Wicked Me

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Paige,” she said.

  “Thank you for coming,” I blurted, but I wasn’t completely sure what I’d said even sounded like English.

  She signed her name on the title page and then handed her newest book, Tender, You Are, to me. It was about a serial killer with suspected paranormal abilities who appeared completely blurred on camera when nothing else did. I’d been dying to read it, pun totally intended.

  Because I was a confessed book sniffer, I began salivating as soon as the new book smell rolled past the happy neurons in my nose, which finally allowed me to speak almost coherently again.

  “Did you know there’s an entire club devoted to flipping to the last pages of your books?” I asked. “They’re very proud of themselves, too, like no one in the history of the world had ever considered doing that before. They call themselves the Montgomery Munchers.”

  Ms. Montgomery leaned back in her chair behind the table and laughed at the ceiling at until her eyes watered. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said once she’d recovered.

  “I wish I was.” It was a sad, sad day when I stumbled upon spoilers, and it made me feel stabby.

  “Well, they should be stopped.” She hiked a shoulder and tried to hide her smile with one of her scarves. “It’s a good thing I’m a writer because that belongs in a book. The story practically writes itself.”

  “Maybe they’ll meet an unfortunate demise in your next one. With a bear.”

  “And the heroes can drink blood from their skulls.”

  Well, that escalated quickly. I grinned, beyond thrilled that I was brainstorming Lisa Montgomery’s next book with her. Bears. Skulls. Disposing dead bodies. I would ride in the trunk of a car for her and describe the experience if it meant I could help.

  She checked her watch and frowned. “Paige, I wish I could stay and talk book ideas with you because you are an absolute delight, but I have to get going.” She stood and offered her hand once again. “It was a pleasure meeting you. Email me again. Please.”

  Her assistants, who had been waiting in the background, whirled her away. I stood there for several moments while replaying our short conversation and clutching her book to my chest, and it hit me—this was what a dream job felt like. I was doing exactly what I was meant to do, and it wasn’t anywhere near the Library of Congress.

  It was here in Wichita, Kansas, only four miles away from Sophia who, at the tender age of six and a half, had inhaled the entire Magic Tree House series. She’d called in near hysterics when she’d finished the latest one, and I’d rushed right over to guide her through what would likely be the first of many book hangovers. If there was ever any doubt that she was my daughter... Well, there wasn’t any.

  Her adoptive parents had welcomed me into their hearts and home with as much fervor I imagined them welcoming her. In fact, they lovingly called us Thing 1 and Thing 2. We even had shirts made with our nicknames printed on them while we stood waiting at the store’s counter, swinging our clasped hands between us.

  I didn’t think I could love her any more than I did when I carried her for nine months, but wow, I was wrong. I’d been wrong about a great many things.

  “Hey,” a voice from behind said.

  I turned and found Kay in the otherwise empty meeting room. Most of the lights had been turned off, and several part-time clerks shuffled past the open door bundled in their coats and gloves.

  Kay’s normally mischief-filled blue eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice a little too breathy. The passing of time did funny things to me lately, especially after the sun set and it was time to go home. Because I didn’t want to. My one-bedroom apartment was a cold, empty, and dark place even with the little reading nook I’d built for myself in the dining room. So I stayed here as long as I could, stalling the inevitable, because six weeks of warmth and laughter and love in a certain D.C. house had ruined my sense of home.

  “Lucky for you, I don’t believe you,” Kay said.

  I sighed. “How is that lucky for me?”

  “You’ll see.” She winked, Kay-style, by bringing her thumb and index finger in front of her eyes, tapping them together, and blinking really fast. The lady couldn’t wink to save her life. She headed for the double doors and wriggled her fingers over her shoulder. “Toodle-oo. Text me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Not tonight?” I called after her. We always texted at night. It helped pass the time until I fell asleep in my apartment and then got out of there as quickly as I could the next morning.

  But Kay didn’t answer. Maybe she had a hot date she didn’t tell me about. On a Tuesday.

  Shaking my head, I strolled to the employee offices near the back of the library, turning out more lights as I went and waving to stragglers on their way out into the blustery January night. One of my favorite things to do when I procrastinated going home was shelving the checked-in books and then innocently blaming the library elves the next morning. It really didn’t take much to entertain myself.

  I left on enough lights to read the spine labels without squinting and then wheeled the cart down the appropriate aisles. The wheels occasionally squeaked, but it was a soft, consoling noise that drifted into the background of my whirring mind. This was the part of the day when I allowed myself to think about Sam, his shocking blue eyes that stuttered my heart, the timbre in his voice that curled my toes. Just thinking his name stormed a rush of emotions through me that tied a conflicted knot at the back of my throat. I missed him something crazy, but I never called the jail again to tell him so because of his blunt request that I didn’t. Even after I’d learned his side of the story.

  The media circus surrounding his family had been terrible to witness, and while I wanted to know about it and didn’t at the same time, Charlotte and Nicole spilled any details I might have missed since they were still at ground zero of Sex Scandal USA. I couldn’t imagine being in that kind of spotlight. Riley’s charge of campaign finance fraud spun my head in too many directions to fathom, but when Sam was cleared of the major charges against him, guilt had swamped me.

