cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.

Jeremy wanted to see more of the Beast. He smiled. “All he did was take a picture,” he remarked, knowing perfectly well the damage a flash could have caused. Maybe one picture with a digital camera wouldn’t have done much, but the principle stood to protect the item in question. Anyway, the item belonged to the library. That author should have waited for permission to get scans.

But he didn’t say any of that, and Benj’s mouth fell open in a small, disappointed circle.

“Jeremy,” he murmured, taking Jeremy by surprise. “I never thought
you
would agree with him.” He said it like he expected better from Jeremy. He said it like he’d imagined Jeremy having this conversation with him. “I thought you were…” he began, then tightened his mouth and frowned in earnest. “My family’s library is not be sullied.”