by MJ Duncan
Maeve must have noticed her interest in the notebook, because she said, “I was working when George bolted off the patio to greet you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Maeve arched her back and sighed as she settled back into her seat. “This final section is giving me fits, so I would much rather sit and talk to you than pull my hair out trying to figure out the stupid thing.”
“Next section?”
Maeve flipped the notebook closed and shrugged. “The climax of my next novel. All the pieces are in place, I just can’t figure out how I want it all to go down.”
“Next novel?” Joss arched a brow as she sat up a little bit straighter. “So does that mean you’ve written others?”
“A few,” Maeve demurred. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “None of that will matter, however, if I don’t get this manuscript turned in on time. My agent has been riding my ass for the last two weeks, which is why I’ve all but turned into a hermit.”
“I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you around.” Joss pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Do I sell your books?”
Maeve nodded, a light blush tinting her cheeks as she focused on the coffee in her hands. “You do, yes.”
“How did I not know this?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Maeve replied. “I mean, I publish under my own name, and you do own and operate an incredibly well-stocked bookstore…”
Joss’s forehead wrinkled with concentration as she wracked her brain, running through her mental catalogue of Atramentum’s inventory. It was beyond frustrating that she could not picture one book with the name Maeve Dylan on its spine. “I really sell your books?”
“You do. I know, because I signed a stack of them for Helen not long after I moved here.” Maeve sipped at her coffee, clearly uncomfortable talking about herself. “How did your game go last night?”
“Well, I didn’t make a fool out of myself.” Joss picked up her coffee again as she leaned back in her chair. “I actually went to high school with like half the team, so it was a fun little reunion.”
“So you grew up here?”
“Not exactly.” Joss shook her head. “I grew up down the mountain in Greenwood Village just outside Denver, but came to live with Helen in my junior year after my parents died in a car crash.”
“Oh, Joss. I am so sorry.”
It was a sentiment Joss had heard countless times over the years. Most of the time it was offered as an automatic platitude, but she could tell from the stricken look on Maeve’s face that the blonde genuinely meant it. “Thanks.” Joss shook her head and shrugged. The loss still stung, but enough time had passed between then and now that, for the most part, it was just a part of her past because life demanded she keep moving forward. Time really did heal all wounds, and after enough of it, even the scars that healing left behind were just marks on her soul, evidence to point at and say I survived. “But yeah. So I finished high school here, and then came back every summer during college to help Aunt Helen at the store. I lost touch with pretty much everybody after I graduated from UCLA because my work was so crazy, so last night was the first time I’d seen anyone in…” Her voice trailed off as she did the quick calculation. “Almost eight years.” She grimaced. “Christ, I’m old.”
Maeve smiled. “If it makes you feel any better, at least you graduated high school in this century.”
“Just barely,” Joss chuckled. Her eyes roamed Maeve’s face as she wondered just how much older Maeve was than her. It could not be much, she figured, perhaps a year or two at most. “Though I doubt you were much before it.”
“Three years,” Maeve confessed as she took a sip of her coffee.
“And did you go to Columbia?” Joss asked, pointing at Maeve’s sweatshirt with her mug.
“For my undergrad, yes.” She sighed and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I went to Iowa for my Master’s.”
Joss frowned. “Why Iowa?”
Maeve laughed. “They have the what’s generally considered the best creative writing MFA program in the country.”
“So it wasn’t some weird love of cornfields.”
“God, no.” Maeve shook her head. “It was fun though. Lots of good memories. What made you choose UCLA?”
“Good math program. And my dad went there, so…”
Maeve’s smile softened. “Westwood’s a fun part of town. I enjoy going there for signings.” She tilted her head and asked, “Math, huh?”
“Yeah. I was a public accountant before I came back here to take over Atramentum,” Joss explained. Her phone that she carried with her on runs in an armband sleeve as a precaution began beeping, and she sighed as she tugged the phone from the pouch to silence off the alarm. “Sorry about that. That’s my if-you’re-still-in-bed-you-better-get-your-ass-up alarm.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I’ve kept you so long.”
“Don’t be.” Joss took one last sip of her coffee, selfishly allowing herself a few more seconds of Maeve’s company, and then sighed as she set her mug onto the table. She smiled as she got to her feet, wishing she did not have to say goodbye just yet. “This was fun.”
“It was.” Maeve tucked her hair behind her ears and added, “Thank you.”
“Thank you for the coffee.”
“It was my pleasure.”
The words we should do this again soon were on the tip of Joss’ tongue, but she held them back. It seemed like it would be too much, too soon. “I’ll see you around, then. Good luck with that climax.”
Maeve smiled and tipped her head in a small nod. “Thank you. Have a good day.”
“You too.” Joss glanced toward the house. “Say goodbye to George for me?”
“After you’ve gone,” Maeve promised. “That way I won’t have to chase after her when she tries to leave with you.”
Joss sighed and shook her head. “You’re no fun. But sounds good. I’ll see you later.” She waved goodbye as she turned to jog down the stairs, more than a little bummed that she had to go.
