Chapter Seven
Seven
Now it was my turn to be thirsty, though I’d never admit it.
Alex was still in his practice clothes. The Huzzah!
T-shirt was back, its hem stopping a couple inches above the waistband of his cutoff gray sweats, and his outfit was completed with battered green high-topped sneakers.
He’d obviously run a hand through his hair more than once, and now it stuck out in all directions, the sunglasses on top of his head raking his hair back from his forehead.
His cheeks were pink from the summer sun.
I tossed the rag onto the counter behind me and took a deep, cleansing breath before striding out to greet him. This was my store—well, okay, it was Emily’s store—and I wasn’t going to let him rattle me. We were being civil, remember? I could be civil.
“Hey.” Alex stopped short when he saw me. “You work here?”
“I work here,” I confirmed, keeping my stride purposeful all the way to the front counter. It seemed safe to keep that barrier between us.
He gave a rueful laugh, his hands on his hips, smiling down at the floor. “I just can’t keep out of your spaces, can I?”
“Aw, you didn’t drop by to see me? I’m hurt.” I opened my laptop, just to show how unbothered I was that he was here. I could chat with him and check my email at the same time. That’s how civil we were.
“Did you want me to drop by to see you?” The question made me glance up from my empty inbox. Instead of the floor, now his gaze was right on me, and it was a little too much.
“Nope.” I did my best to keep my voice breezy, casual. “Everything okay back at the house? Any more injuries?” They should still be rehearsing, so I braced now for a new emergency. Had Simon broken his leg? Did they need a substitute to step in and fight Alex? I could do that; give me a sword.
But he didn’t look concerned. “Nah. Everything’s fine. Simon wanted to take off early. The heat, you know.”
“Oh.” I glanced at the weather widget in the upper corner of my laptop. Eighty-eight degrees, sixty-nine percent humidity. Nice. “Yeah. That’ll do it. You here for a reason?” That came out a little shorter than I’d intended. Customer service was my passion.
He nodded. “Emily said she’d set some books aside for me, from the classics section?”
“Oh.” I held in a sigh. Thanks for the heads-up, Em.
I looked over my shoulder toward the back room, where the holds were kept, as though I could see through walls.
I didn’t like to leave the store unattended when someone was here, but Alex probably wouldn’t ransack the place.
“Okay,” I said, as hospitably as I could. “Hold on.”
Sure enough, there was a bundle of books—two hardcovers and a handful of paperbacks that had all seen better days—rubber-banded together.
There was a piece of paper secured on the top of the pile, Alex’s name scrawled on it in Emily’s looped handwriting.
I glanced at the titles on the way back to the front.
Literary criticism, all Shakespeare related, and a couple about the sonnets.
“I’m sensing a theme.” I put the books down on the counter in between us and took off the rubber band.
“Yep.” He gave a little laugh as he reached for the book on the top of the stack. “The research never stops.”
“Really? You don’t have enough bingo balls in your cage already?”
“I’m a gentleman,” he said absently as he flipped through the book, stopping to read a page. “I don’t talk about my balls.”
I let myself laugh at that, waking up my laptop while Alex flipped a couple more pages. No new emails. No new notifications from any of the networking sites I’d joined.
“What are you working on?”
“Nothing,” I said around a sigh. “Technically I’m applying for jobs, but there’s not a lot happening right now.” My gaze went back to the stack of books on the counter, then over to Alex, who was looking right at me.
“I see you looking.” His voice was teasing, almost flirty, and my heart stuttered. I hadn’t even been checking out his abs. Not this time, at least. But then he pushed the stack of books across the counter toward me. “Come on,” he said in that same flirty tone, “you know you wanna.”
“No, I don’t,” I said automatically. But I also closed my laptop and set it aside before picking up the book on top of the stack.
I couldn’t lie; The Songs and Sonnets of William Shakespeare seemed way more interesting than my résumé right now.
