Chapter Three
She rushed into the bathroom, brushing her teeth with one hand, trying to calm her hair down with the other, managing to spray toothpaste across the mirror and drop her hairbrush into the toilet.
“Perfect,” she said, fishing the brush out and throwing it into the bin. She’d have to buy another on the way home.
“Shoes, shoes,” she mumbled, diving halfway under her bed to retrieve a pair of black boots that had heels and a scuff that she’d colored in with a felt-tip pen.
She pulled everything on, ignored the wrinkles on the shirt that had somehow got worse, then poked herself in the eye with some mascara and approximated her lips with some scented gloss. That would have to do.
Her phone buzzed insistently on her nightstand. She grabbed it. Twelve missed calls from Domi and a text in all caps that simply read: WHERE ARE YOU???
She typed a quick reply that she was on her way, which was not technically a lie, though probably not technically true either.
Then she grabbed her promotional materials, bookmarks, postcards, a few pens, and stuffed everything haphazardly into her bag.
She dashed out the door, made it halfway down the hallways, then rushed back in and got her keys, safely locking the flat behind her.
By the time she made it to the tube station, she was breathless, disheveled, and running at least twenty minutes late. She joined the crowd on the platform and checked her watch every three seconds, like that might somehow speed up time.
And then, of course, came the announcement. “We regret to inform passengers that there will be a slight delay on the Central Line due to a signal failure at Holland Park.”
Emery groaned along with the rest of the station.
She could practically hear Domi telling her that this was why she was supposed to leave an hour early for these things.
She paced up and down the platform, checking her watch obsessively.
And when the train finally arrived, she just managed to squeeze herself through the doors, earning irritated looks from the other passengers as her bag knocked into them.
“Sorry, so sorry,” she mumbled, face burning.
Real smooth, Emery. Emerald Pearl would never apologize for taking up space.
Emerald Pearl would make eye contact with the handsome businessman across the carriage and then write him into her next novel as the brooding love interest who falls for the plucky heroine.
Emery stared at her shoes.
She tried to use the journey time productively.
Mentally rehearsing answers to the questions that she always got at these events, carefully scripted answers that she’d gone over with Domi a hundred times.
Where do you get your ideas? (Everywhere).
Are your characters based on real people?
(A raised eyebrow and a small smile) Will Duchess Delilah find true love? (Buy the next book and find out).
By the time she emerged from Notting Hill station, she had five minutes to get to the shop. She could still make it if she ran, as long as the place was close by. She broke into a trot, her bag bouncing awkwardly against her hip, her half done hair settling into its normal unruly curls.
The neighborhood was charming, all pastel colored townhouses and quirky independent shops, but Emery barely registered her surroundings as she dodged pedestrians and ducked around a woman walking three identical dogs.
And then she spotted a bookshop sign ahead, a quaint, old-fashioned storefront with a wooden sign swinging in the breeze, and she heaved a sigh of relief.
She skidded to a stop, trying to catch her breath and compose herself.
Through the window, she could see a couple of customers browsing shelves, but no sign of any event setup.
No posters announcing Emerald Pearl’s appearance, no table with stacks of books, no line of eager readers clutching copies of When a Bride Meets a Groom.
“Strange,” she said to herself. But maybe the shop was running late too, or, more likely, there was a back room all set up for the signing. She took one last deep breath and pushed open the door, a cheerful bell announcing her harried entrance.
???
Eveline looked up from the register at the sound of the bell, her normal greeting dying on her lips.
A disheveled woman stood in the doorway, hair wild, clothes rumpled, looking slightly as if she’d just run a marathon.
Exactly the sort of chaos Eveline didn’t need today.
She was already short-staffed and dealing with the ongoing drip-drip-drip from the ceiling. She didn’t need crazy today.
The woman approached the counter, still trying to catch her breath. She had a sharp chin, deep blue eyes, a pointed nose. Her hair wasn’t quite as messy as Eveline had thought, just curly. She certainly wasn’t a regular customer.
“May I help you?” Eveline asked, tone polite but clipped.
“I’m here for the signing,” the woman said breathlessly, dropping a heavy bag onto the counter. “I’m so sorry I’m late. The train was delayed, and then I couldn’t find my shoes, and you don’t want to know what happened to my hairbrush, and—”
“Signing?” Eveline interrupted, frowning. “We don’t have any signings scheduled today.”
