The Librarian's Passionate Knight

Red ringed the eyes that narrowed into angry slits. Hands the size of small anvils clenched into tight fists at his sides. He wanted to hit something. With a sickening twist in his gut, Daniel realized what—or in this case who—it was.

“Don’t even think about it.” He shoved her behind him and stepped into the line of fire. “And then do yourself a favor. Walk away. Just walk the hell away.”

Jason, who easily outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds, snorted. “You think you wanna piece of me, pretty boy?”

“Oh, I’d love a piece of you, Clyde.” Daniel smiled pleasantly. “But you’re just not worth my time. Now back off and leave the lady alone or this is gonna come down to you and me and the nice policeman walking toward us. You want to go down for attempted assault with a little drunk and disorderly tacked on for good measure? Make a move and you’ve got it.”

“Problem here, folks?”

“I’m not sure.” Daniel glared at Jason as the uniformed officer approached them. “Is there a problem?”

Jason glowered but finally shook his head.

“Is there a problem?” Daniel repeated, turning his attention to a pair of doe-brown eyes, relaying with his tone that all she had to do was say the word and this bozo was history.

She hesitated then shook her head. “No.”

Daniel watched her face for the length of a deep breath, not knowing what to make of that. What he did know was that it wasn’t his call. It was hers, and since he’d come in at the middle of this particular movie, he wasn’t going to make any snap judgments.

“Guess there’s no problem.” He flashed the officer a tight smile. “Thanks anyway.”

Daniel shot Jason a warning glare. Then he waited to make sure the other man got the hint to move on. When he stalked off, Daniel wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She tried for a smile—of relief or gratitude, he couldn’t tell which. Regardless, it didn’t matter, because she didn’t pull it off anyway. She was shaking so hard that he expected her to vibrate right out from under his arm. She surprised him, though, because when he started walking she let out a pent-up breath that seemed to drain her of her tension and fell into step beside him.

He looked down at the top of her head, comfortable with the easy way she fit against him, not so comfortable with the intensity of the protectiveness he felt for her.

True, it wasn’t the first time he’d been ready to take a fall for a woman. As a rule, though, he generally liked to know a whole helluva lot more about her before he got his lights punched out. For starters, he thought with a cheeky grin, he at least tried to make it a point to know her name.

Phoebe figured she was in shock. She couldn’t think of another reason why she was letting a total stranger wrap his arm around her and walk her farther and farther away from her car. She supposed there was the very real likelihood that Jason had scared her witless. And then, there was the fact that the man steering her down the sidewalk was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

“You okay?” she heard him ask. The way he said it made her realize it wasn’t the first time he’d asked. His voice, as smooth and low as deep water, was filled with concern.

When she couldn’t find it in her to reply, he stopped and turned to her. Cupping her shoulders in his hands, he searched her face. As she, in turn, searched his, she forgave herself for lapsing into speechlessness.

Sweet Lord, he was gorgeous. He wasn’t particularly tall—just under six feet—but at five-four she still had to lift her chin to look up at him. He wasn’t exceptionally muscular either, not like a bodybuilder. Instead, he was sleekly muscled, like a runner or a swimmer, a study in athletic fitness that combined conditioning and finesse to a honed perfection that overshadowed brawn any day. His black T-shirt and black shorts showed off tan arms and legs and lean, sinewy strength.

She knew what it felt like to be tucked into the warmth and power emanating from his body. She’d felt sheltered and protected while visions of a different kind of embrace—intimate, needy—further scattered her already fractured thoughts.

He wasn’t a workingman either, she decided, forcefully dragging her mind back to the moment. Nothing specifically told her that. It was more of a generalization of his overall presence that quietly spoke of money. That he either came from it or was made from it was as obvious as the blue of his eyes. From the artful style of his sun-streaked brown hair that he wore longer than respectable yet looked exactly right on him, to the cut of his formfitting black T-shirt, he wore wealth. It wasn’t overt. It was, instead, effortless. He was as comfortable with it as he was with his utter maleness, at ease with everything that he was.

