let the place go over the last couple of years, but it’s going to take you decades to get this all cleaned up.”
In the process of changing the seasonal display in the shop’s bow window from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Mackenzie Sloan said, “Bite your tongue. It’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, right.” Stacy snorted. “And I’m the Queen Mother.”
“I’m making progress,” she insisted, but as she looked around at the antique bookstore her father had left her when he died unexpectedly three months ago, Mackenzie had to admit that Stacy was right. The place was a mess. In spite of the fact that she’d been cleaning and trying to organize the shop since the day after her father’s funeral, it was still little more than barely controlled chaos.
Guilt tugged at her, bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. “I should have come home more often—”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself!” Stacy, her oldest friend and fiercest protector, immediately jumped to her defense. “You were working a crazy schedule and spending every spare moment on your master’s. Not to mention trying to have a life with a man you loved! When would you have come home? Between two and three in the morning? You were in California, for God’s sake, not across the street!”
“I know,” she sighed. “That’s why Dad came to see me instead. And he acted like everything was fine. I didn’t have a clue he was sick.”
“He didn’t want you to know, Mac. You would have quit school and come home and he would have hated that. You were so close to finishing. He didn’t want you to give that up for him.”
“And the irony of it is, Hugh and I broke up and I came home anyway,” she said with a grimace of a smile.
“After you got your master’s,” Stacy pointed out.
“True,” she agreed. But by then, it had been too late for her father. “At least Dad died knowing I was able to finish school.” Shaking off her sadness, she forced a smile. “He was a great dad. And in spite of the condition of the shop, he left me a business I love.”
“I’m just worried you’re working yourself to death,” Stacy said, frowning. “I hardly see you anymore. You’re working night and day. I bet you don’t even remember the last time you had a date.”
“There are plenty of men in my life—”
“Oh, really? Name one.”
“Lincoln…Washington…Stonewall Jackson…”
Stacy gave her a reproving look. “Cute, smarty-pants. This is serious. I’m concerned.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need to let me introduce you to Baxter Townsend. If I wasn’t married and crazy about my lover boy—”
“Not to mention seven months pregnant,” Mackenzie said dryly, grinning as she patted her friend’s extended tummy. “Or are you forgetting about my goddaughter?”
A tender smile curved Stacy’s mouth as she placed a hand over her stomach. “How could I forget her? The little stinker kicks me all night long. I think she’s going to be a soccer player.”
“Then she’ll have to get that gene from John. You haven’t got an athletic bone in your body.”
Grimacing, Stacy grinned. “Too sweaty. But you like sports. You and Baxter would get along great. He played tennis in college.”
“Stace—”
“He’s never been married,” she added, “and makes a ton of money. He’s a—”
“No.”
“At least meet him. You two are perfect for each other.”
Mackenzie rolled her eyes. The last man Stacy had claimed was perfect for her and had actually introduced her to had turned about to be an alcoholic with a temper. “Do I need to remind you of Gus Dole?”
Stacy had the grace to wince. “Ouch! Okay, so I screwed up with Gus. And now that I think about it, you probably wouldn’t be crazy about Baxter—he can be kind of pompous. But you’re fading away in this shop, turning to dust just like your father’s books and old maps. You’ve got to get out of here!”
“I do,” she argued. “I go somewhere nearly every weekend.”
“To memorabilia shows.” Stacy sniffed. “Where you meet dusty old men who are pushing eighty and only interested in one thing—buying something that belonged to Washington or Jefferson or God knows who else. Dammit, Mac, you’re twenty-eight years old! When your father left you the business, he didn’t intend for you to bury yourself in it.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But you said yourself this place is a mess. Can you think of any man you know who would want to take on this and me? He’d have to be crazy.”
“Not crazy,” Stacy retorted, grinning. “Just a confident, good-looking hunk who likes to read about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams instead of girly magazines. How hard can that be to find?”
“Yeah, right.” Mackenzie laughed. “When you find him, let me know.”
The door to the shop opened then, and, as always, a John Philip Sousa march began to softly play throughout the shop and apartment upstairs. As the music grew progressively louder, Mackenzie, as always, laughed. John Philip Sousa had been born in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t the only reason her father had chosen a Sousa march for the musical alarm he’d installed years ago. He’d had a tendency to get caught up in his work and lose track of what was going on around him and he’d needed something to jar him back to attention when someone walked through the front door. Even now, in her mind’s eye, she could see him jump as the cymbals crashed loudly, reminding him he had a customer.
Beside her, Stacy glanced at the customer who strolled in, only to immediately smile with quick interest. “Oh, goodness, what do we have here? I think I’m in love.”
“Stop that!” Mackenzie hissed as her own eyes roamed over the customer who looked like something out of one of her fantasies. Tall, dark and handsome—there was no other way to describe him. With dimples that framed either side of his mouth and a boyish glint in his green eyes, he had trouble written all over him. Mackenzie took one look at that long, lean body and fantastic face and forgot to breathe.
Stacy, on the other hand, had no such trouble. “Well, hello,” she said with a grin. “Aren’t you the cutest thing? I’ll bet you’re a history major, aren’t you?”
Caught off guard, he laughed. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“And you’re a Civil War buff.”
“Stacy,” Mackenzie warned.
“I’m just asking,” she said innocently.
“I’ve been known to spend days at Gettysburg studying strategy,” he admitted. “Is that a problem?”
“Not at all,” Stacy said before Mackenzie could say a word. “There’s just something about history majors—”
