by Elise Sax
CHAPTER 3
I never found out if Nat had screamed, “I’m hot!” because he was announcing his attractiveness in the face of my rejection or if electric shock made him warm. In any case, Nat recovered pretty quickly, but Jordan insisted on calling the paramedics to check him out, who in turn called the ASPCA for the dog, who was taken away. Later, I found out that the dog had found a forever home with a hipster, Extreme Frisbee player.
I stayed out of the whole incident because Nat held onto a grudge with a death grip. While I watched as the paramedics took care of him, he continued to rail against women—especially me—who were ungrateful for free meals, which included two entrees. Finally, they took him away, and I went to bed.
The next morning, I dressed for doing inventory in a used bookstore, which in my case was a short, green skirt and a white blouse. As I drove to the bookstore, I got a case of the butterflies. It wasn’t a secret that I had been fired from about a thousand jobs. I had yet to find a boss who thought I was a natural and appreciated my work ethic.
Sure, I probably didn’t have a work ethic, but that fact didn’t stop me from trying to find one. I guessed I was getting burned out from going from one job to another. And getting fired.
My new job turned out to be one of the easiest I had ever had, but my new boss Francine had learned her leadership skills from De Sade and Attila the Hun. She looked like she could have been the pointy woman’s twin, but with a long, pointy nose, making her look even more pointy.
“Don’t think that this will be a walk in the park,” she told me in the stacks of used paperbacks. “Because this is hard work. If I see you loafing, I’ll fire you and you won’t see a penny. You get me?”
“Yes,” I said. It wasn’t the first time that I had had a scary boss. I was hoping that she was doing the scary thing up front to keep me in line but would settle down once I started organizing books.
“And you’re going to have to work fast. Are you ready to work fast?”
“Uh…” I said, slowly.
“It’s a mess in here, and I’m sick of it. The romance is mixed with the mystery. Thrillers are mixed with science fiction. It’s bedlam. Chaos. I want you to start with romance. That’s our biggest seller. Women come in here during their lunch breaks and buy a book every day.”
“They read a book every day?” I asked, stunned.
She arched an eyebrow. “You’re a big reader, too, right? I need someone who really knows commercial fiction.”
“I’m a huge reader,” I lied. “If I’m not reading Stephen King, I’m totally into Stephenie Meyer.” That was it. The extent of my knowledge about authors. The Shining and Twilight, and I hadn’t even read those. I had only watched the movies. My new boss nodded her head very slowly, and her eyes roamed my face, as if she could tell from it how much I actually read. I put on my best librarian face, which entailed a slight smile with no teeth and an amazing ability not to blink. It worked. She nodded and pointed to the bookshelves behind her.
“Start there. You can take an hour lunch at twelve.”
And that was it. That was my training. Like a miracle from God, the pointy woman left me totally alone to organize her bookstore. She spent the entire day sitting in a bedazzled chair at the front of the shop next to the cash register, calling friends to complain about the contractor who was renovating her kitchen and playing Candy Crush.
Even though I didn’t know a Julia Quinn novel from a Janet Evanovich, it was easy to tell romance from mystery just by looking at the covers. I decided to first remove the mysteries from the romance section and then organize romance before tackling mysteries.
It was a relaxing task. Handling each book, I took a moment to look at the cover and imagine the story. If I continued working there, I could see me becoming a reader. Just as I had been told, at around eleven o’clock, a few women came in and searched the romance shelves for their day’s book.
“Where’s Susan Mallery?” one woman in a suit and beige pumps asked me.
“I saw some next to Debbie Macomber,” I said, pointing to a shelf next to me. I was pretty proud of myself for knowing who Susan Mallery and Debbie Macomber were after one hour of shuffling through books. The job was growing on me. I finally felt like I was getting someplace, that maybe I had found my purpose in life.
Another woman walked in and stepped over me, as I sat on the floor, surrounded by piles of books. She studied the mystery section, her face settling into a scowl.
“Are you kidding me?” she demanded, looking at the rows of books.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“You don’t have Hard to Die?”
“Hard to…?”
“I read Hard to Kill and Hard to Catch, and if I don’t read the next in the series, I’ll kill myself.”
“What series is that?”
