Chapter 8
My phone buzzes against the counter and a voicemail preview flashes on the screen. "We need to talk about your inspection today." An unknown number lights up like it already knows something I don't.
I reach for a box of Port Hueneme fridge magnets and start stocking the rounder next to the register, lining up the glossy little harbor sunsets and misspelled tourist pronunciations my dad insisted we carry.
The last time we argued about shelf space, he held one up and said people don't come back for the view, they come back for the proof they were here.
Cordelia is shelving new books into the Fall in Love, You Coward section when she lifts a paperback in each hand and holds them up like a referee calling a match.
"This one," she says, tilting the one with an almost-kissing couple on the cover, "goes next to the detective and the arsonist, right? For thematic tension?"
"Because they're both alphabetical under C," I say. "Please put them on the shelf."
She does, then turns and gives me the look she's been storing since Tuesday, patient on the surface and absolutely not underneath.
My phone buzzes again, the same unknown number.
"The flow is good," I say. "The sightlines from the door work. I think we can tighten the Coming-of-Age and Poor Choices section by about four feet and add a second display rack."
"Great," she says, following me. "And Callum?"
I pull a hardcover out of the box and check the spine.
"The store is in really good shape."
"Super," she says. "And?"
"Deely. You're here for store flow, not for an interrogation."
She spreads her hands wide. "I'm helping and I can multitask.
The store is fine, which frees up time for the actual emergency, which is not the YA section.
" She leans against the counter and crosses her arms. "I've been at my other job all week and I've had to survive on secondhand information from Jonah, who tells me nothing useful.
And whatever you choose to text me, which is also nothing useful. I am owed a conversation."
My phone buzzes a third time.
Cordelia glances at it, then back at me. "You're going to answer that," she says. "Or I am."
I open my mouth, the motion sensor chimes, and Callum walks through the door with a paper bag from Mike's Bagels as my phone buzzes again between us. His eyes flick to the screen, then back to me. "You should take that."
I roll my eyes and answer it. "Avery."
"Hi, this is Julia with Coastal Remediation. Got your signed contracts. We're cleared to start this afternoon."
I turn slightly away from them, eyes on the magnets I just lined up. "Today works. Text me when your crew is on-site."
"Will do."
I hang up.
Cordelia looks at Callum, then at Pancake, then at me. Something moves across her face fast enough that I can't name all of it, but I catch the satisfaction.
"Callum Thorpe." She is already moving toward him. "Ten years, a firefighter calendar body, and billionaire money later. God really does pick favorites." She steals the bagel bag out of his hand and hugs him with her free arm.
He accepts this with the composure of a man who clearly remembers Cordelia from prior experience and prepared himself accordingly.
"Good to see you again, Cordelia."
She steps back, looks him over, and turns to me. "Is he taller?"
"He's the same height."
"Then I've gotten shorter, which is depressing.
" She opens the bagel bag and looks inside with great personal interest. "Sesame and everything.
Smart man." She pulls out a sesame bagel, finds the schmear container, and installs herself on the stool behind the counter like she's decided this is a show at the theater.
Pancake drops down facing Cordelia at close range.
She stares back. "You're very small for someone with this much presence."
Pancake extends one paw and taps Cordelia's foot.
She tears off a small corner of her bagel and holds it out to Pancake, who sniffs it and then turns away with staggering dignity.
"I respect that," she says, meaning it.
Callum leans against a shelving unit with his hands in his pockets and looks around the pop-up. He pauses, then says, “The Ventura County First Responders Foundation gala is tonight. Black tie. Ventura Del Mar ballroom. I'd like you to go with me.”
“Why me?” I ask.
Callum looks around the store like he's checking for alternatives. “Everyone else said no.”
Cordelia's jaw drops so dramatically I half expect her bagel to slide out of her hand and hit the floor.
He looks back at me. “Kidding.”
I ignore Cordelia's reaction with the strength of someone who has survived years of her treating my romantic life like community theater.
“We go together,” he says. “People see a local business owner and a local developer at a county charity event and they tell themselves a story.” His eyes stay on mine. “Right now the story is Why Knee Me got hit and you're barely keeping it together. This changes that.”
