Page 44 of Book People

It sounds like an invitation to something more and it’s not.

But I try not to think about that as I turn and guide him up to my flat.

Chapter Twelve

Tonight then. Keep your window open.

H

SEBASTIAN

I follow Miss Jones up the narrow set of stairs, ignoring the part of me that’s busily screaming that this is a very stupid decision.

It’s not a stupid decision. Not at all.

I’ve merely come to get my great-grandfather’s letters. I need to see them and I thought it was pointless waiting for Miss Jones to deliver them back to me.

I thought about it all afternoon and eventually decided that I was attaching far too much importance to what essentially is mere physical attraction. So what that she’s beautiful and I want her? And, yes, I told her this. So what? Yes, the kiss was a slip-up, but today will be different, because today I’mnotgoing to stay.

I’m going to get the letters from her and then I’ll leave.

I didn’t expect to walk in on a book-club session, but all I could think when all those eyes turned in my direction was thatI’d never seen so many people inside a bookshop before. I never have that many in mine, not even on busy days.

They were all laughing too, all smiling, all enjoying themselves.

In the space of two months she’s created a little community of book lovers right here in her shop, and while part of me is annoyed about it, I also can’t help but respect it.

She knows her market and she knows her books, and I had first-hand experience of that today after Mr Parsons finally moved from the chair having read half ofColours. He didn’t say a word. He merely handed me his credit card and, after I’d rung it up, walked out holding the book, still reading.

I couldn’t have predicted that and it makes me wonder if what I’ve been doing all these years has been wrong. Oh, I still sell books, but it’s getting harder and harder to make those sales as the demands on people’s time keep growing and become ever more varied. I don’t have a newsletter, for example, and I don’t do social media. I don’t have ‘event evenings’. I’ve always thought those kinds of things were stunts, that they weren’t really about the books in the end. Because that’s what it’s all about, after all. Books. They should sell themselves – or at least, they used to.

Not now. Hence me reviving the festival.

I walk up the stairs behind Miss Jones and she opens the door to her flat.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but when I take a step inside, I find myself in a small space filled with clutter. A little couch with some patterned throws over it. A battered wooden coffee table covered in papers and rugs on the wooden floor. A galley kitchen painted turquoise, with bright tiling and colourful mugs and mismatched plates stacked haphazardly on the draining board.

A little lamp on a side table near the couch has a pink scarf over the top of it and glows with muted warm light. It’s a fire hazard, obviously, but I can’t deny it makes the whole place feel . . . warm and homey.

Miss Jones fusses around collecting mugs from the coffee table and other dishes, her cheeks pink. Muttering apologies for the dreadful ‘mess’.

Yes, it is a mess. But I don’t mind it. Somehow it feels right for her.

She dumps the mugs on the kitchen counter and turns, folding her arms. ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’

There’s a wary look on her face and I don’t like it. I want her to smile at me instead. Then again, I haven’t earned the right to a smile and I know it, not after that murmured conversation back in my shop.

I keep making mistakes with her, and I should know better. I should have known, for example, that she’d push back about the sex. She’s a stubborn woman and it turns out she’s not shy about what she wants. Me.

It’s tempting, so tempting to give her what she wants, what webothwant, but I can’t. I can’t start down that path, even knowing she doesn’t want a relationship. Even knowing that she’s okay with one night.

Resistance and control are all that separates me from the addictive tendencies of my father and grandfather, and I can’t compromise on that.

Because what I told her was true.

It would never be just sex with us and I can’t have it be anything more.

‘I came for the letters,’ I say. ‘I need to look at them.’

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