The Bookshop on the Corner (A Gingerbread Cafe story) (9 page)

The same niggle of worry stopped me jumping up and down in excitement. “Missy, he’s gorgeous, sexy, funny, charming, the whole package. I get that. But I just don’t see how, or why, a man like Ridge would be interested in me. He seems the type to go out with those swan types.”

“Swan types?”

“You know…” I stood up and flicked my hair, and proceeded to swan around. “Think long lily-white neck, tall, graceful, mouth perpetually turned down.”

“Sometimes I worry about you,” Missy said, laughing. “At any rate, you can swan with the best of them. And Ridge clearly isn’t looking for wildlife — he’s looking for love. Honest to goodness love with my little bookworm.”

“OK, say hypothetically we were both interested in one another. He lives thousands of miles away, in a city teeming with people. I live here, a tiny town, where nothing much changes. How can it work?”

“Sarah, this is what I mean when I say don’t overthink it. Why can’t you just let it run its course? See what happens?” She sighed, and paused to fluff her curls. “What if he takes his shoe off today and he has a huge big toe and that turns you off completely?”

A snort escaped me. “A huge big toe?”

Missy giggled and then said, “Well, you know what I mean. I’m just saying you might not mesh once you’re alone together, but what if you do? What if you’re perfect for one another? Things like distance and differences don’t matter when it comes to love.”

As I shook my head it dawned on me. I was completely obsessing over something that might turn out to be nothing. Maybe it was a self-confidence thing. A flashy reporter, who looked like a hero from a Harlequin book, was interested in Sarah Smith from The Bookshop on the Corner. It could happen…in a romance novel.

Missy put a hand on my arm and searched my face. “Will you put down those barriers? Just for one day? And see what happens?”

I nodded and tried to arrange my features into something akin to nonchalant. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

He could break my heart into a million pieces, and never even know it.

Chapter Nine

I’ll admit it, by the time noon rolled around the sweet butterflies fluttering in my tummy had morphed into a rogue swarm of apocalyptic moths, churning my gut until I had to sit down and pretend it was just another day. My hands were inordinately sweaty. How could hands produce moisture in such a quantity?

With a few minutes until Ridge was due to arrive I clutched a tea towel between my sweaty hands and blew out breaths as they do in Lamaze class. That was supposed to calm you, right? I was mumbling to myself, “Keep calm, keep calm, keep calm,” when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I stopped my gibberish and closed my eyes, not wanting to turn around. I knew from the he-scent it was Ridge and he had just heard my crazy ramblings.

“Meditation?” he asked.

“Ommmm,” I said, and dropped the tea towel, joining my index finger and thumb together as if I were a Yogi.

He laughed, that same sexy sound. “If it makes you feel any better I’m quite nervous myself.”

I turned to face him. “Nervous? Me? You’re mistaken I was just in a trance-like state. I can get er…Zen-like fairly quickly.” I clicked my fingers to show just how fast it could be.

“Is that so?” he said, raising a perfectly shaped man-brow. “Why don’t you teach me, then?”

Oh, good God, I could only focus on his lips, which smiled in that lackadaisical way of his when he found me amusing.

“Cat got your tongue?”

I coughed. “I wouldn’t be able to teach you, I’m afraid. It takes years to reach my level of, er, enlightenment.”

“That so?”

“Uh huh.”

“Shame, I would love to do the downward dog with you.”

Oh, my God. “We are talking yoga now, aren’t we?”

“Talking positions, yes.”

We smiled and stared at each other. I didn’t trust myself to speak, knowing it would come out completely wrong. But curiosity got the better of me.

“You don’t have an unsightly big toe, do you?”

He cocked his head. “Is that a yoga rule? No, I don’t. My little toe, on the other hand…”

I slapped his arm playfully. “It’s OK. We won’t take our shoes off.”

“Not yet, anyway,” he added.

***

After closing the bookshop, we strolled up the street, every now and then bumping hips, and giving each other a sheepish apology. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Lil and CeeCee peering out of the window of the café. They had goofy smiles on their faces and gave me a thumbs up. Holding in a giggle, I waved them away and turned to Missy’s shop. She was standing near the front door, on her cell phone.

