Leather Bound

by Shanna Germain

  Think of Molly Bloom, I told myself. Think of Hester. Think of Lolita.

  No, wrong ones.

  Thinking of literary characters was my usual trick in getting through panicky situations, but every time I thought of one now, it was a woman and she was not exactly doing innocent things in the recesses of my brain.

  I had to break eye contact and look over his shoulder, to the street outside where normal people were doing normal things. A woman walked by with a white dog the size of a teacup curled in her arms. A couple stood arm-in-arm just outside the window and kissed briefly, his lips touching hers with a familiarity that made me feel like a voyeur.

  Looking away, I forced my gaze to land on his, taking in his unusual eyes, his attentive expression. After a long moment, the air righted itself so that I could breathe and then again so I could talk. Soon enough I could even stick my hand out, worrying only a little whether I’d been sweating.

  ‘I’m Janine Archer,’ I said, quickly, before he could take my outstretched hand and render me speechless yet again.

  He spoke as his hand settled in mine. His skin was as warm as I’d imagined, a soft heat that seemed to sink into my palm. His fingers were firm, confident. He didn’t shake my hand so much as hold it, tight and secure, as though it was an important package that had been given to his care.

  He’d said something.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said. I hadn’t heard him at all. What I did hear was Lily giving a quick, sharp laugh behind me and then trying to hide it with a cough.

  ‘I said …’ He enunciated each word carefully, as though I was eight, but a smile played lightly at the corners of his lips as he spoke. And besides, I guessed I deserved it. I was certainly acting like I was eight. Or at least eighteen. ‘I’m Davian Cavanaugh.’

  ‘I’m Janine Archer,’ I said. Again.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You told me.’

  This time, Lily didn’t even bother to try and hold her laughter in, damn her. Did I mention she’s the world’s loudest laugher? I wanted to turn around and pinch her earlobe or hide her away in the back room. Or something. It was impossible to be angry with her, though, once she started laughing. Shaking my head, I smiled apologetically at our potential customer.

  ‘Please excuse us,’ I urged. ‘We’re usually far more professional than this. It’s just been … one of those mornings.’

  I fully expected Lily to make some kind of crack about me smelling like sex. Then I would have to kill her and stuff her into the back room.

  She was blissfully quiet. For once.

  Davian lifted his brow into a high arch, his expression clearly stating his disbelief that we were typically more functional than this. I couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t exactly seen us at our best. The old me, or rather the young me, would have written this entire conversation off as a disaster and fled the room with her cheeks burning and tears threatening to fall. But this was the new me, the adult me, the me who had a business to run and bills to pay.

  Think Scarlett O’Hara.

  That worked. I straightened my back and let go of Davian’s hand.

  ‘So, what book are you looking for, Mister Cavanaugh?’ I asked. ‘If it’s rare, first-edition, banned or signed, I guarantee I can find it for you.’

  He took a moment to look around the store, letting his gaze linger over the shelves before he turned slowly back to me. I was struck again by the caramel swirls of his eyes, the way they seemed to radiate heat.

  ‘It’s none of those things, actually’ he said. ‘The book I’m looking for doesn’t exist.’

  CHAPTER 2

  I barely missed a beat.

  ‘Luckily for you, books that don’t exist are my speciality,’ I said.

  If he’d expected me to balk or turn down his offer, he didn’t let his surprise show.

  ‘I’ve heard that about you,’ he said.

  Which caught me all off-guard.

  ‘What? You have?’

  He shook his head, his smile turning slightly guilty. His eyes flashed darker with amusement.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought you were kidding. So I was kidding too.’

  ‘Actually, I was kidding.’ At least I thought I was. Now I was confused. Had I been kidding? Mostly. Hard-to-find was my speciality. Doesn’t-want-to-sell was also my speciality. Signed by a dead person in archival blue ink was also something I’d found once, at quite a price to the buyer. Was non-existent and completely bizarre my speciality? If this morning was any indication, it just might be.

  I took a quick breath in through my nose, trying to get myself back onto a professional business track. I was well aware that Lily was making noises of shuffling papers on the counter behind me, but what she was really doing was recording all of this for later with her impossible memory. I’d hear about every single nuance of this as soon as she and I were alone.

  ‘In truth, I expected you to turn me down,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t said yes yet,’ I countered. ‘But I like challenges.’

  I especially liked challenges from men with caramel-coloured eyes and more than a little wickedness in the pages of their smile. More importantly, I liked the kind of challenges that forced me to use my brain, the kind that could distract me from my current challenge, who was probably still sleeping in my bed, dreaming about wedding rings or something.

  This guy would either turn out to be a crackpot – chasing down a book that didn’t exist was one of the favoured pastimes of those with too much time, money or craziness, or all three, on their hands – or he’d turn out to be actually looking for something that didn’t exist. Either way, it was something to keep my mind occupied and my field of vision focused somewhere other than my love life.

  ‘You like challenges,’ he mused. There was something in his gaze that implied so much, and yet managed to still remain above board. I liked that, the sexuality that seemed aimed just at me, while maintaining a sense of decorum. It made me wonder what he’d be like at an elegant dinner party, all dressed up and making small talk while fingering you under the table.

