Page 9 of The Holiday Grump
Istared into a pair of twinkling brown eyes, trying to ignore the itchy warmth under my collar. I told myself I wasn’t that curious. I’d let her use the toilet and borrow the towel and whatever the fuck she needed to be okay. This was all for public health, to stop her from peeing in bottles. Could women even do that?
There was no need to know the secrets of a woman who was here for a few weeks to sell tinsel. Not unless she was in danger and those secrets were about to rock up on my doorstep.
But I must have managed to get a little more beer in me than I usually did because I found it harder to ignore the niggling questions.Wasshe in danger? Why couldn’t she return to her hometown? My sister would have regarded this as a prime opportunity for gathering information. Achance to be neighborly. Felicity had a lot of euphemisms for gossip.
I took a breath, weighing my words. “If I read at home, nobody brings me food or beer.”
“You weren’t even drinking the beer. You were nursing it like it was on death’s door.”
“Nice simile.”
She stuffed the towel into her pocket even though it didn’t fit and shot me a look. “Nice English degree.”
She had me there.
“Yeah, it’s pretty useless,” I admitted, following her down the stairs.
“Just like trivia, eh?” Noelle threw me a look over her shoulder before heading for the door, turning sideways to glide between two shelves as if the gap was too narrow to walk through normally.
I turned off the lights and felt my way out of the shop. I’d had years of practice navigating its tight corners. Everything about this room felt familiar. So familiar that I’d long ago stopped wondering what it looked like to other people.
Was it too crowded in here? It was a bookstore, not a gallery. Surely having a wide selection of books was preferable to empty shelves or pretentious display tables. The lack of floor space was my go-to excuse for not being able to host signings or other tedious events. Instead, I stocked all the hard-to-find gems.
“Oh no!” The rumble of falling books followed Noelle’s panicked voice.
I rushed to her and found her by the front door, scrambling up from under a pile of Russian classics. I’d secured the shelf to the wall at the top, but she’d somehowmanaged to knock the bottom, causing the books to tumble down.
She got up to her knees and tried to straighten the shelf. “Sorry! I tripped on something.”
I could barely see her in the faint glow of streetlights and Christmas lights behind the window. No wonder she’d tripped. Why had I turned off the lights?
Berating myself, I helped her to her feet, then picked up a fallen Dostoevsky. She busied herself picking up the rest of the books, setting them back on the shelf, and turning each slightly to face the door.
“That’s okay. I don’t think they were that strategically placed.”
“Tolstoy,” she said, staring at a copy ofAnna Karenina. “Do you sell anything… recent? Maybe romance?”
“Thatisa romance.”
She turned the book in her hands, giving me a dubious look. “Does it have a happy ending?”
“She throws herself under a train.”
She gave me a long, assessing look. “So not a romance.”
I held back a scoff. “I focus on collectors’ items.”
“I know lots of people who collect romance. Special editions and all that.”
“Special editions? What do they do? Put gold foil on the guy’s nipples?”
She put down the Tolstoy, staring at me in amused disbelief. “Have you seen a romance book lately?”
I folded my arms. “I stock some for the crochet club ladies, but they won’t touch the cartoon covers. Needs to have abs or something.”
She cocked her head, grinning. “Well… abs are nice. But Ilike the other styles, too. I can give you a list of my favorites if you want to give them a try?” She scanned the room. “But you might have to make some room first. Sell a few books or something? That brown bookshelf at the window blocks the view into the store. And why is it painted brown? It looks like it’s wooden.”
“You don’t like my shelf?”
