She held out her hand but instead of shaking it Piers Brocklehurst raised it to his lips in a practised move so he could kiss the back of it. ‘Nice to meet you.’
It wasn’t exactly … nice. In fact, Posy longed to rub the back of her hand against her jeans. There was something about the smooth gesture, an oily quality to Piers’ patter, the failure of his easy smile to reach his eyes, which remained flat and rather dead, that spooked Posy. In fact, Piers sent shivers rippling down her spine, in spite of the fact he was textbook good-looking, albeit in an ex-public schoolboy kind of way. He was tall, with blond hair slicked back from his ruddy face, and muscles that rippled beneath his blue pinstripe suit. The man wouldn’t have looked out of place in an aftershave ad, smirking to camera as an unseen woman ran a caressing hand down his chest, but he wasn’t Posy’s type. She already had one extremely irritating ex-public schoolboy in her life – she didn’t need any more.
‘No, really, the pleasure’s all mine,’ Piers murmured throatily, and that flat, dead gaze of his rested on Posy’s hips, breasts, face and then looked beyond her to the bookshop as if there was nothing there to hold his interest.
‘That’s quite enough of that,’ Sebastian snapped, coming to stand between Posy and Piers. ‘Posy only likes men in soppy romance novels, so you’re on a hiding to nothing there. Now about the bookshop, Morland, Brocklehurst has been talking about redeveloping the site, maybe building a boutique hotel here.’ Sebastian gestured at the row of boarded-up shops. ‘And where the bookshop is, he was saying that we should put up a fancy apartment block, with concierge, basement gym, swimming pool and—’
‘Do you ever listen to a single word I say?’ Obviously not. ‘Bookends is mine for at least two years and, as I tried to tell you the last time I saw you, it’s going to be the only bookshop in the country dedicated to romantic fiction.’ Posy finished with relish because she’d shocked Sebastian into silence.
Annoyingly, Sebastian still looked handsome even with his mouth hanging half open in a gormless fashion. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Quite sane,’ Posy assured him as Piers muttered something under his breath that suggested he too doubted Posy’s claims to sanity. ‘And as I was saying, I’m the owner of Bookends for at least the next two years.’
‘More like two months if you insist on going through with some ridiculous scheme to turn it into a lavender-scented palace crammed wall to wall with bodice-rippers. Two months for the business to fail horribly and the bailiffs to turn up on your doorstep,’ Sebastian summed up with obvious pleasure.
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