2
I barely missed a beat.
‘Luckily for you, books that don’t exist are my speciality,’ I said.
If he’d expected me to balk or turn down his offer, he didn’t let his surprise show.
‘I’ve heard that about you,’ he said.
Which caught me all off-guard.
‘What? You have?’
He shook his head, his smile turning slightly guilty. His eyes flashed darker with amusement.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought you were kidding. So I was kidding too.’
‘Actually, I was kidding.’ At least I thought I was. Now I was confused. Had I been kidding? Mostly. Hard-to-find was my speciality. Doesn’t-want-to-sell was also my speciality. Signed by a dead person in archival blue ink was also something I’d found once, at quite a price to the buyer. Was non-existent and completely bizarre my speciality? If this morning was any indication, it just might be.
I took a quick breath in through my nose, trying to get myself back onto a professional business track. I was well aware that Lily was making noises of shuffling papers on the counter behind me, but what she was really doing was recording all of this for later with her impossible memory. I’d hear about every single nuance of this as soon as she and I were alone.
‘In truth, I expected you to turn me down,’ he said.
‘I haven’t said yes yet,’ I countered. ‘But I like challenges.’
I especially liked challenges from men with caramel-coloured eyes and more than a little wickedness in the pages of their smile. More importantly, I liked the kind of challenges that forced me to use my brain, the kind that could distract me from my current challenge, who was probably still sleeping in my bed, dreaming about wedding rings or something.
This guy would either turn out to be a crackpot – chasing down a book that didn’t exist was one of the favoured pastimes of those with too much time, money or craziness, or all three, on their hands – or he’d turn out to be actually looking for something that didn’t exist. Either way, it was something to keep my mind occupied and my field of vision focused somewhere other than my love life.
‘You like challenges,’ he mused. There was something in his gaze that implied so much, and yet managed to still remain above board. I liked that, the sexuality that seemed aimed just at me, while maintaining a sense of decorum. It made me wonder what he’d be like at an elegant dinner party, all dressed up and making small talk while fingering you under the table.
‘Even impossible challenges?’ he asked.
I still had visions of his fingers, and what they might to do to me. The idea lent my voice a low tease that I didn’t mean it to have.
‘Let’s just say I’ve believed impossible things before,’ I said.
‘Even before breakfast?’
Was he ever going to stop throwing me for loops so I could get my brain in order? I felt suddenly and fiercely like Alice going down her rabbit hole.
‘Did you just misquote Lewis Carroll at me?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
Curiouser and curiouser. A lot of our customers covet books like fine art or hot women, but never actually read them. This man was not just looking for a book. He actually read books.
Could he possibly get any sexier? A better question was: could I trust myself to behave like a professional around him? I thought I could, but standing right here, right now, I had to admit I would have bet on anyone but myself to win that argument.
I figured I’d better get him into my office and put my work face on before I delved too deeply into questions I didn’t really want answers to.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Come on back, and we’ll see if I can help you make your unicorn of a book magically appear from thin air.’
From behind me, I heard Lily give another quiet snort of a giggle, but she suppressed it so fast I was hopeful that Davian hadn’t heard. If he had, his face didn’t change expression.
‘I would appreciate that,’ he said.
‘Right this way,’ I said.
* * *
While Davian followed me back towards the office, I kept wanting to turn around to look at him again. I resisted the urge, but barely. I could hear his fingers brushing the occasional book as he went by them, the soft whisper of skin to spines that you only hear in bookstores and libraries.
I wondered, as I often did, if books could feel us, if our very touch was enough to bring them alive. And I wondered, specifically, if they could feel Davian’s hands on them, what the soft stroke of his fingers felt like to their bindings, to the edges of their pages.
‘Here it is,’ I said, turning to face him again, one hand out towards a wide set of built-in bookcases, full of oversized first editions.
Davian lifted that single eyebrow again, clearly confused.
Yeah, I’d felt that way the first time I’d seen my office too. Of course, it hadn’t been my office then, but it was still a huge part of the reason I’d fallen in love with this space, long before we’d rented it and turned it into the store. Before Leather Bound was ours, it had been a bank, complete with a hidden swinging door for getting into the super-secret vault without attracting attention.
Friends had helped us turn the hidden door into a hidden bookshelf door for us before we opened.
I couldn’t help showing it off sometimes. I kind of loved the moment of revelation. It made me feel all Nancy Drew.
While Davian watched, I slipped a book from the shelf to expose a single keyhole. We’d had it made to fit the same skeleton key that opened the front door.
Suddenly I realised that, in my secret joy at showing off the hidden door, I’d put myself in a dilemma. I had to either try and remove the key and ribbon from around my neck – an action that was sure to end up with my hair or my earrings caught in tangles and leaving me looking incredibly stupid in front of this man – or leave the key in its current place and bend down in front of him to open the lock.
After a brief hesitation, realising that he was watching me far closer than I would have liked at the moment, I chose the latter option. If he was going to look at my ass, that was fine, but I didn’t think I could stand to look like a fool in front of him. Again, I meant. Considering I’d already done it once. Or twice. I couldn’t quite remember.
I bent and slipped the key in the hole. The skirt of my dress suddenly felt too short and too flimsy to cover my ass, even though I knew it did. Please let this look good on me, I thought stupidly, selfishly. Not at all professionally.
Lily and I had secret codes for lots of things – ‘I have a stone in my shoe’ meant ‘You have something in your teeth’ and ‘I need a raspberry lemonade’ meant ‘It’s time for us to leave this party/bar/guy’s house.’ But we didn’t
