Page 37 of Book People

Then I try to sleep.

And don’t.

Chapter Ten

You are in my thoughts again. I cannot get rid of you. I am constantly angry that you are not mine.

H

SEBASTIAN

I’m trying very hard not to pay any attention to the shop across the road today. I need to ring various people about James Wyatt’s exit from the festival, but I want to confirm Lisa Underwood first. I can’t do that until I hear from Miss Jones.

I stand behind the counter, staring hard at my laptop screen, ostensibly checking my emails for anything festival-related. But in reality my attention is focused on the front window, which calls like a siren on a rock. Urging me to look through it to Portable Magic, see what Miss Jones is doing.

I resist. I have to resist. But the memory of how she tasted has caught in my head and I can’t forget it.

Sending her that text last night was a mistake, but I couldn’t sleep and I was angry. Angry with myself and my own weakness.Angry with her for being beautiful and sexy as hell, and taking up so much space in my head.

Angry that I don’t know what to do with myself except resist and keep on resisting.

Which, as it turns out, I am shit at.

Fuck the text. I shouldn’t have kissed her, that’s what I shouldn’t have done, but . . . She was looking at me with smoky eyes, her cheeks pink, knowing full well why she shouldn’t have been sitting that close to me. Knowing, yet not moving away. Instead she raised a hand to touch me and I knew if she did that would be it. So I caught her wrist before she could, her skin warm beneath my fingertips.

My Achilles heel. My kryptonite.

I shouldnothave leaned forward and taken her face between my hands and kissed her. That was a mistake and I told her so. Because now the taste of her is in my head and it’s there for good. Like sunshine. Summer days full of heat, and sweetness, and languorous, lazy desire. Strawberries and champagne. Ice cream at the end of a day at the beach.

I’m not sure how I managed to dredge up the will to pull away, yet somehow I did. But pulling away hasn’t made things any easier. I want more. I want everything. I want her naked on my bed, reaching for me with that smoky-eyed look on her face.

The bell above the door chimes, announcing a customer, and I realise that, despite my good intentions, I’m standing there, staring through the front window at Portable Magic. Watching Miss Jones’s figure move through the shop, shelving books.

Jesus. What’s happening to me?

I force myself to turn, to greet my customer, and it’s Gillian Marshall, another of my regulars. She’s in her seventies and a large woman in every way. Tall. Wide. With a certain . . . presence.

She and her banker husband bought a mouldering stately home just up the road from Wychtree, and she strides about the village, all very lady-of-the-manor, though she’s more oblivious than condescending.

I don’t mind Gillian. She’s mostly harmless. But she buys a lot of books for show and never reads any of them, and is always trying to badger me into stocking her self-published memoirs. She also always brings her wretched dog, which is the most ill-behaved golden Labrador I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. There’s a reason, after all, why I told Miss Jones no dogs in the bookshop.

‘Aloysius!’ Gillian bellows at the dog, who has followed her inside, because God forbid it should spend ten seconds out in the street alone. ‘Come!’

Aloysius doesn’t come. He’s gone off to the shelf of Art History books, sniffing at the place where he peed the last time he came in.

By Christ, if he pees again—

‘Sebastian!’ Gillian continues to bellow, ignoring the dog, who’s also ignoring her. ‘I hear you’re having a festival!’

I force a tight smile. ‘Mrs Marshall, good morning. Yes, that’s correct.’

She smiles at me, red-faced in her yellow mac, despite the fact that there’s nothing but blue sky outside. Gillian may be bluff and blunt, but there’s not one bad bone in her body. ‘Good show, good show.’ She puts one large hand on the counter. ‘Are you giving workshops by any chance?’

Oh God. I hope she isn’t going to say what I think she’s going to say.

‘Workshops?’ I ask carefully. ‘What kind of workshops?’

‘For writing, you know.’

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