Calling It Read Free

living room, naked except for her robe. With a total stranger, no less.
    Thanks to a lifetime of defending herself in wrestling matches with brothers who couldn’t care less that she was a) a girl and b) smaller than them, she could take him down regardless of how big he was. Or how, um, solid. It would ruin her relaxing evening to the point of no recovery, however. She took a step back.
    “Don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t come any closer.”
    She reached down behind her, groping for the phone but finding something else instead. A baseball bat, of all things. It belonged to her landlord, as did all the furniture and a surprising number of baseball-related knickknacks.
    Could be worse. There was one of those big foam hands around somewhere.
    Hauling the bat up into a swinging stance, she warned, “Come any closer and I swear to God I’ll take your head off faster than you can say casserole. ”
    His hands went up in the air and he took a step back. “Uh, okay. Looks like we’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding.” Then he sat on one of the stools. “Damn, woman. You sure have a thing about food.”
    Hell, yes, she had a thing about food. She’d grown up with six brothers, every one of whom could eat an entire lasagna faster than she could wrap her hand around the serving spoon. “It’s an awesome casserole.”
    “That it is,” he murmured appreciatively, sending a bolt of heat directly down to where she did not need it. Her nipples puckered, but she blamed it on the fact that she’d just been living in major imaginary sin. She took another step back. His eyesight was probably better than hers. But, oh boy, did the man smell good.
    Then again, maybe it was just the casserole.
    “You should go,” she said. It came out much more hoarsely than she’d intended.
    “I, uh...” His voice had the same raspiness. “I could use a minute.”
    There was no doubt in her mind why he needed a minute, especially when she realized her robe had slipped when she’d lifted the bat, and he had a grade-A view of, well, everything. She lowered the bat and snatched her robe closed. “Maybe you could use that minute to tell me who you are.”
    “Right. Or maybe we could just cut to the chase,” he said, no longer giving off that somewhat amused vibe. It had pissed her off, but she preferred it to the turn things had just taken.
    “You break into my place and you’re giving me attitude?” Asshole. No more nice librarian. Using the I-mean-business trick the nuns at St. Mary’s had used, she rapped the bat on the floor for emphasis. “So let’s go back to ‘who are you’ and then move on to how you got in.”
    “You really don’t know.” This time, it was more a statement than a question.
    “I really have no idea.” And her patience was wearing thin. “Should I?”
    “Fitz didn’t tell you?”
    “Fitz, as in my landlord?”
    “Your landlord?” he snapped. “She moved out?”
    He’d asked that in kind of the way a...
    Oh, great—was she standing here half-naked with her landlord’s boyfriend? Or maybe ex-boyfriend, given that he seemed to have no clue Fitz had moved out a month ago.
    Even though she hadn’t gotten any crazy or dangerous vibes—something she was pretty attuned to after all the years of dealing with her brothers’ exes—she clutched the handle of the bat and adjusted her stance a little. Just to be safe.
    Reading her body language far too clearly, he dialed down the agitation. She actually felt it happen, like the air rushing out of the hole in a balloon.
    “D.B.,” he said.
    “Huh?”
    “My name.” He gestured. “On the bat. D.B. My bat. My place.”
    She looked down. Brought the bat up closer to her face. Yes, there were the initials D.B. carved right in. “Oh. But...” She raised her eyes to his—or, rather, in the general direction of his. “So then who is Fitz?”
    “My sister,” he said, sounding kind of...sad? He recovered quickly, though. “I needed a place to crash