At the sound of my manager’s voice, I reluctantly tore my eyes away from the pages of the book in my hand. The hockey coach’s daughter had just shown up at the star defenseman’s front door, wearing nothing but his jersey, to taunt him after he’d left her a drunken voicemail confessing that he had feelings for her.
Since I wasn’t having sex anymore, I lived vicariously through the characters in the romance novels I devoured. Which was why I was the go-to girl anytime someone came into Bizzy’s BookBoutique needing a recommendation in that genre. I’d read almost every book we carried in that section.
Positioning a ribbon to mark my page, I set the book down before walking toward the back of the store. When I turned the corner to the romance section, I stopped short.
No, it couldn’t be . . .
I rubbed at my eyes, blinking a few times. But no matter how hard I tried to clear my vision, the man from the restaurant last week—John—was still standing there, perusing the titles on the shelf.
When I cleared my throat to announce my presence, his head whipped up, and a smile formed on his face as recognition lit up in his green-gold eyes.
“It’s you.” His ultra-deep voice did funny things to my insides.
“Yep, me again.” I gestured to the shelves. “My manager said there was someone back here needing help?”
John nodded. “Yeah, I’m looking for something specific.”
“Inromance?” I was still having a hard time believing that he was the customer I’d been sent to advise on a recommendation.
He cocked his head. “Is that so hard to believe?”
Heat rose up the back of my neck. “Uh, kinda?”
“You know”—he casually leaned against the bookshelf—“if only more men realized this section was full of instruction manuals on how to treat women the way they deserve, it would prevent a lot of broken hearts.”
I gaped at him. That was an incredibly astute observation.
Curious, I asked, “Has it helped in your love life?”
John let out a sigh, his lips turning down at the corners. “Sadly, no. I’m still woefully single at thirty-six, but these books give me hope that, maybe someday, the right person will just walk into my life and turn it upside down in the best possible way.”
“Ah, so you’re a hopeless romantic, then,” I teased.
“Guilty.” He ducked his head with a shy smile.
Venturing closer, I trailed a finger over the spines of stories that, by rule, always featured a happy ending. “What can I help you find today?”
“I know there is an overabundance of enemies-to-lovers and friends-to-lovers books out there, but what I’m really craving is one that features a strangers-to-lovers storyline. Something where they’ve never met before, but that initial encounter sparks an instant attraction. I want one of the main characters to be consumed by thoughts of the other, making them almost desperate for another chance meeting.”
My breath stalled in my lungs. If I didn’t know any better, I might have believed he was describing our run-in at the restaurant a week ago and in a roundabout way confessing that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about me since.
No, that couldn’t be right. While I’d been raised with a silver spoon in my mouth and taught that others were beneath me, I had come back down to earth quickly when forced to work three jobs to survive. Stripped of designer labels and high-end beauty products, it became glaringly obvious that, in fact, I was nothing more than average—far from special and not at all the type of woman who would have bagged a billionaire if it hadn’t been for an arranged marriage.
I almost laughed out loud, thinking of all the women who had once openly coveted my husband—or more accurately, his bank account. Not one of them would have survived a day in my shoes. Money was meaningless when you were stripped of your humanity, your sole purpose to be an incubator for the don’s heir.
Thank God the opportunity to get out came when it did. Already, Gio had become suspicious that our five years of marriage hadn’t produced a baby, forcing me to undergo invasive testing to determine if there was a cause for myinfertility. I kept my mouth shut, the whole time knowing my barren womb was the result of the secret birth control stash hidden in my underwear drawer.
To this day, I had no regrets. I would have endured every one of those procedures a million times over before I allowed Gio to get me pregnant.
“Ro?” The sound of a male voice brought me back to the present.
“Oh, sorry.” I shook my head to clear it. “Strangers-to-lovers? Yes, we’ve definitely got some of those. Any particular subgenre you gravitate toward?” Keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the shelf, I listed a few. “Hockey, cowboy, small town”—I swallowed thickly—”mafia?”
John hummed. “You know, small town would really hit the spot right about now. Maybe something in the mountains?”
Fuck. There went my wishful thinking that he wasn’t looking for a story to mirror our situation.
When I dared to face him, there was so much hope alight in his eyes that I felt like a total bitch for what I had to do. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but this was truly a case ofit’s not you, it’s me.
