by Frankie Love
Can’t Help My Shelf
His Curvy Librarian
Frankie Love
Kaylin Evans
Contents
Can’t Help My Shelf
1. Nora
2. Nash
3. Nora
4. Nash
5. Nora
6. Nash
7. Nora
8. Nash
9. Nora
10. Nash
11. Nora
12. Nash
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.
Can’t Help My Shelf
Book Three in HIS CURVY LIBRARIAN series
Frankie Love and Kaylin Evans
There’s one thing in life I’ve always, always wanted.
And I’m tired of waiting for my prince charming to sweep me off my feet to help make that happen.
On my 26th birthday I make a life altering decision.
But before the deed is done, Army officer Nash Nichols walks into the children’s section of the library where I work, changing my trajectory forever.
Falling in love sounds sweet and all, but my eyes have always been on another prize: being a mother.
Maybe I will get my own version of a happily ever after … or maybe my heart will be broken in ways I didn’t see coming.
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
Nora
“Happy birthday, Nora!” My youngest sister, Grace, squeals the greeting as she throws her arms around me, and I have to force a smile.
“Thank you,” I say, hugging her back.
It’s not that I hate my birthday, and this isn’t a ‘big year’—I’m twenty-six today—but I have been feeling a little down lately about all the things I wanted for my life that haven’t happened yet. I always pictured myself married to the man of my dreams, with a big family and a passport full of stamps.
The fact that my sister Cassidy and my best friend Brooklyn have both gotten married and started their families in the past year only makes me more aware of the fact that my own life is lagging behind. I’m the oldest of the three of us, and the oldest girl in the family, after all. I should have gone first down the aisle!
Cass and Brooks are both here tonight, with their perfect husbands, helping me celebrate my birthday and honestly, they’re so dang happy… glowing, even… I can’t exactly hold it against them.
I can, however, secretly wallow in jealousy.
“Ooh, you have to meet Taylor,” Grace says as she takes my hand and practically drags me away from the door.
“Who’s that?”
“My boyfriend,” Grace beams. “He just asked me out officially last week! Mom said I could invite him tonight.”
Et tu, Grace? Even the eighteen-year-old is getting more action than me.
We go through the house and out the back door, to a large patio area with a fire pit that my parents built at the beginning of the summer. They’ve been doing a lot of renovations lately, starting with the four empty bedrooms upstairs as us kids slowly move out, but they won’t tell us what it’s all for.
Cassidy thinks they’re getting the house ready to sell once Grace graduates high school and leaves the nest, but I keep telling her there’s no way Mom and Dad would ever part with this house—our home.
“Hey, there’s the birthday girl!” Brooklyn calls the minute Grace and I come outside. She and her husband, Prescott, lift their wine glasses to me, and Mom comes over to wrap me in a hug.
“I made all your favorites for dinner tonight,” she says, “and Dad’s going to build a fire in a little while so we can do s’mores for dessert.”
“Yummy.” I lick my lips at the thought, my mood brightening. What can I say? I’m a child at heart, easily won over by marshmallows and chocolate. Besides, even if my life hasn’t turned out how I imagined it, I still have the best family in the world, and I get to work with my sister and my best friend at the library, in a job I love.
Life is not so bad, and sometimes when the universe takes too long, you just have to make your own dreams come true.
The party is great and the food is incredible as always. But Cassidy and Brooklyn duck out early to spend the evening with their men, and I go home not much later than them. I’ve got something on my mind and my birthday seems as good a day as any to do something about it.
I live in a cute little Cape Cod within walking distance of my parents’ house. I’m renting for now, and it’s a pretty small house on a postage stamp of a lot—all I need at this stage in my life, but one day, I want what my parents have. I want the big house filled with kids and love and laughter, and the big back yard where I can watch them play… ideally with a hunky husband at my side, but I’ll do it alone if I have to.
And that’s what I’m thinking about when I go inside, get changed into some comfy clothes, and curl up in bed with my laptop.
I go to the Golden Creek Fertility Center website—Google says I’ve been here ‘many times’—and click on Book an Appointment. Then I pause, looking at the calendar options the site gives me.
A family of my own is all I’ve ever wanted since I’ve been an adult. I’m twenty-six years old today and I feel like I’ve been patient long enough. I’m done waiting around for Mr. Right.
He’s sure as hell taking his sweet time, and I’m not convinced he’s coming at all.
There’s a little flutter of anxiety in my chest as I click the calendar and select next Friday because that’s when I’ll be ovulating. It’s Saturday now, so I’ve got just under a week to come to terms with the fact that, after months and months of research, sperm donor selection, and internal debate, I’m finally doing this.
I’m starting my family, with or without a partner.
