Chapter Five
All the village says you’re reserved, but you aren’t. There’s a fire in you. They don’t see it, but I do.
C
KATE
I’m super-excited, I can’t lie. Mrs Abbot was a goddess to swan into the pub last night and basically shame Sebastian into including me in his festival. He didn’t want to. His reluctance was obvious, his bowing to the inevitable ungracious. But bow he did.
And not only that, but I managed to get some conversation out of him.
That, too, was reluctant and ungracious, and it felt like getting blood out of a particularly hard stone, but he gave it to me nonetheless.
Now I’m in Portable Magic and keen to head on over to Blackwood Books to have our little planning chat, but the sign on his front door has been turned to ‘Closed’ all morning and there’s no sign he’s in there.
It’s extremely aggravating and, really, just like him.
Then Aisling comes in with a box of vegan doughnuts and sets them on the counter, giving me a knowing look as she does so. ‘I saw you last night. At the Arms. With Tall, Dark and Brooding.’
‘I’d rather be Mrs Peacock in the library with the wrench,’ I mutter. ‘And have Sebastian Blackwood be the victim.’
Aisling shakes her red curls back and rolls her eyes. I’ve complained to her about him before. More than once. ‘Sure, sure. You hate him so much and yet you can’t leave him alone.’
I pull a face. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Of course it isn’t. Just like he isn’t super-hot.’
I ignore this in favour of flipping open the box of doughnuts and examining them carefully. ‘I saw you too, you know. Having a quiet drink with your husband.’
Aisling smiles. ‘A surprise date. Ben organised a babysitter.’
‘Nice.’ I pick out a custardy lemony doughnut. ‘He’s a keeper.’
‘If you think I’m going to be distracted by you telling me what I already know about my husband, you’re wrong.’ She leans a hip against the counter. ‘Come on, take pity on a poor woman with a toddler, a business, a husband and no life. Gimme some exciting single-life goss.’
I met Aisling the first day I came to Wychtree. I wandered into the café she’d just bought, desperate for a coffee, and we got to talking, since we were both starting up new businesses at the same time.
She’s an incredible baker and supplies ‘plant-based delicacies’ to Lindsey’s bakery as well as her own café. I’ve been trying to emulate her approach to the bakery with Sebastian and his shop, i.e. show how businesses can be supportive of each other and not each other’s competition.
Most people don’t want the vegan treats she makes, so she also provides the more usual ones, but she says that the vegan side of the business is growing, especially in the summer when the tourists come.
I love her doughnuts especially and I can’t get enough of them, while, in return, she’s a fanatical reader of mysteries, and gets me to order at least ten every couple of months. She also pins bookshop events to her noticeboard in the café and has a little stand of books on her counter that I supply, which does a fairly brisk trade.
She’s dry and funny and I like her a lot, but I haven’t told her much about my life before I came to Wychtree. I haven’t wanted to get into it, even though I know the gossip mill here has gone into overdrive on the subject anyway.
She does know about my family history, though. The locals always do.
‘There’s no goss,’ I tell her, and bite into my doughnut.
‘Bullshit,’ she says. ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you the whole time. Like a wolf with a rabbit.’
I swallow my bite of doughnut. It’s delicious as always, but I give her a glare. ‘I’m not a bloody rabbit.’
Aisling raises a brow. ‘Aren’t you? You were certainly giving him big eyes last night.’
I redden. ‘I was trying to have a normal conversation with him that didn’t involve us arguing for a change. Also, I kind of wanted to know if it was me he didn’t like or the bookshop.’
‘Both, I would imagine.’
I sigh. ‘I get the bookshop, I really do. But I don’t understand why he doesn’t like me. I’m not that bad. He’s not like that to everyone else, is he?’
‘You mean, cold and aloof?’
‘And rude, don’t forget rude.’
Aisling’s mouth twitches in amusement. ‘I’m afraid he reserves that one just for you. He’s not rude to everyone else. Aloof, yes, and reserved. But that’s the Blackwoods for you. They’ve always been like that.’
‘Why?’
‘First of all they’re men. Second, they’re emotionally constipated. And third, every woman any of them have ever hooked up with has either left or died.’ She gives me a solemn look. ‘Mrs Bennet says they’re cursed.’
‘Mrs Bennet would.’ I lean on the counter, fascinated at this insight, because it’s news to me. ‘Seriously, though?’
