Page 43 of Claim to Fame

"Is this quirky enough for you?” he asked as the cat passed, hissing at Ethan on his way by.

“This is perfect!” Hannah gushed, dropping his hand to run her fingers over a pretty hardcover with foil details.

“Ethan!” a tall man with a bushy beard of curly red and gray hair appeared around a row of bookshelves. He set down the stack of books he carried and clasped Ethan’s hand in a firm shake. “How did Julie like those Sally the Dog books?”

“She loves them,” he said, his eyes lighting up in a way that seemed to be reserved for his granddaughter. “Especially the one on the farm.”

The tall man smiled. “If she likes farm books, I just got in a pop-up book she’ll love.”

Ethan started to follow him down an aisle, but hesitated, glancing back at Hannah. “Go,” she said, shooing him away. “I can look by myself.”

He nodded, sending her a soft, secret smile, before he followed the man to the children’s area in the back corner. Hannah watched for a moment as the cat wove between their legs, flopping on the pile of cushions with an imperious glare at Ethan, and the bookseller began pulling books off the shelves. Her stomach swooped when Ethan opened the cover of one and threw his head back, laughing, then glanced back to find her, holding up the book to show her the giant pop-up cow face from across the shop.

She watched a moment longer, until Ethan was fully engrossed in the business of choosing new books for his granddaughter, before she wandered off in search of her favorite part of any bookstore: the romance section.

Hannah had always believed you could tell a lot about a bookstore by its romance section. Too few romances and the owners were literary elitists—or prudes. But Plot Twist’s romance section was the stuff of dreams. An entire long aisle of shelves, lined on both sides with weathered paperbacks and sturdy hardcovers. There were Harlequins in a short, uniform line and larger contemporary romances with bright covers, historical romances with breathtaking paintings of the couples embracing inside the front cover and paranormal romances filled with werewolves and vampires. A treasure trove if she’d ever seen one.

Hannah trailed her fingers over the spines, plucking books from the shelf as she went, until at last she found a small selection of erotic historical romances by AK Wild. She’d only ever listened to Wild’s books in audio, but faced with their painterly covers, the defiant heroines rendered in swirls of gold and red against medieval landscapes, she could hardly stop herself from buying a few.

She pulled her favorite,The Lady’s Knights, from the shelf and flipped open the front cover, gasping when she saw the two-page image she’d only ever seen in fuzzy photos on the internet. A copy ofThe Lady’s Knightswith the stepback was hard to find—only a few thousand had been produced before the book had been redesigned—but there, in a little bookshop in Rhode Island, Hannah had found one, and it was even more beautiful than she’d imagined.

“What’d you find?” Ethan asked, coming up behind her, a stack of children’s books under one arm.

She closed the cover of the book quickly to hide the scandalous scene in the stepback, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. Ethan wasn’t likely to judge her for reading romance, unlike some people she’d dated in the past, but she still wasn’t sure she was ready for him to know about her love of kinky historicals.

“A romance novel,” she said, tilting the cover towards him. “It’s one of my favorites.”

His eyes went wide, but only for a fraction of a second before they pulled low over his brow. He cleared his throat. “You’ve read it before?” he asked.

“Mmhmm. I’ve listened to the audiobook at least four times, but—”

Ethan dropped his stack of children’s books, cursing under his breath, and bent down to gather them back up. He kept his eyes trained on the books on the floor. She knelt down beside him and helped gather the books, passing him a hardcover collection of Curious George stories. He mumbled his thanks but still didn’t look at her.

“Are you going to be weird about this?”

“I’m not being weird,” he said as he got to his feet.

She sighed. “You are. I didn’t take you for one of those guys who can’t handle a woman reading a romance novel.”

“What?” His eyes flew to hers, but only for a moment before he looked away again. “I’m not.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

“I’m—” He paused, his nostrils flaring, and then deliberately turned to look her in the eye. “Didn’t know you were an audiobook reader, that’s all.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you think listening to audiobooks doesn’t count as reading.”

“Fuck no. Of course, it counts.”

“Then what is this reaction?” She waved her hand in his direction.

“No reaction,” he said, catching her hand in his. “Get the book.”

“Not if you’re going to be weird about it.”

“Get the book, city girl,” he repeated slowly, his voice low. And good lord, that tone did something to her.

“You should get one too,” she said, inching closer to him.

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