Her left foot had just hit the grass at the edge of the patio steps when she could have sworn she heard Maeve whisper, “I look forward to it.”
When she turned around to see if she had heard her correctly, however, Maeve was bent over her notebook, pen in hand, scribbling words on the page with a fervor that told Joss she must have been imagining things.
Seven
It was equal parts curiosity and embarrassment that she had not known that Maeve was an author that had Joss pulling up the store’s inventory on her laptop as soon as she finished opening Atramentum for the day. Joss whistled softly as she typed Maeve’s name into the search field and skimmed the list of titles and publication dates on her screen. Maeve had been playing coy when she claimed to have written “a few” books. She was prolific, having put out one book per year for the last thirteen years.
Snapping her laptop shut, Joss shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and wandered toward the Crime/Mystery section of the store where her inventory list told her Maeve’s books were shelved. She shook her head as she stopped in front of a full row of books with Maeve’s name printed on the spine.
How in the hell had I never heard of Maeve Dylan before?
Because they always stocked books in the order they were released to make it easier for customers to find the beginning of a new series or the latest release from a favorite author, she pulled the top-left-most book titled Smoke and flipped it over to read the blurb on the back. It was a standard summary—clear, concise, with enough of a hook to grab her interest even though she preferred urban fantasy—and she rolled her eyes at herself as she took the book with her back to the front counter. She could have totally hated the genre and found the summary absolutely yawn-inducing, and she would have still read it just because Maeve wrote it.
She should have taken advantage of the otherwise empty store to begin working on the myriad of things that had not gotten done the day before, but she instead sat down on t
he stool by the register and opened the book to the first chapter. She crossed her legs as she laid the book on the counter and tucked her hair behind her ears as she leaned forward to read.
It only took her two chapters to realize that starting Maeve’s book was a colossal mistake. Not because it was bad, but because she was already so completely sucked into the story that she had to remind herself not to snap at customers whenever they needed her help with something.
She knew that it was not their fault she was in full-on I’m-reading-leave-me-the-hell-alone mode, but that did absolutely nothing to temper her annoyance. She had begun reading the story thinking it would give her an interesting glimpse into Maeve’s mind, but the more she read, the more she just wanted to know what happened next. Maeve’s characters were engaging, her prose tight, her descriptions evocative, and Joss was begrudgingly forced to accept that she needed to put the book down when a young couple entered the store chatting happily, and then froze just inside the threshold when she glared at them for interrupting her.
“Chill, Perrault,” she muttered under her breath as the couple scampered past her. She ripped a piece of receipt paper from the roll on the register and used it to mark her spot, and shook her head as she closed the book and set it off to the side.
You can read more later, she promised herself.
Of course, sitting down with the book later meant that she was most likely not going to catch up on the sleep she had missed the night before, but at this point that seemed like a perfectly acceptable sacrifice.
Even though she knew that she needed to avoid reopening the book, it taunted her from its spot on the counter, and she blew out an exasperated breath. “Do your work, Perrault,” she lectured herself under her breath as she forced herself to go fetch one of the boxes of inventory from the back hall.
She glanced toward the row the couple had disappeared down as she used a pair of scissors to cut through the tape holding the box shut, and was pleased to see they each had a small stack of books piled near their feet even as they continued to peruse the shelves.
Restocking shelves was a task that kept her hands, if not her thoughts, occupied, and she was in the middle of delivering the contents her fifth box to their appropriate locations when Scott arrived to begin his shift.
He waved hello as he walked around the front counter to stash his brown-bag dinner in the fridge. “Hey, boss-lady.”
Joss nodded. “Hey.”
Scott arched a brow in surprise when he noticed the book on the counter beside the register, and glanced at Joss as he picked it up to scan the back cover. “Crime novel? When did you get into this stuff?”
Joss grinned, knowing that his reaction to this particular bombshell was going to be priceless. “You know my neighbor Maeve?”
“Yeah…” His eyes went wide as he put two-and-two together. “Wait.” He tapped his finger on the cover of the book. “Your neighbor is this Maeve Dylan?”
“Yup.”
“How did we not know this?” Scott muttered as he flipped through the novel. “I mean, I’ve heard the name before, she’s probably the most influential author in the genre right now, but I didn’t even think that your Maeve was this Maeve.”
Joss rolled her eyes. “She’s not ‘my Maeve’.”
“She kinda is.” He smirked and set the book back down on the counter. “I mean, you’re like the only one in town who’s ever really talked to her.”
“You’re insane.”
“Yep,” he agreed easily. “Seriously though. This is awesome! We have a famous author living right here in Sky! Do you think you can get her to do a signing here or something? It would be great for business.”
“I’m not bugging her about that.” Joss shook her head. “Her agent is riding her ass about finishing her next novel; she has enough going on without us trying to exploit her like that.”
“Next novel?” Scott perked up even more. “Same series? Or is she branching out into something new?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Never mind the fact that I had no idea she was even some big-time author until I came into work and looked her up. “She was working on it this morning when I stopped by to drop off George again.”
“Again?”