  ‘Even impossible challenges?’ he asked.

  I still had visions of his fingers, and what they might to do to me. The idea lent my voice a low tease that I didn’t mean it to have.

  ‘Let’s just say I’ve believed impossible things before,’ I said.

  ‘Even before breakfast?’

  Was he ever going to stop throwing me for loops so I could get my brain in order? I felt suddenly and fiercely like Alice going down her rabbit hole.

  ‘Did you just misquote Lewis Carroll at me?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  Curiouser and curiouser. A lot of our customers covet books like fine art or hot women, but never actually read them. This man was not just looking for a book. He actually read books.

  Could he possibly get any sexier? A better question was: could I trust myself to behave like a professional around him? I thought I could, but standing right here, right now, I had to admit I would have bet on anyone but myself to win that argument.

  I figured I’d better get him into my office and put my work face on before I delved too deeply into questions I didn’t really want answers to.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Come on back, and we’ll see if I can help you make your unicorn of a book magically appear from thin air.’

  From behind me, I heard Lily give another quiet snort of a giggle, but she suppressed it so fast I was hopeful that Davian hadn’t heard. If he had, his face didn’t change expression.

  ‘I would appreciate that,’ he said.

  ‘Right this way,’ I said.

  * * *

  While Davian followed me back towards the office, I kept wanting to turn around to look at him again. I resisted the urge, but barely. I could hear his fingers brushing the occasional book as he went by them, the soft whisper of skin to spines that you only hear in bookstores and libraries.

  I wondered, as I often did, if books could feel us, if our very to
uch was enough to bring them alive. And I wondered, specifically, if they could feel Davian’s hands on them, what the soft stroke of his fingers felt like to their bindings, to the edges of their pages.

  ‘Here it is,’ I said, turning to face him again, one hand out towards a wide set of built-in bookcases, full of oversized first editions.

  Davian lifted that single eyebrow again, clearly confused.

  Yeah, I’d felt that way the first time I’d seen my office too. Of course, it hadn’t been my office then, but it was still a huge part of the reason I’d fallen in love with this space, long before we’d rented it and turned it into the store. Before Leather Bound was ours, it had been a bank, complete with a hidden swinging door for getting into the super-secret vault without attracting attention.

  Friends had helped us turn the hidden door into a hidden bookshelf door for us before we opened.

  I couldn’t help showing it off sometimes. I kind of loved the moment of revelation. It made me feel all Nancy Drew.

  While Davian watched, I slipped a book from the shelf to expose a single keyhole. We’d had it made to fit the same skeleton key that opened the front door.

  Suddenly I realised that, in my secret joy at showing off the hidden door, I’d put myself in a dilemma. I had to either try and remove the key and ribbon from around my neck – an action that was sure to end up with my hair or my earrings caught in tangles and leaving me looking incredibly stupid in front of this man – or leave the key in its current place and bend down in front of him to open the lock.

  After a brief hesitation, realising that he was watching me far closer than I would have liked at the moment, I chose the latter option. If he was going to look at my ass, that was fine, but I didn’t think I could stand to look like a fool in front of him. Again, I meant. Considering I’d already done it once. Or twice. I couldn’t quite remember.

  I bent and slipped the key in the hole. The skirt of my dress suddenly felt too short and too flimsy to cover my ass, even though I knew it did. Please let this look good on me, I thought stupidly, selfishly. Not at all professionally.

  Lily and I had secret codes for lots of things – ‘I have a stone in my shoe’ meant ‘You have something in your teeth’ and ‘I need a raspberry lemonade’ meant ‘It’s time for us to leave this party/bar/guy’s house.’ But we didn’t have a secret code for ‘the hot guy behind you is staring at your ass in that skirt while you bend over in front of him.’ So I couldn’t tell if he was or not. I also couldn’t tell if I would have minded.

  I stood, giving my butt a quick shake to make sure the fabric fell back into the right places, and then slipped the key back into its place between my breasts.

  The bookshelf opened outward, exposing the small office hidden behind it.

  ‘Nice,’ he murmured, and I couldn’t tell if he meant the hidden door, the office or my ass. Was it so wrong that I secretly hoped it was all three?

  I held the door for him, noting that he was tall enough that he kind of had to duck to get through it. Thankfully, the ceiling was higher, and he could stand upright as soon he got inside.

  I followed him, stepping into a room that, if anyone cared to look, showcased more of my personality than any other place in the world.

  A big ancient solid oak desk took up all of one corner of the office. I’d bought it at a garage sale and then paid all my and Lily’s friends in pizza and beer to help me get it in here. It was so big we’d had to take the secret door off its hinges just to fit it. It had one leg shorter than the others, a flaw that our friend Conrad had fixed for me by stuffing an old book under it. I loved it like no other piece of furniture.

  The desk’s wide surface had nothing on it except my laptop and a pile of books I’d been using for another client’s research. Normally, I was a clutter bug, but I’d spent a whole month sanding down and then re-varnishing my baby, and there was no way I wasn’t going to look at it (OK, and run my hands over it, if I was going to be honest with myself) every chance I got.

