Chapter 5 #2
He gave a pause, like he was expecting me to commiserate. “Parents, right?” I said after a moment.
“Truly annoying,” he agreed. “The grandmas didn’t let me get away with much, but they were much more chilled.”
I never got to meet my abuela, who passed away years before I was born. For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder about my other grandparents, on my dad’s side. A momentary longing to know them bloomed in my chest, but it died down quickly—I’d already been left by enough family members.
Besides, as far as I knew, they hadn’t made much of an effort to see me over the years. Just like their son.
Realizing that I had wandered down yet another dangerous path, I tried to steer us back to a safe subject. “By the way, did you have a chance to check out the scene I sent you last night?”
When I had hunkered down with my laptop, I had truly intended to make some more progress on my screenplay.
But as soon as I opened my writing software, I found myself daydreaming about the Duke of Harding.
As I wrote with an ease I hadn’t felt in years, a knot I hadn’t realized lived inside my chest began to unravel.
Next to me, Dash was nodding. “That one might be my favorite yet. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll film that one first.” He unlocked his phone and pulled up the document I had emailed him. “What do you think about shifting this paragraph to the hurt/comfort video and adding this here instead?”
My gaze followed the movements of his fingers as he tapped out some edits. Even if he hadn’t told me about his past in fandom, I would have guessed from the way he had grasped the basics of the Duke of Harding character and built on it.
Something else struck me as we hunched over the small screen, one suggestion following quick on the heels of another until we had most of another scene written—Dash and I worked well together.
Maybe it was the project or the lack of pressure or just the way he seemed so attuned to my thoughts that it was as if we were passing a single brain cell back and forth.
But writing with Dash was a goddamn delight.
“We should do this together all the time,” I said when Dash’s machine came to the end of its cycle. “Write together, I mean.”
He glanced at me from over the door of his machine. “Yeah?” he asked happily. From the way he was looking at me, you’d think I’d offered him an afternoon full of dessert and sex. God, why did he have to be so endearing?
“Sure,” I said, and got up to pretend to check on my clothes, which were still drenched in suds.
And why did I have to be so charmed by him?
Our clothes safely locked into a drying cycle, we ventured out toward the used bookstore. The sun had grown in heat and intensity—I took one look at a row of flowers wilting in their buckets outside a grocery store and instantly felt like one of them.
I was twisting my curls into a knot to free my sweaty neck when I felt a faint buzzing at my side. I dove into my tote for my phone, checking the name on the display before guiltily declining the call.
“It’s okay if you have to take that,” Dash said, slowing down.
“Nah, it’s just my cousin Yaz.” I tapped out a quick text to tell her that I’d call her back later. “She’s just calling to check up on me—or, rather, to check that I’m working on my screenplay. And since I’m not, I’d just as soon avoid another lecture.”
“Why does your cousin have to lecture you about it?”
Tossing my phone back into my bag, I shrugged.
“I’m kind of terrible at getting things done, even things I want to do, and Yaz is pretty good at keeping me on track.
We’re both only children but our mothers—they’re sisters—lived together for most of our childhood, so Yaz is the closest thing to an older sister I’ll ever have.
And she doesn’t let me forget it for a minute. ”
“You’re lucky,” Dash said. “I’ve never been close to my cousins.”
“And you’re an only child, too, right?” I asked, remembering something he’d mentioned the other day.
“I have two much younger half siblings, but for all intents and purposes, yeah, I grew up as an only child. But I do have two kickass grandmas, so I guess it evens out. Though neither of them are much for lecturing.”
“If it’s lecturing you want,” I said before I could think better of it, “I’d be more than happy to help you out. I may be more Chaos Muppet than Stern Brunch Daddy, but I know a thing or two about keeping people in line.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think you can keep me in line?”
“Oh, I know I can,” I shot back as we paused and Dash swiveled to face me. “You think you’re big and tough? I hate to break it to you, Dashwood—you’re nothing but a cinnamon roll.”
“Does that mean you want to take a bite out of me?” he asked, dropping his voice into a sexy drawl.
I shoved him lightly before I got the tingles again. “You wish.”
