Instead of which, here she is, trying and failing to crunch numbers. She thinks she can find fifty cents per hour for Tessa, but she also knows that is going to eat at her until she can afford to do it for everyone else, too. And it’s probably not even going to help Tessa that much.
Ugh. Stupid, stupid Sam, and his stupid, stupid green eyes, and the stupid, stupid distraction of him. Lexi needs to get a grip and fight for her shop. Fight for her staff. And try to wrest her heart back from the deep well it’s fallen into.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tomorrow as usual?Sam texts Lexi that night. She makes the mistake of swiping the message, which means he’ll see she’s seen it, and it will be weird not to reply. But she doesn’t want to reply. She’s fuming.
It’s not like everything was perfect, or even easy, before Sam showed up and changed the direction of the shop. But it was a little less difficult. If they worked hard on a pre-order campaign or an author event, they saw results. People are willing to work hard when they see results. But when, staff meeting after staff meeting, they can tell their boss is trying her hardest to put a positive spin on disappointing news, Lexi can sense the atmosphere in the room shifting. So now there’s no pay riseandthere’s not even the gratification from witnessing the fruits of hard work. Lexi feels like she’s letting her team down, and she hates that. Her staff deserve better, and frankly so does she, and so does the shop, for its many years of loyal service to Capitol Hill.
In her text app, Lexi types and then deletes, types and then deletes. She takes a perverse kind of pleasure in torturing Sam with appearing and disappearing and reappearing dots on his phone. And sure, maybe he’s not watching them. But it’s 11p.m. on a weeknight and so, like any self-respecting millennial, he is most likely lying in bed and staring at his phone. Because what else is there to do at 11p.m. on a weeknight? Certainly not sleep. Not when there’s all this anxiety to not-quite-process.
The piano lessons are fun and she’s making progress, albeit only in the tiny increments that are possible when you don’t have anywhere to practise. There are practice rooms across the city in Dupont Circle, but it takes forty-five minutes to get there and forty-five minutes to get back, and that’s before she’s done any actual playing. She doesn’t have that kind of time. Because she’s working every hour she can. Because she has to, thanks to Sam.
?, he types, after a while. Succinct and to the point. He could just as easily have writtenWTF, so Lexi appreciates the restraint.
The question she’s turning over, the reason for the appearing, disappearing, and reappearing dots is, does she want him to know she is angry? Clearly, a big part of her does. But the more sensible part of her knows that open warfare is not the answer. The last thing she needs is him amping up his game, working even harder to compete with her, overlapping more and more of his stock with hers. If he knows about enemies to lovers, there’s no telling what else he’s been covertly researching. Like, for example, how much the romance genre has been propping up the industry in recent years especially. And yeah, sure, it doesn’t totally jibe with his customer base, whereas Lexi and her staff have worked hard at curating and growing their romance section. They’ve got their loyal local customers, of course. But the out-of-town visitors, the casual browsers, they don’t know the nuances. The end-of-year lists of best bookshops in DC, the mid-year City Paper poll: they all say Pemberley Books is a great general bookshop with a strong romance section, lots of fun events, booksellers who can knowledgeably and enthusiastically advise on every genre; that Great Expectations is especially good for non-fiction. If that balance changes, they’ll be in trouble. Lexi isn’t sure who D:Ream thought they were kidding when they sang that things could only get better; it’s always, and especially in this case, possible for them to get much worse.
All in all, Lexi supposes she had better be nice to Sam. Return to the previous state of affairs: surface politeness underpinned by quietly seething rage. It’s harder, though, now that Sam is a fully realised person to her and not a caricature of a villain, now that she knows a little of his past. Now that she knows how thoughtful and kind he can be. Now that she’s seen his gorgeous eyes up close. But she can do it. She is almost sure she can do it.
I’m getting self-conscious about my lack of progress, she types, a warning of her cooling enthusiasm and her cryptic lack of responses just now.
You’re doing great, he types back immediately, and then, before she can stop herself, she’s flirting.
I bet you say that to all the girls.
Now it’s Lexi’s turn to watch the dots appear and disappear as she stares at the too-bright light of the screen in her dark bedroom.
I don’t let the other girls touch my piano.
Damn it, that’s a good line. Lexi is smiling. She’s also a little warm between her legs. He has won this particular battle.
You say all the right things. 8a.m.?
Sure. Looking forward to it. And to my latte.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Just for that, Lexi considers not taking Sam the latte, but that’s a level of petty she can’t quite bring herself to stoop to. Plus, she’s going to Peregrine for herself anyway. It really is no skin off her nose to get two lattes instead of one.
‘I see you in the morning a lot more than I used to,’ Alli says when she takes Lexi’s order. ‘And always with the two lattes. Very mysterious.’ She smiles and wiggles her eyebrows, signalling that Lexi should feel free to tell her what’s going on. But that would require Lexi knowing what’s going on. And, quite frankly, at this point in time, she has no idea. What had once seemed like such a no-brainer of a plan to make Sam fall in love with her so that he’d be distracted and less of a threat seems fuzzy now at best.
‘Early-morning piano lesson,’ she tells Alli. ‘On a mission to be accomplished.’
‘Ah.’
She looks so disappointed that Lexi can’t help throwing her another crumb. ‘With a very hot piano teacher.’
‘Ah,’ Alli says again, noticeably brighter. ‘Extra hot like the milk, right?’
‘Exactly.’
And that is Exhibit A of why Lexi loves this coffee shop, and why you’ll never be able to convince her that there’s a better one in New York, or really anywhere in the world.
* * *
Sam buzzes Lexi into his building, and his door is ajar when she makes it to his floor. It feels weird to walk in without knocking, but she does it anyway, with her elbow, then nudges the door open further. She slips off her shoes in the entryway, noting again that she approves of Sam’s cleanliness, as evidenced by his no-shoes-in-the-house rule.
Not a particularly sexy thought.
