Chapter 5
Avery
The afternoon interviews blurred together in a flurry of questions and answers.
The entire time I dealt with the constant, distracting awareness of Flint sitting beside me at the small folding table.
Every time he leaned forward to ask a question, he brushed against me, sending a shockwave through me.
While we interviewed the final applicant, I found myself glancing at the way Flint’s arms filled out his flannel shirt. He had the sleeves rolled up again today, showing off his strong forearms, tan and weathered despite the fact that we were just coming out of winter.
Flint even had manly wrists. They were brawny, just like him.
I hated how much I noticed him.
And I hated even more that I couldn’t seem to stop.
By the time we finished with the last applicant, a nervous high school student who admitted he’d never actually finished a book in his life, I was exhausted from the effort of keeping my eyes where they belonged.
As soon as the kid walked out the front door, Flint stood and stretched, his arms reaching toward the ceiling.
His shirt rode up just enough to reveal a strip of tanned skin above his belt and a thick happy trail that I assumed led straight to Nirvana. I looked away quickly, my face heating.
“So,” he said, dropping back into his chair and pulling out the stack of resumes. “Final decision time. Who do you want?”
“Shelly Anderson.” I didn’t hesitate. “She’s been coming into the store for years. She’s chipper, reliable, and there’s never any drama with her. And she’s part of the Billionaire Romance Book Club.”
Flint joked, “But what about the Monster Fucker Book Club?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “We don’t have one of those. We just carry a few titles. It’s a tiny subgenre.”
He flipped through the papers until he found Shelly’s resume, then frowned. “She’s got less experience than Mallory Carpenter. Mallory worked as a corporate marketing strategist. She could help us modernize the store’s approach. She’s wildly overqualified for this position.”
My stomach tightened at the word modernize.
“Why not both? I thought we were hiring two people.”
“Naw. I’m only getting one until Marlene comes back. Save some bucks.”
“But we need to hire two.”
“And I say we’re getting one,” he told me with steel in his voice.
The man was frustrating me, but underneath it all, I knew he was right. He was the boss right now. And I would never talk this way to Marlene. The best I could hope for was to steer him toward Shelly.
So I gave it my best shot.
“Mallory just moved back to town, and she told us herself that she’s only looking for something temporary.” I kept my voice steady even as anxiety clawed at my chest. “She’ll be gone in a few months, and she’ll want to change everything while she’s here.”
Flint’s hazel eyes studied me intently. “Change isn’t always bad, Avery.”
“What customers want is a familiar, friendly face,” I pressed on as he led me out of the stockroom and back into the main part of the bookstore.
“Someone who remembers their names and asks about their grandkids. Someone who knows what they like to read. That’s Shelly.
Not Mallory, who abandoned Red Oak Mountain years ago to chase some fancy career in the city. ”
Flint went still.
He stared at me for a long moment, something shifting in his expression that I couldn’t quite read.
Then his whole posture changed, his shoulders relaxing and his body angling toward me in a way that felt almost intimate.
“You really like Red Oak Mountain, don’t you?” His voice came out low and warm, almost pleased.
I blinked at him, confused by the sudden shift. “Why is that a big deal?”
“I like it, too.”
Hmm. That was unexpected. Was Flint opening up to me?
“What’s not to like?” I bantered back.
He opened his mouth to answer, but Martha Ellis headed toward the register with a stack of books clutched against her chest right then.
Martha was somewhere north of seventy, with silver hair pulled into a tight bun and sharp blue eyes that missed nothing. She had her finger in every piece of gossip that circulated through Red Oak Mountain, and she wasn’t shy about sharing her opinions.
“Welcome to Bookish, where worlds await,” I said to a tourist who ambled in while Martha settled in front of the register.
“Well, well,” she said as she waited for us to get there. “Who would have ever thought I’d see Flint Campbell inside the city limits. I thought you’d turned completely feral out there in those woods. Maybe you’ve just been playing at being a savage all these years.”
Flint grunted. “Martha, haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.”