The blue eyes that searched her face were thick-lashed and kind of dreamy, strategically set for maximum impact in that stunning, poster-perfect face. His cheeks were deeply tan and slightly stubbled, his jaw molded with love by a benevolent master.

His classic male beauty, however, had enough rough edges thrown in to save him from being pretty. A tiny crescent-shaped scar marred the corner of his full upper lip, and a nick split the arch of his dark eyebrow. Still, his face was so symmetrically sculpted it was almost painful to look at it, yet impossible to look away.

He was everything—everything—that a hero was supposed to be. Brave, gorgeous, wealthy.

Her heart sank on a reality check. A worthy heroine she was not.

The realization of who she was, what she was and what she wasn’t, melted over her like spent wax, starting at the top of her head and working its way to her fingertips.

“Are you still with me in there?” he asked with a lazy, amused grin that infiltrated her thoughts like a spelunker breaching a turn in an underground cavern.

“I…um…”

He chuckled, held his hand in front of her face and asked, deadpan, “How many fingers?”

She blinked, focused, and remarkably, the magic of speech returned. “Four and a thumb. At least that was standard issue last I knew.”

On second thought, magic may have been too strong a word when paired up with the words she’d just uttered. Obviously, her reply had spilled out before she thought, because if she’d thought, she wouldn’t be firing wisecracks. Shock, prompted by reality, made her forget to measure her words, police her reactions.

She reined herself in and clarified. “He didn’t hit me.”

He smiled again, gently this time, sort of a slow, concerned unfurling that dug deep grooves in his lean cheeks and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But he wanted to. And that in itself is a violation.”

He had the most sensual mouth. His lips were generous and seemed to be perpetually tipped up in some semblance of a grin.

Too aware that she was staring again, she lifted her gaze to quite possibly the most expressive eyes she’d ever seen. In that moment, she read his pity through them and was ashamed.

“Oh. Oh, no. It’s…it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those poor women caught up in an abuse cycle.” Though he was a total stranger, she didn’t want him thinking that about her. “I ended our relationship months ago. He’s just not— Well, he’s not getting the picture.”

“And he’s not likely to anytime soon unless he has a reason to consider the consequences.”

Consequences. So far, she, not Jason, had been the one suffering the consequences of his unwarranted obsession.

It all caught up with her then. The fear of the past few moments. The utter sense of vulnerability and violation. The embarrassment of a public scene. And her dependence on this stranger to come to her rescue.

Jason had blindsided her. She hated him for that. She hated violence more. She’d felt as helpless against it tonight as she had as a child. And like a child, she’d frozen in the face of it.

She knew what that made her. Leslie Griffin, her sixty-years-young friend and co-worker, could argue all she wanted that Phoebe was heroic for overcoming her abusive childhood, for putting herself through school, for enduring and establishing herself as a solid, independent citizen. The truth, however, was that at heart she was a coward. For that failure alone, she hated herself almost as much as she hated Jason for putting her in this position.

“Well.” She squared her shoulders and rallied what pride she had left. “It’s my problem. I’ll figure out how to deal with it.”

“Think in terms of a two-by-four. Right between his eyes,” he said darkly.

“Do you all run on pure testosterone?” She blurted out the words before she could marshal them. Again.

She closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temple. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

She didn’t know how to act around this man. If she wasn’t gaping in stupefied silence over his glaring good looks, she was bumbling out the most inappropriate things.

“I’m sorry. You saved me from a really bad ending here and I’m coming down on you for wanting to…” She paused, lifted a hand in the air.

“To add more violence to an already violent situation?” he suggested, an apology in his voice. “Unfortunately, sometimes that’s the only option.”

For the first time, something other than gentle amusement hardened his mouth. She saw and heard his anger but understood that it was directed at Jason. She also understood that he hadn’t judged her as harshly as she’d judged herself.

When she realized he was watching her with an absorbed intensity that relayed both concern and the same gentleness as his smiles, she drew in a deep breath and let it out.

