Chapter One
Nancy Newland didn’t quite know what to make of it when she came out from the stockroom and saw Jack Jackson lurking in the darkest corner of her store.
After all, she knew for a fact that he hated books.
He’d once snatched a paperback out of old man Hannigan’s hands during a town meeting and hurled it out the window, because he loathed them so much. Or so the story went.
Plus he plainly and obviously hated her guts.
The only times he ever spoke to her were to tell her off.
In fact, her strongest memory of him was that time he had caught her crying over the mud she’d gotten her little shopping cart stuck in.
He’d absolutely fumed over the whole thing.
Then yanked the cart free so violently her potatoes had exploded out all over the path.
Which had only seemed to make him more frustrated.
Doubly so, when she hadn’t been able to help being frightened.
He’d just seemed so angry, and everything felt weird suddenly, darker somehow.
I’m sorry , she had tried to tell him, I know that I’m a disaster .
But he had just looked at her as if she’d horrified him, or something about the situation horrified him, and stormed off before she could.
Though he hadn’t exactly stopped being angry over the things she did.
He had just done it from afar—as if getting too tangled in her problems only made him madder.
He had to jab a finger at her broken taillight, and nothing more.
Maybe throw up his hands to see her walking her silly little dog, Popcorn, down the spooky back lane behind Main Street.
And the less said about the janky bolt on her shop door that anyone could bust past, the better.
One good push , he’d yelled, from all the way across the street.
Like he was the one who was going to do the pushing.
He wanted to break in and ransack the place.
Starting with the paperbacks, of course.
But she could imagine him moving on to everything else.
He clearly despised anything warm and welcoming and sweet. She’d seen him seethe when his desserts had sprinkles on them. His pet peeve was any kind of coffee that wasn’t just plain black. Happiness made him angry, and pretty things made him even angrier than that.
And her bookstore—Better Off Read—was all that and more.
There were plump chairs filled with chintz cushions all over the place.
Twinkly fairy lights hanging in garlands from the ceiling.
The hardwood floor was covered in plush rugs of the warmest hues; the walls were the most forest-in-fall of umbers.
It was the prettiest place in all of Hollow Brook—and that was really saying something.
Hollow Brook was known for being pretty. It had an actual bandstand in the town square. Once it had been voted the cutesiest town on earth. They were a few days from Halloween and everything was festooned in fun decorations. And every single one of those facts blatantly annoyed the shit out of him.
So what the heck was he doing in here? The most adorable store in the most saccharine town to ever exist, run by a person he despised?
It didn’t seem right. More than that, in fact.
It didn’t look right. The soft colors clashed violently with his hairy face and his tattered jeans and his ridiculously unbrushed mop of dirty blond hair.
It was honestly like seeing a single dark cloud just hanging around in an otherwise pristine sky.
In fact, he was so grumpy all the time that she often thought she could see just that, constantly surrounding him.
A hazy, gray shadow that followed him wherever he went, of the kind that her friend Cassandra had seemed very interested in when Nancy had mentioned it the other day.
Then she’d blink, and it was just him.
Making everything seem dark, with his angry enormousness.
Because that was the other way he contrasted with everything in here:
His size. God, the size of him. He was so immense he made everything around him look like something built for dolls. The shelves barely came up to his chest; the book in his hands seemed tiny in his enormous paws. And every time he moved he came close to knocking something over.
Or, at least, his fabulously rounded butt did.
Though she tried not to think too much about that.
It made her eyes want to go to it, and that seemed like a bad idea. Goodness knows, she didn’t want to seem like she was ogling him. She wasn ’ t ogling him. He turned, and that ass of his accidentally nudged against something, and then suddenly her eyes were just there.
Right on his juicy double.
He would probably kill me with his bare hands if he knew I mentally talked about him like that, she thought.
Then tried to focus on anything else but him.
She organized her little counter area, and broke out a new tube of quarters, and did her best to hide the domed glass–covered display of cupcakes behind a book so it didn’t trigger his seething rage at the sight of swirly pastel pink frosting.
She finally settled herself in the squidgy chair behind the counter with the book she was reading.
A vintage romance, with the most spectacular cover she’d ever seen in her life—all big hair and entwined bodies and waves crashing in the background.
Delightful, and delightfully romantic, in a way that should have made it easy to pay no attention to him.
But it didn’t. She had barely made it thirty seconds before her gaze started to drift back upward.
Slowly, slowly, but it was definitely doing it.
There was his hubcap-sized elbow, resting on top of the nonfiction shelves.
Followed by his meaty right bicep, just above it.
Then there was the solid side of his face, bristling with that darker-than-the hair-on-his-head stubble of his.
And finally she climbed to those wild blue eyes.
That were staring right at her.
Oh no, he was staring right at her. And boy, did he look madder than hell.
His brow was practically pile-driving a groove between his eyes.
That fist-like jaw had clenched so tightly, she could make out every muscle beneath the skin.
He looked like a beast on the verge of throwing her into a dungeon for the crime of trying to save her father.
Give it another second, and the teacup next to her on the counter was probably going to start singing a song.
Unless this was the bad version of the story.
In which case, she was in big trouble.
And what did she do, in response to this realization? Go back to her book immediately? Attack before he could attack first? Call the police, and have him arrested for murdering her with a look? Of course not. Of course she didn’t.
