'What's wrong with thinking that you look beautiful like this?' Nathaniel Wolfe said to Keira Hawkins on one Friday morning at Reagan Hendrick Library, aptly right between the Romance and Satire aisles.
Hearing such words, with so much conviction in his deep voice, while he dearly placed a rough, warm hand on her cheek should make her swoon. She imagined any girl would react like that. Turning their legs into jelly and butterflies to flutter their wings happily in their stomach.
Hearing such words, when all her life she had been called ugly on bad days and ignored on the good ones, only made her suspect him more. What did he want, exactly? What prompted him to do this? What kind of a twisted plot was this?
The questions ran rampant in her head, overlapping each other and provoking the headache she felt coming to truly appear. Then they stuck in her throat and couldn't leave her mouth because she bit her bottom lip. No matter how much he'd like to swat his hand – or his face, she wasn't picky in this regard – Nate was still the patron of this library, and she had an obligation to serve him politely.
In the end, she took a step back while still locking eyes with him. "That's an easy thing to say for a handsome man like you."
In her distant mockup world, carelessly made by her own distracted and childish mind, Keira thought that Nate would stand by his statement, defending his prior opinion against her own spiteful and critical words. She was so thirsty for anything that remotely sounded like sweet nothings, whispered by her imaginary lover from her high school year.
She was proven wrong when Nate once again said something she didn't expect.
"Ah! So you do think I'm handsome!" he grinned like an idiot.
And just like that, Nate broke the fairytale-like event currently happening only in her head. Keira automatically put her forefinger to her lips, shushing him because they were in the library and she was a librarian. It was only logical to do so. "Please keep your voice down, sir."
Thankfully, the nearest patron from them was the previous young couple in the Historical Fiction who, apparently, was too busy kissing each other senseless. Good grief, she didn't take Nate's bet. Else, she'd owe a stupid hotdog to the annoyingly good-looking man.
"I told you to call me Nate," he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows. "Unless you have a certain kink for a dom–"
"It's not like that, Mr Wolfe," she cut in, face flushing pink from his inappropriate remark. Not from thinking about him standing tall before her, looming in his regal appearance while she kneeled submissively as he ordered. Just for the record, she never thought of that scenario in her head. Not with Nate. Not with any other man. Ever.
"Then, I insist. Just Nate, please."
Instead of humouring him, Keira chose to forget the last few minutes that ever happened in her life. "I will take you–"
"Yes, please take me now. Preferably in that lovely red couch in the corner," Nate butted in. The more she interacted with him, the more Keira was confident that the word 'shameless' in the dictionary also contained his picture.
Feeling her cheeks heating even more, she continued stubbornly, "To the reference section. That's why you're here, remember?"
"Yes, yes, along with asking you out."
Ah. There he went again.
Keira took a deep breath to tell him, 'No, she didn't want to.' But she was too late. Because Nate swiftly moved past her, standing proudly in front of her.
"I said I'm serious. You look beautiful. That's not a lie. You do look beautiful to me. I don't care what anyone else thinks about you. But please, believe me when I say it. And you should know, I never said 'please' this much in my entire life before."
The flippy comments, the idiotic grin, and all of that childishness left him. Before her, a man genuinely confessed that he liked her. Strangely – or not – Keira didn't know how to respond.
It was such a beautiful lie that she had no words to say.
"And it's not a lie, either," Nate said as if reading her mind like Professor X or that silly looking man doing magic in front of the library's stairs every Wednesday at the end of each month. "I might lie a lot, but not now. Not to you."
Inexplicably, she only sensed honestly rolling off with his words. The headache came again, throbbing happily while she was in an turmoil.
It was just too confusing.
One moment she wanted him to be honest. Wanted him to be real, bringing her romantic daydream created on dull days and tedious tasks. The next, she despised everything he said because it was just too good. Because she was one of the avid believers of that famous saying. If it were too good to be true, then it wasn't real.
Therefore, she did the only logical thing she could come up with instantly. Accusing him of lying when he said oh so genuinely. Refusing him when he said 'please' too much.
"I keep my personal life out of work," she said through clenched teeth, skillfully avoiding eye contact. She had too many weird patrons to practise on. After some long months, it became one of her talents. She had the right to brag. Those, along with her ability to change topics. "And we're here, sir."