He walked behind the register, and I followed on his heels.
“Yup, it’s been more than a blue moon,” she shot back, her eyes sparkling.
Flint’s arm brushed against mine as he reached for Martha’s books, and another spark of heat shot through me at the contact.
I pressed my lips together and tried to focus on anything other than the solid warmth of him beside me.
“Let me ring these up for you, Martha. It’s nice to see you. How’s little Maddie doing?” Flint asked, his deep voice rumbling in a way that made my stomach flip.
“All grown up and married to Jack. They tied the knot last year.”
“Huh. Good for them.” His large, work-hardened hands moved over the register keys. He punched in the ISBN for the first book, and the register beeped an error.
He might be a big, burly mountain man capable of doing many things, but he sucked at running a register.
“You transposed two numbers,” I said quietly, leaning closer to point at the screen, while my shoulder brushed against his arm. “See? It should be 978, not 987.”
He corrected the mistake without comment, but I caught the slight curve of his lips and the way his eyes darted to me, warm and appreciative.
“So, Avery dear,” Martha said, her keen eyes darting between us with obvious interest. “How is it going, working so closely with Marlene’s nephew?”
“It’s going well,” I said carefully, keeping my expression neutral.
Martha’s eyebrows rose slightly, clearly hoping for more gossip than I was willing to provide.
“We’re having a friendly debate today, actually,” Flint said. “Trying to decide who to hire. Shelly Morrison or Mallory Carpenter.”
Martha’s face lit up with the gleam of someone who’d just been handed a juicy piece of information. “Mallory Carpenter? She’s a darling, but she wouldn’t last a month. That girl’s got wandering feet.” She shook her head firmly. “Definitely Shelly.”
Flint turned to look at me, and grudging respect flickered in his hazel eyes.
Standing this close to him behind the narrow checkout counter, I could feel the heat radiating off his body while my heart skittered in my chest. Just one glance from the man seemed to throw me into a full swoon.
“I guess we’re hiring Shelly,” he growled. “I’ve been overruled by two women now.”
I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to hug him.
“Really?” I asked, staring gratefully up into his eyes.
He gave me a half-smile and rumbled, “Yeah. You’ll have to work with her longer than I will. Might as well go with your choice.”
“Thank you,” I told him quietly, my attention so focused on him that I forgot all about Martha.
Until she cleared her throat and said, “Get a room. But first, finish checking me out. I’ve got books to read.”
I turned to stare at her with surprise, but Flint just chuckled and finished ringing Martha up.
Part of me knew my resistance to Mallory wasn’t entirely rational. I liked her. She was perfectly nice and extremely professional.
But she would bring change, just like Flint was bringing change, and I was terrified of losing my place if the store evolved into something I didn’t recognize anymore.
Flint leaned close and rumbled, “Hey Martha. Can you do me a favor?”
Martha leaned in towards him, too, “For you? Anything. I still remember how you found us a new Christmas tree for the square that year when the first one caught on fire. You saved Christmas.”
Flint shrugged a shoulder as if none of that mattered. “It’s for Marlene. She probably hasn’t told anyone but Bookish is struggling. Might not make it another year. Can you get the word out at some of the tourist spots? I think that will make a difference.”
Martha’s eyes dimmed, then lit up. “I’m sorry to hear Marlene’s having trouble. Of course I’ll spread the word. By the way, how’s she doing?”
Flint got a funny look on his face. “Better than you’d expect. I think she’s happy she broke her leg. She said something about good company.”
“Really?” Martha looked like she wanted the scoop.
But Flint shook his head. “Bring people in, then I’ll tell you.”
Martha opened her mouth and started cackling, to my surprise. “It’s a deal, Flint. But you drive a hard bargain for a tiny bit of gossip.”
I just stood there with my mouth shut, watching the whole exchange. Flint had her wrapped around his finger.
After Martha collected her books and left, the store fell quiet.
“Are you really going to hire Shelly?” I asked.
