Page 175 of Will Bark for Pizza
How many people were waiting to meet me? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred?
After today, my face would be plastered on social media. My identity would no longer be a secret.
As nervous as I was, I had to go through with this. The book club had worked tirelessly these past several weeks. So had my family, building the bookshelves so the store could be fully open today.
I still wasn’t convinced I was a household name in the book world, but Diana Davenport had made enough of a dent that she just might help save a very important bookstore. One that meant a great deal to so many in Bluebell Springs.
Anxiety or no anxiety, I had to be brave.
“Where’s Husker?”
“Beckett’s got him.”
“He was here?”
Disappointment hit hard, threatening to worm its way into my already rampant fears of the day. Why did Beckett stop by to pick up Husker but didn’t even saygood luckto me?
“Turn that damn frown upside down, babe. Your lovesick puppy came looking for you.Ichased him off.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to focus right now. And if I let him near you in this dress, it’d already be on the floor.” She fidgeted with my hair a little more, meeting mygaze in the mirror. A wicked smile spread across her bright red lips. “And anticipation makes for crazy good sex later.”
My cheeks flushed, but I didn’t try to hide the reaction. Lila knew nearly everything now. In fact, she helped me sneak over to Beckett’s cabin a couple of times since her arrival so we could have some alone time. I claimed it helped me relax, but we both knew I wasn’t telling the full truth.
I wasn’t just having a little friends-with-benefits fun with the man.
I wasn’t just falling for him.
When it came to Beckett Campbell, I was pretty sure I was all the way in love with him.
That scared the ever-loving shit out of me, of course. But I was working through the panic. One of these days, when things were more settled and the fate of the bookstore was stable, I might even be brave enough to tell him. Brave enough to take a chance on love again.
“You ready to go?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be for something I swore I’d never do.” No matter what happened today, there was no turning back. On the way out the door, I caught the faintest whiff of Mom’s floral perfume. Whether imagined or real, I accepted it as the good omen I so desperately needed. “Let’s go before I try to run away.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
BECKETT
“You did good, Beckett,”Aspen said, scanning the bookstore apartment one last time for any final detail we may have missed.
“Really damn good,” Alyssa agreed, fluffing one of the throw pillows for the cozy corner sectional. Some color Aspen calleddusty rose.
“Couldn’t have done it without some help.”
“If Kira doesn’t beg you to marry her and give her babies when she sees this, there’s no hope for you,” Alyssa added.
“That good, huh?” I said on a chuckle.
“This has been her dream since she was nine,” Aspen explained. “I don’t think she figured out she wanted to be a writer until college, but she always talked about it when she was a kid. I’m sorry to say you’ve probably set the bar pretty high for yourself. You’ll have a hard time topping this.”
The room sparkled with all the twinkle lights alongthe ceiling and tucked into the custom bookshelves, which were painted white, at Lila’s insistence, and filled mostly with decorative items. Filling them with books, I was informed, was something Kira would want to do.
“The flowers aren’t too much, are they?” I asked of the enormous bouquet of local wildflowers resting on the L-shaped writing desk near the window. A desk I custom built. I considered red roses, but I felt those might send too strong a message. Even if I was planning to ask her to make what had been growing between us official.
“The flowers are perfect,” Aspen reassured me.