The woman’s eyes widened in confusion. “But…”
“But we have no event today.” Eveline tried to keep the impatience from her voice. “Perhaps you’re looking for Barton’s? They often host author events.”
The woman pulled out a phone, scrolling frantically. “But the email said… Close to Notting Hill tube station… Oh.” Her face fell. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Eveline asked, despite herself. Something about the woman’s obvious distress made it impossible to simply dismiss her.
“I’m at the wrong bookshop.” She looked so genuinely heart-broken that Eveline felt a pang of sorrow for her. “You’re right, I should have been at Barton’s.”
“Ah,” said Eveline, understanding dawning. “You’re looking for a book signing. You’re looking to get your book signed.” The poor woman, she must be a true fan of whoever was doing the signing, she looked positively distraught.
The woman hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Exactly. A, um, a reader.”
Eveline studied her closely. There was a tiny nagging feeling of familiarity.
Perhaps she’d seen the woman at a literary event, or at one of the other bookshops in the area.
“Well, you’re not far off,” she said. “Just go down to the end of the road, turn right, go about a hundred meters or so and then a left, it’s a ten minute walk. You might still make it.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, hastily gathering her things, dropping what looked like ten pens, stooping to pick them up, banging her head on the counter and then reappearing. “I’m so sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Eveline said. “That’s what bookshops are for, helping people find what they’re looking for.”
As the woman turned to leave, Eveline noticed the papers spilling from her open bag. An Emerald Pearl bookmark. She rolled her eyes. Of course. Another romance devotee rushing to meet the queen of unrealistic fantasy herself.
“You’ll want to hurry,” she called after the woman. “I hear those Emerald Pearl fans line up for hours.”
???
Emery froze. How did this woman know that she was going to an Emerald Pearl signing?
She glanced down and saw the edge of a promotional bookmark sticking out of her bag.
Thank god, she wasn’t a witch. She was, Emery had noticed from the very first instant, extremely attractive though.
Which had made conversing with her a nightmare.
At least she hadn’t spat on her or done anything else equally awful. Now she just had to make her escape.
“Right,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Big fan.”
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. Here she was, the actual Emerald Pearl, standing in a bookshop pretending to be her own fan. Domi was going to have a field day with this story. If Emery ever got out of here with her dignity intact, which was looking increasingly unlikely.
She turned to go, mentally calculating if she could still make it to the right bookshop in time, when the shop phone rang. The woman, who must be the owner judging by her look, reached for it, momentarily distracted.
Emery seized the opportunity to slip away unnoticed.
She was halfway to the door when she spotted a display of classics that made her inner book lover slow her steps.
Austen, Dickens, the complete Virginia Woolf, beautifully bound in leather.
She couldn’t help but be impressed. This was a serious bookshop, not just a place that sold whatever was on the bestseller list.
For a second, Emery felt a twinge of insecurity. Would her own mass-market paperbacks ever be considered worthy of a place like this? Probably not. She sighed. She made people happy, though, and that was important.
The shop owner’s voice drifted over from behind the counter, her slight French accent becoming more pronounced as she grew agitated with whoever was on the phone. “Non, c’est inacceptable.”
Emery glanced back, taking in the woman’s elegant profile. She was striking. Dark hair pulled back into a loose knot, high cheekbones, an air of sophisticated intensity that screamed Emerald Pearl a whole lot more than Emery ever did. She looked like the kind of woman she should put in a novel.
Except this wasn’t a novel, and Emery definitely didn’t have time to stand around daydreaming like it was. She needed to get to this damn signing before Domi sent out search parties.
She backed toward the door, eager to make her escape while the woman was still occupied with her phone call. In her hurry, she failed to notice that her bag was sliding down her shoulder. As she turned, her bag swung wide, and caught the edge of one of the books on the display of classics.
For one heart-stopping moment, Emery watched in horror as the entire display wobbled, books teetering precariously on their shelves. Time seemed to slow as the first volume slipped over the edge.
And then, just as the bell above the door jingled to announce a new customer, the entire display collapsed with a spectacular crash. A copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles slid across the polished wooden floor, coming to rest at the feet of the stunned group of customers who’d just entered.