“Yup.” Flint moved to the front door and flipped the sign to CLOSED as the tourist who’d ambled in left without buying anything. “She was the last customer. Let’s close up.”
Heat crept up my neck. “You go on ahead. I’ve got some things to finish.”
He turned back to face me, his brow furrowing. “You did this last night too. Stayed late after I left. Why?”
“I’m fine. Just go on and skedaddle your cute butt out of here.”
Flint laughed, then dropped his voice low until it rumbled even deeper than usual, “I don’t skedaddle, hon. I stride fiercely, in a manly man way, saving cats and capturing the attention of pretty women like you. Almost like a… mountain man would.”
My mouth dropped open. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Oh, I was just skimming a few of the mountain man titles. I was trying to impersonate one of those dudes.”
I might have needed a fan to cool myself off. He obviously hadn’t read the spicy scenes in any of those books yet, or he wouldn’t be joking about them so casually.
“Avery,” he turned to look at me. “How late did you work last night?”
I sighed, realizing I wasn’t going to be able to avoid this conversation. “Until nine. There’s no one else to do it, not until we get the new hires trained.”
I’d be working nine to nine until then.
Flint seemed to grow larger somehow, his shoulders squaring as he stepped toward me. The dominant energy rolling off him made my breath catch.
“Marlene can’t afford to pay you overtime,” he said firmly. “We’re closing at five until Shelly gets trained.”
“I don’t expect overtime.”
“Then I’ll work the evening shift.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You go home.”
“But the Western Book Club is meeting tonight,” I shook my head. “You can’t handle those old men. They’re particular about their books and they don’t like strangers.”
“I can handle a few old men talking about cowboys. And I grew up here. I’m not a stranger.”
I raised an eyebrow. It was time for a pop quiz. “Oh yeah? Where’s the western section?”
“Uh…”
Flint looked around the store, his eyes scanning the shelves. Then he walked with confident strides toward the historical section, where a few books about American frontier history were displayed.
A small laugh escaped me before I could stop it, and his head turned sharply at the sound.
“What? These are westerns?”
I walked past him to the actual western section, where rows of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey lined the shelves. “Fiction,” I said. “Not history. They want stories about gunslingers and cattle drives, not academic texts about the negative effects of frontier times.”
His lips curved into a smile, slow and warm, and his eyes moved over me in a way that made my skin tingle. Like he was appreciating something about me that went beyond my knowledge of book organization.
“I’ll manage,” he said. “But… if I have questions, can I call you?”
I hesitated.
Giving him my number felt like crossing a line. This was how it had started with Sawyer.
A few lingering looks, then a casual request for my number.
The next thing I’d known, I’d been bewitched by the man, and riding his cock on the way to what I thought would be a future announcement about a wedding day.
Men like Flint and Sawyer were what real mountain men were like.
Not what I read about in the romance novel versions of them.
And the thing about women like me?
We weren’t the heroines in a novel. We were the side characters. A best friend, or a woman working at a produce stand, briefly mentioned. Someone else always got to catch the hero.
Not me.
Only heartbreak could come from giving this man my number.
But he was watching me with those steady hazel eyes, waiting patiently, and despite knowing better, I found myself reaching for his phone before I could talk myself out of it.
I typed in my number and handed it back, my fingers brushing against his palm. The contact sent a jolt of electricity up my arm.
“There,” I said, pulling my hand back quickly. “But only for work questions.”
“Sure. Only for work questions,” he rumbled, but the glint in his eyes suggested he might not stick to that rule.
I grabbed my purse and headed for the door, feeling his gaze on me the whole way.
He only called me six times that night. There’d been no panic in his voice as he asked question after question about how the book club was supposed to work.
Evidently, those old cowboys gave him a serious razzing because at 7:30 p.m. when he’d finally managed to shuffle them out the door, he texted me to say my overtime would be approved going forward.
I snorted as I snuggled on the couch reading his text. Then I picked up the phone and called my friend Gwen.
I needed to bring her up to date on the whirlwind Flint Campbell was causing at Bookish.