He lifts one shoulder. “Also, you own a bookstore and people trust bookstores.”
I stare at him for a second. “I feel like I just got tricked into volunteering.”
One corner of his mouth moves. “Interesting interpretation.”
“You practiced that speech, didn't you?” My eyes narrow.
“Only the bookstore part.”
He says it like it's practical. Like he isn't standing in my store making an argument that already sounds reasonable enough to lose to.
“If it helps the store,” I say.
His expression settles in a way that feels suspiciously immediate. “It will.”
“Then we have an agreement," I say, nodding.
I say it the same way I said I'll take the lease, like terms and conditions still exist between us and I haven't learned that agreeing with Callum Thorpe occasionally comes with undocumented side effects.
Cordelia, on her stool, takes a slow and deliberate bite of her bagel and says nothing. But her eyes say everything she's choosing not to.
Pancake looks up at Callum from beside Cordelia's stool like she's filing a formal complaint about the bagel distribution.
Callum glances between the dog and the half-eaten sesame bagel in Cordelia's hand. "You're not helping her case," he says.
"I'll text you the details," he says to me.
Then he tells Cordelia it's good to see her, and leaves with Pancake, the motion sensor chiming behind him.
Cordelia waits until she's sure he's out of earshot. "Avery."
"Let's get a display rack from the back," I say.
"That's not what we're going to talk about." She slides off the stool, walks to the display rack near the front window, and straightens two face-out titles that do not need straightening.
She points a bagel at me. "You neglected to share how hot he got."
I groan quietly into the counter.
"No, seriously. He used to be cute in a very annoying Jonah's-best-friend kind of way.
Now he looks like he hikes through national parks for fun and rescues people from wildfires with his bare hands.
" She narrows her eyes toward the front window like she can still see him.
"Dark hair. Green eyes. Tall enough to make women forget basic financial literacy. "
"Deely."
"And he absolutely smells like pine trees. The actual trees. Like he walked through a forest and rubbed himself against the entire ecosystem and made it sexually competitive."
I press my lips together because laughing will encourage her.
She points the bagel at me again. "All that should not legally exist in the same man. That combination was assembled in a lab to ruin women's lives."
"You're being dramatic."
"I'm being accurate." She pops the last bite of bagel into her mouth. "Wear the green dress. The one with the low back."
I open my mouth.
"Purely logistical," she adds, before I get there. "It's the only formal option you have that still fits the way it's supposed to. That's a store-optics-based recommendation and nothing else."
"That's not what your face is doing."
"My face is completely neutral."
Nine hours later I'm standing in front of my bathroom mirror in the green dress and Cordelia was right about the fit.
I arrive at the Ventura Del Mar Grand Hotel eight minutes early and find Callum already on the front steps in a charcoal suit so well-constructed it looks like it was built directly onto his body by someone with exacting standards.
He turns when he hears me on the steps. "You look beautiful." He holds out his arm and we go inside.
The ballroom is full of the architecture of Ventura County money on its best behavior. City officials, developers, and a contingent from the county fire authority.
Callum moves through the ballroom like he already knows where the pressure points are.
Two men in expensive suits cut across the ballroom the second they spot Callum.
"Thorpe, you asshole," one of them says, grabbing the back of his neck before pulling him into a one-armed hug hard enough to wrinkle both jackets.
The other points at him. "You disappeared again."
"I answer my phone sometimes," Callum says.
"Liar."
They laugh and start talking over each other about a retirement party and somebody named Medina getting written up for backing an engine into a pole, and I stand there holding my champagne flute waiting for the moment I become invisible, but it never comes.
"This is Avery Laramie," Callum says, touching my back lightly. "She owns Why Knee Me Books & Brews."
One of the firefighters shakes my hand. "You're the bookstore owner? My wife dragged me in there last month and I lost a hundred dollars and my entire Saturday."
"That sounds like a successful retail experience to me," I say.
Callum laughs under his breath.
The conversations keep shifting around us after that.
Someone from county planning asks about Harbor View foot traffic.
A woman in a navy gown asks if we carry cookbooks.
Callum lifts my empty champagne flute out of my hand at some point and replaces it with a full one without interrupting the conversation.