Page 15 of Book People

Mrs Abbot, looking extremely satisfied, exchanges a few more words with her before excusing herself and heading to the bar.

‘You can thank me later,’ Miss Jones murmurs, as she sips at her drink. ‘We have twenty people in our book club and they’ll all want to buy tickets.’

‘I am not having a romance panel,’ I force out from between gritted teeth. ‘And I am definitelynothaving bloody dogs in my shop.’

‘They won’t be at your bloody shop,’ she says. ‘They’ll be in mine. And so will the romance panel. And if you don’t want them, then you’ll have twenty less tickets for your festival, and twenty more for mine.’

She’s incorrigible.

She’s impossible.

I want to get up and walk away and never speak to her again.

I want to reach over the table, drag her into my lap, and kiss her senseless.

The two desires are so entirely at odds that I’m left paralysed, so I do nothing but sit there like a bloody idiot instead.

Then she does something even more egregious.

She leans forward, elbows on the table, her expression full of entreaty. ‘Look. We both want more customers and arguing about who stole what from whom and throwing accusations around isn’t helping either of us. We don’t like each other, fine, but we’re both adults. We’re both professionals. We could be helping each other’s businesses instead.’

She’s so very honest. There’s no guile to her, no guardedness. Nothing I can use as an excuse to push her away or rebuff her. If I told her to piss off now, which every part of me wants to do, I would definitely be the bad guy.

I would be the petulant child having a tantrum to her calm, measured adult. She is being the bigger person and I hate it.

It costs me to say it, but I know she’s right, so I force it out. ‘How?’

This time it’s worse, because this time the sparkle in her eyes isn’t for Mrs Abbot or one of her other customers that she charms the pants off.

This time the sparkle is for me.

‘We can have separate events,’ she says, glittering like a diamond. ‘I’ll do all the genre stuff and you do all the literary high-brow stuff. But we’ll get both kinds of readers coming to the event, and all the literary orders can go through you, and I’ll do the genre orders. I’d love to be involved in this and I don’t have the reach that you do, or the history. And, you know, genre readers do read literary books too. I can send them your way, and you can send literary readers who enjoy a good thriller or romance to me.’

It hits me right in the chest, that sparkle. Like a bullet.

She loves what she’s doing, I can see it in her eyes. It might have started as a dream she’s been chasing, but it means something to her and I have to concede that she’s put her all into her shop.

She’s drawn people to her and they like her; they like her books.

It’s a tough business, bookselling in general, and even tougher coming into a small village as a relative outsider. And I haven’t been welcoming. I’ve been actively hostile towards her, which isn’t fair of me.

Yes, she’s taken away some of my customers and I’m angry about it, but now she’s offering me an olive branch, and while part of me wants to refuse, I’d be a fool not to take it.

What she says about a shared festival sounds . . . good. For both of us.

How extremely irritating.

‘Fine.’ I hear the petulant note in my voice and don’t like it one bit. ‘But there will still be no dogs in my shop.’

She gives me a smile, a real one. Like the one she gave that adolescent boy in her ridiculous shop. Like the one she gives to her customers, as if she’s pleased to see them and couldn’t think of anything better than to have them in her place of business. Like I’ve given her a gift she hadn’t expected.

That hits me straight in the chest too.

‘Okay,’ she says. ‘No dogs for Mr Blackwood. So noted.’ She picks up her gin and tonic, sparkling away like a little star. ‘This is great. Let’s chat tomorrow about it and we can start to put some more plans in place.’

Her excitement should be infectious but all I feel now is hungry and it isn’t for food. I should be able to put it to one side the way I’ve always done, but it’s difficult with her. It’s going to be especially difficult if she’s going to involve herself in my festival.

I never dip my pen in the company ink – or the village ink, to be precise. It’s too difficult here. Especially when everyone knows that Blackwood men can’t keep a woman to save their lives. My great-grandfather’s wife left him. My grandfather’swife also left him. And I’m sure it was only pure chance that my mother died before she had the opportunity to leave my father.

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