‘Sebastian’s namesake, his great-grandfather, had his wife walk out on him not three years into their marriage. Then his grandmother hated the village, and left his grandfather for London after a few years, and then Sebastian’s mother died when he was about ten. I went to school with him, so I remember it. Village gossip said she would have left his father eventually if she hadn’t died.’
I’m appalled. And intrigued.
I hadn’t known he’d lost his mother as a kid. That must have been really tough. ‘Oh no,’ I murmur. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Yeah. Then George Blackwood, his dad, started drinking. It was all bad, really. I don’t know the details, but I heard that George was going to lose the bookshop, so Sebastian took over and borrowed massively to keep it going.’
I remember him last night, telling me fiercely that books were his livelihood, his history, his legacy. Making me want to cringe at my burblings about opening my own bookshop. Mine had felt like a cherished dream, while his . . .
His was a vocation. A calling.
He was a priest and his god was books.
‘You’re getting that look in your eye,’ Aisling says.
I redden further. ‘What look?’
‘The look of a woman who discovers a man’s tragic backstory and is now one hundred per cent more interested in him than she was already.’
I make a disdainful sound and take another bite out of the doughnut. ‘Come on, Ash,’ I say, my mouth full. ‘We’re failing the Bechdel test.’
Aisling grins. ‘Mrs Abbot told me last night that you’re now going to be part of the book festival. How did that happen?’
I had a little rant to her a few days ago about how Sebastian left me out of planning the festival, and how annoyed I was, so she knows my feelings on the subject. She also knows that I’ve been in the process of planning my own.
‘Oh, she basically shamed him into it by assuming he’d asked me already and so he had to agree, otherwise he would have looked like a dick in front of her.’
‘Did he retract it after she’d gone?’
‘No, actually. He didn’t. He was pissed off, I saw it in his eyes, but he agreed.’ He knew that the ideas I’d given him were good ones, and even now, I feel again the traitorous little echo of warmth that thought gave me.
As if I actually cared about his opinion.
How ridiculous.
‘Points to him then, I guess,’ Aisling says.
I want to ask her more questions. About the Blackwood family and about what he’d been like as a kid when she’d gone to school with him, but that would render all my protestations that I wasn’t interested null and void.
Then just as I’m about to change the subject, a movement out the front window of my shop catches my eye and I see Sebastian stepping into Blackwood Books.
Finally.
I feel the oddest little shiver of anticipation, but I tell myself it’s the anticipation of planning. Definitely nothing to do with him and being in his fierce, electric presence.
‘Gotta go, Ash,’ I say to my friend. ‘I’ve been waiting to talk to him over there about some ideas for the festival, and he’s just come back.’
Aisling grins and, after making me promise to tell her all about it later, she disappears out the door.
For a second I’m half tempted to pop upstairs and check the bathroom mirror to see if I’ve got lipstick on my teeth or something, but then I tell myself sternly I’m not buying into that. I’m done with prettying up myself for a guy, and especially not that guy.
However, I do pause beside the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of my shop and peruse the shelves, because after my discovery last night that he was reading a science fiction novel, and after he’d looked so annoyed that I’d discovered it, I kind of want to give him a gift.
A gift that will annoy him, true, but one that he’ll appreciate in the end, I hope. After all, genre is my area of expertise and I read avidly from all of them.
I take the latest Murderbot book, by Martha Wells, off the shelf, because it’s just come in, and if he hasn’t read it already then he should, and then I step out of my shop, cross the road to Blackwood Books and approach the door.
The sign still says ‘Closed’.
Of all the . . .
But there’s movement inside and, when I peer through the glass, I can see him standing behind his antique oak counter, talking on his phone.
Well, he may not be officially open, but he’s there, and I want to talk to him, so I push open the door.
So I’m just in time to hear him yell ‘ Fuck! ’, and aim a kick at the empty wire rubbish bin beside the counter. It bounces, then rolls across the shop floor before bumping gently up against my feet.
I stare at him, absolutely riveted.
I’m not afraid of his display of male fury. What I love is seeing cold and controlled Sebastian Blackwood lose his temper completely.
Then I love it even more when he realises I’m standing there and I’ve witnessed his little tantrum, and his impressive jaw hardens, a muscle jumping at the side. His eyes burn like twin gas flames.
He raises a hand and shoves it through his short black hair.
‘Apologies,’ he says stiffly. ‘You were not meant to see that.’