And I’m completely draining my savings account because IVF is expensive AF.
Yikes.
As soon as I click Submit to make my appointment, I take a deep breath and sit back. In one week, I could be pregnant, on my way to becoming a single mom, broke as hell but living my dream.
Now I just have to find the right way to tell my family, all the awesome people who helped me celebrate my birthday tonight. I know they’ll be happy for me, and they’ll help me raise this baby… but I honestly never thought I’d say, “Mom, Dad, guess who just got inseminated?”
I set my laptop aside and lie back, falling asleep to visions of baby booties and chubby cheeks.
2
Nash
“Come on, hurry!”
I chuckle as my four-year-old niece, Chelsea, does her damnedest to drag my two-hundred-pound ass to the door. She’s got her hands wrapped around two of my fingers and she’s giving it all she’s got.
“Hey, be nice or Uncle Nash isn’t going to want to stay with us next time he’s on leave,” my sister, Quinn, says as she holds Chelsea’s backpack out to her.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Can’t fault the kid for loving the library.”
I take her backpack because Chelsea is still trying to drag me across the room. It’s empty right now, but after storyt
ime I know this little bookworm isn’t going to want to leave the library until it’s full. Quinn and her husband, Owen, have been raising a voracious reader and it’s pretty darn cute.
“Are you sure you don’t mind taking her?” Quinn asks me. “I’d normally go too, it’s just that I’ve got this conference call…”
“Are you kidding? Chelsea and I are gonna tear it up at storytime,” I say with a grin just before I finally give in to Chelsea’s frantic pleas. “Okay, let’s go!”
“Yay!”
We walk the couple of blocks to the Golden Creek Library, Chelsea skipping and grinning the whole way. It’s times like these I wish I was home more often. Don’t get me wrong, being a U.S. Army soldier is the best damn job in the world and I’m never bored when I’m deployed. But my niece is growing up fast and I’ve missed a lot. Seems like just last week that I was in Japan and Quinn was video chatting with me, bragging that Chelsea had started to crawl.
Inside the library, we follow the sound of kids chattering and running around, and find the children’s department. Chelsea immediately breaks off from me to say hi to some storytime friends, and I hang back with the other parents.
“Okay, everybody, inside voices,” someone says, coming into the room. I turn my head and my chest instantly tightens with desire.
The children’s librarian is goddamn smokin’.
She’s got rich, chocolatey brown hair and deep blue eyes, with fringe across her forehead that gives her a good-girl vibe… but what I notice most are her curves. She’s plump and soft in all the right places, and when her eyes catch mine across the room, I have a few thoughts that are definitely not appropriate for storytime.
Damn, she’s beautiful… I was not expecting that, and it only makes me want to volunteer to bring Chelsea to the library whenever she asks for the handful of days I’m in town.
“I’m Miss Nora,” she says to the kids gathering around her, smiling and getting down on their level as she pulls a picture book off a shelf. “And today we’re going to read The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say Moo.”
I lean against the back wall and watch Chelsea plop down on the carpet, right in the front like the little teacher’s pet her mother always was growing up. Nora invites all the other kids to sit close, not minding when one of them climbs right into her lap, and opens the book. The material is a bit too childish for me, personally, but I gotta say, I’m rapt nonetheless.
Nora’s got an instant connection with these kids—Chelsea is hanging on her every word… and I can’t tear my eyes off her either.
While she reads, I try to rationalize it. I’ve been surrounded by a buncha hard-faced soldiers for months, not a drop of estrogen around. I must just be reacting to the soft curls of Nora’s hair, the femininity of her curves in that floral-print dress. It’s normal, right, for a guy like me to go on leave and have the strong urge to clear all these kids out of here so I can push this sexy librarian up against the stacks and take her?
Well… normal for guys like me, but not me.
I’ve never been that type, honestly. I appreciate a gorgeous woman when I see one, but I’m not into meaningless sex and a little part of my mind is always present, reminding me that the military comes first and it’s only a matter of time before I deploy again. So I restrain myself, I don’t let my fantasies run wild.
Until her. She’s something else.
After storytime ends, the kids all get up and a lot of them disperse, off to whatever Sunday afternoon activity comes next. Chelsea runs up to me and says in a cute little-kid lisp, “I want to read more bunny books!”
“Hmm, okay,” I say. The only titles I can think of are Pat the Bunny and Watership Down, and I can’t imagine either of them are right for a four-year-old.
Luckily, the sexy librarian overhears us and offers to help. She guides Chelsea over to a shelf of picture books about animals, and pulls a few of them out for her. While my niece pores over her options, Nora stands next to me and says, “I haven’t seen you at storytime before. Your wife usually brings Chelsea.”