Okay, so fine, we were definitely flirting. Both of us. But it was not a problem, because neither of us was going to take it further than that. There was too much at stake, at least for me, to put our working relationship in jeopardy over something as ill-advised as a hookup.
Not that I wasn’t used to doing six ill-advised things before breakfast. Not that my pulse wasn’t racing in anticipation of the expanding rush of heat that had begun sweeping over me the moment I thought of the words hooking up in relation to Dash.
Not that—
Belatedly, I noticed that Dash was pushing open the door to the storefront we’d stopped in front of.
I had a brief moment to notice the yellow awning and the words Second Chance in rolling script on the window before Dash was gesturing me inside.
He did that tall guy thing, where he held open the door with a hand placed high overhead while I ducked under him.
“Holy shit,” I breathed as I came to a stop in front of a pile of books. “This is—”
Words failed me, but Dash seemed to understand my meaning.
“Right?”
His face had lit up at my amazement, as if he hadn’t really believed that I would be this entranced with what was essentially an Aladdin’s cave full of worn paperbacks.
Pastel and jewel-toned spines peeked out among the mottled beige of old paper, the cracked and sometimes flaking cardboard almost gleaming in the lamps suspended from the decorative tin ceiling.
The shelves were plain wood, bowing slightly under the weight of the paperbacks, and even the counter was piled with books, high enough that I could only see a glint of brown skin and close-cropped dark hair as the person standing behind them waved at Dash in response to his greeting.
Strewn around the room were a few battered wooden step stools, perfect for reaching some of the higher stacks.
The only thing missing was a plush armchair to cuddle up on.
Or a loveseat that fit two, my brain supplied.
“I feel like Belle in Beauty and the Beast,” I declared as I made my way around a wobbly pile of Harlequins. “When the Beast showed her his library. Only this is better because I doubt they had romance novels in whatever-century France.”
I stopped to run a finger over the glossy embossed letters of a purple-and-pink cover and, impulsively, cracked the book open and brought it to my nose.
“Oh, man. This reminds me of Mrs. Perez. This older Cuban lady who lived down the street from us growing up,” I explained to Dash, taking another heady sniff.
“She died when I was fourteen or so, and when her daughter came to clean out the house, she found hundreds of romance novels stacked on every surface. She didn’t want to deal with all that, so she gave them to Yaz and me in exchange for us helping her pack up her mother’s things.
Yaz had zero interest in romance novels, but she saw how much I wanted them and busted her ass for an entire weekend. ”
Dash smiled. “No wonder you let her lecture you.”
“I owe her a lot,” I said, shrugging as I put down the book.
I hadn’t realized until I said it that I did owe Yaz. I owed her peace of mind. If nothing else, I needed to make her see that she didn’t need to spend another twenty-six years putting her life on hold to worry about me every time I got myself into one of my flails.
We lapsed into a comfortable silence as we browsed.
I could have cheerfully left with half the store, but even a couple of dollars per paperback would be a strain on my limited resources.
The two books I did get were mostly for the covers, gorgeous 1980s illustrations that depicted heroines with big dresses and bigger hair, and sinuously curving fonts.
Dash, I noticed, had a whole stack of Candlelight romances. “I’m a sucker for these,” he said, handing over a twenty-dollar bill to the person behind the counter. “Hey, Shy. Mariel, this is Shiloh. They own the bookstore.”
“Nice to meet you, Shy. You have a great place here.”
“And you haven’t seen half of it,” Dash said happily, before asking Shy, “Mind if we go in the back?”
Shy nodded, their pizza-shaped earrings catching the light from the window behind them. “Sure thing, Dash. Watch out for Kitty Marlowe, though—she’s not in the best mood today.”
“Kitty Marlowe?” I asked.
“Shy’s cat,” Dash explained.
“Kitty Marlowe belongs to no one but herself,” Shy said, looking amused as they finished bagging up our books. “Want me to keep your bags here until you’re ready to go?”
“Sure, thanks. Come on, Mariel.”
Dash led to me a green door I hadn’t noticed before, mostly because it was obscured by a table piled high with pirate romances.
We stepped through, and it was like walking into a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel.