Crowdwell’s Bookshop stood at one of the quieter ends of Oxford, at the end of a cobblestoned side street. Ever since he was a kid, he’d fancied Nan’s shop like something out ofHarry Potter. The shop was magical, with its leaning shelves and weathered paneling, mystical-smelling tea brews and aging, perpetually hazy windows. They frosted over even in the summer. He loved it almost as much as he loved the woman who ran it.
“You’re late, Danny Boy. You’reneverlate.”
Nan’s thick brogue cut the quiet atmosphere, disturbing the accumulated dust on a stack of Robert Ludlum novels on the counter. He rushed to put on his apron, whistling as he went. If there was one person he didn’t want to fail, it was the frail woman with the purple cat eyeglasses who birthed his mum and signed his paychecks every week.
“Young man! You’d better answer me!”
Thank God there was no one in the shop to hear her squawk. Bending across the counter, he cozied up to her, kissing her forehead for good measure before returning to his melody.
“Sorry! Started my new job at the Ashbrooke place today.”
“All the way out of town?”
“The uni’s back in session, Nan.” He shook her shock off with a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders. Collecting a box of titles that needed shelving, he got to work. “Not a whole lot of work for a know-nothing like me.”
“Maybe if you’d gone to uni—”
“And miss all this? Not a chance,” he teased.
He shouldn’t have brought up university at all. He’d gotten the questions from Thomas Dubarry, Mr. Privileged Future Duke, and now he was getting it from Nan. His education, or lack thereof, was a sore subject with Nan, and whenever it came up in a fight he always left feeling like a loser.
He understood the way it made people look at him. But the way he saw it, he had two options: he could go to university, bury himself in debt and hope he someday got a soul-crushing job that would earn him a living, or he could work hard, keep his head down, and spend every spare second pursuing his dream. He couldn’t have both. It might have taken him down in everyone’s estimation, but he’d rather have his dream and a life he was proud of than a degree and debt.
The bell above the door rang, signaling a new customer. From the corner of his eye, Daniel caught his nan perk up. She was the queen of customer service. After almost one hundred and fifty years of operation, Daniel thought she was the only thing to keep their little bookshop alive during the digital age. But she soon shrank back down to her usual perch on a tall wooden stool behind the counter when she realized the door hadn’t opened for a customer. It had opened for Angie.
“Danny Boy?” The stocky redhead burst through the door, piercing the air with her usual greeting. “You about?”
“Right here.” He waved from behind a stack of overstock shoved rudely into a corner.
“And now you’ve got guests!” Nan waved her hands dismissively at his childhood friend. “You’d better do the stocking like you’re supposed to.”
“I’m on it.” He made a show of groaning, showing her how hard he was working. It didn’t matter the books might as well have been a box of biscuits to him; she needed to believe he was working his ass off. He climbed up to the second-story loft, not entirely aware he was taking them two at a time. Certainly not aware he’d grabbed a stack of romance novels.
“Angie O’Reilly.” Nan’s sharp voice turned on their new entrant. “Ihopeyou aren’t about to come into my shop without telling me hello.”
“Hey, Nan.”
“Now, have some tea before you catch your death.”
“It’s not raining,” Angie stated.
“Don’t you children listen to the radio? What do they teach you in these schools my taxes pay for? You can catch your death anywhere nowadays.”
“But I have to tell Daniel something important—”
“It can wait until after you’ve warmed up.”
Once Angie finally accepted a cup of tea, she pounded up the stairs. Soon, her head of vibrant hair appeared next to him, clouded by the steam coming out of her mug.
“Is the new song ready?” Angie panted.
“No.”
Ugh. The song. Daniel hadn’t so much as thought about the song in days. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He wasalwaysthinking about his songs. Lines fluttered between his ears and harmonies whispered to him from the trees, but lately, he hadn’t come up with anything worth playing in public. Every time he tried to write something, music suddenly became the furthest thing from his mind. He was stuck.
“Well, you might want to hurry it up.”
“Why?”
