Chapter 16
Half asleep, Jules began to wonder if he had gotten stuck. Just as she was thinking of following in his footsteps, there was
a rattle and a clunk, as he released the lock and opened the door wide.
“Madam,” he announced, with a little bow.
Jules ducked into the shop, under his arm, slipping off his morning coat as he closed the door behind them both. “Thank you,”
she said, handing it back to him with a genuine smile.
“I like seeing you in it,” he said, holding her gaze. Mesmerized, Jules found it impossible to look away. “In fact, I just
like seeing you,” he went on, lowering his voice, so that Jules had to lean forward—wanted to lean forward—to close the distance
between them.
She stepped toward him, one step, two steps... He remained completely still, one hand holding the coat, the other hanging
relaxed by his side. His arctic-blue eyes, with those impossibly thick, dark lashes, fixed on hers, breaking her gaze only
to drop languidly down to her mouth and back again, in an endless moment.
Time stood still.
“I want to kiss you,” she whispered. Her words sounded odd in the silence.
Roman gave a little nod, inviting her in, his face grave. Still, he didn’t move, waiting for her to come to him.
She remembered all the stories she had read about vampires. Deadly. Impossible to resist. But they still needed an invitation
from a willing victim. Jules was the prey. And yet, she stepped forward.
She placed her hands on the tops of his arms tentatively, with just an inch of air between her body and his. She could feel
his body heat and was aching to press herself against him. What was this madness?
“Our families have hated each other for centuries,” she whispered, closing her eyes and swaying slightly.
“About time we healed the rift then, don’t you think?” he said softly. “The Montagues and the Capulets, united at last maybe?
Romeo and Juliet fell in love, after all...”
“And look what happened to them,” she murmured, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she reached up on tiptoes and, with inexorable
slowness, leaned in, brushing her lips against his, feeling the stubble on his chin, the pillowy softness of his mouth, and
breathing in the smell of him, his clean hair, the remains of his lime aftershave, his animal warmth.
For a long moment, he let her explore as she drank him in, and then, consent fully established, he responded, at first gently,
and then, pulling her against him, wrapping his arms around her to prevent her from falling, he kissed her on and on, until
her stomach disappeared and her head spun.
“Jules, Jules, Jules...” he said softly as they eventually broke apart. He was shaking his head in wonderment. “What’s
that short for? Juliet?”
“Julia,” she said, with a little moue. She had always hated her full name. “Nobody calls me that, though.”
“Julia,” he rumbled, running his finger down her cheek. “I like it. It can be my own special name for you.”
Suddenly, she started liking her full name a whole lot more.
“What does this mean?” she said, drowning in his gaze, wondering how she had never noticed the tiny white scar that dissected
his left eyebrow. Far from being a flaw, it seemed to give even more impact to his deep blue eyes, now almost black, his pupils
were so dilated in the dark shop, lit only by the streetlamp outside.
“I don’t know what it means,” he said, smiling gently. “Everything? Nothing? Up to you... But I know I like it. And I like
you, Julia. Even if your family name is Capelthorne.”
Time drifted as they stood there embracing. Kissing.
“I should go,” he said, drawing away and sighing. “It’s late. You’re tired, and they’re expecting me back at the town hall.”
“No,” she protested. But what did she want?
Okay, so what she really wanted was to drag him upstairs and check out the taut abs he was clearly hiding under his fine white
lawn shirt.
Only that wouldn’t be wise, would it?
Reluctantly, she ran her fingers lightly down his chest and stepped away. It felt like the hardest thing she had ever done.
In the end, Roman didn’t go back to the party. Instead, he set off up the hill to walk back home to Middlemass. He needed
the dark, the physical exertion, and the solitude. His stiff black leather shoes quickly rubbed his heels to blisters, but
he barely felt it. As he walked, he berated himself: How had he allowed it to come to this? What on earth had he been thinking,
kissing her like that?
In all the years since he first set eyes on her in that green silk dress, he had never once seriously thought she could be his.
But he had never forgotten. So, meeting her again, just a few months ago, he had been amused at first. Intrigued.
Perhaps he had even wondered whether the usual hollow dalliance, which he was so used to in his New York existence, would be a diversion for them both—some compensation to him for having to return home to Middlemass against his will.
How much better would it have been if he had refused to come home, if he had stayed safely an ocean away from all this?
And now, with his family’s interest in—yet again—crushing the Capelthornes, he could no longer stomach the destructive, pointless
feud he had never understood—not anymore. But the two trains were rushing toward each other on the same track, doomed to destruction,
and however much he now admitted to himself that he cared for her, there was nothing he could do to stop the devastating crash
that would result.
No, it was a disaster. It could only end in hurt. Would only end in hurt. And hurting that woman was the last thing on earth he wanted to do.
Jules spent most of Sunday in her pajamas, grateful for a day of not having to open the shop. She should be doing the accounts
and the ordering really, but she couldn’t settle to anything. Again and again, she relived that kiss, feeling his arms around
her, drowning in the feelings it let loose in her.
He was a Montbeau, she kept telling herself. But her heart didn’t want to listen.
