Monster Among the Roses: A Beauty and the Beast Story (Fairy Tale Quartet Book 1)

by Linda Kage

  After a confused blink, she said, “What?”

  “Let me know what you think about my ideas for your bookshelves.” I swiveled the piece of paper upside down so it’d be right-side up for her. “I already have a few plans.”

  Successfully drawn in by the lure of bookshelves, she eased closer. Five feet became three. Then one. When she saw I really did have a ton of ideas, she silently pulled out the chair across from me and sat.

  “Why are these shaded and these aren’t?”

  “The shaded ones are the shelves already there,” I explained, growing eager to tell her the ideas stirring in my head. “The non-shaded ones are the ones I’d like to add.”

  Her finger slid over the three rows of shelves positioned above the shaded ones. “But…”

  “The walls in here are so tall,” I explained before she could ask. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if the shelves went all the way to the ceiling, and we installed one of those rolling library ladders to reach them?”

  Lips parting in awe, she turned toward the wall where I wanted to do just that. “That would be so cool,” she breathed more to herself than to me, in a voice I’d never heard her use before, a voice I had a feeling was her real one, not some haughty tone she put on just to speak to me.

  Then, suddenly, as if remembering herself, she cleared her throat and spun back to me, her cheeks tinged with pink.

  A smile exploded across my face. “I know, right?” I tugged the sheet of paper closer to me so I could point out a few more ideas. “And the shelves you have now are fixed and permanent. But I’d like to install adjustable ones. You don’t organize your books in alphabetical order, so it would be easy to economize space by grouping similar-sized books on each row to fit in more rows.”

  Her face shot up. “How do you know I don’t organize alphabetically?”

  The look I sent her was sly and knowing. Ignoring the question, I tapped my finger against the design. “I’ll figure out what wood and styles the current shelves are and try to imitate them, unless you want something different.”

  Isobel stared at me a moment, obviously still stuck on the fact that I knew her library so well, before she shook her head and blinked. “I…the same style would be fine.”

  “Okay, then.” I nodded. “I’ll look for a matching stain finish while I’m at it. Did you want doors on any of the shelves to house some of your favorite or rarer books?”

  “I…” She turned to study the wall. Then she nodded. “Yes, I think that would be lovely to have maybe one bookcase with doors. Thank you.”

  I’m absolutely positive her thank you came out completely by accident, maybe without her being aware she’d said it. It took everything inside me not to react in fear she’d realize what she’d just said and try to retract it.

  I liked this side of her, this softer, human side. I liked it a lot. Maybe even more than her bitchy side.

  “Great,” I said, jotting down a note that she needed some doors as I tried to control the racing of my heart. “Is there anything in my plans you want to alter?”

  She blinked at the scribbles I’d made, and I took a second to clear my throat. “Sorry, I’m not much of an artist. Hopefully you can still understand what I was trying to convey though.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured vaguely, “I mean…” She looked up into my face. “Actually, this looks fine. If you can do it.”

  I gazed into her unnaturally blue eyes and felt something inside my chest unfurl. Why did she have to seem so soft, almost vulnerable, today? It tugged at something protective inside me.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I assured her.

  Her lips parted and she dragged her gaze away. “Well…we should probably…we should probably figure out some calculations.” Popping out of her chair as if it had bitten her, she began to back away. “I’m going to go find a tape measure.”

  As she hurried from the room, I watched her go. What I wouldn’t give to see what was going on in her head. Neither of us had mentioned the notes, or books, or seeds we’d been exchanging on the couch, and yet it seemed natural to pretend they had never happened.

  When she returned, I was standing in front of the longest stretch of wall that would hold the most shelves, jotting down notes on a fresh piece of paper. “Looks like this wall can hold maybe seven shelves across and ten up,” I said as she approached. “So that’ll make a total of seventy shelves. And since we already have four across and seven on each bookcase, that would mean there are already…”

  “Twenty-eight,” Isobel informed me when it took me too long to calculate in my head.