  Sure, he could have absolutely told me everything from the start, but my reaction when the police showed up at the LOC could explain why he didn’t want to talk to me. All of it made me feel like I might as well have committed the murders and dealt those drugs myself. How could I have thought he would willingly do something so awful? Of course he would sacrifice his future to protect his sister. When that man loved, he did it with his whole heart, after all. I should have seen that from the beginning, but I’d been forced to confront all of this madhat information at the LOC and I didn’t have time to process.

  Plus, I’d been blinded by my past. Rick had turned out to be married after I thought I’d fallen for him and turned cold and hard before he left me. He’d turned into a stranger, and his betrayal of my trust had skipped over the lake of the rest of my life, each bounce widening the circles of that poisonous stone until they were all-consuming. But Sam wasn’t Rick. I’d known that for a while.

  Now, several senators, representatives, and upper-political types were under investigation, including Rick, and I could have given the police much more information about our pasts. I didn’t, though, because karma could be a real bitch sometimes.

  I did come clean to my parents about who Sophia’s dad was, about how much it hurt to hear Dad call me wicked, and they received all of this as expected. Silence for days, not even a funny cat video link to YouTube, until Dad called about a week after I told them and asked me to go for a walk with them. It was awkward—I’m not going to lie—but weather permitting, we’d gone on walks ever since.

  Now as I rounded the corner into the romance section, I had so many things to be proud of, to be happy about, but I couldn’t stop the constriction around my heart. I’d assumed the worst about Sam because I’d been backed into a corner. Could he ever forgive me for that? More importantly, could I forgive him for not even wanting to ta
lk to me about any of this?

  The library’s heating unit shut off with a soft click, blanketing complete quiet over the building. I stuck a book in the correct slot, but movement out of the corner of my eye froze my hands against its spine. Something dangled farther up the aisle from the shelves, swaying back and forth like a pendulum, but without any circulating air, it soon stopped.

  In the dim light, it looked like something on a chain but I couldn’t make it out. I stepped closer, my cart forgotten, until my lungs clenched and heaved. It was the necklace I’d made Sam all those years ago, the ugly, symbolic dreamcatcher crafted from zero jewelry-making talent. It was stuffed between two Lisa Montgomery books.

  A nervous flutter slammed my heart into a triple beat. Why was it here? I rested the pendant against my palm and pulled, slowly, in case things got weirder and it was attached to a bomb or something. The end of the chain popped free from between the books, and with it, a cascade of bookmarks fluttered to the ground.

  Bacon scratch-n-sniff bookmarks. I sank to my knees and touched them, not quite sure if I’d accidentally laced my spaghetti leftovers with a hallucinogen. Was Sam...here? I hated to think it in case it wasn’t true.

  Something had been written on the backs of the bookmarks. On all of them.

  I love fishing.

  I was once sprayed by a skunk and thought it was a declaration of war against me.

  I hate running, so if there is a zombie apocalypse, I’m screwed.

  My high school’s boiler room was kept locked because of me. Draw your own conclusions.

  My middle name is Rambo. I wish I was kidding.

  They went on and on, and I clutched them in a pile to my chest as a flood of warmth pushed my back against the shelves with a strangled sigh. The lights on the ceiling burned the backs of my eyes until the room turned watery, so I closed them, breathing in a lungful of calming truth.

  He was here. My sweet Sam.

  “Paige.” The soft voice, deep and rich with a musical lilt, came from my right.

  I snapped my eyes open and stared. A muscular body leaned against the bookshelf at the end of the aisle, and I swept my gaze across tendons, up the curve of a well-defined bicep under a black T-shirt, along the perfectly sculpted, stubbled jawline to a pair of shocking blue eyes that searched my own with profound intensity.

  It was Sam, of course it was Sam, but it took a beat longer to process this because of all the differences I noted compared to the last time I’d seen him. He’d cut his hair so it spiked up every which way, giving his face a leaner, harder edge, and he seemed bulkier in the shoulders and arms. It made me wonder if the months in jail had forced the change or if survival had. Maybe a little of both. God, I hated to think of him there.

  I stood quickly and cleared my throat to find my voice, but I didn’t know what to say because he was here. With me.

  “It’s Sam Cleary,” he said. “You remember me from when we were kids?”

  Uh, yeah? “What are you doing here? Did Kay have something to do with this?”

  “Kay wanted to help.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m introducing myself like I should’ve when I first saw you in D.C. again. Just play along.”

  I shook my head, not at his request, but at this whole situation. He must have seen something on my face because he winced and dropped his gaze to the empty space between us. We stood there, quiet, and the unnaturalness of it all stomped on my insides with spiked heels. I shoved my feet forward, my hand outstretched, an invitation to hold me and never let me go or for a simple handshake. Whatever worked.

  He glanced at it, then returned his eyes to me, a question in their depths he already knew the answer to. Slowly, he reached out and grazed his fingertips over my palm. The slide of his rough skin on mine powered a current right between my thighs.

  “Of course I remember you,” I said, grasping his hand tight. “Samuel Rambo Cleary.”