Ridge hefted his backpack to his other shoulder and clasped my hand. Before I could say anything he said, “She’s faking that call, isn’t she?”

How did he know that? Though looking at Missy, who was gesticulating wildly, it did look a little farcical. My heart swelled for the love my friends had for me. My guess was they thought I’d chicken out of the date, and then they would have dragged me kicking and screaming to meet Ridge for the picnic by the water’s edge. “I’d say so, yes,” I admitted. “Looks like a prop.” I thanked my lucky stars she wasn’t talking into a hair-dryer.

“You’ve got great friends.”

“Yes,” I mumbled, suddenly remembering my sweaty palms, one of which was now encased in Ridge’s strong man-hand. Was it noticeable? Surely he would let go if it was? Would he now think of me as the sweaty-hand girl? I blinked my angsty worry away. I was acting like a teenager on her first date.

Ridge squeezed my hand gently, bringing me back to the moment. “Ashford certainly is a nice town,” he said, his voice reflective. “Your friends made me feel very welcome.”

He didn’t seem to notice anything untoward with our hand-holding, so I replied, “Even with the third degree they gave you?”

“Of course, they’re looking out for you. And any man would think twice if he wasn’t serious when CeeCee does that special look of hers.”

If he wasn’t serious
.

I nodded. “She’s got that look down to a fine art. It’s taken years of practice.”

“It’s like you all value your friendships, you look after them, so they last for ever. I guess that’s the beauty of a small town.”

His comment made me wonder about what kind of friendships he had. A place as big as New York City you could have hundreds of friends and literally never bump into them. Whereas here, we cherished the people in our lives because they were all we had. We lost townsfolk every year, mainly teenagers who’d finish school and head out to university, and on to greener pastures. The people that stayed banded together like a family, as such.

As we neared the edge of town the rolling meadow came into view. The grass was soft and lush from the spring rains, and waved slightly in the breeze.

“Should we set up here?” Ridge asked, pointing to a shady patch under a sugar maple tree.

“Yes, there’s just enough sunlight poking through the leaves.” From here we could see the small river bed, the sound of lapping water a perfect accompaniment to the bright day.

Ridge took a checkered rug from his backpack and flicked it open on the grass. It occurred to me I hadn’t packed anything for the picnic. No wine, no cheese, not even a book, which was unlike me. Lazy days under the shade of a tree with a hot man or no, I would
always
carry a novel.

“What’s wrong?” Ridge asked, his forehead creasing.

Who went on a picnic
without
the picnic? What if he thought I’d come here expressly for some kind of raunchy encounter?

“It’s just in the rush of the morning, I…”

He kept his eyes trained on me while he pulled a bottle of wine and some glasses out of the backpack. “Yes?”

“Oh, well, it was so busy and…”

He sat on the rug and leaned the wine bottle against the gnarly trunk of the tree. Out of his seemingly endless bag, he rummaged and pulled out a small hamper of food. Phew.

“Sit down,” he said.

I gathered my skirt in my hands and sat on the rug.

“You’ve thought of everything,” I said, indicating the picnic, which would now be a picnic and not some first-date shag-fest. Not that I was thinking it would be.

“Try this.” Ridge held a chocolate-covered strawberry to my lips. I took a delicate bite, not wanting to clamp down on his fingers in my haste to eat.

I made a show of nodding and expressing my delight over the strawberry so he wouldn’t know what my turncoat mind was imagining.

“It’s not too early for a glass of wine, is it?” he asked, popping the half-bitten strawberry in his mouth. For some reason, the gesture seemed wildly erotic, us sharing the tiny red fruit.

“It’s never too early for wine.” My voice sounded thick. Who knew desire could make a person come across intoxicated? Maybe the wine
would
help.

“There’s all sorts of delicious treats in here, so I hope you’re hungry.”

Hungry for love.
What? It was as though someone else had taken over my mind. Someone a little more adventurous than me. I tried to ground myself and focus on Ridge. “You’ve been to see Lil and CeeCee, I take it.”

He nodded. “I wanted the picnic to be perfect.”

