by Kym Roberts
I followed his gaze to the front door…and had the opposite reaction. Glee flooded through me, wiping away all my fear.
“Aunt Violet!”
Chapter Two
I scrambled to my feet and made a beeline for the woman standing just inside the door, looking around like she’d gotten lost in time. Her expression changed; lightened and brightened when she caught sight of me. At fifty-eight, my Aunt Violet was tall and slender with curves that had filled out with age.
Violet dropped her purse and swung open her arms. “Honey child, you are a sight for sore eyes!”
Most women I hug are shorter than me by several inches. Aunt Violet, however, was taller than I am by an inch. She was the exact height my mom was before she died. They were nearly identical in every way…except for their hair and personalities.
Before my momma died, she was the calming effect in my life. After she died, my daddy filled that role. When he and I split ways when I was seventeen, it was Violet’s role to fill.
Except she couldn’t. Aunt Violet was the wild child, like me. But whereas I changed during college, Violet could still burn a town to the ground with her antics. She took me in and gave me a loving home when I fled my hometown and everyone in it. But she could never fill the role I wanted most, just as my mom or dad could never have been my boisterous cheerleader that Aunt Violet became.
Aunt Violet had been all about teaching me to take the world by my own woman-made storm. To make a difference, I had to make the world see me. She insisted I leave my mark and strive toward a career that protected and served. If I’d followed her advice, I would have been working a beat on the Denver Police Department, and miserable as all get out. That was my Aunt Violet’s career, not mine.
I did listen to her when she said I had a way of talking to people that calmed them, just like my momma did. I took her advice to heart—just not toward the path of law enforcement. I left all the bad guys, the conflict, and the spikes of adrenaline to my Aunt Violet, got my degree in education, and started teaching kindergarten instead. Teaching involved working day hours, with weekends off and summer vacations I couldn’t pass up. And the wild child in me became the calming spirit in the household. I had to be, otherwise my cousin Jamal…
“Where’s Jamal? Is he okay?” I pulled back and considered her raven eyes accentuated by the sweeping arches of her eyebrows.
“Your cousin is parking the car. He’ll be in in a minute.”
I pulled my aunt away from the door and refused to let go of her hand. Looking at her inside my momma’s dream store, I suddenly realized what it would be like to see my mom in her late fifties. Her hair would be shorter and straighter than my aunt’s, who wore her hair with the curls tapered and uneven. Aunt Violet’s bangs accentuated the long lines of her jaw on one side, while showcasing the beauty of her almond-shaped eyes on the other. And for a moment, I could see my momma cleaning out the Barn, the pure joy of building her dream evident on her face.
Then I remembered the shock my dad experienced when Violent walked in—she was my momma returning from the grave twenty years too late. I looked to him to offer comfort, but he’d recovered from seeing his wife’s twin.
“Violet, you don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you,” Dad said as he came up and hugged his sister-in-law. It was like watching my parents together. They would have celebrated their thirty-second wedding anniversary this year.
Jamal walked in and I ran to give him a bear hug. At six foot eleven inches, my cousin could be intimidating—if you were a computer, thanks to his hacking skills. To anyone else, Jamal was like chocolate chips in their hand; hold him tight enough, and he’d melt all around your fingers. I held him tight and felt his feet begin to squirm, and then his tummy began to rumble in my ear.
I laughed and pulled away. “You’re hungry.”
Aunt Violet couldn’t resist teasing her son. “Jamal is always hungry. It’s a state of being that has been a constant since he left the womb.”
Jamal grinned, his eyes twinkling below a masculine set of the same arched brows as his mother. Somehow, between the two of us, he’d been the one to receive hazel eyes, while despite my biracial heritage, I’d inherited my mother’s deep brown eye coloring. We both, however, received the same light brown curls. My cousin wore his hair short, and if I could reach the top of his head, I’d flop my fingers through it like I did to my students—he was that adorable.
“A snack would be really good right about now,” Jamal said.
I pulled his Jolly Green Giant form toward the back of the store. “I have donuts in back.”
“Get out!”
“Actually, get in,” I told him as I pushed him inside the double-sized stalls that housed our tearoom.
I was in the middle of asking Violet and Jamal why they were in Hazel Rock when the front doors swished open and the tiny bell dinged. Princess, excited about all the recent flurry of activity, peeked her head out from under the counter where we kept her bed and looked at the front door. I greeted our customer as she ran up and squeaked at his feet.
“Hello, is there something I can help you find?”
“I…I…I…” The man shook his shaggy head of hair and looked down at the floor and Princess nervously. He looked too embarrassed to say anything else as he slinked away toward the computer section.
“She won’t hurt you. In fact, I think she kind of likes you.”
That was an understatement. Princess was bound and determined to make a new friend, and by the hesitant hand the man reached in her direction, I suspected he was warming up to the idea himself.
“Let us know if we can help you with anything,” I called after him. He nodded, but never established eye contact. “If there’s a book you’d like that we don’t have in stock, please let us know and we’ll order it for you.”