“Well,” she said, feeling compelled to assure him, “I’ll be okay. He’ll give up sooner or later. In the meantime, I really don’t know how to thank you. Most people wouldn’t have stopped, and, you know, gotten in the middle of someone else’s mess.”

“I’m not most people.”

That much she’d already figured out. He certainly wasn’t like most of the people she knew at any rate. And he wasn’t anything like her. She was strictly struggling to be middle-class mundane. And he— Well, he wasn’t.

“So, what happens now?”

She let out a breath through puffed cheeks. “What does happen now?” she mused aloud before her brain synapses clicked into place. “Well, now I guess I walk back to my car and drive home.”

It seemed simple enough, except that on the heels of her statement, she realized it wasn’t going to be simple at all. She would have laughed if she could have mustered the strength.

“Well, normally I’d walk back to my car and drive home.”

“Normally?”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth then lifted a shoulder. “He got away with my car keys.”

He quirked a beautifully arched eyebrow—the one with the nick in it. “Oops. That’s a problem.”

Phoebe tugged on the tips of her hair where it tickled her nape and tried not to fidget as he continued to watch her with that half-amused, half-interested, all-male grin.

“So it would appear that you’re stranded.”

Yep. She was in a tight spot. So why was she suddenly grinning back at him?

It was ludicrous. Someone who had once meant something to her, someone she had trusted and had actually considered building a life with, had just tried to physically assault her. In addition, he’d made off with her car keys. Yet the pain of the first and the anger over the second just sort of drifted off in the comfort of this man’s dazzling smile.

“I’ll, um, just hail a cab,” she said, sobering resolutely. “I’ve got an extra set of keys at home. I can come back for my car tomorrow.”

“Or,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts, “I could take you.”

Yes, yes, yes.

She pulled back from that idea with a steadying breath. “No, oh no. I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’ve done enough. And you don’t even know me. For that matter, I don’t know you.”

“That is an issue,” he agreed with another one of those knee-melting smiles that didn’t make fun but teased just the same. “Here’s a thought. You could tell me your name, and I could tell you mine.” He paused, his grin playful and expectant. “You see where this is leading, right?”

Infectious. His smile was positively infectious.

“And then we can say we know each other,” he finished, looking very pleased with himself and his silliness. “Works out pretty well to my way of thinking.”

She liked his way of thinking. She was baffled that a man who looked like him would even bother with a woman who looked like her, but she liked it. In fact, she was quickly discovering that she liked everything about him.

Like his lips. Supple, sensual.

“So, what do you say?” he prompted. “How about you go first?”

“Phoebe,” she murmured, dragging her gaze away from his mouth. “Phoebe Richards.”

“Phoebe,” he repeated, mulling it over then looking immeasurably pleased. “I like it. It suits you much better than Mouse.” His expression was as sober as it was sincere.

She blinked, speechless again.

“I’m Daniel.” He extended his hand. “Daniel Barone.”

This time when he smiled it was full out, no-holes-barred and devastating.

She drew a deep breath and tried to shore herself up as every bone in her body sort of liquefied to the consistency of pudding.

And then she smiled like a goon again because he just made it so darn easy.

Slowly, she took the hand he offered. It was a strong hand. Her own hand felt small and protected tucked inside his. Before she could stop the image from forming, she imagined the coarse, warm strength of it caressing…well, something much more intimate than her hand.

She was thankful it was shadowy and dark on the street. Maybe he couldn’t see the flush spreading across her cheeks. With luck, he wouldn’t notice the slight tremble of her hand either when she finally managed to extricate it from his and lift it to her nape to tug self-consciously at her hair again.

“Let me take you home, Phoebe Richards,” he said, his voice and his eyes gentle. “Now just wait a sec before you say no. Think of how bad I’d feel if after all this you ended up getting mugged or something. I’d have put my life on the line for nothing.”

His easy self-assurance only reminded her of all the confidence she lacked. It reaffirmed that she had no business accepting his offer because in the overall scheme of things, it meant very little to him if he took her home and way too much to her.

