Page 8 of Book People

I don’t want to reveal the extent of my shop’s losses. Dad was the main culprit, it’s true, but I don’t like what it says about me as a business owner. I want her to stop poaching on my territory, but she thinks this is a game, a battle of front windows, intellectualism versus the mainstream, and it’s not.

It’s my livelihood.

Someone approaches the counter and she allows her saccharine-sweet smile to linger on me for a moment longer before she directs her attention to her customer, a gangly adolescent boy with blue-dyed hair, wearing some complicated and elaborate harness around his shoulders.

The smile she directs at him is so warm and genuine that he blushes.

Suddenly I’m even more furious.

Furious that she should be so pretty. Furious that everyone likes her. Furious that I know exactly how long it’s been since a woman smiled at me like that. Furious that I don’t think I’veeverhad a woman smile at me like that.

I stand there fuming as she talks with the kid, exchanging a bit of banter and gently teasing him as he buys his little stack of manga. And I should probably leave. I’m in no fit state to speakto anyone – not even a woman I don’t like – when I’m in this kind of mood. But I don’t move.

When the boy finally walks away, she gives me an exasperated look. ‘What is it, exactly, Mr Blackwood, that is making you quite so angry about my shop?’

‘My falling sales,’ I blurt, unable to stop myself.

She blinks as though this is a shock to her. ‘Falling sales?’

‘Yes, falling sales,’ I bark. ‘What? Did you think there were no romance readers here until your little shop opened? Did you think people only started reading thrillers and mysteries when you miraculously came down from the heavens and waved your portable magic wand?’ I give her my coldest stare. ‘They were always here, those readers. And they used to order from Blackwood Books.’

She blinks again. Yes, this is clearly news to her.

Slowly she straightens and the shock fades from her eyes. The look she gives me now is as cool as the one I’m giving her. ‘Then perhaps you should have done more to keep them.’

It’s a little knife she’s got, but it slides in and wounds all the same. I stiffen. ‘I don’t run a bad business.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she agrees. ‘But you don’t run a warm, welcoming business either. You took for granted the customers you had, so don’t blame them if they wanted to go somewhere else where they’re not looked down upon.’

Another knife wound.

‘I don’t look down on anyone,’ I say. ‘Everyone should be able to read what they want. But Blackwood Books has a history and that history should be treated with honour and respect.’

Her grey eyes flash with temper and, like the cliché I’m rapidly becoming, I find her even prettier when she’s angry. ‘Are you saying that genre fiction is disrespectful?’

‘No.’ I uncross my arms and put both hands on the counter, leaning on them. ‘I’m saying that Blackwood Books is in ahistoric building. It’s a small local business, and you and your corporate nonsense are in danger of running it into the ground.’

She puts her hands on the counter too, and leans in, invading my personal space the way I invaded hers. She’s looking angrily up at me, not at all afraid that I’m so much taller and broader than she is. ‘Corporate nonsense? Next you’ll be comparing me to Amazon and proclaiming that the death of the independent bookseller is nigh.’

‘It is, Miss Jones,’ I bite out, staring down into her pretty eyes. ‘It is nigher than you think.’

We stare furiously at each other and only then do I realise that her eyes are almost crystalline, lighter in the centre, with a darker ring of charcoal around the outside. Her skin is smooth and velvety, and slightly flushed, and she smells as sweet as she looks. Her mouth is slightly open and her lips are full and soft-looking.

I want to take a bite right out of them.

I want to take a bite right out of her.

‘Um,’ an adolescent voice says from behind me. ‘Maybe you two should get a room?’

I curse under my breath and shove myself away.

Then I turn and leave that hellhole without another word.

Chapter Three

I really shouldn’t be telling you these things. It’s far too forward.

C

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