Love Like the Dickens: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  “Dinner.” He followed her as she tried to maneuver away from him. “Let’s go out for dinner and talk about old times. Catch up. Revisit the old flame.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “No,” she squeaked, moving behind the counter. To her horror, Belinda and Nora were putting on their coats. “There is no old flame. You and I barely knew each other.”

  “You work here or what?” He began to move around the edge of the counter toward her. “Close up the place and let’s go hang out.”

  “I really, really don’t want to.”

  He stopped abruptly, frowning.

  “But… you messaged me?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It was—” she stammered “—a mistake.”

  He sighed deeply. Nick had obviously seen some disappointments in his life. He hadn’t been Sexy Nick for quite a few years. She hated feeling sorry for him, but it must have been a hard tumble from football hero to…

  The back door to the shop opened and Oscar appeared. Wearing a long coat and woolen scarf he looked like he had walked out of the pages of a Dicken’s novel. His eyes twinkled at her briefly before he took in the small crowd arranged in front of the counter. His gaze lingered on Nora for a moment before turning to Nick. Agnes willed her lungs to continue working.

  “Oscar, this is Nick. He’s an old—”

  “Friend. Soon to be lover.” Nick obviously wasn’t one to dwell on disappointments. Agnes’ jaw dropped as Nick nodded, winked again and shrugged back into his parka. “Destiny, Aggie,” he said, zipping his parka. “Don’t fight it.”

  They all watched in silence as Nick backed to the door, wagging his fingers at them like six-shooters. “I’ll be back. You’re mine, Agnes. You just don’t realize it yet.” He stumbled on the edge of the doorway, yanked the door open and disappeared into the darkening night.

  Belinda broke the silence.

  “What a lovely young man,” she said. Everyone turned to stare at her. “I mean, yes, he seems a bit rough around the edges, but he made all that effort to see you, Agnes. That’s very kind of him, don’t you think?”

  Oscar raised his eyebrows at her.

  “It’s something, all right.” She sighed.

  She couldn’t believe Savannah had been so wrong.

  Thirteen

  “You’re gonna have to wear your hair down, girl. Get over it.” Mad Maddie growled at Agnes, but there was a merry light in her one good eye that softened her words enough for Agnes to smile back at her. Mad Maddie, the angriest manicurist in town, was in charge of makeup and costumes. She walked with a limp, had scars covering one eye, and dressed in flowing scarves that made her look like a round angry fairy. Agnes wasn’t about to argue with her, even though she preferred her hair in a bun.

  “You ain’t an uptight librarian when you’re on that stage, you’re a friggin’ spirit of love and kindness and some other kind of hogwash. Loose hair. Flowing locks. That’s what Madame Director wants, and that what she’ll get.”

  They both looked over at Irenia, thrashing about on the stage in the throes of sorrow as the Ghost of Christmas Present led her through the Cratchit’s scene where Tiny Tim’s fate is revealed. Agnes had floundered through her own scenes already and she enjoyed the backstage darkness as she waited to see Oscar take the stage. She always felt so much better when her scenes were over.

  “No, Spirit! Say it isn’t so!” Irenia shrieked.

  Maddie rolled her eyes.

  “Oscar, let’s see that hand.” She turned her attention to Oscar, perched on a stool beside Agnes, draped in his dark costume and holding a creepy prosthetic hand out to the angry manicurist.

  “It’s a work of art, Maddie,” he said, his kind voice barely above a whisper as the echoes of Irenia’s theatrics vibrated around them. “I just think my own craggy ancient claw is sufficiently grave-like to serve the purpose.”

  He stretched out his hand in demonstration, pointing one long finger menacingly toward the stage. His fingers were indeed long and thin. He should be playing piano or typing on an ancient typewriter. Agnes blushed at the romantic turn of her thoughts. She loved picturing him by the fire, a book in his lap and spectacles perched on the end of his nose. She sighed. No where on Savannah’s list did it say: “indulge in ridiculous fantasies about a tall bookshop owner with a beard.” Too bad. It was something she was really good at.

