Chapter 9 Now
Tonight, The Bookshop has embraced its alter ego. The voices are loud, the vibes are chaotic, and the store’s typical adults-to-kids customer ratio is fully inverted.
I love it.
When I pitched this Holidays in July event and one-day sale to boost The Bookshop’s consistently subdued summer profits, I told Fern to picture the bookstore version of Narnia. It turned out more like Narnia’s winter-wonderland wild-child twin.
“Good call on the earplugs,” Dan shouts.
I wince at his volume, then tell him, “Glad they’re helping.”
“What?” he yells. He pulls out an earplug. “Sorry, I’m terrible at lip-reading.”
“Just saying, I’m glad they’ve been helpful.”
“Oh, definitely.” Dan glances around the crowded store. “This might be the closest thing to a frat party that I’ve ever been to.”
I tip my head, trying to figure that one out.
“But hey, people are buying books.” He jerks his head behind him. “Boss seems happy about that.”
My stomach drops. “Fern’s here?” I crane around him, scanning the crowd. “She said she didn’t think she’d make it.”
I was counting on her not making it. I could tell even Narnia was a stretch for her comfort. Its winter-wonderland wild-child twin is going to send her into a full-blown panic.
Dan shrugs. “Guess she changed her mind.”
I sigh. “Well, thanks for the heads-up. I’m going to go try to find her—”
“Thea!” Jordan yells.
I spin around. Jordan points to her watch. “StoryTime in five, right?”
I give her a two thumbs-up, then start wending my way through the crowd, on the hunt for Fern. “She just had to be diminutive,” I mutter.
I’m so absorbed in searching for my five-foot-nothing boss in a sea of taller people that I miss what’s in front of me, bumping hard into someone’s chest. I yelp as I stumble back.
Alex wraps his hand around my elbow, steadying me. “You good, Ted?”
“Great!” I squeak.
His eyes narrow. “Ted?”
“Promise.” I salute him. Because that’s not suspicious at all.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Ted.”
“Fern’s here,” I whine.
He leans in. “What?”
I press up on tiptoe and say right in his ear, “Fern showed up.”
Someone bumps me from behind, which shoves me into Alex. My hand slaps onto his chest. My nose smooshes into his jaw. My mouth grazes his neck. Alex clasps my waist, steadying me once again.
For a split second, my brain short-circuits, my senses telescoped to the warm, clean scent of his skin, the satisfying sandpaper scrape of his stubble, the heat of his hand gripping my waist. Every hair on my body stands on end.
I pull away, rubbing my nose. “Sorry,” I tell him.
“All good.” He squeezes my waist, then lets go. “You didn’t know Fern was here?”
“She said she didn’t think she’d make it.”
He says, “You seem upset?”
I throw up my hands. “Of course I am! It looks like the Abominable Snowman threw up in here. She’s going to freak!”
“She didn’t seem freaked when I saw her.”
I grab his arm. “She didn’t? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. It was a couple minutes ago.” He pulls me into a comforting, smooshing Alex hug. “Take a breath, Ted.”
I plop my chin on his shoulder and shut my eyes, drawing in a long tug of air, then blowing out.
“Good,” he says.
I indulge myself, soaking in the comfort of his touch, take another deep breath, then step back. “Thanks. I feel better.”
Alex looks at me like he doesn’t exactly believe me. “I know you’re anxious about everything going well tonight; you took a risk and pushed for this. Which I’m proud of you for, by the way.”
“I hate risks,” I say grumpily. “I hate pushing.”
Alex bites his lip like he’s fighting a smile.
I glare at him. “This is funny to you?”
“No. I just wish…” He clasps my arms, his thumbs running soothing circles along my tense shoulders.
“I wish you could enjoy this instead of worrying about it. But I get why that’s hard.
Fern doesn’t make it easy for you.” He holds my eyes.
“I will say, when I bumped into her, Fern said she’s thrilled.
Customers are buying the shit out of these books.
You’ve got a reporter here, covering the event, and they are very happily eating their third cake pop while washing it down with a complimentary decaf cortado Jordan made them. ”
“Oh, thank goodness,” I sigh. “If Dan had made it, we’d be cooked.”
