Chapter One
Lilah
"Ihave an idea," Jasmine Knudsen says, draping herself across the counter in front of me like she's using it as an altar. Let's be honest, though. My best friend hasn't set foot in a church since she was a kid. I'm pretty sure the only time she calls for God is when she's getting herself off.
I'm not a hypocrite, so I don't judge. If self-pleasure is a one-way ticket to hell, I'm hurtling toward my own personal sauna at lightspeed. Since it's the only kind of pleasure I get, well, let's just say I will not be running out of batteries anytime soon.
Thank you, Duracell.
"What kind of idea?" I ask, bracing myself for whatever wild shit she's about to throw at me. With her, it's always something. That's part of why I love her. We're two peas in a pod. But I might actually live long enough to regret asking her to run the book club at my new spicy romance bookstore,Book of Love.
We've only been open in downtown Santa Maria for three months. Things have been going well so far. We have a lot of avid readers who drop in to browse and buy, and since we teamed up with my brother-in-law's winery last month to offer book-and-wine night boxes, our sales have been steadily increasing.
But let's just say that book club is on shaky ground. The first book Jazz picked involved three dinosaurs and one human. The second was a Christmas romance…only the hero was a nutcracker toy. I'm not judging. Around here, we let our freak flags fly. It's basically our motto. If it's a spicy romance, we'll read it. We'll probably discuss it in all its smutty, gory detail, too.
But poor Mrs. Wesley hadn't read a romance since 1970. She wasnotprepared for her crash course in current smut when she joined the club. Neither was her husband. They both ended up in the emergency room after trying to spice things up using Jazz's book club picks for inspiration.
Since I used most of my trust fund to move across the country and open this place, I can't really afford to be sued the next time someone breaks a hip and their seventy-year-old husband's cock. I definitely can't afford the bad press if this store is the cause of a string of roleplay-gone-wrong injuries.
I can just see the headlines now. "Spicy bookstore leaves a string of broken cocks in its wake", or "Book club pick sendselderly couple to hospital with sex-related injuries." I'll never financially recover.
"A self-care section," Jazz announces, smiling like the Grinch with a plan, which is proof-positive that her version of self-care and the rest of the world's are not the same. She confirms my suspicion a second later. "If we add a section of vibrators, people will be beating down the doors to come."
"I see what you did there," I mutter, setting aside the blind date book I just finished wrapping.
Jazz gives me a wicked little laugh, her blue eyes sparkling with humor. "I knew you'd appreciate that."
"Who doesn't appreciate a dirty double entendre?" I grab another section of Kraft paper to start wrapping the next book.
"Good point. My idea is genius."
It is a good idea, but…
"I'll have to look into it," I say carefully. "We may need some sort of special licensing to sell sex toys."
"What? Women literally sell them out of their trunks. They have parties with them!" Jazz cries. "I doubt they have a special license for that."
"They aren't running a shop in the heart of downtown Santa Maria either," I remind her, ripping a piece of tape from the roll. At least, I try to rip it off. I end up tangling it instead. "Dammit."
"Here. Let me." Jazz grabs the dispenser, quickly unraveling the mess I made of it. Having nails must be nice. Mine are chewed to the quick. "I bet your sister could tell you if you need a special license."
I eye her blankly, genuinely mystified by how her mind works sometimes. "How would Lucy possibly know that?"
"Uh, she married into a family that owns a winery," Jazz says, like she's pointing out the obvious. "They sell adult beverages. Adult toys aren't that different."
"Then you're using them wrong," Sarah Tolliver chirps as she hurries past with bare feet and a stack of books. She helps out around here most days, running the café or the register…anything we need, really.
Jazz tosses a wad of tape in her direction, but it simply lands on the floor at her own feet. She shrugs it off, turning back to me. "You're forgetting one very important thing, Lilah. We aren't in Tennessee anymore. This is California. The only definition of a dry county here is one situated in the desert. You moved here so that you could open this store without running afoul of the Morality Police."
"I wanted to be closer to Lucy," I mutter defensively. It's true. I got tired of my older sister being half a continent away. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hopping on a plane just for sister time or to see my nieces. Both of my brothers are in the military, so I never see them.
"Maybe that was part of it, but we both know you never opened this place back home because you were worried that it'd be shut down as soon as someone got a wild hair up their ass about the kind of books you sell."
She's right, dammit. I was a librarian back in Nashville, and every other week, someone from one church or another was trying to get me fired for daring to stock books they disagreed with. The only reason they never succeeded was because the city was too afraid to face my dad's wrath. When you're one of the richest men in the state, you get to call the shots. He kept my job safe when many other librarians were losing theirs.
But I didn't want to have to rely on him to keep me in a job, so Jazz and I packed up and moved to Santa Maria. I don't regret the choice because owning my own bookstore has always been my dream, but I do feel a little like I let the perpetually offended and the Ban the Books crowd win.
They're probably celebrating my move with a new librarian willing to kowtow to their insane demands.
