Chapter 5 #2
“I’m no twit,” Morrie yawns. “Heath is the one who uses up all the hot water shampooing his eyebrows.”
I glare at Morrie, using said eyebrows to convey an important message. I am going to kill you. It will be slow and satisfying. I am going to cut off your testicles, stretch out your winkle in a pasta machine, and serve them to you as spaghetti and meatballs…
Mina’s eyes widen at me, cutting off all satisfying thoughts of culinary revenge. “Your name is Heath?”
Morrie snorts. “He hasn’t told you yet? And after you made such fun of my name, you’re going to love this. Our beloved, cantankerous bookshop proprietor goes by the name of Heathcliff Earnshaw.”
Mina laughs. “As in, Heathcliff the infamous rogue from Wuthering Heights?”
Yes, that exact miserable git.
“My mother had an abominable sense of humour,” I mumble.
“This is too hilarious.” Mina practically doubles over with laughter. “How can you two live in a bookshop with those names? It’s way too meta.”
Morrie and I exchange a glance. We haven’t even thought of getting a story straight. I didn’t expect Mina to put it all together so quickly. No one else in the village ever had.
(Or perhaps they did, but were too terrified to say anything. That was preferable.)
“We met online,” Morrie says breezily. He’s a much better liar than I. “In a chatroom for children of literary-obsessed lineage.”
I groan. Okay, maybe he’s not a better liar.
“Oh. You guys are a couple?” Am I imagining it, or does Mina actually sound disappointed? She coughs into her sleeve. “I mean, that’s perfectly okay, of course. I just meant that I didn’t realise, not that it matters to me one way or the other—”
“James answered an ad I put in the shop window,” I say, trying to rescue the situation. “Our names are an unfortunate coincidence.”
“We’re not together,” Morrie adds, his tongue flicking across his lip. “Although it’s not for lack of trying on my part. Heathcliff is such a prude.”
—and then I peel off your skin, age it for thirty-six months, grate it, and serve it on the side as parmesan cheese—
Thankfully, Mina’s gaze flicks to Morrie. “So you’re—”
“Pansexual, I believe you call it these days. In the world of my books, it was known as sexual deviancy.” Morrie’s eyes flick down her body, and she melts beneath his gaze, which definitely has me contemplating his demise again.
“So if you want to fuck him, you can go right ahead.” I scowl. “Just don’t do it upstairs. I have to eat up there.”
“Hey, that’s not appropriate—”
“All this talking isn’t getting any work done.” I shove a box from behind the desk with such force that a cloud of dust kicks back into my face, sticking to my beard and eyebrows. “These are books.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Mina shoots a glance at Morrie. “No offence.”
“Oh, I never take offence.”
“You’re to go through this box and pick out the books we’re going to keep, then load them onto the computer and shelve them.
There won’t be many books for keeping.” I glare at Morrie.
“You can blame him for this thankless task because I slipped out to the post office and he got sweet-talked by a dim-witted octogenarian into accepting this drivel.”
Mina flips the lid on the box, revealing stacks of James Patterson and Nora Roberts titles.
“If you’re wondering why we don’t want books like these—”
“It’s because they’re airport books. We don’t buy airport books, Mills and Boon, or nineteenth-century bibles,” Mina rattles off as if she’s quoting a ‘how to run a bookshop’ manual.
“If anyone comes in with railway books, self-help, local history unless it’s self-published, and Folio Society volumes, those go on the yes pile immediately.
I told you, I grew up in this bookshop. I learned a few things from Mr Simson.
” She holds up a copy of The 5 Love Languages. “Case in point – this is a keeper.”
Morrie raises an eyebrow at me. I squeeze my fists at my sides, wishing I could cut off that stupid eyebrow. I know what he’s suggesting, that Mina being here isn’t a coincidence. That she’s the one Mr Simson told us about. The annoying thing is, I’m starting to believe him.
“She’s got this, grumpyguts.” Morrie flaps his hand at me as he picks a book from the box and settles himself back into the leather chair. Quoth perches on the back of the sofa, flicking his gaze from me to Mina, and back again.
Could both of you go away? I boom inside my head.
Make us, Quoth shoots back.
He only dares say that because he knows I won’t while Mina’s in the room.
Mina sorts through the book stack. Grimalkin creeps back into the room and winds around her ankles. Determined to distract myself, I boot up the computer and start work on the list of online orders we need to package and ship out.
“Argh!” I mash the keys with my fist. “If you don’t stop giving me this error message, I’m going to stomp on you until you’re nothing but pulp and then feed you through a paper shredder, you gibface flapdoodle.”
“You okay there?” Mina glances over my shoulder, her breath warm against my cheek. This close, I catch a whiff of her perfume – orange blossom and some kind of smoky wood, like a good whisky. I freeze, unable to do anything but breathe her in.
How is she not afraid to be this close to me?
I realise that Mina is waiting for me to say something. I manage to push some words out of my worthless face hole. “I bloody hate online bloody orders.” To illustrate my point, I punch the side of the monitor. “Why can’t people just come into the shop like the good old days?”
“Maybe because they’re all burned up in your sunny disposition?” Morrie pipes up from across the room.
“Croak,” adds Quoth.
“That’s enough out of both of you,” I shoot back. “Shouldn’t you be at your job?”
Morrie yawns. “And miss the chance to see you explain the computer to Mina? Never. I texted and told them I’d be late. They don’t care. They have bigger problems today.”
“This actually looks pretty easy.” Mina leans over my shoulder. “You’re just adding the books to this online catalogue, and that syncs them to Amaz—”
“Do not speak that word in this shop!” I boom, clamping my hands over my ears.
