Chapter 3
THREE
ROBYN
Maple Falls was slowly turning in for the night and the last golden rays of the sun had long since slipped below the horizon.
A few locals were walking to The Kettle, the local tavern, for fire-roasted pizza, cold beers, and billiards.
There’d be laughs, tales of bygone days, and the camaraderie that came from living in a small town.
But tonight, there was no place Robyn would rather be than in the bookstore with her black cat, Mr. Darcy, by her side.
For the past three years, ever since she’d rescued him from a shelter back east, Mr. Darcy had stayed close wherever she went.
He followed her everywhere, weaving between her legs and stealing her spot the moment she got up for a cup of tea.
When the store closed for the day, it became her home. She had Meg’s cozy studio apartment upstairs and all the reading nooks a book lover—and one spoiled kitty cat—could ask for.
Mr. Darcy had been slowly making the bookstore his own, climbing on the top of shelves for extended naps, or hiding behind the counter when the store got busy.
Now, he was following her around the shop while she closed the shutters and switched off the overhead lights, waiting for their nightly ritual of reading and writing.
It had been painful leaving her towering Tbr pile behind at her rented brownstone near campus, but it seemed silly to bring them when she’d literally have a bookstore at her fingertips. Now the only question was, which book to read next?
She sat in her favorite spot, curled into the oversized chair by the front window with a fluffy throw blanket tucked over her legs, hair braided loosely over her shoulder. Mr. Darcy was right on the back of the chair, already snoozing away. He didn’t even stir when Robyn scratched behind his ears.
The bookstore had a different kind of quiet after closing. It felt soft and safe, like the building itself exhaled once the last customer left.
Robyn balanced her laptop on her knees and opened the site where she posted her stories—her secret life. A few clicks, a familiar password, and there it was: her latest chapter, already swimming in views and comments.
She smiled before she could stop herself.
She loved writing these romances. Loved the way her readers swooned and laughed and begged for more of her serial fiction.
Loved the freedom of it, the delicious, reckless permission to create happily-ever-afters where love always won, desire didn’t have to be justified, and no one had to shrink themselves to be accepted.
On the page, she was living the dream she’d never quite been brave enough to claim out loud: writing love stories that felt truer to her than the respectable life everyone expected her to want.
Except she had to hide behind a pen name to do it.
There was no way around it. When she thought of the real world discovering her true identity, it made her stomach twist. Her parents would be horrified.
Sure, they’d gotten better over the past year, but they were still her parents.
They still had their expectations for her even though they’d let up on her older sister, Krista.
Robyn smiled, thinking of her sister. Now Krista was brave, turning her back on everything their parents demanded, living life on her own terms, and falling in love with Joe along the way. Robyn loved that for them—truly, she did.
But that life wasn’t on Robyn’s cards. Not just because of her parents. When she thought of her colleagues… well, they’d laugh her out of the lecture hall. And her students? How could they possibly still respect her?
A distinguished literature professor at Yale did not write steamy small-town romances for a cult following online.
She was supposed to publish peer-reviewed research. Literature reviews. Teaching pedagogy. Historical analysis of the great writers of the twentieth century.
Not will-they-won’t-they tension. Not longing. Not heroines with messy hearts and heroes with rough hands and soft mouths.
Robyn scrolled through the comments, making sure her latest chapter hit all the right beats when she landed on the comment she was secretly searching for.
ReadsAfterBedtime97: Chapter 15 was . You’re trying to ruin me.
Robyn’s mouth curved. Of course it was ReadsAfterBedtime97.
She didn’t know anything about him, but he was always there, reading along, leaving praise and teasing and shameless enthusiasm. He got her little jokes. He caught her innuendos. And he was just a little bit flirty in a way that turned her on more than an internet stranger should.
And if Robyn was being painfully honest… she sometimes thought of him when she wrote. Not his face, not his name, but the idea of her biggest fan reading her words and wanting them.
It made the writing come easier.
Robyn’s fingers hovered over the keys, the tiniest thrill sparking in her chest. She typed her reply and hit post before she could overthink it.
AfterHoursAuthor: Maybe taking matters into your own hands would help.
ReadsAfterBedtime97: A little self-care?
Robyn’s cheeks warmed. She glanced at the darkened front windows, thinking about all the nights she’d climaxed thinking about Tyler after writing one of her scenes. What would he think, if he knew about her secret, steamy writing life?
AfterHoursAuthor: I like to think my biggest fan is having their needs met.