“Th-thank you.” The man had to be the shyest forty-something-year-old I’d ever met. Over six feet tall, he was soft with big beefy arms and a waistband to match. His cheeks tinged red as he nodded and gave a small smile in the direction of Princess and the floor.
I turned back to Jamal and Aunt Violet.
“So, tell me again, what brought you to Hazel Rock?”
“Sounds to me like you don’t want us to visit you,” Aunt Violet pouted.
“Don’t be ridiculous! I love that you’re here. It’s been too long.”
Violet looked at my dad. “Twelve years is too long.”
It was my turn to blush. Each holiday season my aunt had begged me to let her take me home. Each year, I’d stubbornly held on to my teenage anger. It’d been so petty, but only being home made me realize how juvenile I’d been.
“That’s behind us now,” my dad said. “We promised to talk if we ever have an issue with each other again.”
“Then I think it’s time to have a party.”
Jamal groaned. His idea of a party was to strategize an attack on a video game with his online friends. Then I remembered what was coming up the next week. They were here for my birthday…and my aunt was famous for throwing big parties. The last way I wanted to celebrate entering into a completely different age category was with a big party. I was no longer going to be in my late twenties. I’d be thirty—with no prospects of a husband or children. If that wasn’t depressing enough, my aunt wanted to shout the milestone from the rafters? Ugh.
Jamal recognized my discomfort and immediately rescued me. “Actually, I have a business venture I’d like to discuss with my favorite cousin.”
“I’m your only cousin, Jamal.”
He grinned and gave me a fake punch to the jaw. “And yet you’re still my favorite.”
I laughed. “Okay, what’s this big venture you have?”
Jamal beamed from ear to ear. “I developed an app.” From the amount of pride gleaming in his eyes, he may as well have said, I’m a father, while he h
anded out cigars.
“You’ve developed several apps—”
“But this one is different. This one will help your store.”
“The Book Barn Princess?” I looked over at my daddy, who shrugged as if to say, why not; couldn’t hurt.
“What kind of app?” I asked.
“I call it the Book Seekers.”
“The Book Seekers?”
“That’s right. It will bring customers to your store and increase your business.”
“And how exactly will an app bring people into the store?”
“First, you should tell her about the author who’s agreed to do a signing at her store next Friday.” My aunt was bursting at the seams wanting to give away the secret before Jamal could explain.
“Wait. You’ve asked an author to do a signing at the Barn?” I tugged at my lip with my teeth. I wasn’t sure how Daddy would react to my cousin putting his foot in our business.
Jamal bobbed his head up and down, that pride coming out in his expression once again. I tried to hold back my apprehension. Book signings were a huge undertaking. You had to advertise them in advance, but somehow my cousin thought we could just throw it together in a week and a half. How would we get the author’s books in inventory that quickly? It’d cost me extra in shipping. Chances were, I’d lose money the Barn didn’t have.
“Jamal, we can’t—”
“Lucy has already made arrangements to get the books shipped to the Barn.” My aunt’s voice was unrepentant.
I slid a glance in my daddy’s direction. “Lucy? Who’s Lucy?”
“Lucy Barton!” The words exploded from my aunt’s mouth.
“What?” I asked, looking between my aunt and cousin in disbelief. Surely, I’d heard her wrong. “Did you say Lucy Barton?”
Jamal’s head did that slow, proud nod again.
“The Lucy Barton? The best-selling author of the Midnight Poet Society Mysteries, Lucy Barton?”
“That’s the one.” Aunt Violet came over and hugged her son around the waist.
“But how?”
“Juicy Killer is her daughter,” Jamal said with a self-satisfied smile.
“What? What are you talking about?”
My aunt rolled her eyes and slapped Jamal’s stomach with a backhand. “Don’t you mess with my baby girl.”
Jamal laughed. He was thin and nonathletic, but his momma didn’t raise a wimp. “Juicy Killer is her online name. She’s one of my partners for the Book Seekers. She suggested it to her mom, and her mom agreed. I wasn’t sure we’d get it up and running in time, but we’ve been working night and day trying to get it ready for launch. We completed it five days ago.”
Five days would have been nice to have in order to plan such a huge event. It would have been enough time to make sure I had enough books. “Wait a minute, you said Lucy Barton was having books sent by her publisher?”
“That’s right. She knew a bookseller wouldn’t have enough time so she ordered the books herself. It was her donation to support her daughter. She said the Barn could keep the profits as a thank you for helping her daughter.”
It was my turn to grin. “I thought it was a mistake, but now—the books arrived this morning.”
“Get out!”
“Come here, I’ll show you.”
Jamal grabbed a donut in each hand as we went back out to the main sales floor.
“I can’t believe Lucy Barton is going to be in the Barn. All we have planned was a midnight poetry reading on Friday. Now it can serve as a prequel to the main event!” I hugged my cousin around the waist as we walked and he ate his donut over my head.
“I could get her in to meet you before the actual signing begins,” he said through a mouthful of donut.
“Jamal, your momma didn’t teach you to talk with your mouth full,” Aunt Violet reprimanded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lucy Barton will bring in huge crowds,” Aunt Violet told my dad.