The woman stared at me like I had sprouted a second head on my shoulders. “The Harriet Hard mystery series. You haven’t heard of Harriet Hard?”
Once again, I felt like an idiot. Was I supposed to have heard of Harriet Hard? “Well…”
The woman threw her hand over her heart and closed her eyes. “It’s the best series I’ve ever read. I so want to be Harriet Hard. She’s a spy catcher. She travels all around the world and has wild adventures. She’s totally kickass with a to-die-for wardrobe. Hard to Catch ended on a cliffhanger, and I have to get my hands on Hard to Die, or I don’t know what I’ll do. You’ll never believe how book two ended.”
“How?” I breathed. Her enthusiasm was contagious. Harriet Hard sounded like the kind of woman I wanted to become. And she sounded like she had a steady job, too.
The woman bent her knees slightly and put her hands out, like she was preparing to catch a ball. “Okay. This is what happened. Harriet Hard was locked in a warehouse with a twenty-megaton bomb, and then…”
I was riveted to the story for another five minutes before she had to return to work. I promised her that I would search for Hard to Die and hopefully have it for her the next day. I stopped what I was doing and attacked the mystery shelves. It didn’t take me long to find five copies of Hard to Kill, the first book in the series. I opened up to the first page.
Harriet Hard had picked a rotten day to die. Not only was it her spa day, but it was also her birthday. She was perfectly aware that her assistant, Ronaldo, had a surprise party waiting for her at Chez Pierre—the swankiest new restaurant in town—for lunch, but now she would have to miss her party, miss lunch, and go through the day with unpolished toenails. All because she was going to die.
Holy crap. It was the best book, ever. I was hooked, immediately. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t put a book down. Quickly, I read how Harriet Hard almost died three times but managed to survive through her smarts, good luck, amazing flexibility, and a rocket launcher.
“You can take your lunch break now,” my new boss interrupted. “You’re not reading a book, are you?”
I slammed the book closed.
“Oh, no, just making sure it’s mystery. I’m splitting up romance and mystery first, and then I’m going to organize the romance by author.”
She seemed to think about that for a moment. Then, she nodded. “Okay. But remember to do it fast. Take your lunch break now so I can go in an hour.”
I ate an apple in my car while I devoured as much of the book as I could during my lunch break. Harriet Hard had escaped again, and now she was in a head-to-head, cerebral battle with her arch nemesis, Hugo Rockchenko, at a fancy restaurant.
Harriet laid her linen napkin on her lap, which was firm and shapely from years of elite combat training. Her sleeveless silk gown was cut low in front, and the man sitting before her let his eyes dip to the place where her breasts met, revealing tantalizing cleavage. But even though the infamous Russian spy and assassin, Hugo Rockchenko, was obviously attracted to Harriet, experience had proved more than once that he would have killed her any chance he got. Poisoning, running her down with a Mack truck, and shooting a
t her with a high-powered sniper rifle were among the ways that he had already tried to do away with his arch-nemesis, but Harriet Hard was hard to kill. Very hard to kill. The hardest. But he wasn’t going to give up. Harriet was sure of that.
So, while they ate their gourmet dinner, Harriet kept a small caliber pistol strapped to her inner thigh, prepared to blow a hole between Rockchenko’s eyes with the smallest provocation. Now, however, she was busy eating her caviar on little toast points and sipping her second glass of Don Perignon, all the while listening to what Rockchenko had to offer.
“A truce,” he said, his voice dripping with the accent from a fine Russian boarding school.
Harriet laughed, lustily. “Why would I trust you with a truce?”
“Because if you don’t, and we can’t work together, there will be a world war, and this time it’ll mean total devastation. The complete loss of human life on the planet.”
“Nuclear war?” Harriet asked.
“Chemical. A new toxin that melts the face right off a person. Melted faces, Harriet. This thing is bigger than our little spat.”
My lunch hour sped by. I didn’t want to stop reading. I needed to find out what would happen between Harriet and the Russian spy. I hid the book in my purse when I returned to the bookstore. My boss left right away to go to lunch, and instead of going back to my inventory, I sat among the piles of books and continued to read about Harriet Hard’s adventures. Quickly, I got back into the story. Murder! Mayhem! Melted faces! It was a rollercoaster of action and emotion. Then, it took a turn I never saw coming.