  I pointed my pen at her and winked. “Thank you. Twenty-eight. So we can add…forty-two more shelves for this wall alone. Wow. That’ll give you over twice the space you already have.”

  A look of awe entered her expression as she stared at her shelves. In that moment, her thoughts were loud and beautiful. She was already thinking about how she’d rearrange her books with that much more room.

  “Did you find a tape measure?” I asked.

  She held one up.

  “Sweet. Do you think you could measure the distance from here to here for me?” I stepped past her, brushing so close her rose scent clogged my nostrils. My body went into extreme focus, becoming all too aware of how near she lingered as she leaned forward to place the tape measure where I asked.

  God, she smelled so good, I couldn’t help myself. I tipped closer and—

  No, I shouldn’t be doing that, especially when her father was home and would probably walk in at any moment to assess our progress.

  That thought helped kill the reaction I was having. I cleared my throat and wrote width of each shelf on the paper to distract myself. But the moment I glanced up, all I saw was her…from the back, lifting her arms to carefully measure. It brought up the back of her shirt, showing off a small slit of skin between the bottom of her shirt and the top of her pants. Pants which covered the most luscious, tightly rounded, perfectly curved ass ever.

  “Thirty-five and three-eighths inches,” she reported, making me jump and dart my attention back to the sheet of paper and clear my throat before writing down the information.

  “Great. Thanks. And how thick is the wood?”

  Oh, hell. I hadn’t really just asked that, had I? If she asked which wood, I was a dead man. I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

  “Looks like five-eighths of an inch,” Isobel said, and I almost lost it.

  Five-eighths of an inch? Um, no. It was definitely thicker than that, especially at the moment.

  When I didn’t respond soon enough, Isobel turned, blinking at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “What?” My eyes flashed open wide. Bookshelves! We were talking about bookshelves, here. Nothing else. Get your damn mind back in the game, Hollander, you fucking fifth-grade pervert.

  Isobel tipped her head, studying me. “Are you okay?”

  “What?” I asked again. I was acting completely unhinged. “I mean, yes. Yes,” I nearly hollered. “I’m good. Great. How the hell do you stay in such good shape?”

  And oh my God, what? Had I really just asked her that? Why, why, why did some things just tumble out of my mouth?

  I wanted to smack my hand to my forehead, then sink through the floor and die.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, and for once she totally lacked any bitter, insulting, or haughty attitude when I actually deserved it most. She merely sounded utterly confused.

  “I just…” My face on fire, I cleared my throat and motioned to her. “Sorry, I just noticed you seem to be really fit, and I wondered…” Damn, I didn’t think I was making anything better. More awkward, but probably not better. “I just wondered what your secret was.”

  Because that ass. Holy damn, a guy could bounce a dime off that perfect, tight ass.

  Not that I’d noticed. Of course not. That would be shameless, unbecoming behavior. And I was a decent guy.

  “I run,” she finally said.

  “Really?” Holy shit,
she wasn’t going to ream me up one wall and down another for checking her out. Thank you, God. Clearing my throat again—man, I needed a drink of water or something, for all this throat clearing—I forced myself back to the conversation. “When do you run? I’ve never seen you—”

  “Early in the morning,” she cut in, thankfully stopping me from more uncontrollable jabbering. “Before you get here. There’s a trail around the lake. When the sun comes up, it reflects off the surface of the water. Sometimes there are ducks or geese swimming in it.”

  “It sounds beautiful.” And she looked beautiful while she described it.

  Isobel shrugged and turned away. “It’s peaceful.”

  I nodded. “I don’t run, like ever…unless something’s chasing me.”

  Grinning at the joke, I cleared my throat when she didn’t laugh back.

  God, I was such a dork.

  “It’s a good cardiovascular workout,” she said, opening the tape measure to measure the height of the bookcases.

  Again, I stupidly bobbed my head up and down. “I should try it then. You think I could run with you some morning?”

