you found new staff yet?’ Connor all but growled the words.
Jaz unlocked the door, proud that her hand didn’t shake, not even a little. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘Will someone be in to help today?’
‘Perhaps.’
He followed her into the bookshop. ‘Perhaps! Do you think that’s good enough?’
‘I don’t think it’s any of your concern.’
He followed her all the way through to the kitchenette.
‘Coffee?’
Idiot. Mentally she kicked herself. Coffee was way too chummy.
Relief didn’t flood her, though, when he shook his head. Work boots thumped overhead and an electric saw rent the air. ‘Sorry. I hope we’re not disturbing you too much.’
‘Not at all.’ That didn’t bother her in the slightest. Seeing Connor every day…now that was tougher.
Don’t go there.
‘What time do you start work?’ she asked, because it suddenly seemed wise to say something, and fast.
‘Seven-thirty.’
She swung around from making coffee. ‘Yet you didn’t knock off yesterday till just before five?’
One corner of his mouth kinked up as if he’d read the word slave-driver in big letters across her forehead. ‘My apprentices knocked off at three-thirty.’
But he’d hung around at least an hour longer?
‘Look, Connor, you don’t need to bust a gut getting the work done in double-quick time, you know. If it takes an extra week or two…’ She trailed off with a shrug, hoping she looked as nonchalant as she sounded. He really should be at home spending time with Melly.
His jaw tightened. ‘I said it would be completed asap and I meant it. I at least have employees to help me.’
He planted his legs, hands on hips, and Jaz’s saliva glands suddenly remembered how to work. Heavens, Connor Reed was still seriously drool-worthy.
‘What do you mean to do about it?’ he demanded.
She stepped back. Stared. Then she shook herself. He meant her staffing problem.
Of course that was what he meant.
‘Get straight to work. That’s what I mean to do. I have oodles to get through today.’ She wanted to spend between now and nine o’clock trying to coax the secrets out of that ancient computer, particularly the ones that would point her in the direction of her suppliers.
After she’d walked Melly to Mrs Benedict’s front gate this afternoon, she’d return and see what else she could coax from it.
Just for a moment, gold sparked from the brown depths of Connor’s eyes. ‘Have you settled in at Gwen’s? Are you comfortable there?’
‘Very comfortable, thank you.’
Not true. Oh, her room and en-suite bathroom, the feather bed, were all remarkably comfortable. Gwen’s reception, though, hadn’t been all Jaz had hoped for.
She made herself smile, saluted Connor with her mug of coffee. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’ Then she fled to the stockroom before those autumn-tinted eyes saw the lies in her own.
The computer did not divulge her suppliers’ identities. It didn’t divulge much of anything at all. Who on earth was she supposed to phone, fax or email to order in new books? She started clicking indiscriminately on word documents but none of them seemed to hold a clue. Before she had a chance to start rifling through the filing cabinet, it was time to open the shop.
Business wasn’t as brisk as it had been the previous day, but she still had a steady stream of customers—all tourists. As she’d had to do the previous day, whenever she went to the bathroom she hung a ‘Back in five minutes’ sign on the door.
She breathed a sigh when it was time to close the shop and walk Melly the five blocks to Mrs Benedict’s front gate.
‘Melly, why don’t you want to tell your dad that you’re unhappy at Mrs Benedict’s?’
Melly stopped skipping to survey Jaz soberly. ‘Because Daddy has lots of worries and Mrs Benedict is his last hope.’ She leaned in close to confide, ‘I know because I heard him say so to Grandma. There’s no one else who can look after me and I’m too little to stay at home alone.’
‘I think your happiness is more important than anything else in the world to your Daddy.’ She waited and watched while Melly digested that piece of information. ‘Besides,’ she added cheerfully, ‘there’s always me. You’re more than welcome to hang out at the bookshop.’
Melly didn’t smile. ‘Grandad’s picking me up today. I stay with him and Grandma on Tuesday nights.’
‘That’ll be nice.’
Melly didn’t say anything for a moment, then, ‘Grandma thinks little girls should wear dresses and skirts and not jeans. I don’t have any jeans that fit me any more. Yvonne Walker thinks skirts are prissy.’
‘Yvonne is in your class at school?’ Jaz hazarded.
‘She’s the prettiest girl in the whole school! And she has the best parties.’ Melly’s mouth turned down. ‘She didn’t invite me to her last party.’
Jaz’s heart throbbed in sympathy.
‘But if she could see my hair like this!’
Melly touched a hand to her hair. Jaz had pulled it up into a ponytail bun. It made Melly look sweet and winsome. ‘I’ll do it like that for you any time you like,’ she promised.
Melly’s eyes grew wide.
‘And you know what else? I think if you asked your daddy to take you shopping for jeans, he would.’
Jaz waited on the next corner, out of sight, until Melly’s grandfather had collected her, then walked back to the shop and installed herself in front of the computer.
She turned it on and stroked the top of the monitor, murmured ‘Pretty please,’ under her breath.
Above her a set of work boots sounded against bare floorboards, the scrape and squeal of some tool against wood. She glanced up at the ceiling. Why wasn’t Connor at home with Melly? Why was he here, working on her flat, when he could be at home with his daughter?
She glanced back at the computer screen and shot forward in her seat when she realised the text on the screen was starting to break up. ‘No, no,’ she pleaded, placing a hand on either side of the monitor, as if that could help steady it.
Bang! She jumped as a sound like a cap gun rent the air. Smoke belched out of the computer. The screen went black.
‘No!’