Aunt Flo knew there was something up; Jules kept finding the older woman watching her with a secret smile on her face.
“What?” Jules demanded over lunch.
“‘What’ yourself,” Flo had replied, raising an eyebrow and waiting.
She got nothing.
“On another subject,” Flo went on, tactically admitting defeat for the time being, “what are you going to do with your mother next Sunday?”
“Um... do us all a favor and have nothing to do with her at all?” hazarded Jules. “Why?”
“Because it’s Mother’s Day, you ungrateful child,” Flo chided.
“Aha!” said Jules, who had admittedly forgotten. “I’d better take her out to lunch.” She frowned as she remembered the state
of her finances. “I’d rather take you out to lunch. We can all go to the Middlemass Arms. You will come to stop us killing each other, won’t you?”
“I certainly will not. You don’t need me,” said Flo, “and if the Middlemass Arms is the plan, you’d better give them a ring
to book a table. They’ve got a really good new manager and are extremely busy these days, especially at the weekends. Oh,
and I’ve transferred some money into your bank account. You can’t feed her on fresh air, and it’s high time you had some payment
for all your hard work.”
“You don’t need to do that!”
“I don’t, but I have,” said Flo implacably. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it. There’ll be more next month too,
and then every month from now on. The business can afford it, you know it can.”
Aunt Flo was right, thought Jules later that day. Despite the undoubted challenge from Portneath Books, the figures were looking
not too shabby. Charlie was doing a sterling job with the secondhand book auctions online, and trade in the shop downstairs
had been pretty good over the last few weeks too; fine weather and an uptick in the economy had brought tourists flooding
into town early in the year, bringing their spending power with them.
Now that Jules had taken over marketing and promotions, footfall was higher than the same time last year too.
She was head-to-head with Portneath Books on growing a social media presence, and she knew she was because she spied on Portneath Books’ Instagram account all the time.
She wondered if Roman and that blond woman—what was her name again?
Cally?—did the same with hers. People had really caught on to Jules’s idea that they take selfies with the “Capelthorne’s Books” sign, posting on Instagram with #Capelthornes and #independentbookshops.
A few had even done little BookTok posts, showing off their latest purchases from the shop.
Jules entered all the posts into a weekly draw for signed author copies of whatever they were promoting that week, and each week they had more entries than the week before.
Often, the prize was a book from one of the (usually) shy local authors who had self-published poetry or essays on the history
of the area. Flo always tried to support them when they sidled into the shop, clutching copies of their magnum opus. Sometimes
they asked to do signings, which Jules learned to hate on their behalf. She would spend half her day chatting with them to
keep their spirits up while they sat with a, more often than not, barely touched pile of books beside them. That said, the
local paper was always prepared to do a profile, name-checking the shop, and once or twice Jules even managed to schmooze
an author interview on the radio, with Jules briefing them to mention their upcoming signing session with such repetition
they tended to come off sounding as if they had some weird form of literary Tourette’s syndrome.
Yes, the marketing and promotion couldn’t have been going better, thought Jules.
She curled up in her little book nook with the latest of the hot, cozy crime novels, Murder at Mass Time . As always, but even worse today, her gaze was drifting constantly to Portneath Books. It was open, of course, but, from
what Jules could see, gratifyingly quiet.
There was no sign of Roman. Not that she was specifically looking, but a text or a WhatsApp would have been reasonable, wouldn’t it? Just an indication that his unmistakable passion the previous night hadn’t been a huge mistake or, worse, a cruel manipulation.
Had she been ghosted?
It was four days and counting—not that she was counting—and Jules was outside the shop with her trusty little “Special Offers” table, focusing on the fabulous Murder at Mass Time .
It was the fourth from this author and so brilliant she had decided to put out the debut book on special offer too, in the
hope it would get people hooked on the series. The fluorescent orange cardboard stars were so handy, she didn’t know how she
had previously lived without them. Satisfyingly, as soon as she marked the price, she had people stopping and taking a look.
Sending two more customers into the shop clutching their selections, she was just straightening the piles of books when she
became aware of a new potential customer standing in front of her.
Looking up, her eyes widened. “Hello, stranger,” she drawled, unable to fully keep the reproach out of her voice as her heart
rate soared.
Roman was drawn and pale, with dark circles under his eyes, his jaw set stern.
“You look terrible,” she added, not sure how sympathetic she truly felt.
“‘Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity,’” he observed, indicating her heavily discounted price signs with a nod of the head.
“If you want to fret about something, fret about your own bottom line, Montbeau,” she responded tartly.
This raised a small smile. “We should talk,” he said, meeting her eye at last and then quickly looking away, as he nudged the top book in the stack experimentally, looking as if he was about to pick it up and then changing his mind.
Jules empathized with his difficulty in meeting her eye—looking at him was almost unbearably overwhelming. She felt a flush
blazing up from her chest to her hairline, remembering their kiss... their embrace. Everything.
“Coffee?” she said, nodding toward Finn’s.
Of course, the sight of a Montbeau openly consorting with a Capelthorne over a cup of coffee would set the town alight with
gossip, but what the hell. Jules was past caring.