Chapter Two
Two
I stared at Imogen wide-eyed, not sure if I’d heard her correctly.
“What?”
“Please rescue me, Phoebe. I can’t handle these people.” She held her hands together in a gesture of pleading and gave me her most heartfelt expression. How could I refuse, especially when it was a rare day indeed that Imogen couldn’t handle an irate customer?
I wiped my hands on my apron and followed her out into the main part of the store. A group of four people had come in. One was milling around in front of the tea shop counter, sniffing our testers and nodding approvingly. One was inspecting the stack of books in the front window with a scrutinizing look, not with an eye to purchase but more like a teacher checking over my work, and the final two were waiting at the cash desk that sat between the two shops.
I might not have been the most social media–savvy person on the planet, but I recognized Sebastian Marlow at the desk immediately. His face was, after all, plastered all over my bookstore’s walls, and I had recently unpacked over fifty copies of his books.
“Sebastian, what a pleasure to meet you. I’m Phoebe Winchester. I spoke with your publicist to arrange all of this.” I gestured toward the display, which the young man in black horn-rimmed glasses I’d noticed earlier was now rearranging. “Um, sir, what are you doing?”
He ignored me and continued to change the entire presentation of the table. Daphne, who was standing on the window ledge beside him painting letters on the glass, cast me a helpless look. I just shrugged. I could change things back later; let the little weirdo rearrange books if he wanted to.
“Oh, yes. Deacon. My business manager. I fired Deacon.”
My head swiveled back to Sebastian. He was an incredibly handsome man, with the kind of rakish good looks one might expect from a man who made his money in the wilderness. He had a bit of a Bear-Grylls-meets-Heath-Ledger-in-his-prime vibe that I’m sure helped explain why such a large portion of his fan base was female. Right now, he was looking bored and very much like he didn’t want to be in my shop.
“Did you say you fired Deacon?” I scrunched up my brow, because surely I’d misheard him. Deacon Hume, Sebastian’s publicist and business manager, had been the one to arrange this entire signing and the accompanying outing. I’d just been emailing him about final details and the weekend itinerary not even twenty-four hours earlier. There had to be some mistake.
The petite girl beside Sebastian piped up. “I’m Melody Fairbanks. I was Deacon’s assistant. I’ll be helping Sebastian this weekend in his place.” She offered me her hand, which I shook politely, still not sure I really understood what was happening.
Something must have caused quite the rift between Sebastian and Deacon, because I had been under the impression that they were childhood friends and that it had been primarily Deacon’s efforts and marketing savvy that had helped turn Sebastian from a guy who knew a lot about birds into the world’s most recognizable bird watcher.
They’d even launched an app recently that helped novice birders identify nearby species with a quick photo or an audio recording of the bird’s song. The Backyard Birder app was a mega-success; even I had it installed and had started using it almost every evening while sitting out on my front porch.
Whatever had caused the split between the two men wasn’t my business, but I was a little surprised not to be seeing the person I had spent so much time coordinating everything with.
None of this was Melody’s fault, though, so I fixed my best smile on my face and greeted her politely. “I’m sure Deacon would have shared with you all the arrangements and plans he and I worked out for this weekend.”
“Yes, thanks, it was all very thorough. We’re on our way to the bed-and-breakfast right after this to check in, but we wanted to stop and see where the reading was going to be tomorrow.”
She glanced around the store, her lips pursing slightly, and then her nose wrinkling visibly when she spotted Bob sitting in one of the armchairs next to the big fireplace on the far wall. The fireplace was unlit for the summer, but it was still Bob’s favorite place to while away the hours.
“Is that a cat ?”
“That’s Bob.”
“Well, what is he doing here ?”
I glanced over at my cat, then back over my shoulder at Imogen, who immediately pretended to be busy stocking new releases. I didn’t know how she’d figured this group out so quickly, but I understood now why she’d passed the baton of helping them over to me.
In a way, it was probably for the best. I loved Imogen and she was spectacular at her job—and definitely overqualified to be working here—but she had a short temper and not a lot of patience. This would probably have pushed her over her limit.
In fact, from behind me I heard her mutter under her breath, “Well, he ain’t shopping for the latest Dan Brown book, Melody.”
Thankfully, my guests did not have as keen a radar for sarcastic snipes as I did and didn’t appear to have heard her.
“He’s a shop cat. He’s here whenever I am.”
“I sincerely hope you aren’t planning to have him here for the signing tomorrow.” Again, Melody looked as if Bob’s presence were a personal insult to her. I’d met people who didn’t like cats, but I’d never had anyone have such a viscerally negative reaction to my chunky baby before.
“As a matter of fact, no. With all the people who will be coming and going tomorrow, I didn’t want to have to worry about him potentially getting out, so he will be staying at home.” What I wanted to say was that Bob had every right to attend, since it was his store too, but I felt like that might not be the hill I wanted to die on here.
“Well, good.”
Sebastian hadn’t said much of anything. He gave my cat a quick once-over and I saw the faint trace of a smile on his lips, but I couldn’t quite read the reason behind it.
“Now, before we check in, I just wanted to confirm, the B and B is really the best we can do?” Melody said this in a sweet voice, the way someone might ask for a favor right before asking to speak to a manager.
“If you’re asking about finding a hotel instead, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Closest hotel that’s not a B and B or motel chain is going to be an hour or so northwest in Leavenworth. And they’ll most likely be fully booked, with it being Independence Day on Monday.”
Melody chewed the inside of her cheek and gave me a long stare, as if my answer might suddenly change if she just waited me out.
“I promise you: the Primrose is the nicest bed-and-breakfast in a fifty-mile radius. They’ve won awards. There was even a Hallmark Christmas movie filmed there once. It’s incredibly charming.”
“I’m sure it’ll be great,” Sebastian said gamely. “It’ll be great,” he told Melody directly.
The young man in glasses had finished rearranging the table at the front, and when he joined Melody and Sebastian, he handed me a stack of Sibley field guides and slim Birds of Washington books. “You can find another spot for those, I’m sure. Do you have any more copies of The Backyard Bird Man for Beginners ? Sebastian, do you want to sign stock now?”
I took the hefty collection of birding manuals and stared at the guy with glasses, who barely looked old enough to drink, let alone be in charge of anything.
“No, I think they like it when I sign in front of them. We’ll sign what’s left tomorrow.” He gave me a wink, suggesting we were in on this together. I imagine that might have worked on other women, and it might have worked on me if he were a dark-haired private investigator, but I was unimpressed.
“We’ll stop by in the morning just to arrange the seating and plans for the signing afterwards. Are those shelves movable?” Melody waved a hand toward my heavily laden shelves of new and used books. “We’re obviously going to need more seating.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”
In the window, Daphne hid a snicker behind her hand and accidentally slicked purple paint into her hair in the process.
This was in fact my first rodeo, but I desperately needed Melody not to know that. And it wasn’t the first signing we’d had here—plenty of local authors had done stops—but it was certainly the first one of this magnitude.
The tickets for Sunday’s hike and bird-watching outing had sold out in minutes. I was starting to think I should have put a cap on the reading, but it was a bit late for that now.
“Well, make sure you’re prepared,” Melody snapped. “Because this weekend Sebastian is going to make history. He’s going to put this little backwater town of yours on the map.”