  She whirled around to stare at me as if I’d lost my mind, the tape measure snapping back into its shell as if equally shocked by my question.

  I flushed, feeling like a moron. “Sorry. That was a stupid question. Ignore me.”

  After a couple blinks, she returned to measuring. But every time she bent down to tuck the end of the tape measure into the very bottom of the bookcase, her hair would fall into her face. She’d try to spit it out, then wipe it away so she could see what she was doing, only for the tape measure to pull free of wherever she was securing it to.

  “Here,” I offered, stepping forward to assist, but she hissed, “Blast it,” and yanked a hair tie from her pocket before pulling her long, silken dark locks back and securing everything out of her face.

  I pulled to a stop, shocked she’d done that. Then a ball of warmth grew in me, realizing she felt comfortable enough around me to expose her scars. As if hearing my thoughts, she shot me a hard glance and narrowed her eyes, her expression daring me to say a single word.

  With her glare, she let me see the skin that had been marred and distorted, but she also reopened her defiant, I-will-crush-you, snooty attitude. It was amazing, really. She hated people seeing her scars so much that she cloaked this self-protective anger around her as if bubble-wrapping her vulnerabilities. The only problem with that method was instead of hiding her tender spots, she actually brought more attention to them.

  It was sad, and made me want to hug her until all the pain inside her went away.

  “What?” she demanded, narrowing her eyes.

  Smiling, I offered a thumbs-up. “Much better. Now that you’re done fiddle-farting around with your hair, let’s get some shit measured.”

  chapter

  EIGHT

  We couldn’t finish our measuring without the use of a ladder. So I returned to the supply room and dragged my window-washing ladder back to the library. Before I reached the entrance, however, I noticed some guy ahead of me approaching the door as well.

  Frowning, I slowed to a stop.

  Who was this?

  He wasn’t Mr. Nash or Lewis. He was younger, around my age with dark hair and mirrored sunglasses. When he stepped into the room, I hurried after him, because seriously, who the hell was he?

  When he caught sight of Isobel with her back to him as she stood at the study table, studying our “blueprints,” his face lit with a mischievous grin, and he snuck up behind her.

  Not sure if I should alert her to his presence, I paused in the doorway to watch him say, “Boo,” just before he tapped her on the back.

  Isobel yelped and spun around. She appeared irritated until she focused on his face. Then she transformed, springing toward the stranger and flinging her arms around his neck with a happy laugh. My eyes narrowed as he picked her up and spun her in a circle.

  Something solid and nasty plopped hard into the base of my stomach. It swirled and frothed as Isobel cheekily smacked the man’s arm until he returned her to her feet and took a step back. They both continued to grin at each other.

  She liked him—whoever he was—she really liked him. I’d never seen her show genuine affection for anyone before, and it didn’t sit well with me, mainly because she’d never seemed to like me that well.

  Ah, hell, I was jealous.

  Mentally swatting that nasty realization away in my head, I studied the man, dissecting him. He looked rich, friendly, clean, and pretty much too fucking perfect to be true. I decided I didn’t like him. All that shine had to be fake or hiding something ugly.

  “When did you get here?” Isobel asked, her blue eyes glossy and bright with a special glow just for him, the lucky bastard.

  He grinned, his teeth way too white, and way too straight. “Just now. I thought I’d come see you before I got stuck in some long, boring meeting with the old man.” Then he sighed dramatically, making Isobel laugh.

  Holy shit, she’d just laughed, truly honestly laughed. How in the world had this douche gotten her to laugh? It wasn’t right. Totally wasn’t fair.

  I pretty much had to hate him now.

  Who was he?

  Was he her boyfriend?

  Her dad made her out to be so lonely and solitary with no one to talk to, yet Mr. Perfect here seemed to be doing just fine making her smile and laugh.

  My jealousy burned hotter.

  As if feeling my glare beaded in on him, Prince Charming glanced my way, only for his glowing smile to pause with a hint of shock. Instantly, he turned back to Isobel and grasped her shoulders.