Daniel Barone, she’d decided, couldn’t help but play the hero. She, conversely, never had and never would fit the role of a heroine. Especially not his heroine, although she couldn’t help herself from wanting to cast herself in the part.

That was when it hit her.

She knew who he was.

Her eyes widened.

How could she not have recognized him?

Maybe she was wrong, she thought, stalling panic as her gaze raced across his face. Maybe she hadn’t just made a fool of herself in front of a man who, a few months ago, the Boston Globe Magazine had billed as “Boston’s Own Sexy-as-Sin Daredevil Millionaire.”

Yeah, and maybe the light sheen of perspiration that had broken out on her forehead made her look delicate instead of desperate.

“Daniel Barone?” she squeaked, like the mouse she truly was. “The Daniel Barone?”

When he merely crossed his arms over his chest and grinned, she pressed the flat of her palm to her forehead.

“The Boston Globe’s Daniel Barone? The Baronessa Gelati Barone?”

Unless you lived under a rock, you knew about the Boston Barones. The colorful Italian family’s ice cream dynasty was legend, not just on the East Coast but worldwide. The original gelateria still flourished in the North End of Boston, and the delicious gelato had made Baronessa a household word and made multimillionaires out of anyone bearing the Barone name.

He shrugged, looking a little sheepish, which only added to his appeal. “I’m getting the impression that you may not consider this a good thing.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s just—”

“It’s just a name,” he preempted to make his point. “And I’m just a guy who wants to make sure you get home okay. Okay?”

In spite of it all, she was helpless not to return his smile. She’d given up resisting it. Just as she’d given up on the idea of doing the smart thing and begging off on his offer of a ride.

When he extended his hand, she hesitated for only a moment before taking it.

Just a name. Just a hand. And he’s just being polite, she told herself. Yet she felt as if she was walking in a dream as she let him lead her to his car.

Wasn’t she entitled, just this once, to have a fantasy fulfilled? One real-life fantasy involving one of the richest, sexiest men alive?

When he opened the door for her she went with it. She sank into the plush, supple leather of the bucket seat and pretended that she belonged there. She let the classical music flowing from the stereo system wrap around her, and entered another world. His world.

Phoebe Richards, welcome to the world of the rich and famous. All she needed to complete the scene was Robin Leach with his phony accent prattling away in the background.

She sighed and regained enough of her wits to remind herself that she really didn’t belong in that world. Just like she didn’t belong with a man like him.

Yet here she was.

She was in a car, in the dark of night, with the man of her dreams—hers and any other woman with a beating heart.

Daniel Barone was a true-life knight in shining armor who had literally saved her. Surely the shiny silver Porsche qualified as armor. Surely he was as much of a knight as Guinevere’s Lancelot.

And in the name of fair play, surely, just once in her life, Phoebe Richards was entitled to a fairy-tale ending, even if, like Cinderella’s coach, she’d turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.

Okay. So she was mixing her fairy tales and her metaphors. She didn’t care. For this brief moment in time she indulged. She let herself forget about pumpkins and different worlds when he turned to her.

His blue eyes were thoughtful and interested as they met hers over the tanned arm that gripped the gearshift. The streetlight cast stunning shadows and shading across his incredible face. He smiled that devastating smile. “All set?”

“To the castle,” she murmured and settled back as his soft, warm chuckle enveloped her.

Three

Phoebe’s euphoria didn’t last past the first intersection. The adrenaline rush that had kicked into full stride during the ugly scene with Jason wore off quickly. Plus, she was far too grounded to let herself drift on this little dream cloud for long. Grounded or not, though, without the adrenaline to shore her up she was a wreck by the time Daniel had deftly followed her directions and pulled onto her street.

Daniel Barone. She still couldn’t quite grasp it. And he, well, if he found her neighborhood lacking compared to the pricey Beacon Hill residence where he’d grown up and the circle of wealth in which he ran, he was too polite or too polished to let it show.

