It’s a quaint little shop with a limited selection, but I’ve found some real treasures over the last three years of shopping here.
The books are usually well-loved and overread, and you can practically feel the lives they’ve touched all over the pages.
I drag my fingers along the shelves, feeling the spines as though they can reach out and grab me back. And I climb through crowded stacks and around and into the back where Hilda keeps the historical romances.
A knight or a duke or a highlander is just what the literary doctor orders every once in a while.
I grab a particularly thick Regency romance off the shelf and start scanning the pages.
I smile to myself as I catch a couple sassy lines from the heroine, but suddenly, the hair stands up on the back of my neck.
I turn around quickly, expecting to find someone behind me, but the aisle is completely empty.
That’s weird.
I draw in my eyebrows, and I spend almost a full minute glancing at the shelves around me, waiting for someone to pop up.
If my mom knew about this, she’d be talking the metro PD into launching a full-fledged investigation.
I make a pact with myself to make sure I never mention it. Lord knows, Connie already has enough paranoia on her plate to last a freaking lifetime.
Finally, I look back down to my book, but before I can fall too deeply into it again, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
My stomach flips, and then I grimace.
Oh God. Did I really just get excited at the prospect of Cap bothering me again?
I obviously let Julie get too far inside my head.
In an effort to minimize how disgusted I can get with myself in one sitting, I leave the phone in my pocket. If they really need me, they’ll message again.
I’m only two pages farther when it buzzes again.
With a heavy sigh and a quick mental pep talk, I take the phone out of my pocket, close my eyes, and then peek one just barely open to see the name on the screen.
I’m surprised to find it say Kevin, so I click open the messages to see what he has to say.
Kevin: Julie says she saw you at the park.
I smile a little at the simplicity of his message. And here I was worried about what it might say—
Kevin: She says you’re boning your boss. So, I guess you figured out the dynamics.
WHAT THE HELL?
Me: What?! I’m not boning him! He’s not boning me! No one is boning.
Kevin: Oh, come on, someone is boning. Even if it’s not you. And, hey, maybe she just said you should bone. I’m not sure.
For some reason, I’m so flustered, I speak out loud as I type. “Just because I would enjoy boning Caplin Hawkins doesn’t mean I should. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the last thing I should do in my life.”
I nod just once, a punctuation mark at the end of my statement, and hit send on my lengthy text.
Cap and I are not sleeping together. Not now, not ever.
Not now, not ever.
I quietly repeat that mantra to myself two more times, and by the time I’m done, I almost believe it.
Cap
“I’ve never been turned on by old English before. It feels tingly,” Thatch says, and the rest of us groan. It’s the Monday after I followed Ruby into a bookstore like a glorified stalker, and book club is officially in session.
I’m not necessarily proud of my actions, but if I’m honest, I’m not disgusted by them either.
For the first time in the history of the world, my vampire slash driver Vin was running late to pick me up from the park where I met Ruby for the contracts. Intent on getting back to work, I headed for the subway, but before I went underground, I saw Ruby cross the street and head into Hilda’s. My subconscious made all the decisions thereafter.
“Good God,” Wes grumbles. “I don’t think I want to come to poker night anymore.”
“It’s book club,” I correct, and he gives me a smarmy grin.
“Exactly.”
I watched as Ruby picked up book after book and scrolled through the pages before finally landing on this one, and then I waited for her to leave to ask the clerk about the title so I could buy the same one. Now that I’m here, though, and I’ve had time to consider what I heard her say in the store that day, I’m not sure all this effort is actually going to get me anywhere.
Not now, not ever, she said.
Chaos ensues around me as my heart sinks a little bit.
“Come on, Whitney!” Thatch yells. “You cannot tell me you didn’t enjoy listening to a proper Englishwoman tell her gentleman that she’s going to give him a good old-fashioned blowy!”
“I’m officially disturbed by you saying blowy,” Theo says, and the rest of us laugh. Mine is just barely preoccupied.