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When I got closer, Elise grinned at me and waved. My cheeks filled with heat as I returned the gesture, hoping my expression didn’t give away my thoughts about how out of place her husband and his friend looked in my reading nook.
To cover my awkwardness, I shifted my focus to the children sitting in a circle on the bright blue carpet. “Ready for reading time?”
Timmy bounced on his bottom, clapping his hands as he smiled up at me. “Miss Ellery is finally here!”
“Yay!” Sally cheered.
My heart melted at the warm welcome I received from the group of kids who had come to hear me read. But that didn’t stop me from teasing Timmy, who’d been coming to my reading time since the very first time.
“Finally, huh?” I tapped my finger against the face of the watch strapped to my wrist. “It looks to me like I’m right on time.”
“Nuh-uh, I been waitin’ foreverrrr,” he protested with a firm shake of his head.
His mom shot me an apologetic smile, but I waved off her concern. I was used to Timmy’s boisterous personality. It was part of why he was one of my favorites.
I was an only child, but that hadn’t stopped me from loving kids. According to my mom, it was part of the reason I enjoyed being around babies so much—because I was trying to make up for the fact that they never gave me the little brother or sister I had wanted so much when I was younger.
Whatever the reason, I just really hoped that I’d be able to find another job working with kids because I found them to be so much easier to deal with than most adults. I appreciated how you never had to guess what children were thinking since they tended to be open books. Like the way Timmy was currently twisted around to glare up at his mom.
Crossing his arms against his thin chest, he muttered, “How come we been here for a whole hour then, Mommy?”
She shook her head with a laugh. “Nice try, kiddo. But we only got here fifteen minutes ago.”
“It felt like forever,” he grumbled, heaving a deep sigh.
“I guess I better get reading so time will start flying because we’ll be having lots of fun,” I suggested as I carefully moved through the circle of kids to drop my stuff on the floor next to the big chair I always used. Once I got settled, I glanced up and struggled to keep the smile on my face.
The other man standing near her stared at me with a wicked gleam in his whiskey-brown eyes that was at odds with the baby in the carrier in front of his broad chest. Dressed in a frilly pink outfit, she looked tiny compared to him. Probably because she was since he looked to be about six and a half feet of pure muscle while she was a dainty, weeks-old infant.
His thick, black hair looked as though he had just rolled out of bed, and a beard covered the lower half of his handsome face. The black ink on his neck and hands added to his rough look…and made him even sexier.
I felt drawn to him in a way I had never experienced before, which made no sense since he was well out of my league. A guy who looked like he did, was about a decade older than me, and a member of a motorcycle club had to have women throwing themselves at him on a daily basis. And judging by his beautiful baby girl, he’d already claimed one of them as his own.
Forcing my stare away from him—and clenching my thighs together to ease the ache in my core—I blinked a few times as I tried to focus on the book in my hands. The words swam before my eyes as several of the kids gasped at the cover.
“Oooh, dragons,” Sally squealed.
“I love dragons,” Timmy cheered.
Their excitement pulled me out of my stupor, and I lifted the book higher so everyone could see it. “That’s right, today’s book is about a dragon whose wings came in late, so he has to learn how to fly when he’s older than everyone else. He’s a little embarrassed to be taking lessons with other kids he thinks of as babies, but they help to teach him more than just how to fly.”
With everyone’s attention on me—including the hot biker I was doing my best to ignore—I dove into the book. But I didn’t get lost in the story like usual. I was conscious of him the entire time I read to the children. So much so that my voice cracked a few times while I did my dragon voice.
Luckily, the kids didn’t seem to notice that I was off my game. When I got to “The End,” they begged for another story, like they always did. So I pulled a second book out of my bag and read it to them too. Once that was done, the kids who were regulars at my reading circle jumped to their feet and raced to their parents after yelling a quick thank you to me. The other children took their cue from them, and then it was a race to the stacks to pick out books to take home, most of which had a dragon theme.
Elise came over to say hi to me, and then she turned to the two men she’d brought with her. “This is my husband, Toby. And our friend Whiskey, with his new daughter, Corinne.”
“Umm, hello.” I tried my hardest not to gawk at the hot biker holding the pretty baby while my ovaries combusted at the sight.
“Zane,” he murmured.
“Pardon?” I asked, my brows drawing together.
His gaze stayed locked on my face as he explained, “My name is Zane.”
“Oh.”
“On that note, I wanted to go look at some pregnancy books.” Elise yanked on her husband’s arm to drag him to the nonfiction section of the library.