He was also the picture of the perfect gentleman. Except that he drove too fast. She hadn’t needed to read the Boston Globe article about him to know that it was part of his MO. The speed. The thrills. The daring to do what most mortals feared. His exploits were legend. She supposed it should be exciting, racing through the night in this shining bullet of a car, but her slight case of the shakes was prompted more by apprehension than any spirit of adventure.

She was hopeless. And he was so wrong about her name. Mouse suited her perfectly. She had the backbone of a snail. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d been the victim of one of those hit and run urban legends—like the one where some unsuspecting soul fell asleep in a motel room and woke up in a bathtub full of ice and missing their kidneys. Only in her case, it was her spine that had been surgically removed.

She sighed heavily. She didn’t belong in this silver Porsche. She didn’t belong in either dream or reality with this man, no matter how hard he tried to put her at ease. And bless him he did try. To her utter mortification, however, their conversation on the half-hour drive to her house consisted mostly of her stuttering apologies for putting him out and his teasing her about her white-knuckled grip on the console.

Out of her league.

She should have felt relief when he finally swung the car into her driveway and cut the engine. Instead, an unsettling mix of remorse and regret swamped her.

She smoothed her hand lovingly along the melting soft leather seat, heaved another resigned sigh and reached for the door handle.

And so ended her romance with romance.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll get that.”

Because she wasn’t as resigned to the end as she’d thought, she waited while he got out of the car, walked around the hood and opened the door for her with all the gallantry of a medieval knight.

The castle, Daniel noted, turned out to be a modest ranch, white trimmed in black, circa 1960. It was set in the middle of the block in a quiet and fairly well-kept neighborhood of Boston proper. Lamplight glowed from inside the house where a huge, fat tabby lounged in the bay window and regarded them through the glass with golden eyes and a superior attitude as they approached.

He was a detail man and noticed that the parched grass was mowed and twin rows of sunburned flowers struggled to brighten the sidewalk leading to the front porch. The porch was actually little more than a concrete stoop covered by a shingled overhang that boasted a hanging basket of deep-purple petunias and peeling posts.

He wasn’t sure what affected him more: the fact that she was a woman who planted flowers, that she probably mowed her own lawn, or the peeling paint that said she was either pressed for money or time.

In the end it was none of those things. It was the sight of an ugly, fist-size plaster frog squatting on the stoop. He didn’t have a clue why it got to him.

“Well,” she said as he watched her avoid his eyes by tucking her chin and staring at the center of his chest. She tugged on her hair, something she seemed to do a lot when she was nervous—which she obviously was around him. “Thank you. Again. Really. And you didn’t have to walk me to the door.”

As she’d been doing since about midway through the drive across town, he could see her gearing up for another apology for putting him out.

“Don’t you dare say it,” he warned her before she wound up for a good start. “We reached an agreement, remember? You aren’t going to apologize anymore.”

“You’re right. I’m s—” she caught herself and smiled sheepishly. “I’m so not going to apologize again.”

Looking pink and flustered and adorable, she bent to pick up the ugly frog.

Daniel stood there in suspended silence…absorbing the pleasant scent of vanilla ice cream and summer that surrounded her…studying the endearing little cowlick that parted her hair with a swirl at her crown…considering touching the silky soft strands that looked baby fine and so touchable he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and sifting it through his fingers.

He didn’t get it. He didn’t get why he was so fascinated by her. She was as far from a siren as Dame Edith and yet she called to him. He should feel relief now that he’d done his duty. He’d delivered her safely to her door. He was free to go. So he sure as hell didn’t know why, when she turned that stupid frog upside down and slipped a key out of the compartment hidden in its belly, he felt a surge of tenderness that sent warning bells ringing in every rational part of his brain.

Aside from general concern, it shouldn’t matter so much that the woman was being hounded by an ex-boyfriend with a whole lot of mean on his mind. It shouldn’t matter so much that she hid her house key in a frog and probably regarded it as a security measure.

It shouldn’t matter so much that at first glance, he’d thought of her as ordinary.