Versions of You

Chapter 1

One

Kitchi Falls, Pennsylvania

Was there any better smell than paper and rain?

I turned the page of my current read, a paranormal romance novel with a vampire hero. With a thousand things to do, from inventory to ordering, reading should be low on the list. But it was raining, my favorite time to crack open a book, so I gave myself permission to take some time off.

Outside, thunder rumbled. The lights flickered once, twice. The storm was getting closer. Something in my chest tightened … anticipation or unease, I couldn't tell. I shook it off and kept reading.

Less than a full sentence in, the door of my shop swung open, the tinkling bell that alerted me to new customers drowned out by the sound of driving rain.

“Are you out of your mind?”

Nolan immediately took off his jacket, shaking it and giving my terrified cat his own shower. Putting my book on the counter, I laughed as James ran through Nolan’s legs and into the stacks.

“You know he hates getting wet,” I said.

Hanging up his soaking rain jacket, Nolan headed straight for the coffee counter, putting a new pod into the machine.

“Pretty sure he hates his name more.”

As if sensing we were talking about him, James sauntered back through Nolan's legs with regal indifference.

Nolan bent to scratch behind the cat's ears, and I caught myself watching the way his shoulders moved under his damp shirt.

I looked away quickly, busying myself with straightening already-straight bookmarks.

“What do you think James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser?” I asked my cat, now underfoot. “Do you like your name?”

Nolan, coffee in hand, pulled up a stool, the deep familiar sound of his laugh as comforting as the aroma of the delicious dark liquid he’d poured. “Tell her it’s ridiculous.”

At the sound of his voice, James turned away from me and headed around the counter straight to his favorite person, jumping up to his lap. Traitor.

I watched the two of them. The man who was as steady a presence in my life as my parents.

The cat who alternatively liked and hated me, sometimes in the same sixty-second span.

A bookshop that, while it might not be paying for an oceanfront vacation home soon, thrived enough to bring me a steady income …

life was good. So what if I didn’t have a date for my cousin's wedding ? Or if my mother wouldn’t stop asking if I was seeing anyone.

I wasn’t. Pushing thirty. No prospects in the love department. But I had plenty to be grateful for.

“You still lost in,” he nodded to my book. “There?”

Nolan picked up my latest read. “The Vampire’s Temptation. What’s tempting him?”

“Maybe the vampire is a girl.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

He put the book back, taking a sip of coffee as James bounded off the counter.

“My little contrarian.”

I was Nolan’s little everything. That was his favorite expression, and one that got him into trouble recently. His latest ex—and Nolan had a lot of them—wasn’t a fan of our close friendship. But I didn’t feel too bad since she wasn’t really for him, anyway.

“So what exactly are you doing out in,” I waved my hand toward the window of my shop where ‘Between the Pages’ was written in big, bold letters. “This.”

“Lucas’ tattoo chair’s hydraulic lift was jammed, and he had an appointment tonight.”

Although the owner of Grunt Ink, just down the street, went to high school with Nolan and me, we’d gotten closer to him and his wife more recently.

“Were you able to fix it?”

Nolan looked at me with those brown eyes of his, waiting until I took it back.

“Ok, ok. Stupid question. Of course you were.”

“Good girl.”

I nearly spit out my coffee—one of the many things Nolan and I had in common, being able to drink caffeine at night—at that.

“What? Isn’t that what your heroes say?” he nodded to my book.

When I stopped laughing, I answered. “Yeah. But not like that.”

His brows raised.

“It’s a sex thing. They say it as praise kink.

Like when. . .” Oh geez. How the hell did I explain it to someone who never read a romance book in his life?

Or any book, for that matter. Which was one of the things we definitely didn’t have in common.

I’d had my nose in a book since middle school and Nolan had been avoiding them for even longer than that. “Never mind. Did you eat yet?”

“Not unless beef jerky counts. Why?”

I grudgingly admitted defeat. “No way I’m getting any more customers tonight. Besides, I’ve been craving a chicken cheesesteak. Any interest in KC’s for a late dinner?”

Before I even finished the question, Nolan headed to the back room. James jumped onto my lap.

“Where did he go?” I asked, petting his head with one hand and opening my book with the other.

The story of my life … finishing a chapter when I had other things to do. But there was something about the lure of the page, the characters in a romance, especially, that felt safe and exciting all at once.

“And so it seems we will have a bit of fun here in,” he waved his arms around him, “Stone Haven.”

Lawrence ground his teeth. “Fun? If you call the murder of an innocent woman—”

“Innocent?”

Kenton lifted his chin. “She is Maiorium,” he repeated. “And for that, she can not be allowed to live.” He lifted his glass. “A toast to our little secret. And to Alessandra Fiore’s last days on earth, poor thing.”

He downed the rest of his drink, stepping around Lawrence and gripping the railing of the second-story balcony.

“Have fun attempting to save her.”

And just as Lawrence turned to walk away after muttering a curse under his breath, he added. “I hope you have better luck than you did in Caltabellotta.”

He wasn’t surprised when Lawrence pushed him from the balcony. Indeed, he allowed it. And laughed the entire way down to the ground despite the risk of discovery.

Taunting him had been worth it.

“Figure out why he’s tempted yet?”

I jumped at the sound of his voice, startling James who bounded off my lap. Closing the book, I stood up.

“I already know that. It’s on the back cover blurb.”

Nolan scrunched his nose, reminding me of the skinny basketball player who asked me for help writing a paper in seventh grade.

We’d been inseparable since, although Nolan was no skinny seventh grader anymore.

He’d filled out in all the right places since then …

a brown floppy haired, hazel-eyed hunk who was as reliable now as he’d always been.

“Where’d you go?

“Dumped my coffee. If I knew you’d be willing to close up early, I’d be at KC’s with a beer in hand already. I knew you’d go back to the book. Sometimes I think you like them more than real people, my little bookworm.” He winked and flipped the closed sign. “Let’s go baby.”

Baby. He’d been calling me that for years, and I still smiled every time. He also had cleaned up the coffee station and stacked the romance display I’d been reorganizing … quietly tidying the shop while I’d been lost in my book.

“Thanks.”

“Anything to get out of here sooner,” Nolan put his still-wet rain jacket back on. “Please tell me you have an umbrella somewhere.”

That would have been a brilliant idea, except … “I had no idea it was even supposed to rain.”

KC’s Taphouse was less than a block away, but we were still going to get soaked.

Before I could stop him, Nolan had taken off his jacket and was putting it on me.

“Just because I forgot mine doesn’t mean—”

"Stop wiggling." His hands lingered on my shoulders after settling the jacket, thumbs pressing gently against my collarbones. When I looked up, something flickered across his face … there and gone so fast I almost missed it.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." But his voice sounded rougher than usual. "Let's go."

Knowing Nolan’s single-minded determination, I listened. No way he’d let me out of this shop without his jacket. It smelled like cedar and soap, and I couldn’t tell if the warmth spreading through me was his, or mine.