“Is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Jackson?” she asked instead.
Honestly, even he looked incredulous. But when he finally broke the Mafia stand-off levels of silence, it wasn’t to mock her over the thing she assumed—like the fact that she sounded like a huge dork, and had called him mister .
“How the hell do you know my name?” he asked instead, in so baffled a way it actually seemed to soften his gravel-in-a-cement-mixer voice.
Even though it was probably the least baffling part of all this.
Of course she knew his name. Everybody did. He was practically a town legend. Mostly because he was ornery and antisocial and had a terrible habit of accidentally trashing things with his gigantic man hands or his size-twenty feet.
But also because of that time he passed out in the town fountain.
Oh yeah, everybody knew about him after that time he passed out in the town fountain.
It had been on the front page of the Hollow Brook Gazette .
A REA M AN T AKES A B ATH IN L OCAL M ONUMENT , it had read.
Which had of course made him even more furious than he usually was.
He’d bought up every copy and burned them.
Stood outside the newspaper’s office with a giant protest sign.
To this day you only had to mention it to make his eye twitch.
Though not for the reasons you’d think.
He didn’t care about the picture of him they’d used, slumped in the water while wearing only a single sock and a pair of long johns.
Or about the content of the article, which had claimed he was fifty-four years old—despite the fact that he was barely into his thirties.
No. He had fumed over the bathing claim.
And she remembered this, because that was what his protest sign had said.
I DO NOT WASH IN FOUNTAINS , he had written in angry capitals.
Then in smaller ones, at the bottom:
I JUST TRIPPED AND FELL AND THEN SOMEBODY STOLE MY CLOTHES.
So really, how could she not have known who he was? It was a complete impossibility—he had to understand that. But he didn’t. After a moment of Nancy’s stunned silence he asked again. “Did you pass out standing up? Seriously, kid. Tell me how you know who I am.”
And oh lord, he sounded angry now. Just really massively annoyed. So she went with the tamest possible answer she could think of. “Probably the same way you know who I am.” She even added a little laugh, to be safe.
But it didn’t work. He just looked uncomfortable for a moment, and then seemed to abruptly gather himself.
Like there was nothing unreasonable about the answer he had for that, and he wasn’t going to let her shame him into thinking otherwise.
“I know who you are because you run the only bookstore in town,” he said triumphantly.
And what could she do then? That made perfect sense.
There was no way to challenge it. She wasn’t even sure why he’d hesitated, really.
Though of course it meant that she couldn’t hesitate any longer, either.
She was just going to have to tell the truth now.
Then accept him murdering her to death with his bare hands.
“Okay. Well. I guess there was that time you were in the Gazette ,” she said.
Before bracing for the inevitable smashing of his giant fist into her face.
But he just winced. Like her comment had somehow thrown his back out.
And instead of arguing with her, or explaining, he calmly returned the book he was holding to the shelf.
Dusted off his hands. Then simply walked right out of her store without another word, or even a second glance.
As if they’d never talked at all, she thought, and almost wanted to go after him. Just to see if he was okay, maybe.
Though that sure felt like a weird instinct.
And it was followed by an even weirder one.
Because once she was absolutely positive he was gone, she went over to the shelf he’d stood by. Kind of casually, like she wasn’t really doing anything at all. Even though deep down, she knew she was. She understood exactly what she was going for, no matter how strange doing it felt:
She was trying to find the book he’d been reading.
The one he’d been almost engrossed in. It ’ ll be sticking out a little way , her mind suggested.
And sure enough, there it was. The only thing on the shelf that wasn’t flush with all the rest. Though once she’d found it, she kind of wondered if that was a good way to tell.
After all, it was possible someone else had left it sticking out.
In fact, it had to be that.
Because the book wasn’t about big trucks.
Or being mad about people who double-parked.
Or any of the things she would have guessed he liked.
No. It was a slim, lavender-colored volume with a flower on the front.
And the title was even more inexplicable than all of that.
In fact, she wasn’t sure where the book had come from, and looking at it made her feel a little funny. But there it was, all the same.
How to Be the Ideal Human Boyfriend , she read.
Then almost laughed at herself, for thinking this was what he’d been intently perusing. There was just no way, she thought. No way in hell that he would ever be interested in something like this. In fact, she went to put it back. She worked it into place, shaking her head at herself.
And that was when she smelled it.
The scent of struck matches, still lingering on the spine.
Like the one she always noticed whenever he passed by.
He must light his cigarettes with something really old , she had always thought.
Industrial cartons full of matchsticks thick as your finger .
Bulk packs of ancient hotel brands from 1975.
It did fit his whole vibe, after all.
The sloppy denim, the worn old shirts, the near mustache amidst all that other aggressive facial hair.
That thick but muscular body, that low gruff voice.
He made her think of horror movies from some other era, full of pistols with skinny barrels and white-tiled mental hospitals and funny-colored blood.
He’d be the mean, ornery sheriff, she suspected.
The one who doesn’t believe the heroine about something horrible going on until it’s too late.
But that didn’t make her feel better about anything that had just happened.
How could it possibly?
He had needed help, in a way that brutally embarrassed him.
And somehow she had shamed him into leaving it behind.