Alex smiles softly. “It’s going great, Ted. Everything’s going—” He does a double take suddenly over my left shoulder and freezes. “Shit.”
“What?” I start to glance that way, too, but he squeezes my shoulders hard.
“Don’t,” he says urgently. “Don’t look. Please.”
“What’s wrong?”
Alex steps close and whispers in my ear, “It’s Kate.”
It’s hard to focus on what he’s saying with his mouth brushing my ear, his familiar scent washing over me. I shut my eyes and force myself to process what he said. “Kate who?”
“Ted,” he groans.
Hearing him say my name like that, low and rough, hot in my ear, I have to swallow a whimper. A flash of aching lust bolts through my body. “What?” I mutter hoarsely.
“It’s The Kate. From the dating app—”
“Wait.” I pull away, snapped out of my trance. “The Kate? From Kate Gate?”
“Kate-Nate Gate,” Alex reminds me.
I whole-body shudder.
“Yes,” he says darkly. “That one.”
Kate-Nate Gate was the beginning and end of our foray into the dating apps. Alex and I agreed, after that night, to delete the apps and never speak of Kate-Nate Gate again.
“Dammit,” he says, turning slightly, tucking himself against me. “She saw me. She looked at me.”
“How threatening was the look?”
Alex scrubs his face. “I don’t know, Ted.” He peers up, then immediately looks down, swearing under his breath. “She’s coming over.”
“You want to make a break for it?” I ask.
“No, Jen isn’t here yet. I have to keep an eye on Mia.”
I frown up at him. “Do you have an eye on Mia?”
“Sitting crisscross applesauce in the kids’ cozy corner. Reading Miss Rumphius, which I will buy, because it’s covered in the sticky remnants of her fifth—God help me—cake pop.”
“Wow. That level of awareness is…” Hot, I think. “Impressive,” I say instead.
He nods. “Thanks. But can we come up with a solution for The Kate? Because she’s definitely heading my way.”
“Solution,” I tell him. “Yes, I’ve got this.”
I do not, but I want to. Alex is always so quick to jump in and help when I’m in a pickle—ready with ideas, offering solutions. I’m not a fast thinker like him, but I’ve read an astronomical number of novels, and somewhere in there has to be a character who’s been in a similar situation.
“Romance, for sure,” I tell myself. “Historical, maybe? Diverting an unwanted suitor?”
Alex, understandably, is perplexed by my muttering. “What?”
I snap my fingers as it comes to me. “Yes!”
“So confused,” he says.
“Act like we’re romantic,” I tell him. “That’s how we scare her off.”
He rears back. “What?”
“What do you mean what? Did you not understand me?”
“No, I—” He shakes his head. “I meant, how specifically do you want to act romantic—”
Alex’s voice cuts off as I throw my arms around his neck and press my body into his, hips against hips, my breasts smooshed into his chest. “Like this,” I tell him.
I’m playing with fire, touching him like this. But I can do it. For Alex. Focusing on the task at hand—scaring off The Kate, I say to him, “Without looking, can you gauge how close she is?”
He swallows thickly. “It’s blurry, in my peripheral vision, but she’s closing in. Maybe five feet away?”
“Follow my lead, okay?” My fingers dive into his hair, and I tug a little bit. Alex’s eyes widen.
“Okay,” he says hoarsely.
“Babe.” I say it louder than I normally would, but not so loud that it’s obviously a performance. Hopefully.
Alex’s mouth twitches. “Babe?” he whispers.
“I don’t know!” I whisper. “It’s the first thing that came to mind.” Then I say louder, “This evening is going perfectly. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Alex stares down at me, his hands drifting down my waist, tucking me closer. “Yes, you could have. But I’m glad I could help.”
“You really did help,” I tell him genuinely. “So much. Thank you.”
“Ted.” He reaches up and tucks a loose curl behind my ear. “Don’t thank me.”
“You sure?” I smile up at him, my gaze traveling over his face. “Because I was just thinking about how I can’t wait to go back to your place and show you how thankful I am.”
A swallow rolls down his throat. “Oh yeah?”
I nudge my hips into his. “Oh yeah.”
My hands still in his hair, I draw his head down, like I’m about to nuzzle into his neck, and whisper, “She still there?”