  “Don’t freak out,” he told her in a steady voice as if he’d just spotted a spider in her hair and needed her to remain calm so he could remove it, “but there’s a guy in your library.”

  Immediately, Isobel spun toward me as if remembering I still existed.

  Yeah, remember me? The man building your bookshelves.

  Her cheeks looked flushed, but I wasn’t sure if that was from embarrassment over forgetting about me or excitement from his arrival.

  “Oh,” she said, making me feel even smaller because she really had forgotten about me. “He’s here to build bookshelves.”

  Sure, yeah, tell your boyfriend that’s all I’m here for, I wanted to snarl, before it struck me that building her bookshelves really was the only reason I was in her library. I wasn’t here because we were friends or because she actually wanted to spend time with me. I was only providing her with a service for her precious books.

  Acid slithered around the jealousy bubbling in my stomach, while the pretty, shiny man perked to attention at the mention of bookshelves.

  “Really?” he asked, intrigued. Slipping off his shades and tucking them into his front pocket, he strolled toward me and eyed the ladder I was so lamely holding. “What a good idea. I’d started to worry all those books you were collecting were going to start overflowing out into the hall one of these days and overtake the whole house.”

  “Hey.” Isobel, who’d followed him to me like a faithful pet, drilled a reprimanding finger into his side. “If you’re so worried about the number of books I collect, then why do you always bring me a new one every time you visit?”

  With a grin in her direction, he winked. “Oh right, thanks for reminding me… Here you go.” He pulled a miniature book from his pocket and tossed it her way.

  She fumbled a moment before catching it. Then she took in the cover and gasped. After she flipped it open to the title page, she gasped again. “Oh my God, this is a first edition fairy tale book. I’ve been looking for one of these forever. Where did you find it?”

  “Oh…” After breathing on his knuckles, the man buffed them against his shoulder in accomplishment. “I have my sources.”

  “Thank you.” Pressing the tiny book to her chest, Isobel sent him a look full of adoration and complete devotion.

  I thought I might puke.

/>   He nodded, looking similarly taken with her before returning his curious gaze to me.

  “So…” When he said nothing more, merely examined me as if I were an artifact in a museum, I self-consciously stuck out a hand.

  “Shaw Hollander.” I meant to add nice to meet you, but that part stuck in my throat.

  He nodded and shook with me. “Ezra Nash.”

  “Oh!” I blurted. “You’re the brother.”

  Relief and a flood of understanding poured through me. In one brief fraction of time, I felt both foolish for being so irrationally jealous and yet so pleased he wasn’t actually dating Isobel I almost laughed. Then the moment passed and a cold sweat shrouded me as I realized what this meant. I wouldn’t have been so upset to learn she had a boyfriend if I hadn’t been interested in the position myself.

  And that thought scared me. I knew I’d always been interested in her—in that way—but my reaction had been so extreme.

  She was supposed to be a job, just a job. Falling for her could only cause problems. I needed to keep my feelings in check. I needed to stop thinking of her like that, or looking at her like that, or—

  “The brother,” Ezra Nash repeated on a grin. “That sounds so ominous, but yeah, I’m…the brother.”

  “The annoying brother,” Isobel snickered, which prompted Ezra to reach over without even looking her way and pinch her in the side.

  She shrieked and slapped his hand, causing him to grin wider at me.

  I stared between the siblings in awe, intrigued by their comfortable, teasing relationship and once again struck by how glad I was to learn they were only brother and sister.

  Completely revising my opinion of him, I decided I liked him after all. I liked him a lot. He could make Isobel smile and laugh, and he wasn’t dating her, so he was aces in my book.

  “When did Dad hire a carpenter?” he asked, making me gulp because the glint in his eyes showed suspicion, as if he already knew why Henry Nash had truly brought me into his home.

  “Two weeks ago,” Isobel answered, sticking her thumbnail between her teeth as she studied a section of wall near us. “And he’s our new general, overall handyman, not just a carpenter.”