“But we won’t have much time for advertising.” My dad still sounded skeptical, and I had to agree with his assessment. Hazel Rock grew to a community of 2,095 thanks to the twins born to Mary Lou and Brad Bickford last month, but that wasn’t nearly enough to sell two hundred and fifty books I was estimating I’d have on hand, along with the twenty books I’d ordered.
“That’s where the Book Seekers app comes in. I’ve scheduled a press conference with the assistance of Lucy’s publicist for Thursday morning, right here at the Barn.”
I looked around at sales floor, half-decorated for the holidays, and heard my dad snort.
“You just gave Princess an excuse to work all day long for the next two days.” My daddy wasn’t talking about our armadillo. He’d called me Princess since before I was born and the pink little creature watching the whole scene from the doorway received her name because of his love of me, and my adoration of anything pink.
My mind raced through the list of things we’d have to do. “We’ve got to have a bigger display for the Midnight Poet Society Mysteries and what about her older books in the series? We should order some of those and get them in stock. And the holiday decorations. I want to have the store looking its best. Holy schnikes! I have to send an email to all our book groups and customers—the Mystery Moms! They’ll want to know Lucy Barton will be here. They’ll come from all over of the state—even Oklahoma and New Mexico. We’ve got a lot to do.”
“Who are the Mystery Moms?” Jamal asked.
I turned on my cousin. “You don’t know who the Mystery Moms are? They’re only the biggest national book club for mysteries. They have dues and chapters and conferences. We sponsor a chapter here in Hazel Rock. They meet once a month at the store. They’re some of our best customers.”
“She has no life outside this barn,” my dad complained.
I ignored him and began to take notes on my phone.
“She’s going to have to live and breathe this barn odor for the next couple weeks,” Jamal said as he sniffed the air.
Princess had snuck over to where we stood and was sniffing my cousin’s pant leg as we spoke, her head traveling upward as she tried to smell the new visitor. Jamal jumped when she stood on her hind legs and put her claws against his shin. I expected her to jump in return, but she just stood there, watching and sniffing him.
“That’s not the Barn you smell, that’s Princess. I told you she has a smell all her own.” Unfortunately, I was getting used to the odor. “She’ll have a bath before the reporters get here, and the store will be dressed to the nines. It’s the least I can do to make the store look its best for the reporters.”
My cousin reached down and tenuously patted Princess on her shell. “So, this is what a pet armadillo looks like. I still can’t believe you have one.” Princess rubbed her body against his leg, but that was a little too much for Jamal to handle. He cringed and stepped back. I remembered doing the same thing once upon a time.
“You’ll get used to her.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I will.” He wiped his hand on his shirt before shoving the rest of his second donut in his mouth. “The Book Seekers app is about to bring in more customers than you can possibly imagine. I’m talking about expanding your business and making it into a successful bookstore.”
“We already are a successful bookstore, Jamal.”
“Yeah, but this will make the Book Barn Princess a nationwide brand.”
I’d been down this path a few months back with Cade. He wanted me to take the business and go nationwide, open other stores, but I was content with having just one Book Barn Princess in Hazel Rock. What was wrong with owning one independent bookstore and not wanting to expand? What was wrong with just wanting to make our business as successful as it could possibly be? Why did the men in my life think our store had to grow beyond Hazel Rock?
I wanted to succeed. I
wanted to live comfortably. And yes, my daddy needed a retirement plan, but couldn’t I do all that right here in Hazel Rock?
My dad was the first to speak. “We’re not looking for a nationwide brand, Jamal. We like the Barn just the way it is.”
Jamal looked around at all the pink walls, the different stalls filled with various genres. The girl’s section was decorated in a princess grunge theme with a tiara chandelier above the stall. It was beautiful and all the little princesses who visited the Barn loved it—including our very own little armadillo. Princess liked to look up at the glistening crystals hanging down as if they were stars in the sky. It seemed to confuse her, yet enthrall her at the same time.
I reinforced my daddy’s statement. “We’re happy the way things are, Jamal.”
“Wouldn’t you be happier if you were bringing in more than just a handful of customers a day?”
“Of course, we’d like to bring in more customers. Every business owner wants that.”
Jamal rubbed his long, lean hands together. “Then hear me out, and I’ll make sure you don’t regret it.”
I looked to my dad for his input. This wasn’t just my decision; this was a choice both of us would have to agree on. We owned the store together. We worked together, and we made decisions together.
“What can it hurt?” my dad asked.
What could it hurt indeed…
Chapter Three
Jamal went through the details of the app several times, explaining to us exactly how it would work. The user would receive their initial clue to locate a book somewhere in Hazel Rock. But it wasn’t an actual book, it was a virtual book. The user would follow the clue to the location by utilizing a 2-D map and the phone’s GPS signal to display the user’s location. Once at the location, the user grabbed the book by pointing their camera at the cover. Once a photo was snapped, the picture and the book was then automatically recorded on the individual’s virtual bookshelf with their profile and a second clue was earned. If the user did not locate the second book on the next clue, they could purchase additional clues.