  “I made the damn hand, and you’re gonna use it,” Maddie said. She thrust the fake hand at him, slipping it over his real hand like a glove. It was gnarled and ashen in color, with broken fingernails and knuckles like wrinkled chestnuts. He shrugged the sleeve of his costume over it, extending his arm slowly to reveal the ghastly pointing finger. It was easily three times larger than his own hand.

  “I doubt I’ll be able to lift it for more than a minute at a time,” he whispered to Agnes as Maddie bustled over to the table of makeup and hair products. “I could use it in self-defence if I had to, though. It must weigh five pounds.”

  Agnes’ giggle turned in to a groan as Nick’s voice drifted up from the audience. Oscar shrugged at her, lowering the hand to his lap.

  “It would appear that your lover has arrived. Again.”

  “He is not my lover, Oscar. For goodness sake!” Agnes groaned inwardly. “I don’t have a lover, I don’t want a lover, and I definitely don’t want Nick as a lover.”

  Oscar shrugged.

  “And I just said lover way too many times.” She took a deep breath, pleased to see that Oscar smiled at her instead of walking away. “I don’t know why he keeps showing up.”

  “I do.” Oscar looked at her and she blushed. “And Belinda seems to enjoy him.” Oscar pulled the curtain back slightly so they could see across the depth of the stage to the seats in the front row. Nick and Belinda sat side by side, heads almost touching, pouring over the script like children prepping for a test. Nick threw back his head and chortled at something Belinda said, causing her to flutter her hands up to her chin.

  “Belinda, really.” Irenia turned toward them, her hands on her hips. “Young man. If you will insist on attending our rehearsals I must demand you show some decorum. Some respect for the performers who are striving, striving I say, to become more than what they are, even for a brief, flickering moment in time…”

  Irenia launched into a lecture that seemed to revolve around the idea of the audience as the fourth wall and something about the hero’s journey.

  Nick laughed again, cutting her off. Agnes shook her head.

  “You do you, Scrooge-baby,” he roared. Irenia took a step backward. “Me and Belinda’s just making plans, ain’t we Belinda-girl?”

  Agnes watched, dumbfounded, as Nick put his arm around Belinda’s small shoulders, hugging her up against him and causing her to squeak in alarm.

  “He wants to be the lobster.” Mad Maddie appeared beside Oscar, holding the hood of his costume, making incomprehensible comments about crustaceans.

  “There’s a lobster in A Christmas Carol?” Agnes wondered if she was missing some important aspect of the Dicken’s classic.

  Maddie tugged the hood over Oscar’s head, his beard disappearing behind a black sheath of fabric. “Lobster’s the parade mascot,” she said, roughly adjusting the hood until Oscar’s eyes reappeared in the depths of fabric.

  “Lobster’s the parade mascot,” Agnes repeated. Sometimes repeating things back was the only way to grasp the particulars of one’s life when it seemed to be spinning out of one’s control.

  “You’re all in the parade, right?” Maddie grunted.

  “We are?”

  “Irenia decided. Opening night. You all get into your costumes and doo-dads and show up in the parade. You know? The Light up the Lighthouse gig?”

  Oscar groaned. The sound echoed out of his hood like a moan from the grave.

  “Do we have to?” He sounded like a six-year-old.

  Maddie ignored him, pinning the hood to his cape. “Parade winds through town, ends up at the Lighthouse. They t
urn on the lights, then everyone goes to the theatre for Opening Night. It’s not a bad idea, really,” Maddie said with uncharacteristic positivity. “Get everyone all festive and happy. Then you people put on your show and—”

  “Where does the Lobster come in?” Agnes asked. She squinted at Nick. Why couldn’t Nick just leave her alone? Why did Nick have to be a lobster? Why, oh why, had Savannah thought Agnes should contact him?

  “Parade mascot. Giant lobster costume. Made it myself.” Maddie finished tugging on Oscar’s hood just in time to send him toward the stage for his entrance.

  Agnes watched as Oscar, with grim spookiness, moved through his scene in eerie silence. He was so tall, and so dark, she was enthralled just watching him from behind the scenes, although he kept reaching up and rubbing his chin. When he raised his fake hand to point at the grave it was all she could do to not applaud wildly. He stopped and rubbed his hidden chin with the giant appendage.