ReadsAfterBedtime97: Then consider my needs extremely well taken care of, thanks to you…
Robyn covered her mouth with her hand, but a quiet laugh escaped anyway.
She finished polishing the next scene, checked the formatting twice (because she was who she was), and hit upload. Another chapter released into the wild. Another secret held close to her chest.
Her shoulders lowered a fraction.
For a moment, she simply sat there, listening to the faint tick of the old wall clock above the New Releases display.
Then a text message lit up on her screen. It was a new group message:
Maple Falls Book Club.
Mrs. Bishop: Hello everyone!!! This is your formal invite to tomorrow’s first book club meeting. 7 p.m. sharp at the bookstore! We have a mystery to solve.
Mrs. C.: Everyone check your email. I’ve sent a PDF of the story’s first installment.
Mrs. Bishop: And tomorrow we’ll open the first clue!!!!
Robyn shook her head at Mrs. Bishop’s use of exclamations, but still replied: Can’t wait. Looking forward to it.
Her friends Madison, Kit, Zoe, and Emily soon chimed in with their enthusiasm. They were all Maple Falls locals, women Robyn had known in one way or another for years through holidays, summer visits, and her sister Krista’s ever-expanding circle of friends.
Madison, Zoe, and Emily had always felt a little old for her when Robyn was a teenager…
because, well, they were older. Just by a few years, but it felt much wider when she was younger.
Robyn had been quieter back then, usually tucked off to the side with Meg and with Lily Hawthorne, Jackson and Liam’s sister, trading books and inside jokes while the rest of the town moved around them.
But adulthood had a funny way of closing those gaps. Now they were all friends in their own right, pulled together by the strange gravitational force of Maple Falls.
Meg, of course, had been Robyn’s best friend longest of all. She’d understood the bookstore part of Robyn’s heart before anyone else did.
Robyn was still waiting to hear back from her sister, Krista. She’d snapped a picture of the manuscript earlier and sent it to her, but hadn’t heard back yet. That wasn’t unusual. Krista was traveling Europe with her boyfriend, Joe, and it was probably late at night there when Robyn had sent it.
That was the one downfall to her sister’s absence—she couldn’t tell her everything that was happening in real time.
Soon, they’d have to have a real conversation, one where they drank cups of coffee in their respectable time zones, and she could fill her in on everything: Tyler, the bookshop, Great-Grandma Isabel’s story. Christmas couldn’t come fast enough.
Robyn also thought of her grandmother Alice.
She was Isabel’s daughter and a book lover too, but Alice and her grandfather Walt were currently downstate visiting her sister for a few more days now that Alice’s hip was doing better.
It was odd not having them in town. Robyn was used to popping in every other day, helping out where she could.
She cherished those moments and would miss them when she was back at Yale.
Robyn would be sure to fill her in when they came back on Wednesday. Alice would be delighted by the discovery of the manuscript, Robyn was sure of it. Just like she knew she’d join the book club too, on her good days, anyway.
Robyn’s gaze drifted to the manuscript resting on the side table beside her. Isabel’s ribbon-tied book looked fragile in the lamplight; it had been waiting a century to be touched again.
She picked it up and opened it to the first page.
She’d started to read it earlier and promptly set it back down, her nerves getting the best of her.
What if she didn’t like it? What if her great-grandmother was a terrible writer?
Or an amazing writer who made Robyn doubt her talent and everything she’d ever written?
But now the first meeting of the book club was tomorrow, she couldn’t procrastinate any longer.
Robyn studied the manuscript; the loops of the handwriting were neat and confident.
The voice on the page was gentle and vivid at once, setting and mood stitched together perfectly.
Isabel had done a brilliant job with the sensory details.
She could picture everything, the story pulling her right in.
Robyn could feel herself in it. As if some part of her had come from these pages.
She meant to read only a chapter or two, turn in early, but the story drew her in completely. It was a cozy, witchy romance threaded with a hint of danger. The heroine forced to overcome a curse in a town humming with secrets.
By the time Robyn looked up again, the hot apple cider she’d poured earlier had gone lukewarm on the table.
Her eyelids felt heavy.
She should go upstairs. She should wash her face, lock up properly, climb into bed in Meg’s apartment above the bookstore.
Instead, she shifted deeper into the chair, pulled the blanket higher, and rested the manuscript against her stomach.
The twinkle lights blurred softly as her eyes drifted shut.
And sometime between one sentence and the next, Robyn fell asleep with a story in her hands and warm, coffee-colored eyes on her mind.
The man she always pictured in the quiet hours of the night. The one whose approval had started to matter more than she ever wanted to admit.