His movements were slow and precise, as if he’d been here before. I felt as if I were the stranger to this town. Everything at once appeared different. The white clouds were fluffier, and the grass softer. A diaphanous light blanketed everything.

Handing me the wine glass, Ridge stretched out beside me, propping his chin in his hand. “So, Sarah Smith, what do you think?”

I took a hasty sip. “Umm, great tannins, complex fruity flavors, maybe blackberry, a hint of pepper…”

He laughed. “I meant about us in general.”

I blushed.
Nice one, Sarah!

“I’ll add wine aficionado to your repertoire, and what else does Sarah Smith enjoy?”

Where to start? Would telling him about the real me seem inordinately dull? “I live and breathe books,” I said, deciding on honesty, because, really, who cared what he thought? He’d be gone from our lives soon enough. “My bookshop is everything to me, and I can’t see myself ever venturing far away from it.”

He searched my face. “Really? But on your blog you talk about wanting to travel to bookshops around the world, to meet like-minded owners…”

I frowned. He must have read a number of archived posts to find out that little gem. Why was he so interested? Again the feeling that he was looking for something other than a date made my skin prickle. “It’s a pipe dream. I’d love to travel but my bookshop is my income, and there’s no way I could entrust anyone with it. My friends all have their own businesses, so it could never happen.”

He sipped his wine, sloshing it around his mouth. “But you said yourself on your blog, it’s your online business that sells the most. Surely you could continue that wherever you are? You order the books in, they could be shipped direct to customers instead?”

He was thorough in his research of my blog. I wondered why he’d read so much of it. A man who’d scoured the globe probably thought I was some kind of bumpkin for never having left Ashford or its outskirts.

“I suppose I could, but it’s not as simple as that.”

He brushed a lock of my hair from my face, distracting me for a moment. “I understand,” he said. “For some reason I can visualize you travelling, marveling at bookshops around the world. I’d just love to see your face when you wandered into Shakespeare and Company in Paris…”

He reminded me of Gloria and Gerald, searching for forgotten bookshops together. What a sweet life that would be. And he was right about Shakespeare and Company. I spent a lot of time trawling through the internet looking at photos of the iconic bookshop where Hemingway and a host of other literary greats hung out all those years ago. Would I ever leave, if I stumbled into that rickety, glorious bookshop that hummed with memories of the past?

I did what I did best: coughed and changed the subject. “Where to next for the roving reporter?”

He ducked his head and fiddled with the stem of his wine glass. “I’m off to Australia. Two weeks travelling around big brown land in a four-wheel drive, in the remote north. It’s an outback-adventure-themed travel piece, so think camping, and fishing and whatever it is Aussies do.”

My eyes went wide with surprise. Australia. It was practically the other side of the world. Wasn’t it dangerous there? Snakes, and crocodiles, and killer kangaroos at every turn?

“Sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

He shrugged. “It will be. A few weeks ago it would have been the highlight of my career so far, but now…things have changed.”

“What’s changed?” I asked.

“You’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you.”

“Everyone thinks
I’m
crazy so you’re in good company.” I couldn’t make eye contact while I waited for his reply, so I gulped my wine, and swished it around my mouth before remembering it was red wine, and my teeth would no doubt now be a shade of burgundy.

“Well…” He paused, fiddling with the stem of his wine glass.

Silence hung between us like a page break.

He continued: “When I first came to Ashford for the chocolate festival it was like coming home. I don’t know why. I’m born and bred in a big city but the place touched me. I don’t know how to describe it without sounding cheesy. And then, at the festival, I saw you.”

I wrestled with his words, surprised and confused as to how I felt.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, rubbing his chin with jittery hands. “I know how it must sound. You haven’t even seen my big toe yet — that could be the deal breaker.”

“You said it was your little toe.” My voice came out as a squeak.

He laughed, and pulled me down next to him on the rug. Wine sloshed out of my glass, so I let it roll onto the soft grass. Ridge turned on his side and faced me. We were so close I could feel his breath on my face.

“Did you ever feel like you were on the brink of something, something indistinct, but like there was something missing, you just didn’t know what?”

Yes! I wanted to scream YES! But I lay mute, ogling him, wondering when I was going to wake from this dream.