  “Oscar, must you?” Irenia straightened up from her crouched stance as Scrooge to approach Oscar and tug on his hood. “Stop touching your face. You have no face, remember?”

  “Apologies, Irenia,” he mumbled. “It’s quite warm under here. And itchy.”

  “Shave.” Irenia waved her hand at him in dismissal. “Write that down, Belinda. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come needs a shave.”

  Belinda dutifully scratched her pen across the script open on her lap. Nick beamed at her, his arm draped lazily across the seat behind her.

  Sexy Nick as a lobster.

  Savannah definitely hadn’t seen that coming.

  ∞∞∞

  The snow began late one afternoon, swirling against the windows of her apartment in pretty little gusts that made her appreciate the thick blanket on her sofa. She had some hot chocolate and toast, put on her thickest pair of wool socks and curled up with a book, pleased that the evening stretched ahead of her without commitments. The forecast had prompted Irenia to cancel rehearsal in favor of slippery roads, although the phone call had come with dire warnings regarding performance nights.

  “The show must go on,” Irenia had trilled. “If it snows on a performance night, we shall endure!”

  Agnes hoped there would be no enduring. She watched the snow accumulating on her window ledge as the evening progressed. Stormy weather in Nova Scotia was nothing new.

  She was almost asleep an hour later when a thumping reverberated from downstairs. She rubbed her face and went to the door, hoping it wasn’t Belinda coming to rant about Irenia some more.

  “Is everything alright with you, Agnes?” Oscar’s voice was warm and deep, rising up the stairwell like steam from a cup of tea. “It’s quite a storm out there.”

  He appeared on the stairs, his hat and coat liberally dusted with snow. She smiled at him. Bundled in layers against the cold, he looked… different.

  “The power went out at my house,” he said, shaking off his hat. She stood back and held open the door for him. “I thought I should come by and check the shop. Make sure everything was ok here. You still have power, I see.”

  He removed his hat and scarf, looking down at her as he stood dripping in the entryway. She gasped, blinking at him in surprise.

  “Oscar, what on earth happened to your beard?” She tried not to laugh, but his chin was covered by a thin, chopped scruff, like he had been attacked by a lawnmower and lost the battle.

  “Oh. Yes.” He rubbed his chin, shrugging. “I started to shave.”

  “Why didn’t you finish?” she giggled.

  “The power went out. I didn’t think it would be wise to shave by candlelight.”

  “I’m not sure you could make it look any worse,” she laughed. He frowned at her, then smiled and rubbed his hand over his stubble again. There were several tufts poking out from under his chin.

  “I haven’t shaved for years. I’m afraid I may have lost the knack.”

  Agnes pulled him into the apartment, closing the door behind him. She helped him take off his coat, listening as he described the condition of the roads and the forecast for the rest of the evening. She sat him down, then disappeared into the bathroom. She came back out with a towel, a pink razor and can of women’s shaving cream.

  He blinked at her.

  “You can’t go out looking like that,” she said. “You’ll get arrested. You look mostly-dead.”

  “Flattery, Ms. Librarian. Perhaps I’m simply trying to get into character.”

  She had no idea what was happening to her.

  This strange, new Agnes had every intention of shaving a man she barely knew, had kissed once and whose long hands she fantasized about. She had no idea where the calm confidence that filled her came from, but she looked him steadily in the eye, enjoying the blush that rose on his scruffy cheeks.

  She liked new Agnes.

  She filled a bowl with warm water, draped a towel across his shoulders and, with great care, began to shave him.

  Fourteen

  He watched her, fascinated by the dark flecks of gold in her eyes as she leaned toward him. His skin warmed where she touched him, gently smoothing shaving cream over his rough beard, one hand on his shoulder, her face inches from his own.

  They stopped speaking, his words floating away like wisps of fog as his heart thudded under her hand. Gently, steadily she ran the razor over his skin, the rasping of the blade covering the rush of blood that pounded in his ears.

