Stud in the Stacks Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  About

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Stud in the Stacks

  Pippa Grant

  Contents

  About

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About

  When it comes to women, I know what they want. And all day long, I give it to them. Dark, broody, and sexy? You got it. Need to laugh? I’m your guy. Desperate for something to put you in the mood? You’ve come to the right place, kitten.

  Every morning when my library opens, there’s a line around the block, the ladies flocking to me in need of their next book boyfriend. I’m that dude. The one who knows his way around the romance section. And if you think that hasn’t gotten me plenty of action over the years, you’d be wrong.

  But I’ve made a few miscalculations, and now my reputation has my job in danger. If I can’t prove to my boss that I’m more than a playboy who recommends romance in the hopes of getting some hanky-panky in the stacks, I can kiss my job goodbye.

  Stud in the Stacks is a sexy, hilarious, sometimes embarrassing romantic comedy told in both points of view, complete with tacos, romance novel love, and unicorn parties with no cheating or cliffhangers.

  Keep in touch with Pippa Grant!

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  Books by Pippa Grant

  Mister McHottie (Chase & Ambrosia)

  Stud in the Stacks (Parker & Knox)

  Exes and Ho Ho Hos (Jake and Kaitlyn)

  The Pilot and the Puck-Up (Zeus and Joey)

  And more…

  1

  Knox Moretti (aka Mr. Romance, aka Tarzan, but only for tonight)

  Even though it’s been six years since I stripped for a roomful of women, I’m pleased to report my loincloth still fits in all the right places. Tad more snug in front than I remember, but if I had to grow, might as well be in the junk.

  I give the elastic one last test as the producer signals that I’m up. Spider-Man gives me a fist bump. Thor smacks my ass. They’re the last two bachelors going up on the block after me in tonight’s superhero-themed auction.

  There are some who might say Tarzan isn’t a superhero, but Jane would beg to differ.

  And I fucking own this costume.

  Plus, if no one else bids on me, my Nana’s right up front, ready to throw down the hundred bucks I slipped her before the show.

  I’m hoping for a little higher than that though. Batman just went for a cool five grand.

  Batman was a dick, which I assume my Nana didn’t know when she started the bidding on him. A grade-A, condescending asshat who thought just because he had a few million bucks in the bank, he could call people gay like that’s an insult and take a metaphorical shit on my favorite books.

  I fucking want to beat Batman. Reminds me of my regional manager, except richer and more tolerant of bachelor auctions.

  Pretty sure I’ve never dated Batman’s daughter though. Big difference there.

  “Ladies,” local anchorwoman Nancy Houlihan says into the microphone onstage, “next up is…”

  She pauses, the spotlight criss-crosses the stage, and a drum rolls. All goes silent, the light stops on my doorway entrance to the stage, and Nancy crows, “Tarzan!”

  My music starts—does anything say jungle man quite like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight?” Not if you have half a sense of humor, it doesn’t—and I put all my swagger into walking out that door to the whoops and hollers of the fancy crowd. I might not have the cash most of these guys have, but I’ve never considered a bank account to be the true measure of a man.

  Nancy’s on the far side of the stage at the microphone, watching while I make my way to the center, grinding and gyrating and feeding off the energy of the crowd.

  At the front table, Nana’s covering her eyes, and it’s all I can do to keep from cracking up.

  Am I a sexy beast? Sure.

  Do I know how to give the ladies what they want? Damn straight.

  But a bachelor auction? I’m a little more than just my meat, thank you very much. Also, I’ve read over eighty bachelor auction romances. I know how this story is supposed to end, which is why I almost said no.

  Given how much shit my boss has been giving me about his perception of my personal life interfering with smooth operations at the library, too—and that whole thing with his daughter—I probably should’ve said no.

  However, Nancy reached out to me through my blog and said the magic words—“All proceeds are going toward literacy”—so here I am, and I’m damn well going to get as much money for my sexy ass as I can. I shake my booty, I point at the women in the audience, I wink, I smile, and I get my groove on, squatting to the floor and thrusting to some “a-weema-weh.”

  Nancy and my Nana might be the only two women in the room unaffected.

  Just because I don’t take myself too seriously doesn’t mean I can’t give a good show.

