“Ah,” said Eveline, understanding dawning. “You’re looking for a book signing. You’re looking to get your book signed.” The poor woman, she must be a true fan of whoever was doing the signing, she looked positively distraught.
The woman hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Exactly. A, um, a reader.”
Eveline studied her closely. There was a tiny nagging feeling of familiarity. Perhaps she’d seen the woman at a literary event, or at one of the other bookshops in the area. “Well, you’re not far off,” she said. “Just go down to the end of the road, turn right, go about a hundred meters or so and then a left, it’s a ten minute walk. You might still make it.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, hastily gathering her things, dropping what looked like ten pens, stooping to pick them up, banging her head on the counter and then reappearing. “I’m so sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Eveline said. “That’s what bookshops are for, helping people find what they’re looking for.”
As the woman turned to leave, Eveline noticed the papers spilling from her open bag. An Emerald Pearl bookmark. She rolled her eyes. Of course. Another romance devotee rushing to meet the queen of unrealistic fantasy herself.
“You’ll want to hurry,” she called after the woman. “I hear those Emerald Pearl fans line up for hours.”
???
Emery froze. How did this woman know that she was going to an Emerald Pearl signing? She glanced down and saw the edge of a promotional bookmark sticking out of her bag. Thank god, she wasn’t a witch. She was, Emery had noticed from the very first instant, extremely attractive though. Which had madeconversing with her a nightmare. At least she hadn’t spat on her or done anything else equally awful. Now she just had to make her escape.
“Right,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Big fan.”
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. Here she was, the actual Emerald Pearl, standing in a bookshop pretending to be her own fan. Domi was going to have a field day with this story. If Emery ever got out of here with her dignity intact, which was looking increasingly unlikely.
She turned to go, mentally calculating if she could still make it to the right bookshop in time, when the shop phone rang. The woman, who must be the owner judging by her look, reached for it, momentarily distracted.
Emery seized the opportunity to slip away unnoticed. She was halfway to the door when she spotted a display of classics that made her inner book lover slow her steps. Austen, Dickens, the complete Virginia Woolf, beautifully bound in leather. She couldn’t help but be impressed. This was a serious bookshop, not just a place that sold whatever was on the bestseller list.
For a second, Emery felt a twinge of insecurity. Would her own mass-market paperbacks ever be considered worthy of a place like this? Probably not. She sighed. She made people happy, though, and that was important.
The shop owner’s voice drifted over from behind the counter, her slight French accent becoming more pronounced as she grew agitated with whoever was on the phone. “Non, c’est inacceptable.”
Emery glanced back, taking in the woman’s elegant profile. She was striking. Dark hair pulled back into a loose knot, high cheekbones, an air of sophisticated intensity that screamed Emerald Pearl a whole lot more than Emery ever did. She looked like the kind of woman she should put in a novel.
Except this wasn’t a novel, and Emery definitely didn’t have time to stand around daydreaming like it was. She needed to get to this damn signing before Domi sent out search parties.
She backed toward the door, eager to make her escape while the woman was still occupied with her phone call. In her hurry, she failed to notice that her bag was sliding down her shoulder. As she turned, her bag swung wide, and caught the edge of one of the books on the display of classics.
For one heart-stopping moment, Emery watched in horror as the entire display wobbled, books teetering precariously on their shelves. Time seemed to slow as the first volume slipped over the edge.
And then, just as the bell above the door jingled to announce a new customer, the entire display collapsed with a spectacular crash. A copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles slid across the polished wooden floor, coming to rest at the feet of the stunned group of customers who’d just entered.
Chapter Four
Mortified didn’t even begin to cover it. Books lay scattered across the floor like casualties on a battlefield, leather spines cracked open, pages splayed at unnatural angles.
“I am so, so sorry,” Emery gasped, dropping to her knees and frantically gathering the fallen classics. “I don’t know what happened. Well, I mean I do, my bag knocked into them, but I didn’t mean…”
The look on the French woman’s face could have frozen the Thames in July. She’d hung up the phone and was now staring at Emery with an expression that suggested she was calculating the exact cost of the damage down to the penny.
“What have you done?” she said, voice dangerously soft.
Emery clutched a copy ofPride and Prejudiceto her chest like a shield. “I’ll pay for anything that’s damaged, I swear.”
A gray-haired woman who’d just entered tutted sympathetically. “Don’t worry, dear. Accidents happen.”
But the French woman wasn’t listening to either of them. She was already on the phone again, this time having what sounded like a heated argument with an irate customer. Emery couldn’t follow all the French expletives, but she caught enoughto know that someone named McKeefe was very unhappy about something that had nothing to do with her book avalanche.
Taking advantage of the temporary reprieve, Emery scrambled to collect more books, arranging them into neat stacks. The other customers, sensing the tension, had drifted to the far corners of the shop, leaving Emery alone with her shame and a stack of Jane Eyres.
When the woman finally ended her call, she looked even more stressed than before, a tiny muscle twitching in her jaw. She ran a hand through her dark hair, dislodging a few strands from her elegant knot.