  No one had ever touched him like this. This was an intimacy he had never experienced before and he fought a silent battle between vulnerability and desire. He longed to wrap his arms around her and feel her soft body against him. He longed to lie quietly beside her and listen to her breathe.

  This was ridiculous.

  He swallowed and she pulled back, her eyes wide.

  “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “I don’t want to cut you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t look at me like that,” he muttered.

  He held her gaze. Very slowly, she lifted her leg to straddle his lap, lowering herself onto him gently without taking her eyes off him. He put his hands on her hips, barely breathing as her warmth enveloped his thighs. She continued to shave him, gently, slowly, heat rising from his skin, his lap, his heart, his hands.

  The lights flickered twice and went out.

  “Oh,” she gasped, almost rising but he held her hips firmly so she remained on his lap.

  It was dark, the only light filtered softly through the snow-covered window in the living room.

  She wiped his chin with the towel. He could sense her smiling.

  “Agnes—” He lifted his hand to her neck, under the thick tumble of her hair. He pulled her toward him, pressing her against his chest as he sat up to kiss her.

  She was warm and soft and responsive. She dropped the towel onto the floor, tugging her fingers through his hair and parting her lips to deepen the kiss. She sighed against him, warmth and strength rising between them.

  His world spun madly on its axis. All he had ever wanted in the world was to kiss this woman. He’d had no idea.

  Someone pounded on the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  They pulled apart, gasping slightly. She ran her fingers over his chin to his lips. He kissed her fingertips, willing the noises from below to disappear.

  “Agnes! Aggie, you there?”

  “Oh God, it’s Nick.”

  Agnes groaned. She leaned her forehead on Oscar’s briefly.

  “Nick, the Lobster,” Oscar whispered. “Can’t we just leave him in a snowbank?”

  ∞∞∞

  “And by the time we dug him out, the snowplows had come by to salt the roads and it had stopped snowing.” Agnes sniffled. Her nose had started running that morning, at about the same time she had finally thawed out from rescuing Nick’s car from the ditch. Paisley passed her a napkin, grinning at her above her steaming latte. “So Nick went back to the city and your dad went back to his place, and there is still no power at the Book Nook.”

  Pai
sley had shown up in the morning, bundled a weary Agnes into her winter clothes and insisted on dragging her over the frozen streets to the Lighthouse. It was warm and cosy in the café, where power had been restored, thank the gods of coffee and danishes.

  “I’m so glad you made me come out,” she said. “After a night spent mostly in a snowdrift with Nick, a morning without coffee would have been too much to ask.”

  “I’m just curious what Dad was doing at your place, late at night, in a snowstorm, with the lights out?” Paisley blinked at her innocently.

  “He was… worried about the Nook,” she said, blushing crimson. “It was just… lucky that he was there, or I would have had to shovel Nick out by myself.”

  “Nick was spying on you.”

  “What? Why do you say that?” Agnes looked over her shoulder nervously.

  “Kind of weird, don’t you think?” Paisley frowned at her like Savannah used to do when she was being impossibly naïve. “A great big man knocks on your door in the middle of a snow storm… you, a librarian… looking for help digging himself out of a ditch two streets down from your apartment? On a night when another man just happens to be visiting you, in a romantic power outage, all alone…”

  “Paisley, you make it sound like a tryst. He was just checking… in.”

  “Why are you blushing?”

  Agnes hid behind the rim of her coffee cup. “Do you really think he was spying? That’s super creepy.”

  “Definitely. I don’t think he’s dangerous, but I absolutely think your Sexy Nick is a bit too intense for his own good.”

  “I think he likes Belinda.” Agnes tried to deflect the conversation away from Oscar. Oscar, with his dark eyes and the surprising dimples that appeared once his beard was gone. Oscar, with his warm mouth and strong hands.

  “And that makes you blush too?” Paisley grinned at her.

  Get a grip, Agnes.

  “Everyone likes Belinda. It’s Belinda’s super-power.” Paisley sipped her latte. “And she is at least twenty-five years older than Nick. I don’t think you’re going to get off the hook that easily.”