  The music keeps playing, but it lightens as Nancy steps to the mic. “Ladies, meet Tarzan. He’s six-two, one hundred eighty pounds, and when he’s not swinging vine to vine to save Jane in the jungle, he likes to—”

  “One thousand dollars!” A brunette in a killer red dress leaps out of her seat at a table midway back in the banquet hall and waves her paddle.

  Holy shit.

  Bidding hasn’t even started, and we’ve already surpassed Nana’s budget. I
cock a finger at the brunette, wink and fire, and a Marilyn Monroe lookalike in the corner flings her paddle in the air.

  “Fifteen hundred!”

  “Two grand!”

  I make eye contact with the strawberry blonde at table seventeen, and hello.

  There’s something fierce about her. She’s not leaping out of her seat like the brunette, Marilyn Monroe, or the little old grandma in the back who just stole a mic to offer up seven grand and her pet poodle.

  Seven grand? And what’s a literacy foundation going to do with a poodle?

  “You keep your hands off my grandson, Mabel!” Nana yells.

  “Suck it, you old hag,” Mabel yells back.

  I point Nana to sit down, then do a slow turn, pausing to show the audience my ass while I flex my arms and shoulders. Am I whoring out my body?

  Yes.

  Do I care?

  Fuck, no. It’s for a good cause. Even my boss—whose daughter is now dating a pediatrician—can’t argue with raising money for literacy.

  Bonus if the winning bidder and I click, but if we don’t, she’ll still have a night to remember. With all our clothes on. I might be nothing more than a librarian in a loincloth, but I do have some standards.

  “Ten grand.”

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen again. She’s got a death grip on her paddle and her voice is firm, but there’s something in her expression that says this isn’t where she wants to be.

  Like she’s out of her element, but she has a goal, and she’s going to get it, even if it’s uncomfortable.

  And she just doubled Batman’s final price. I could kiss her for that alone.

  I’m distracted by a high-pitched whistle and a “Shake it, baby!”

  The music switches to an old song from my grad school stripping days. I tip my head back and laugh. Nancy cocks her own finger gun at me—the lady did her research well—and goes back to fielding bids. I dip into another grind, rub my hands down my chest and play with the band on my loincloth.

  “Fifteen grand!” That from the brunette who jumped the gun on the bidding.

  “Twenty!” Holy shit, Marilyn Monroe’s serious.

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen surges to her feet. “Fifty thousand dollars!”

  Fifty what?

  Holy fuck.

  The music screeches to a stop. I stop. Nancy stops.

  She bats her fake eyelashes at the strawberry blonde. Not coy, like she’s hitting on the highest bidder. But like she just forgot how to talk and she’s stalling for time.

  She visibly swallows, which is more than I’m currently capable of doing. “Fifty thousand dollars?” Nancy repeats.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” the strawberry blonde confirms with a waver in her voice.

  Fuck me.

  This isn’t bachelor auction money. This is gigolo money. Or…worse.

  I know that book too. And at least a dozen variations.

  Nana looks at me as though she, too, suspects this is bang her and knock her up money. Or I want to be your sugar mama money. Or possibly I need to take you into a secret lab for official government research money.

  I read a lot. Don’t judge.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Nancy says. “Going once…”

  I stare at the strawberry blonde.

  She stares back, not blinking, but not nearly as confident as she was when the bidding was still in the four figures. There’s something about that determination in her gaze—there’s a story there.

  An intriguing story. One I’m surprisingly interested in hearing. Fifty grand? For me? I’m a catch, but that’s almost as much as I make in a year.

  “Going twice…”

  “One hundred thousand dollars!”

  A new voice rings out from the back doorway. Gasps and whispers of “Who is that?” echo under the sparkling chandeliers.

  I crane my neck, but she’s backlit, and all I can see is a shapely figure and a curly head of hair.

  The strawberry blonde at table seventeen drops her paddle, eyes flared, lips parted like someone just stole her baby unicorn.

  I might be wearing a similar expression.

  Because what the fuck is expected of a guy who goes for a hundred grand?

  Nana’s gaping at me.

  Apparently she doesn’t know either, but then she starts grinning like she’s already counting new great-grandbabies.

  “One hundred thousand dollars,” Nancy repeats faintly. “Do I hear one-fifty?”

  Silence.

  “One hundred thousand. Going once…” Nancy calls.

  The strawberry blonde quietly sinks into her seat.

  “Going twice…”

  A hundred grand.