Mina stumbles back in alarm, catching herself on the edge of the desk and toppling over into a disordered heap. Quoth shoots me a withering stare, and trust me, if you think you’re an expert on withering stares, you haven’t even felt withering until you’ve been dressed down by a disappointed raven.
I want to gather Mina in my arms, but I know that if I touch her, I’d never let her go again, so I remain frozen in place, like the cantankerous fool I am.
“What word?” Mina gasps. I hate how adorable she looks, all dishevelled and slightly worried. I am an evil man. “You mean the name of the world’s largest online store? But then how do we talk about running the business—”
“We call it The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named,” Morrie says happily. “Although Heathcliff has some choicer phrases, if you prefer.”
“Fine,” Mina sighs as she picks herself up. “I guess I should have known I was working in a house of crazy. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Heathcliff, show me how we get the books onto The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.”
She leans over my shoulder, and I find myself succumbing to that intoxicating scent and actually explaining how the catalogue and pricing software works. As she reaches for the mouse, her arm brushes mine, and that electric jolt shoots through me again.
“—and here’s where we can see the online orders,” I manage to choke out without falling to the ground to worship at her feet.
“Check this inbox every morning, find the books, box them up, and take them down to the post office. Don’t leave it for me to do.
You can make small talk with Deirdre, the postmistress, and bring back more of this coffee on your way back. Are we in agreement?”
The whole room lights up as Mina grins at me. At me. “If you give me a fifty pence an hour pay raise, I’ll even throw in some Cornish pasties for breakfast.”
“You drive a hard bargain.” I hold out my hand, and she shakes it.
Once her tiny fingers are in mine, her warm palm pressing against me, I find it impossible to let her go. I meet her eyes, see the pain and determination there, and something else, too – it almost looks like curiosity, or desire, but those aren’t emotions one should ever feel around me.
I jerk my hand back. Mina shakes out her fingers.
Once she finishes dealing with the online catalogue, I set her free to shelve the books we’re keeping.
She runs off as if she knows exactly where everything goes, and Quoth and the cat hop after her.
While I work, I listen to her moving about the shop, talking to Quoth and singing to herself.
It’s grotesquely adorable, and I hate how much I love it.
The bell jingles. A middle-aged woman in a ghastly cardigan wanders into the opposite room.
I grit my teeth as she pulls books off the shelves, taking photos of them on her phone, and shoving them back…
usually, in the wrong place. As she wanders up the staircase, she spots the raven sitting on top of the doorframe.
“Oh, what a majestic bird,” she says. “It’s a raven, isn’t it? Once upon a midnight dreary—”
“Croak!” Quoth isn’t in the mood for his Mina-time to be interrupted. He lifts his leg and lets another parcel fly. The woman yelps and ducks out of the way just in time to avoid being hit.
“Sorry!” Mina yells after her. “He doesn’t seem to like that poem!”
She hurries back down the stairs, sees me, and starts yelling that it’s unhygienic to have a raven inside. Big mistake, lady.
Mina creeps downstairs just as the lady storms off, the veins in her forehead throbbing from her rage.
“I’ve never been so insulted! I won’t buy another book from this shop ever again!”
“You were never going to buy a book anyway. That’s the whole bloody point!” I slam the door behind her.
“You know, if you’re nicer to customers, they might buy books.” Mina gestures into the empty shop. “Maybe then you could afford a few more light bulbs around the place.”
Glancing around, I wonder if it’s hard for Mina to see in all the dark, gloomy corners.
Note to self: buy more lightbulbs.
“She was never going to buy a book,” I glower. “Didn’t you see her? She was going around snapping pictures on her phone so she could look them up on The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named later. You can tell a reader from a kilometre away.”
“Oh, can you?” Morrie appears on the staircase behind Mina, emerging from the second-story flat. He’s added a blue cashmere scarf to his ensemble that makes him look even more like a twit, although Mina seems smitten. “Enlighten us with your powers of deduction.”
“Mina is a reader.”
Morrie snorts. “Well, duh. That’s obvious.”
“How can you tell?” Mina asks. “I told Morrie I used to practically live in this bookshop, but I never told you.”
“Easy,” Morrie grins. He loves playing this game. “There’s a smudge of ink on your right index finger and—”
“It’s taken her forty-five minutes to shelve seven books,” I say. “She’s either reading as she goes, or she’s simple.”
“Hey!”
“As charming as always, Heathcliff. If you’ll excuse me, Mina, one of us has to make the bones.
I’m heading into the office.” As Morrie passes her on the landing, he takes her hand, raises it to his face, and kisses her knuckles.
Mina’s cheeks flush with heat, and I contemplate turning Morrie’s spleen into a nice panna cotta.
“Don’t let Old Cantankerous scare you away. I look forward to when next we meet.”
“Yes… er… right. Bye.” Mina stares after him, doe-eyed, as he saunters out the front door.
As Morrie stoops to fit his tall frame through the door, another figure pushes past him. A young woman about Mina’s age, carrying an expensive-looking but impractical handbag, pauses in the entrance hall to study Morrie’s departure.
“By Isis, I never thought I’d see an arse like that walking out of a dump like this,” she purrs.
This girl is nothing special, and she clearly isn’t a reader. I’m turning away from her to head back to my desk when I hear Mina gasp.
My gaze swings to her. Mina flings herself against the wall, pretending to be part of the Victorian floral wallpaper so that the girl won’t see her. Her eyes are wide with fear, and her chest heaves with shallow breaths.
Whoever this girl is, she has Mina terrified.
Which means that she will fear my wrath.