Page 21 of The Battle of the Bookshops
His trouble was he had been too long without a relationship, he told himself. He had not wanted to complicate his life in New York with women—or, at least, not with anything serious. No, the last thing he wanted was the distraction of having a woman in his life—not least one who, in any case, loathed and despised him, understandably enough. What on earth was he expecting from her?He needed to get a grip, to get the new business onto an even keel, to prove to his family—especially his father—that he was worthy of their faith in him. That had to be his only focus. The rest was just dreams and fantasies.
Chatting over lunch a few hours later, Jules and Flo with toasted cheese sandwiches and Charlie with a bento box he had brought with him filled with pasta salad, Charlie brought the two women up to speed.
“Okay, so, find of the morning is this early set of Dickens,” he enthused. “Not first editions, obvs—they were originally serialized in magazines anyhow, of course—but it’s a sick-looking stack of books. Leather bound. Handsome. Very covetable.”
Jules perked up. “Hundreds?” she asked hopefully.
“Easy,” said Charlie. “Maybe more,” he added. “Probably to an interior designer working for a client with deep pockets. Good-looking, readable books always sell.”
“I know we’ve asked you to clear the whole floor if you can,” Jules explained, “but that doesn’t mean necessarily that we will ditch the antiquarian books angle altogether. It’s one of our main points of difference with Portneath Books, and I’d love to show we can have an income stream they are not exploiting themselves.”
“So, um, what if I created enough income to pay me—or someone else—a tiny salary?” Charlie suggested shyly.
“Totally worth considering,” said Jules. “Let’s get some stock shifted, see where we are, and then decide whether to get you actively buying as well as selling. We could look at buying from BookFinder.com for a start, if you can identify something we can make a margin on. Probably more promisingly, we could even get in touch with some house clearance companies and find stock from there. Not too much, mind. We don’t have the storage, as you know,” she went on. “That’s retail space we need to be workinghard for us, but—if it’s primarily online—we could be trading secondhand books out of some warehouse space nearby. Everything could be logged and cataloged. You’re setting up a system to do that anyhow...”
“Coolamundo,” said Charlie, through a mouthful of pasta. “Watch this space.”
In truth, Jules didn’t really think the secondhand bookselling idea was going to make enough of a difference to avoid closure, but she had other ideas up her sleeve and definitely wasn’t going to go down without a hell of a fight.
She kept remembering, with a shudder, Roman’s expression when he came clean about his plans the previous night. The hard look in his mesmerizingly blue eyes: laughing and charming normally, they had been suddenly ruthless and cold. Shark eyes. Like he said, it was nothing personal; it wasn’t, or so he claimed, even linked to the feud between the two families. It was “just business.”
Spring continued with its typical blustery showers and sunshine. The fat, furry buds on the magnolia stellata in Flo’s courtyard garden burst into masses of pure white flowers almost overnight, and Finn’s deli down the road started putting galvanized buckets of tightly bunched and papery narcissi on the cobbled pavement outside the shop.
Flo’s tired old bones knitted at last. She had first her leg cast and then, finally, her arm cast removed, revealing limbs that were distressingly stiff and weak. It had taken a handsome young physiotherapist at Portneath Hospital to flirt gently with Flo before she could be persuaded to try a walking stick. With it, Jules could tell she felt more secure on her feet, but she couldn’t help watching her aunt anxiously, terrified she would fall again, perhaps when Jules was not around to help her. Flo, on the other hand, was chipper: she was able, after a fashion, to get back up the stairs to her ownbed, and trade, despite their omnipresent competitor, was picking up as tourists flooded back into the town over the Easter holidays.
“You look pasty,” Flo berated Jules as she came out of the office to put the kettle on midmorning. “Never mind tea, take a proper break! Get outside into the fresh air for a bit, why don’t you?”
“Too tired,” complained Jules, yawning.
“You’ll feel better for it, I guarantee you. Go and have a walk on the beach, that’ll blow the cobwebs away. Take my mac, mind, it looks as if it could rain.”
