It was Phil Watkins, the Head of Collections, brandishing one of the poles they used to pull down the high shades. Apparently, she wasn't the only one on edge after that presentation on book theft. Maybe security had oversold it just a little.
“It's fine, Phil,” she said, taking a firm step away from the stranger. “But hey, good thing you're here. This gentleman wants to buy the ECEE collection. All of it.”
She couldn't stop her lips from quirking in a smile as Phil, small, round, bald and the sweetest guy around, got a ferocious expression on his face. The stranger blinked as Phil took a better grip on his pole and stepped forward.
“Please tell me how you came to think that an academic archive dedicated to research and education is for sale,” he said, and Norah took a seat at her desk to watch the carnage.
And maybe also to watch the handsome stranger's face for a while, but no one had to know about that.
CHAPTER TWO
∞∞∞
Val thought he had been entirely reasonable.
There was something he wanted to acquire. He had looked up the contents of the Eighteenth Century English Ephemera collection online, put together what he thought was a reasonable price and then increased it by a quarter. They definitely didn't know what they had, and he wasn't going to tell them, but it was more than fair, both for their collection and their trouble.
Hell, I'm even willing to give it back after I'm done. There's no problem here …
That wasn't what what Phil Watkins, Head of Collections, thought, and by the end of the archivist's tirade, he was beginning to wonder whether the man was at least part-dragon himself. He was defending the archive as if Val had proposed to set fire to it and behind him …
Val's true mate sat at her desk as if watching Val get chewed out was the best entertainment she had had all year. Val had to make sure he was staring at Phil's angry face because otherwise, he was going to do some very unacceptable staring at the plush beauty in the heart-print dress who was currently smirking at him.
You want to do more than stare, his dragon whispered. You could just walk over there and kiss that smirk right off of her face, and then you could kiss her all over, couldn't you, unzip that dress, touch her all over-
“And education, Mr. Rychek, is not for sale! I do not know if you understand the pains that libraries take in the acquisition of their collections, but it can be the work of several lifetimes. Librarians like myself and Ms. Bridger are working to secure the resources that scholars need –“
Bridger, her name is Bridger, it's wonderful, she's wonderful, and she looks so soft, and perfect, and –
And oh God, but he was going to lose his mind if he couldn't keep a tight rein on everything.
Fortunately, among the dragons of his family, he was reckoned to be the one with the iron control, and he took advantage of it now.
“Clearly, I have failed to understand the function and accessibility of this archive,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Let me state what I need, and perhaps we could come to an agreement.”
It took longer than he would have liked, but once Phil realized that Val wasn't actually some random wealthy man who wanted to use the archives to decorate his home, things got a lot easier. It took a little bit of wrangling, but twenty minutes and a small contribution to the library later, Val was looking down at his very own special access pass.
“Those are great,” Norah told him, and he jumped because he would have sworn that she hadn't been standing by his elbow a moment ago. Of course once he realized how close she was, he wanted her even closer. If she touched him, well, that would probably be the end of anything that looked reasonable or disciplined on his part, and against his dragon's longing growl, he took a step back.
“What's so great about them?” he asked, more curtly than he would have liked, but Norah didn't miss a beat.
“Well, that means you get access to all the little collections throughout the archive, you can secure a private study cell, and you have an informal invitation to all of the potlucks and dinners.”
“Are the potlucks and dinners that good?” he asked, and she smiled.
“Pretty good, I think. Generous, anyway. When I was a starving grad student, they provided me with a lot of free hot meals, and the older librarians always made sure I took home leftovers.”
Val scowled at that, because he hated the idea of her starving and eating at potlucks to get by. He must have scowled a little too hard because Norah sighed.
“Right, right, you probably eat at like five star restaurants all the time,” she said with a slightly self-conscious laugh. “Well, the dinners are pretty good, anyway.”
His dragon hissed in fury and shock at how badly he was mangling things, and Val winced. He had known his true mate – his actual true mate! – for less than an hour and he was already messing it up.
I can fix this later, he told himself firmly. Later, I can make all of this better. I'll take her around the world, any restaurants she wants to go to, anything she wants to see, anything at all.
He must have left it too long again, because now Norah was looking at him expectantly, and he coughed.
“Anyway, I appreciate your help,” he said. “Hopefully, I can look for the materials that I'm here for, and then we can both move on.”
To dinner, to bed, to Paris, to Rome, to a small cabin in Norway if that's what you want ...
“Right,” Norah said with a smile. “So let's get to work. Why don't we begin with what you're looking for?”
Val frowned, because no.
“I'll
