Chapter Four
The hug seemed to last for an eternity. Noelle’s lips brushed against his shirt.
The fabric felt crisp and smooth. Expensive.
What kind of cotton was this shirt made out of?
She had no idea what had come over her, but she almost didn’t want to let go of this man.
Instead of pulling away, she leaned in closer.
His chest rose and fell as he breathed and she could hear the steady pounding of his heart.
She peeked her head around the man’s arm and saw that Brian had finally walked away.
Thank goodness. Brian glanced over his shoulder one last time and puckered his lips in a sour frown.
Across the street, Tati was staring out the salon window at Noelle, mouth agape.
Noelle could practically see the question marks floating above Tati’s head.
But she didn’t have any answers because she wasn’t entirely sure what was happening either.
Reluctantly, she pulled away from the handsome stranger who claimed to know her. He looked down at her and smiled. Again, she was struck by a sense of familiarity, but she still couldn’t place him. Maybe she actually had seen him in a cologne ad before.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I actually don’t think I remember you.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “That’s because we’ve never met.” He pointed his thumb in the direction in which Brian had disappeared. “You seemed uncomfortable with that dude and it looked like you needed an out.”
Noelle smiled, relieved that she hadn’t somehow forgotten meeting Jeremiah before. Maybe she’d seen him on the PATH once, and that was why he looked familiar.
“Thank you,” she said. “You saved him from getting punched, so he should be thanking you too.”
“We don’t need you catching any charges,” he said, laughing. “My name really is Jeremiah, though. What’s yours?”
“Noelle.”
“Noelle,” he repeated. He smiled slowly this time, like he was savoring the sound of her name. “Nice to meet you, Noelle.”
He held out his hand, and goose bumps spread across Noelle’s skin as their palms pressed together. His hand was much larger than hers, and other than the calluses on the inside of his palm, his skin was smooth.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” she said, gazing down at his long fingers.
“He an ex or something?”
Noelle tore her attention away from their clasped hands and looked up at Jeremiah’s face. “No. God, no. He’s just some guy I met at my other job.”
“Ah.” Jeremiah smirked, and a dimple appeared on his left cheek. “So, you were gonna punch him? Let me find out you have a mean right hook. You a boxer?”
He began examining her knuckles, and Noelle shook her head and laughed as he turned her hands this way and that, peering at her skin.
He glanced up and looked at her through his lashes.
Then he flashed a disarmingly charming smile, and Noelle could do nothing but smile back as a flight of butterflies began a feverish swarm in her stomach.
“I, um,” she started, then stopped.
She, um, what? She had no idea how to finish her sentence. The butterflies had traveled upstream and were currently discombobulating her brain.
Jeremiah politely ignored her sudden inability to form a complete thought.
He released her hands but kept his eyes firmly on her face.
“I could use your help finding a book—if your shift isn’t over, that is,” he said. “Would you be able to help me?”
Right. Her job. The one that she’d be losing by the end of the day.
“Oh yeah, of course,” she said. “Please follow me.”
Jeremiah held the door open for her, and the bell chimed as they stepped inside.
Kevin briefly glanced up as Noelle placed her leather jacket behind the register, but he quickly became engrossed in his phone again.
Noelle chewed the inside of her cheek and tried to fight her frustration.
This was whom she was being fired in favor of?
No, she wouldn’t let herself get worked up about that right now. She’d finish her shift and think all of her frustrating thoughts later, preferably with a box of Smith’s Sweets cookies nearby to help soothe her battered, jobless soul.
She walked back over to Jeremiah. “What are you looking for today?”
He paused by the beach reads display table and picked up a copy of How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan. He turned it over and peeked at the description on the back before placing the book down.
“I’m looking for a vintage copy of Dracula,” he said. “A few people online said you had a good selection of classics.”
Dracula was the last book she’d expected him to say. But so much about Jeremiah and this entire afternoon was unexpected. She might as well just roll with it.
“Sure, our classics are this way,” she said, gesturing for him to follow her toward the back of the store. “Are you a big reader of classic literature?”