I flipped through it, stopping briefly on Sonnet 29—I’d read that one at Simon and Emily’s wedding.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. The words echoed in my head as I scanned the page; I could still hear my teenage voice faltering over some of the phrasing.
Back then my Shakespeare muscle had been weak, but I’d already fallen in love with the language.
On the other side of the counter, Alex had set the first book aside and was paging through another one. He paused a couple times, then set it aside too before noticing the book in my hands. “Ah,” he said. “You’ve got the songs one.”
I passed it over. “You adding songs to your repertoire?”
He nodded absently. “Something like that. I was thinking about this.” He glanced up at me under his dark lashes, which were criminally too long for him to be walking around having. While I was distracted by those long eyelashes, he cleared his throat and began to read:
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken…”
“Meh.” I interrupted his recitation, taking the book back and flipping to a different page. “Overrated. Overdone. What about:
“To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose and donned his clothes
And dupped the chamber door,
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.”
“Ophelia,” he said dryly. “Nice and romantic. Gonna woo all the fair ladies with that one.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were out to woo with this.”
“It’s the renaissance faire,” he said. “It’s all about wooing.” He held out his hand for the book, and I passed it back.
“And drinking.”
“And drinking,” he conceded with a smile. “And cavorting.”
“Not to mention frolicking.”
“Can’t forget frolicking.” He turned a page, skimming the text while we talked. “Frolicking is an important part of the day.”
“And…” I thought hard, trying to keep up. “And emptying your bank account because you decided you needed to go home with a sword.”
He gave a small laugh, glancing up at me with a smile. “Listen, there is not a home in this world whose decor could not be improved by a good sword over the mantel. How about this one?
“Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.”
He had a great voice for Shakespeare. But of course he did.
And the way he looked at me from under his lashes as he recited come hither, come hither, come hither…
It was a special kind of music, sending shivers down my spine and making each nerve ending stand on end.
I caught my breath, and it was a few moments before I could speak.
“That’s…that’s a good one.” I had to admit it, didn’t I? With him standing this close and his words hanging between us like a ripe piece of fruit that I wanted to reach out and pluck? My chest felt tight, my breath came in short gasps.
“You have a favorite?” He offered the book back.
I didn’t take it. Because of course I had a favorite. And the thought of it loosened the grip that he’d started to have on my heart. I leaned my elbows on the counter and let myself smile. He was gonna hate this one.
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”
Alex’s brows drew together, his gaze sharpening as I continued. I was surprised at my memory, but some things just stay with you.
“Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.”
“Okay.” Alex snapped the book shut. “Maybe something a little less snarky than that. I’m not looking for anything that’s calling men assholes.”
“Sometimes they need to be called assholes.” I tried but failed to keep the smirk off my face as I took the book back.
“Oh, yeah?” He reached for another book, his voice still sharp. “There something you want to say to me?”
“What? No.” I blinked, running through the song I’d just quoted. Okay, yeah, maybe that could have applied to Alex, but…“Not everything is about you,” I said. “That one was all my dad.” I pressed my lips together hard, wanting to call the words back.
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Your dad? I thought you two were cool. Back when we…” He coughed, the sentence sticking in his throat. “I remember you talked about him some. That summer. You were getting to know him.”
“Oh. Yeah.” My laugh was short, bitter. “That didn’t last long.
” I looked down at the book of sonnets and songs.
“Anyway, he left when I was a baby, and Mom raised me all on her own. She didn’t like to let me see, but around their anniversary she was always a little down.
” My eyes stayed fixed on the book between us.
I didn’t want to look up at Alex. Why was I still talking?
He didn’t need to hear all this, and yet my mouth kept moving.
“One year, I think I was fifteen…Emily had just gotten me into Shakespeare, and we’d read Much Ado About Nothing together, saw some film adaptations… ”
“The Branagh or the Whedon?”
“And the David Tennant/Catherine Tate. You’ve met my Aunt Emily, right? You think she’d settle for just one or two?” I chanced a look up at him now as he huffed a laugh of agreement. Something inside me warmed at the softness in his eyes.