  A grin bloomed across his mouth while he studied our clasped hands. God, how I’d missed that dangerous, knee-buckling grin that made me want to be wicked with him.

  “No more secrets,” he said, his gaze returning to mine.

  “No more secrets,” I agreed. I stared at him, memorizing his new, sharper edges, and committing them to memory while I stepped closer. His masculine, leather and musk scent plumed outward, and I breathed all of him in. At least that part of him hadn’t changed. “Do you forgive me?”

  His gaze settled on my mouth before he dragged it down my buttoned shirt to our clasped hands. Perv. Me, not him, because that familiar jolt pulsed through my blood whenever he looked at me like that, and to be honest, I’d missed that, too.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” he asked. “There’s nothing to forgive you for.”

  “I let myself believe you were the bad guy. I allowed my trust in you to just fly out the window the second the police showed up and read you your rights. I gave up on you within seconds...” My voice broke, and I looked away from him. “Even though I know you.”

  “I should have told you everything from the beginning.”

  The books on both sides of us blurred into a kaleidoscope of colors behind fresh tears. “You didn’t even let me talk to you,” I said. “To let you know I loved you, still love you, and was thinking about you every second of the day.”

  “I was trying to push you away from me and my fucked-up family,” he said softly. “It wasn’t what I wanted, though. The past six months have been hell only because I didn’t spend them with you.”

  When I didn’t, couldn’t say anything to that, he tucked a gentle finger under my chin and lifted so I would meet his gaze.

  “When I first saw you reading on our front porch all those years ago in D.C...” he started. “You did something to my eight-year-old heart that day, blinded it, maybe. You were the girl I’d love forever. Always have been. Nothing you or me could do would ever change that.”

  His words soaked inside me with a warmth that powered my soul. “I kind of like that truth,” I said.

  His lips tilted. “Good.”

  “How about another truth? I met my daughter. Sophia,” I blurted through a watery, likely maniacal, grin.

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s absolutely perfect. Her parents can’t keep up with her reading habits, and she gets this mischievous grin that lights up an entire room.”

  He slid me a knowing smile. “Kind of like someone I know.”

  “Her seventh birthday party is coming up if you would like to meet her.”

  He looked at me with something that I could only describe as hope and happiness. “Yeah. Of course.”

  “I love you, Sam,” I said, because that was the easiest truth, then I stepped into his arms forever.

  As he held me tight, he sighed into my neck, a long one that sounded like he’d ended a tiring journey and finally arrived home. “I love you, too.”

  33

  Sam

  WE TALKED INTO THE rest of the night, our backs to the bookshelves and junk food wrappers from the vending machine in a pile at our feet. We talked about Riley, Sophia, the future, how since I had a big red stain on my criminal record and couldn’t do police work that maybe I could start my own private detective business like the dude from the Lisa Montgomery book Heist My Heart. Yeah, I’d been at the presentation to hear her, far enough from Paige so she wouldn’t see me yet, and it was fucking awesome.

  Paige collected the trash and brushed stray crumbs off her tight black skirt as she stood. “There’s one more thing we haven’t talked about.” She held her hand out to help me up, and the slight V in her hot librarian button-up shirt dipped for a nice view.

  Jesus H., I’d missed her. Not just her body—hear that, dick?—but how we just clicked together so comfortably. I’d never spent almost the entire night talking to a woman about our future, but it felt exactly right. Everything felt right with her, especially her hand in mine when I grasped it and the immediate zing between our palms. I stood, close e
nough so the toes of my boots and her librarian heels touched.

  “What’s that?”

  Her tongue skimmed the bottom of her teeth and her chest heaved. “Um, we haven’t talked about bacon.”

  I smoothed some hair behind her ear then tracked my thumb down her jaw. “Bacon?”

  “Uh-huh.” She closed her eyes when my thumb found her lower lip and outlined its perfect shape. “I like having your around, so maybe we could talk about portion control.”

  “No can do,” I said and replaced my thumb with a kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I have no control.”

  “Me neither,” she said with an evil grin. Then she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me with her whole body.

  I pushed her against the bookshelf and shifted so my thigh rubbed up her center, then pressed into her to feel the heat between her legs. She gasped. I moaned into her mouth.

  “While you’re at it,” she said between kisses, “can you grab Rage For Two?”

  My head swam with need. I fisted the bottom hem of her shirt to keep from falling over, my knuckles scraping over the warm flesh at her waist. Her skin was so soft, so perfect. My fingers crept toward the dip of her spine just above the delicious rise of her ass. Her silk thong teased my fingertips. Her whole body arched into mine when I gave them a slight tug.

  “I asked if you’d get me a book,” she panted, “not play with my underwear.”

  “I didn’t know they were mutually exclusive.” I sank my lips to her ear, close enough to breathe against it, and groaned when she squirmed against my thigh. “Would you like me to remove it?”

  Her eyes flamed brighter, and her beautiful mouth fell open. “My underwear?”

  “My hand. What kind of book retriever do you think I am?”

  She laughed, a breathy one that sounded more like a sigh. One hand circled my waist. The other fingered the button on my jeans.