“Oh, nah, I don’t read that much.” He sent her a quick, sheepish look as he walked beside her. “I’m sure you hate hearing that.”
“Not really. I read a bit of everything now, but I wasn’t much of a reader for most of my life. I do think there’s a book out there for everyone, though. Maybe you just haven’t found yours yet.”
“That’s a nice thought,” he said. He ran his fingers against the spines of several John Grisham novels from the ’90s as they passed through the thrillers section. “Makes me feel less uncouth.”
Noelle smiled. “There’s a word you don’t hear often.”
He smirked, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “When my siblings and I were kids, my grandfather had this thing where he would teach us a new word and if we found three ways to use it in a sentence by the end of the week, he’d give us twenty dollars.”
“How old were you when he gave you ‘uncouth’?”
“Thirteen. One of my sentences was ‘Percy thinks I’m uncouth because I get powdered sugar all over everything when I eat funnel cake.’ ”
Noelle’s smile widened. “Who’s Percy?”
“My brother.”
She laughed, and Jeremiah grinned at her.
“But for real, though, I have read some books,” he said. “Self-help and business, stuff like that. My sister reads a lot of horror. I’m getting Dracula for her birthday gift. It’s one of her favorite books. She has a bunch of different versions.”
They came to a stop, finally arriving at the classics section.
“I like horror too,” Noelle said. “Do you know the names of some of the other books she’s read?”
“Umm, maybe. She likes gory shit about vampires and monsters murdering people. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, though.
Then again, she does wear a lot of black, so maybe what she reads isn’t that surprising.
A few weeks ago, she was telling me about this book called When a Vampire Wakes or something like that. ”
“Wait, I loved that book!” In her excitement, Noelle grasped onto Jeremiah’s bicep.
His muscular, well-developed bicep. He glanced down at the point of contact, lifted his eyes to hers, and flashed an intrigued smile.
Noelle’s cheeks immediately warmed. She yanked her hand away and busied herself with searching the shelves for last names that started with S.
She cleared her throat. “Um, your sister sounds cool.”
“Yeah, she’s dope,” he said.
She could feel Jeremiah watching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him again just yet. Her thoughts were loopy and jumbled because she was fighting an internal battle with the butterflies for control of her brain.
She pulled the three copies of Dracula they had in stock.
A 1986 paperback edition featuring an image of Dracula hovering in the shadows, a 2003 mass-market edition with a painting of Dracula’s Transylvania castle on the cover, and a more recent gray and black hardcover clothbound edition, published in 2011.
“Here’s what we have,” Noelle said, holding the books out to Jeremiah. “Only the 1986 edition is technically considered vintage, but all three are still in pretty good condition.”
Jeremiah accepted the books from her and inspected each copy.
While his attention was elsewhere, Noelle took a moment to observe him.
He had full lips, and his eyelashes were unfairly long.
He wore a gold watch on his wrist. She didn’t know much about watches, but from the way he was dressed and from the look of his car, she would guess that his watch probably wasn’t cheap, even if it was fairly understated.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and Noelle found herself admiring his neck muscles, of all things.
She wondered what it might feel like to touch his skin there.
Wow. Was she really standing here lusting after a customer?!
“I’ll take this one,” he said, snapping her out of her thirsty-ass daydream. He held up the hardcover clothbound edition. “I think she owns the other two already.”
“Great!” Noelle’s voice was a high-pitched squeak. Jesus. She needed to ring this man up and send him on his way so she could think clearly again. She took the Dracula editions he didn’t want and returned them to the shelf.
Jeremiah leaned his shoulder against the bookshelf, making himself comfortable. “So, you said you read a bit of everything?” he said. “What’s your favorite book?”
“That’s hard. I have so many. The Mothers by Brit Bennett is probably my favorite literary novel. Definitely Indigo by Beverly Jenkins. That’s a romance novel.”
He smiled. “You like romance?”
She nodded and tried not to read too deep into the way the word romance rolled so smoothly off his tongue. Had he said it that way on purpose or was she imagining it? Her gaze darted from his throat to his large hands, back up to his brown eyes.
“What’s your other job?” he asked.