  I beckoned to the chair across from the desk, a double theatre seat that I’d scavenged from a dilapidated cinema a couple of years ago. Davian glanced at it before he settled himself into the folding seats. He could have taken up both, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat on one, crossing his long legs to the outside as though someone was already sitting in the seat next to him. His jeans were dark, with just a hint of wear at the creases of his pockets. His grey shirt showed off his shoulders and the width of his chest.

  While the seat next to him was tempting – oh, God, was it tempting – I knew myself better than that. There was no way I’d be able to sit that close to him and not touch him, accidentally or otherwise. Instead, I lowered myself to sit on a corner of the desk. I had a notebook in one of the drawers here somewhere, but I couldn’t be bothered to look away from him long enough to get it right now. I’d just have to wing it.

  ‘How did you hear about us?’ I asked, mostly just to hear his voice. ‘If you don’t mind. Most people don’t just walk in our doors looking for invisible books.’

  ‘It’s not invisible,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘It’s non-existent.’

  He opened his briefcase, the two copper toggles slipping with ease through the rich, dark leather. As he scanned the contents, I found myself scanning him, my gaze travelling the length of him, from the single dark curl that fell across his forehead to the open neck of his button-up shirt, to his broad shoulders and slim hips. I wanted permission to reach across the room and slip that very top button through its hole, just one, to find out what lay hidden underneath.

  I liked the way he took up a space. The fold of his body had a presence that felt solid and real, without needing to make more of itself. Even his fingers, shifting the papers as he looked through them, contained a quiet strength that I found appealing.

  Davian pulled out a small rectangle of vanilla-hued paper and held it out between two fingers. Even before I took it, I knew what it was.

  What I didn’t know was how he had got hold of it.

  I turned it over, face-up, and stared down at it.

  Leather Bound, handwritten in dark red with Lily’s calligraphic swirl. Another brilliant idea of mine that had turned out to be not so brilliant after all. Before we opened, I decided we were going to hand-ink all of our business cards, to give them a personal feel. I made one, realised my handwriting sucked, and then handed the project over to Lily, who’d studied art in college. She’d gotten through about twenty of them before we both decided it was my worst idea ever. Lily hadn’t even offered her usual ‘I told you so’s. She just went out and had some real ones made by an actual printer.

  We’d never given these handwritten cards out to customers and definitely not to strangers. Only to a few close friends and supporters, the people who’d helped get Leather Bound off the ground, financially or legally or emotionally.

  I’m a bad liar and even worse at keeping my mouth shut. So I couldn’t not ask the thing that was in my brain.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked. ‘We’ve never met.’

  I’m decent with faces, but I’m not as good as Lily. I’m better with voices. I can hear one note from a singer and tell you who it is and how recent it is. But a face like Davian’s? I would have remembered him. Without a doubt.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ve never met.’

  ‘Then where did you get this?’ It was an invasive question, but I asked it quietly, and he didn’t seem put off by it.

  ‘A … friend,’ he said. With a just-long-enough pause that I could almost read what he wasn’t saying. Perhaps a former lover. Or someone he desired. Clearly someone he didn’t want to talk about.

  Despite my curiosity, I let it go. For now. I was good at digging. It’s what I did. But privacy is privacy. Unless it became important in finding his book, I wouldn’t pry any deeper than I had to.

  ‘Well, tell your friend I said thank you for recommending us,’ I said.

  Something played acros
s his features then, an odd darkness that pulled his caramel eyes slightly closed. His lips tightened a little, making his mouth seem drawn and concerned.

  I waited to see if there was more, but he didn’t say anything. I wondered if that meant I was right about it being a former lover. A former love. Probably very recently former, from the look on his face.

  Time to change the subject. As much as I wanted to know all I could about this man – including how he liked to be touched and what he tasted like and, oh, dear God, what he might look like beneath those perfectly fitted jeans – he was, first and foremost, a potential client. I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. Or sad, which was what seemed to be slipping into his eyes the longer we sat there in silence.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mister Cavanaugh, and tell me everything you can about the book you’re looking for.’

  * * *

  ‘Only if you call me Davian,’ he said. ‘I still like to pretend I’m too young and wild to be a Mister.’

  Which, of course, made me wonder how old he was. He looked my age but since nearing thirty I thought everyone either looked really young, really old or exactly my age. Which could not have been true.

  ‘I’m afraid to say you don’t look particularly wild, Davian,’ I said. I liked the way his name felt on my tongue. Devilish and yet comfortable, as if I was reading a new story in a very old book.

  He didn’t say anything to that. His smile, however, was a little wild. I caught a glimpse of the devil in that grin and I’m not afraid to admit that it ratcheted my heart more than a little. Smart bad boys wrapped in well-tailored shirts are on my fetish list. Along with leather, voyeurism, great nipples, pretty cocks and, well, any number of things that I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about while talking to a potential client.

  Resisting the urge to say his name again just for the fun of it, I said, ‘Tell me about your book.’

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The dark edges around his irises made his caramel eyes even more like chocolate. It’s weird to admit that I kept wanting to lick his eyeballs, but they just looked so much like a decadent dessert.