Page 1 of Book People

Chapter One

I confess that I did not think much of you at first. I thought you were arrogant enough to shame the Devil. How wrong I was!

C

KATE

He’s doing it again.

I scowl across the narrow, cobbled street at the window of Blackwood Books, the bookshop directly opposite mine. Today the owner – the insufferably named Sebastian Blackwood – has clearly decided to make a big deal out of the latest Booker Prize winner. He’s got stacks of the book displayed prominently, along with excerpts of glowing reviews that he’s blown up and laminated, all arranged around some giant red letters that say ‘Booker Prize Winner’.

There are no exclamation marks after ‘Winner’, of course. It’s as if he’s making a point that there’s no need to shout. Yet his display practically screams: ‘Booker Prize winner! So much better than other books!Especiallythe books across the street!’

I may be projecting, but I’m sure he’s doing it to spite me, and, look, I’ve got good reason to suspect that’s what’s going on.

It’s been six months since I moved to Wychtree – the most picture-perfect of English villages, with a river on one side and woods on the other – and I opened Portable Magic four months later (why, yes, the namedidcome from a quote by the great Stephen King about books being ‘a uniquely portable magic’), and Sebastian Blackwood has willingly talked to me exactly zero times. You’d think that, since he owns the only other bookshop here, he’d have been thrilled to have another book person to talk to, but no. Apparently not.

I did try to introduce myself before I opened, because I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to say hi and, yes, I know I’m opening a bookshop opposite yours, and you could see me as competition, but I’m not. I know Wychtree is small, but people read different things and it should be plenty big enough to support two bookshops – at least I hope it will. We’re aiming at different markets, and the people who shop at Blackwood Books aren’t the same as the people who shop at Portable Magic, etcetera, etcetera.

Except he didn’t want a bar of it. Every time I went into his shop, he was apparently ‘very busy’, either with customers (fair) or ‘putting out stock’ (if you could call fiddling around intensely on his computer putting out stock).

Every. Single. Time.

I kept trying, because I didn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot. I even resorted to cheery notes slipped under his shop’s door. But he ignored those too, so in the end I gave up.

I assume it’s the competition thing, and he’s pissed off I’m here. Honestly, I get it. But he could at least talk to me about it, instead of giving me the cold shoulder or a being passive-aggressive dick with his shop window.

Turning away from all his Booker Prize nonsense, I glance over at my window instead. I spent most of yesterday arranging a nice little collection of romance novels, along with boxes of chocolates (the boxes, not the chocolates – I ate the chocolates) and mugs of fake tea, and cushions and blankets, and a cheerful, bright sign that says: ‘Indulge in some “me time”!’

Yes, there’s an exclamation mark. It’s jaunty.

I actually get a lot of pleasure out of doing shop displays. I find planning and arranging them restful. It’s a mindfulness thing, and I was pleased with what I’d done yesterday, but now I’m frowning at it and second-guessing myself.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have added the exclamation mark. Perhaps it makes the display look low-brow and trashy.

I growl under my breath, because how annoying to even think that, and all because of that ‘better than you’ window display across the street.

The bloody man did the same thing last week too, when I’d put out some cosy mysteries, countering with a lot of weighty true-crime nonfiction and averyserious sign that said – pointedly, I felt – ‘TRUECrime’. As if the caps on the word ‘true’ suggests that a cosy mystery is somehow not as worthy because it’s made up, and usually has an animal in it. Then, a week before that, I’d put a lot of effort into a special display for a new shipment of graphic novels. A day later, he’d basically turned his front window into a paean to the classics and ‘Books everyone should read in their lifetime’.

And I’m sure he’d underlined the word ‘Books’.

I shouldn’t take it personally, but being ignored when you’re only trying to introduce yourself and be nice is insulting. Especially when I’m notactuallyhis competition. His shop is very literary and high-brow, and he has a collection of rare books too, so it’s atotallydifferent market to mine. I’m all about escapist reads, thrilling thrillers and romantic romances.Cosies and fantasies and science fiction. Also a bit of nonfiction, with family-friendly cookbooks, down-to-earth biographies of famous sports people, and a few travel and home-and-garden, coffee-table-type books.

Ithasto work and it will.

Anyway, good thoughts, good thoughts.

I came to Wychtree to find my joy again after my mother’s death and four years in an awful relationship, and being angry isnotwhat I want.

Happy is what I want to be. Happy and optimistic, and loving each day because I’m living my dream.

Yet as I turn away from my shop window, I can’t help glancing reflexively at his again, and it’s terrible timing, because suddenly his tall figure comes into view. He’s leaning over to delicately place another copy of the Booker book on an already towering stack, and there must be something in the air because, with an abrupt turn of his head, he glances out the windowstraightat me.

And, really, all this – ‘all this’ being him – would be so much easier to deal with if it wasn’t for one thing: Sebastian Blackwood, snob extraordinaire, ishot. Legitimately, incontrovertibly, and supremely annoyingly hot.

He’s tall – I’ve always had a thing for tall men – and he wears his black hair cut ruthlessly short. His face is sharp and hawkish, and he has the bluest eyes this side of Paul Newman. Whenever they look at me, they’re always cold and distant, but sometimes . . . Sometimes, they’re not. Sometimes I’m certain I see sparks in them, though I’m not sure why. Not when he clearly doesn’t like me just as much as I don’t like him. Whatever, it’s not atallwhat I want, so I try to pretend those sparks aren’t there. Ignore the Paul Newman-blue eyes.

But despite the street being between us, I can see them now as his gaze meets mine, and for some inexplicable reason my face feels hot.

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