“I’ve got the Gardners delivery coming in this morning,” Jules replied. “You know you can’t manage those enormous heavy boxes they send. And there’s a pallet coming from Hachette too, that remaindered stock I told you about.”
“Charlie is upstairs,” said Flo. “He’s strong. We’ll manage just fine. Now go. I don’t want to see you for an hour at least.”
Jules considered. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Some fresh air would probably nip this headache in the bud, and she hadn’t once managed to make it down to her favorite walk along the beach since she arrived.
It was only when she got out to the harbor that the wind, blowing in from the sea, hit her full force, tugging at her hair and whipping it across her face. She began to wish she had taken up the offer of a coat. It wasn’t worth going back and risking getting drawn into work again, though. Aunt Flo was right, she had been spending too long huddled in a gloomy office. Clouds were scudding across the sky, periodically blotting out the lemon-yellow sun, which gave little warmth. Jules picked her way down the uneven stone steps set into the harbor wall, jumping off the last two to land on the shifting shingle of the beach. At this time of day, it was possible to walk across the shingle all the way to the cliffs at the east of the town, and Jules was soon marching, reveling in being a little out ofbreath, marveling at the shifting shadows of the clouds reflected on the surface of the water, which was being whipped into foamy crests. The wind was at her back now, tugging and tussling, driving her on, and in what felt like no time, she was out beyond the town, alone except for the sea birds, wheeling above or bobbing on the sea, their lonely cries the only sound besides the hypnotic suck and crash of the waves.
Jules glanced at her watch and saw, with mild concern, it was later than she had thought. Turning to head back the way she had come, she was taken aback to see the scraps of white clouds in the pale blue sky to the west had given way to heavy purple rain clouds bearing down on the coastline ahead of her. The sun still shone, casting a low golden light that made lunchtime feel like evening, but Jules could see a gray blur of rain, like a distant swarm of bees, falling on the headland perhaps a quarter of a mile in front of her and heading her way. As she walked, pushing forward against the wind, a vivid rainbow and then another—a double arch—materialized out of the mist. With one end on the headland and the other rising up out of the sea, the glorious double band of color was mesmerizing, and Jules cursed herself for not remembering her phone: she could have done some #blessed schtick for the Capelthorne’s Insta account, which would have been a welcome tick on her to-do list. And then she was glad she didn’t have it. This marvel was for her and her alone—all the more precious for not being shared.
It was a shame the old wives’ tale about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow wasn’t true, though.
Quicker than she thought possible, the rain bearing down on her arrived. One moment she was just doing battle with the wind; the next moment it felt like someone had directed a cold-water showerhead at her face. The raindrops were huge, freezing, and immediately drenching. She was caught too far from home forthere to be any point making a run for it or even walking with her head down. Instead, Jules stood for a long moment, tipping her head back, eyes shut, arms out to the side, and embraced the elements. If that wasn’t a lesson in facing your troubles head-on, she didn’t know what was.
The downpour was so fierce and sudden, rain was running down the center of the road by the time she left the beach, and the cloudburst had entirely cleared the streets of tourists. Jules pushed open the door, hopeful a few visitors might have ducked into the shop for cover and stayed to buy something. What she found instead was Charlie and Flo sitting together and splitting their sides with hilarity. Flo was doubled over her stick laughing silently, with tears of mirth streaming from her eyes. Charlie was making heroic efforts to stop, but going into fresh paroxysms whenever he caught Flo’s eye.
“What?” asked Jules, smiling at the sight of them both and pushing her dripping hair back off her face.
Charlie flapped his hands helplessly and then, after several attempts, straightened up and began to explain, but then Flo interrupted. “Just customers being ridiculous,” she said, waving it away. “They never cease to entertain. You are completely soaked, child,” she went on. “You’ll catch your death. Why don’t you run upstairs and have a hot bath. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
“I’m fine,” said Jules, raking her wet hair with her fingers. “Did those deliveries come in?”
“Yup,” said Charlie. “I put them in the stockroom, is that okay?”
“Perfect,” said Jules, too intrigued to see her remaindered stock to follow her aunt’s instructions about a hot bath.
Twenty minutes later, she was delightedly bringing stacks of books into the front of the shop.