Joss shrugged. “George likes to come out and say hello when I’m running around the lake in the morning, and since I don’t want her to follow me home, I take her back up to Maeve.”
“Hold up.” Scott held up a hand. “Why haven’t I heard about this before?”
“I don’t know,” Joss drawled, shaking her head. “Maybe because it’s only happened twice, and it’s not really all that important in the grand scheme of things?”
Scott rolled his eyes. “It’s totally important.”
“I’m afraid to ask why you feel that way,” Joss muttered as she began pulling books from the open box on the floor and stacking them on the counter.
“Because,” Scott said, drawing out the last syllable for a good four beats, “you like her.”
“And you know that, how?” Joss challenged.
“Because I know you,” he answered imperiously. “You keep bringing her up whenever we’re just shooting the shit, and you were all broody yesterday after you saw her at the deli—”
“I was not broody,” Joss interrupted. “And I do not ‘keep bringing her up’.”
“Fine. Introspective and wistful.” He arched a brow and dared her to argue. When she just huffed in annoyance but did not correct him, he grinned. “And, you do. And then, come to find out, it was the second time you had seen her that day!”
“Why do I feel like a character in some story you’re plotting right now?”
“Because you are,” he retorted. “I’m calling it, Joss Perrault Finally Finds Her Happily Ever After.”
Joss chuckled and shook her head. “That is the worst title for a story ever. And, I hate to break it to you, man, but I’m pretty sure she’s not even gay.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.” Joss ran a hand through her hair and sighed as her thoughts drifted to the parting words she had thought she had heard earlier that morning. No matter where Maeve was on the spectrum, the last thing she needed was for Scott to try to play matchmaker should he accidentally cross paths with her. And, really, even if their spheres of attraction overlapped, there was still the fact that she was just a nobody who ran a bookstore, and Maeve was an internationally acclaimed author. “But, even if she were gay—which, for the record, I don’t think she is—there’s no way in hell a woman like her goes for someone like me.”
“Now you’re the one who’s insane. You’re a catch! If I weren’t married and, you know, totally the missing the required assets to catch your attention…” He smirked and mimed grabbing a rather impressive set of boobs.
Joss feigned like she was going to throw one of the books she was holding at him. “That’s so wrong…”
He laughed. “What? I thought we were in agreement about boobs being awesome.”
Joss glanced toward the customers that had yet to emerge from the stacks, and rolled her eyes. “We are,” she muttered. “But still… No, dude. Just no.”
“Fine,” he sighed dramatically, like dropping that entire line of conversation was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. “Look, is she single?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who went total fangirl when you found out who she was—you tell me.”
He pulled out his phone. “I can Google it…”
“Oh my God, no.” Joss took his phone and set it on the counter. “That’s creepy.”
“Wikipedia? It says here that she won an Edgar at the age of twenty-two for this one.” He lifted the book he was still holding as evidence. “She’s bound to have a Wikipedia page.”
“No. I am not internet-stalking my neighbor.”
“You won’t be. I will.” He smiled and reached for his phone.
Joss grabbed it before he could and put it in her back pocket. �
�No.”
“You’re no fun.”
“I know.” Joss picked up a stack of books off the counter and shoved them into his arms. “Go shelve these and then come back for more when you’re done.”
Scott blew a loud raspberry as he adjusted his grip on the books. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
The bell above the front door jingled as a mid-twenty-something brunette in a bright sundress walked in the store, and Joss smiled at her gratefully. “Hi, welcome to Atramentum. Can I help you find something?”
“Like the balls to make a move,” Scott muttered just loud enough for Joss to hear.
She discreetly flipped him off as she kept her eyes on their customer, who was mumbling something and digging through her purse, thankfully too distracted to pay much attention to the playful spat happening in front of her.
Scott laughed. “We’ll continue this later.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Joss chuckled.
“Sorry,” the woman apologized with a smile as she pulled a scrap of paper from her purse and handed it to Joss. “My friend recommended this author—do you carry her books?”
Joss read the name scribbled on the note and was grateful that Scott had already disappeared into the back as she nodded. There was no way he would be able to resist making some kind of comment designed to embarrass the hell out of her. “We certainly do. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you where we have all of Ms. Dylan’s books.”
Eight
“Again, huh?” Joss arched a brow at the dog waiting for her at the edge of the lawn as she jogged out of the woods, back straight, ears alert, with the dopiest grin on her face.
George stood up and cocked her head, her muscles tensing as she waited for the command she knew was coming.
“Right then,” Joss said, clapping once before waving a hand at the wide lawn that stretched in front of them. “Let’s go.”
This quick sprint with George had become a regular part of her morning routine over the last week, to the point that she had even begun to save a little energy during her run leading up to this point so she could try to outrace George to the patio. A familiar fluttery feeling settled in her chest as they neared the house and she saw that Maeve was sitting on the back patio, her laptop folded shut in front of her as she watched them over the rim of her coffee cup cradled in her hands. This was the best part of her new morning routine, and Joss returned Maeve’s smile with an easy one of her own as she skipped up the steps to the patio.