Gesturing to the closed reference section in the library, Keira difficulty put on her Professional Smile again. Nate seemed to deflate, but that might only be in her imagination. There was a flicker of excitement in his electric blue eyes, complete with a dazzling grin in a flash.
"Can I push that?" Nate didn't wait for her reply. Instead, he trotted past him and eagerly pushed on the dark button on one of the shelves. "Ah, why didn't I think of this to store my arms collection? I can use the empty space for my pet shark."
Keira was a little unsettled. However, she didn't know what set her off more. The fact that he had a pet shark or the part about his arms collection. And, what arms was he talking about? Arms as in human arms or weapons? Both options seemed dangerously absurd. The conclusion she got was that she didn't want to find out.
Moreover, who didn't know about mobile shelving systems? Did he live under a rock?
Ridiculous. His expensive-looking suits didn't agree with that assessment.
Nate pressed another button at random and grinned proudly at her when the mobile shelving system began to move. He strolled between the newly opened aisle, peering curiously at the backs of the books stored there.
Keira looked at the medical journal depicting lobotomy on one of the shelves. Wondering, if she received one, would she still find the man currently snorting in amusement at an old volume down the aisle to be attractive and offensive at the same time?
She shook her head and continued with her own title browsing.
"Do you like working here?" He asked. When she looked up, he was somewhere in another aisle. Only the two of them were there, so she'd forgive him for practically shouting in the library's standard.
She didn't follow him but answered nonetheless. "I do, actually."
"Really?"
"I like books. Being surrounded by them is practically a dream come true."
Nate didn't comment right away. She wondered if he didn't hear her. But, he appeared next to her the next second without making any sound from his red-soled shoes. She mused if perhaps he was a ninja or something. "That's a nice dream. Simple and easy to realise."
Keira half-turned away from him, rolling her eyes. "I take it you're one of the big-dreamers, huh?"
"Ugh… I don't know. I never dreamed," Nate confessed, once again disappearing to the next aisle without explaining any further.
They left it at that.
As the one who started the question, Nate seemed to fold in himself when directed with that particular question. Keira guessed for a wealthy man like Nate – it was just an assumption but had a high probability of being true – a dream was not that hard to achieve. Money indeed made everything a little easier to realise. But she could also be biassed about that.
The silence that followed wasn't particularly uncomfortable. But she found she liked it more when he talked. Even if it was nonsensical. Maybe she just enjoyed hearing his voice, and a treacherous thought occurred in her mind.
Keira chuckled, thinking how funny the situation had turned for them.
She found out Nate wasn't the only one acting like a man of the storm. Floating from one thing to the other. One second he was teasing her, nigh on begging her for a date, and the next, he was being serious. Painfully honest in his every word, despite her refusal to believe it. But so was she.
Like it or not, they acted almost the same. The only difference was that she kept her changing thoughts in her head while he outwardly stated them.
The hurried, tap-tap-tap sound of footsteps brought her back to reality. Keira whipped around and found a stern-looking man in a suit – though it didn't look quite as fancy as Nate's – strode to the limited reference section.
"I'm sorry, sir," she tried to stop the newcomer. "This is a closed section. You have to be scholar to–"
"Boss!" he interrupted her. Very rudely at that, as he only paid a glance before dismissing her entirely. He was the very definition of a man focusing on his ultimate goal. Namely approaching Nate. "We need to head back now."
"The nerf. Can't you see I'm busy at the moment?" Nate was disgruntled, but he put the book back on the shelf again.
"Something happened at the headquarters," Nate's subordinate reported in an urgent manner.
Hearing so, Nate walked back towards her. "See? I could use a hand or two to kill my incompetent driver," his electric blue eyes glared coldly at his subordinate. He huffed, "As much as I hate it, I have to go."
Keira didn't have the chance to reply because both men clad in suits were already walking fast out of the reference section. Nate managed to turn around and half-shouted, "I'll see you later at seven, okay?"
And her intended rejection stuck in her throat. Nate was already disappearing past the Computer shelves with said incompetent driver on his tow. The only comfort she had was that he didn't know her address.
Nate didn't know her home address, right?
…
Right?!