“Hovering.” His breath is hot against my ear. His lips brush my cheekbone. I fight a shiver as he says, “Very close.”
“Squeeze my butt,” I tell him.
Alex goes rigid in my arms. “What?”
“Squeeze. My. Butt.” I nuzzle into his neck in earnest now. “Unless you’d prefer a reunion with The—” A squeak catches in my throat as Alex splays his hands wide and firm, one on each of my butt cheeks, and gives them a very enthusiastic grope.
I could not be more thankful that we’re far from the kid’s section and the store’s crowd density hides what we’re doing. The only audience I want for this is the woman we’re trying to scare off.
Alex whispers, “She’s clocked us.” His lips graze the shell of my ear.
A white-hot ache pulses through me. “Great,” I manage.
Something hard presses into my hip. My eyes pop open.
“Please try to ignore that,” he whispers into my neck.
“Pretty big that to ignore,” I whisper back.
“Ted,” he warns.
“Sorry, just stating a fact!”
He groans. “I promise I’m trying to be as gentlemanly as possible.”
I laugh hoarsely. “Rest assured, this is by far the most gentlemanly ass grope I’ve ever received.”
Alex laughs, too. His hands slide up, settling at my waist. “She’s stopped coming closer,” he says quietly. “I think it’s working.”
“Of course it’s working,” I whisper. “Historical romance never fails me.”
“Never would have thought an ass grope was de rigueur in Regency era ballrooms.”
Another laugh jumps out of me. “It wasn’t. But it was way too crowded in here for a waltz.”
“Ah,” he says. “It’s all coming together now—ass groping, the modern equivalent of Regency England’s waltz.”
“Precisely,” I tell him. “The waltz was considered downright scandalous when Germans introduced it to British society.”
Alex gasps and pulls back, meeting my eyes. “You saucy Germans!”
I smile up at him. “Honestly, proudest part of my heritage.”
Alex smiles back, and it hits me how it has too many times the past two years, in that way that makes it so hard to keep things in their safe friend place. Even the moments that start so wrong—awkward, tense, stressful—with Alex, they have this way of morphing into something that feels so right.
I clear my throat, then ask him, “What’s you-know-who’s status?”
Alex hazards a quick glance past me, and relief floods his face. His grip on my waist goes slack. “She turned around. We’re good.”
“Wait,” I tell him, hands still locked around his neck. “Don’t pull away yet. She might look back. We should make sure our… denouement is convincing, too.”
“Good point.” He meets my eyes, his mouth tightening in a grimace. “Also, before we do, I have a minor problem to deescalate.”
“What problem—” My mouth clamps shut when Alex shifts, I think, in an attempt to draw his hips away from mine. All it does is make even clearer, without my body pressed against his, that his “minor” problem is not so minor.
Heat floods my cheeks. “Ah. Right.”
“I need you to say something really unsexy right now,” he tells me.
“Okay. Sure.” I rack my brain, then meet his eyes. “Did you pack any Gas-X? I forgot to take my lactase enzyme before I went to town on those olive and cheddar kebabs, and man, those cubes give me the toots.”
Alex snorts, then drops his head to my shoulder on a pained groan. “Didn’t work.”
“What?” I am baffled. “Alex, lactose-intolerance-induced gas is very unsexy.”
“But your toots are weirdly endearing? They sound like a tiny trumpet.”
I glare up at him. “You know the rule. If I ever toot, no I didn’t.”
“Right.” He schools his expression. “Of course.”
“Daddy! Thea!” Mia barrels into our legs and smiles up at us. “Group hug!”
Alex’s eyes meet mine. “Well. That worked.”
I draw my body back from his immediately and settle myself into a respectable friend-hug posture. It’s one thing for Mia to see Alex and me embrace as friends. It’s another thing for her to see us tangled around each other like we just were. “I thought you had an eye on her,” I whisper.
“I did.” He scoops Mia up onto his hip and she throws her arms around our necks, squeezing tight. Alex tips his head away from her to my far side and whispers, “But then someone asked me to grope her butt and started talking about the sensuality of the Regency era waltz.”
I sigh as I wrap my arm around Mia and squeeze her back. “I should have seen it coming. The waltz always leads to trouble.”