Buried [Completed]

Chapter twenty

As far as Dougal was concerned nothing could be sexier than this: a librarian wearing only her eyeglasses, her hair tousled from recently having sex, totally engrossed in one of his books. A Murder in the Family, to be precise. The print-out had arrived in the mail while he'd been in Pendleton. His last chance to check over the manuscript before it went in for publication. He'd been glad to delegate the job to Charlotte. He tried to hand her a cup of coffee— he'd just brewed a new pot— but she waved for him to put it on the bedside table.

"Is the book any good?"

"Hmmm." She didn't even look up for a second this time.
"I'll take that as a yes. You have great tits by the way."

Still no response. He went back to the living room where they'd already packed two boxes of books and were working on the third. At least, they had been working until Charlotte spied the final line edit copy of his upcoming book sitting on his desk.

"May I read this?"

He'd been flattered by her interest.

"On one condition."

His condition had been that she let him take her back to bed. Sex with the librarian was remarkably good. Everything with the librarian was remarkably good. Talking, going for walks, sharing meals, even sleeping seemed nicer with her in his bed.

He pruned through the books on the last two shelves, finding another dozen titles to put in for the sale. He finished his coffee, cleaned up after their late breakfast of toast and eggs, then went back to the bedroom.

Charlotte was on her stomach now, still naked, legs bent at the knees so her feet dangled in the air. He felt a strange, light-headed emotion. Happiness? He kissed her toes.

"Finished, yet?"

"Oh, no...."

"I'm getting bored."

"Go for a walk. It's a nice day."

"How would you know? You haven't looked up once since you started reading."

"You should take that as a compliment."

"I'm beginning to think you only like me for my writing ability."

Finally she put down the manuscript pages. She studied his face solemnly.

"You must be kidding."

"Well, yeah, I was."

He settled on the bed beside her, taking her into his arms. She smelled like coffee and sex and vanilla.

"Why didn't you want to marry Wade?"

He expected her to say she hadn't loved him. Instead she said, "I'll tell you if you tell me something first."

"What?"

"Why didn't you go to your sister's wedding?"

"Because I warned her not to marry that creep."

"Yes, but why? What do you have against Kyle? You were friends when you were younger."

"Yeah, well maybe I wasn't such a great judge of character back then. Kyle was always a cheat. He cheated at school and he cheated on his girlfriends... including your sister Daisy." Charlotte tensed, but didn't interrupt.

"He was also a mean bastard. Loved to pull pranks. And I always played along. He knew he could count on me to back him up. I'm ashamed, for the way I used to look up to him. Wade never did, you know. That guy always had his head screwed on straight."