‘I imagine not.’ I pick up the bin and carry it over to the desk. ‘But, sadly for you, I’m now curious. What happened?’
‘Nothing.’ The word is terse as he tucks his phone back into the pocket of his black trousers. He’s steadfastly not looking at me.
‘Do you always kick bins across the room when nothing happens?’
The muscle in the side of his jaw leaps again. ‘Frequently.’
‘Did you just make a joke?’
He finally lifts his gaze to mine and I catch the intensity in it head-on. ‘What are you doing here, Miss Jones?’
It’s annoying how my breath catches, but I try to ignore that. ‘I’m here to talk about the festival,’ I say cheerily. ‘We were going to, remember?’
‘Ah, yes. Right.’ He glances away again. ‘Well, I can’t do it now. I have too much to do.’
‘Is it related to that temper tantrum?’ It’s probably unwise of me to ask, but what the hell. If he didn’t want anyone to know he was upset, he shouldn’t have kicked that bin across his shop.
He glances at me yet again, his mouth in a hard line, and all at once I wonder how I’d ever thought of him as cold, because he’s not. He’s a bloody house on fire and the flames are licking out the windows.
‘Just tell me,’ I say. ‘You look like you want to chew through a wall.’
He lets out a breath at that and runs a hand through his hair yet again, and I can’t help the flicker of desire that shoots through me. Because he was already hot and now, all angry and fierce, he’s even hotter, and I like it.
It’s honest. It’s passionate. And it’s an obvious sign that he cares about whatever is making him so angry.
Jasper wasn’t honest. He lied all the time and he certainly didn’t care. Not about anything, not even me.
‘Fucking James Wyatt has pulled out of the festival,’ Sebastian finally spits. ‘There was a scheduling clash and now he can’t come. James Wyatt is—’
‘Yes,’ I interrupt. ‘I know who James Wyatt is, I’m not stupid. I have been staring at your Booker Prize-winning window for the past couple of weeks now.’ It makes sense, then, his rage, and I’m not surprised. You don’t want your headliner pulling out of your carefully curated event at such short notice.
He glowers at me. ‘If he can’t come, it’s going to be a disaster. I might as well call it off right now.’
I shouldn’t smile, that’ll only make things worse, but I can’t help it. He looks so angry and he’s being so dramatic, and it’s adorable.
‘That’s right,’ he says shortly. ‘Laugh. The death of my bookshop is fucking hilarious.’
I have the oddest urge then to put my hand on his brow and smooth away the lines there, and it’s so strong that my fingers itch. I curl them into a fist instead, but I don’t stop smiling.
‘I hear the Wychtree Dramatic Society is doing Hamlet this year,’ I say dryly. ‘You should audition, Mr Blackwood. I think you’d be a shoo-in after that performance.’
His glower becomes a scowl. ‘You don’t understand. This shop is—’
‘Your livelihood, your history, your legacy. Yes. I remember.’
‘Then you’ll know why this is a disaster. And it will affect you too.’
He’s not, unfortunately, wrong.
James Wyatt would have been a great drawcard and it would certainly have given the festival some of the cachet that we need. As much as it galls me to admit it, you do need a big name to grab the crowds, especially if you’re not in a major city.
But just then I have a thought and, quite frankly, it’s brilliant. I’m even impressed with myself, and I haven’t been impressed with myself for longer than I’d care to admit.
I might have left publishing behind, but I still have my contacts, and while I didn’t edit many big names, I did work with one. I didn’t acquire her or anything. I was only her point-person when it came to administration, and worked with her on a couple of her later titles, but she was great, and we got on like a house on fire.
Lisa Underwood. She wrote a breakout hit called Colours , a sweeping romance that managed to hit the nirvana of publishing: cross-genre audiences. Mainstream fiction readers loved it, so did literary readers, so did romance readers, etcetera, etcetera.
It was the biggest book of the year, hit all kinds of bestseller lists, and garnered glowing reviews everywhere. A movie was optioned and that was a hit too.
In short, she was huge, and we still sometimes email each other, and now I’m wondering if she would want to come to tiny little Wychtree, come to our festival, be our headliner.
She might not, but . . . she might.
I hold up a hand. ‘Stop. Wait right there. Don’t move.’
Sebastian gives me Blue Steel (if you haven’t seen Zoolander , I can’t help you). ‘What?’
‘I might have an idea,’ I say, and smile. ‘I presume you’ve heard of Lisa Underwood?’