“Wife?” I say, brow furrowing for an instant before I realize she thinks I’m Owen. “Oh, no, I’m her uncle… Nash.”
I hold out my hand and watch as Nora’s cheeks grow rosy. “I’m sorry, I know better than to make assumptions about those kinds of things. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
She takes my hand, her skin soft and warm against mine, and our eyes lock in a way that goes much deeper than a simple pleased to meet you. Then Chelsea pops up between us holding a stack of books. “Can I get all these?”
I look to Nora. “What’s the checkout limit?”
“Way more than that,” she says with a reassuring smile to Chelsea. “Did you remember to bring your library card today?”
“Of course,” Chelsea says, practically rolling her eyes at the suggestion that she could possibly forget something so important.
I chuckle and Nora points her toward the checkout counter, just a few feet away. I tell her to go ahead and Chelsea races over to the waiting librarian, like a miniature grown-up with her arms full of books.
“She’s precocious,” I say to Nora, who nods.
“She’s adorable,” she agrees. “And again, sorry for assuming…”
I crack a smile. “Isn’t ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ like, the first thing they teach you in library school?”
She laughs, and it’s a musical sound. I catch her eyes drifting over me, fast like a flash but unmistakable, and then she looks at me again as she says, “True, but you can still learn a lot that way.”
My chest is filled with that tight sensation again, an unfamiliar desire that makes me want to sit through storytime all over again, and whatever else Miss Nora has on her schedule for the afternoon. Instead, I glance in the direction of the checkout area and see that Chelsea is almost done. I only have a few seconds more alone with Nora.
So I go for it.
“Forgive me if I’m being forward, but would you like to have dinner with me?”
The color in Nora’s cheeks deepens, but the corner of her lip curves into a smile. “You are being forward… but I forgive you.”
“Is that a yes?” I ask, my heart actually beating a little faster. What the hell has gotten into me?
“Yes,” she says, reaching for a scrap of paper on a nearby desk and writing down her address. “Pick me up at seven.”
Then Chelsea comes charging back over, a little slower now because her backpack is loaded down with bunny books. “Come on, Uncle Nash, let’s go read!”
I shoot Nora one last smile, and a wink for good measure, then take Chelsea’s hand as we head back outside.
3
Nora
The moment Nash and Chelsea disappear out the front door, Cassidy and Brooklyn descend on me like they’ve been spying the whole time.
“Oh my gosh, Nor, what was that?” my sister asks.
“That was Nash, apparently,” I say, my head still spinning a bit. Did I seriously just agree to go on a date with one of my storytime kids’ relatives? No way that can go wrong…
“He was hot,” Brooklyn says, and I have to agree.
All through storytime, I kept stealing glances at Nash’s soft brown eyes, his chiseled jaw, the thick black frames of his glasses that would look nerdy on anyone else but only made me want to send all the kids home early so we could do a little silent reading of our own.
Wow. Is it the fact that I’m ovulating right now, or did Nash himself turn me into a puddle of hormones?
“So?” Cassidy prompts, and I look innocently at her.
“So what?”
“Pick me up at seven.” She parrots my own words back at me, then gives me a wry smile. “You’re going on a date with him?”
“Eavesdropper,” I say, giving her a little shove just like when we were kids and it was my job as the older sister to keep her in line.
“Well, I think it’s about time,” Brooklyn adds. “When’s the last time y
ou went out on a date?”
Ugh, don’t make me do the math. I shrug, thinking instead about my appointment at the fertility center on Friday. What was I thinking, accepting a date in the same week I finally take the plunge to start my family solo?
Cassidy and Brooklyn don’t know about that yet—they’re my best friends and they know I’ve been thinking about starting a family on my own, but I’m still too nervous about it to tell them I actually made an appointment. Maybe once I know I’m pregnant…
“The fact that you can’t even come up with an answer tells me that you probably have nothing to wear,” Brooklyn says.
“I have a lot of pretty dresses,” I object, but she shakes her head.
“No, I’m talking about underneath,” she says in a whisper, then nudges me with her elbow. “You should stop in at that cute new lingerie shop downtown on your way home, pick up something special.”
“I don’t know—”
“Do it or we’ll chaperone and make sure you pick out something crotchless,” Cassidy threatens, and I laugh at the same time that my cheeks burn red.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
It’s not the worst idea ever. They’re right—it’s probably been years since the last time I went on a date that actually had chemistry, and my underwear drawer has been shifting decidedly toward the practical end lately. It wouldn’t kill me to pick up something that makes me feel sexy… and I must confess, if only to myself, that from the way he was looking at me, there’s a good chance Nash will get a peek at what I buy.