  Holy fuck. Batman can blow me.

  “Sold! To…the lady in the doorway for one hundred thousand dollars!”

  I put on a smile and move to the side of the stage as my purchaser swings her hips through the tables. The strawberry blonde at table seventeen is staring down at her program, and I get the oddest feeling in my chest.

  Like something bigger than a hundred grand could’ve happened.

  2

  Parker Elliott (aka Recovering Dweeb Desperately Seeking a Fake Fiancée)

  I used to think rock bottom was that moment when I convinced a seedy-looking middle-aged couple at the bus stop just over the state border to pretend to be my parents and sign off on my marriage license to Randy Pickle on our senior skip day in high school. You can’t get much lower than eloping to Connecticut a week before graduation with the guy voted most likely to pick his nose while debating with himself over whether Star Wars or Star Trek was the better franchise.

  At seventeen, after four years of being the pimpled, brace-faced, bespeckled dweeboid of Julian Oakland High, I figured marrying Randy was as good as I’d ever get. And he probably thought the same of me.

  He was sweet enough, but totally clueless when it came to women. During our brief marriage, his nose got more action than I did. Not that I knew any better. And judging by the way he recoiled in panic when I took my clothes off, I can say with absolute certainty that seeing me naked scarred him for life.

  Which kinda scarred me for life too.

  And which I also didn’t know wasn’t normal.

  Still, given the state of my life upon high school graduation, I figured the only place I could go was up.

  Right?

  Wrong.

  Up would be confidently strolling into my high school reunion next month in a killer dress and heels, alone, unashamed, and fabulous. Dropping little tidbits about my enviable fabulous life.

  Why, yes, I am a vice president at the country’s fastest-growing organic grocery store chain.

  My delicious Latin lover couldn’t make it because he was called in to do emergency neurosurgery on—oh, I’m sorry, in the interest of national security, I’m not authorized to say who.

  Of course they’re real.

  Reality, though, is not on my side. My boobs are real, but D’s on a 36-inch underband look more like lemons than grapefruits. Also, it’s possible my problem is less in my breasts and more in my tendency to compare them to sour fruit. What guy wants to fondle a lemon?

  Correction: What normal, healthy, attractive man wants to fondle a lemon?

  Definitely not my usual type.

  My last lover was Latin, but only if you consider a lover to be someone who makes more passes at his clam chowder than he does at his date, which, no, is not a euphemism. And the closest I have to a killer dress is the outfit I was wearing when this guy in line in front of me at the coffee shop dropped dead of a heart attack last year.

  And yes, the firefighter who shoved me out of line to start CPR was utterly charming and adorable, but timing, people. Timing. A man was dead.

  Now, my reunion is three weeks away, the stars have not aligned, and I need some serious arm candy.

  Which is why I’m loitering in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental Friday night, an hour after bein
g outbid on Tarzan at the superhero-themed bachelor auction, waiting for him to leave so I can proposition him.

  This isn’t desperation.

  It’s a tactical strategy to get me through Hell: Revisited, which I would bail on in an instant if my boss hadn’t asked me to go and schmooze one specific former classmate who just happens to now own the nation’s largest experimental indoor hops farm.

  Fucking Randy Pickle and his fucking Pickle Hops.

  Okay, fine.

  This is desperation. But organic beer—and my continued employment—is a good cause. So is literacy. And since I caught my boss having sex with his girlfriend in his office, you’re damn right I blackmailed him for money to buy myself a hot date for my reunion.

  Wait, that didn’t come out right. I’m not usually a blackmailer. And my boss doesn’t always bang his—okay, yes, actually, he does, but that’s not the point.

  The point is, if I’d known some redheaded bombshell shoehorned into a rockin’ tinfoil dress was going to show up with a hundred thousand freaking dollars to steal the best superhero of the night, I would’ve asked for a bigger budget.

  Crap.

  Still not helping my self-respect here.

  But I don’t care anymore because there’s Tarzan, strolling out of the elevator banks.

  I perk up, my nipples perk up, and my determination goes into hyperdrive.

  He’s ditched the loincloth—dammit—in favor of butter-soft denim gift-wrapping his long, muscular legs and that package that was barely contained in his stage clothes. No more glimpses of his eight-pack either. It’s covered by a casual green T-shirt that hugs his pecs and is probably restricting blood flow to his biceps.