With deft fingers, Hugo Rockchenko unhooked Harriet’s lacy bra and garters, letting them slip to the floor. His muscular arms encircled her waifish waist and pulled her against him roughly, allowing her to feel the length and breadth of his rigid desire for her. Then, his lips attacked her, possessing her, and in that moment, he went from being Harriet’s arch-nemesis to her lover. Forbidden fruit that could get her killed.
Or worse.
“What are you doing? You’re reading, aren’t you? I can see that you’re reading.”
“Huh?” I said and then realized that my boss had returned. I had read through her lunch break and hadn’t heard her come back. I had a delayed reaction, jumping in fear. I screamed and threw up my hands, throwing the book against a stack of romance and making the other books topple to the floor.
“I wasn’t reading,” I lied, out of breath.
“This is exactly why I fired the last girl.” She wasn’t buying it. She knew I was a liar.
“It won’t happen again.”
She wagged her finger at me. “It better not. I told you I wanted you to work fast. Fast. You can’t work fast if you’re not working.”
She had a point.
“I swear it’ll never happen, again,” I said, holding up three fingers. “I just…just…” Had to find out what happened with Harriet Hard! And she was about to get naked with Hugo!
“Fine. This is your warning. If it happens again, you’ll have to go,” she told me and went back to the cash register.
The rest of the day, I tried to work, but every chance I got, I would slip back into the book to read a few pages. It was like resisting chocolate or Chris Pratt.
When the day finally ended, I went home with book one and book two hidden in my purse. I waved to Jordan on my way through the Italian restaurant and took the stairs two at a time to my little apartment. The moment I opened the door, I threw my body onto the couch and opened the book again. I tore through the book and moved onto the second. I read all night and got to the last chapter as the sun began to rise.
“One of us is going to die, Harriet, and it’s not going to be you,” Hugo said, cradling Harriet’s face. “Let me throw my body onto the bomb to shield you.”
Harriet’s eyes filled with tears, a first in years. She didn’t want to shed tears for her murderous enemy, but damn it, she couldn’t deny what she felt for Hugo.
“No,” she pleaded. “Let me try to dismantle the bomb, again. If I remove the timer, then the…”
Hugo put his finger over her lips, quieting her. “My darling, this is the end. We must say goodbye now, or we won’t have any time.”
The bomb glowed hot, signaling that it was about to explode. The enemies turned lovers didn’t have a lot of time.
“I’ll find a way to save you, Hugo. If it’s the last thing I do!”
He took a step backward and smiled wide.
He smiled like a wolf about to devour its prey.
“What?” Harriet asked. Her skin broke out in goosebumps, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her sharp instincts returned to her, and she knew that she had been fooled and manipulated by the master spy in front of her.
“You fell for the whole thing, hook, line, and sinker,” he said, laughing. “It was the easiest operation I’ve ever done. Kisses instead of bullets. Who would have thought it would be so simple?”
Harriet’s blood boiled. Her pulse raced. She had been played by her arch-enemy. She had let herself be tricked. She had forgotten all of her training and ignored her instincts.
“What’s your plan, Rockchenko?” she hissed between her teeth.
“Well, let’s see,” he said, studying his fingernails. “I have you in a closed space with a bomb, which is ready to explode. I think it’s clear. I’m going to kill you and destroy the free world. Say goodbye, Harriet Hard.”
Harriet had prevented a nuclear attack three years before. She had protected the president from a kidnapping attempt the year before. And just that week, she had saved a litter of kittens from drowning. She knew deep in her heart that Hugo Rockchenko had her dead to rights, but she also knew that there was no way she would let him get out of this alive.
She had to save the free world, and no bomb or super spy was going to stop her.
The fact that she had been fooled would haunt her for the rest of her life, but on the bright side, she would probably only live for another thirty seconds.
“I’ll say goodbye,” Harriet told Rockchenko. “But I’m taking you with me.”
“Don’t be foolish. You can’t defeat me,” he said, but his eyes told a different story. He was scared. Wary.
Smart guy.
The bomb began to beep, which was the signal right before it was going to blow. Her arch-nemesis slowly made his way to the door. But she wasn’t going to let him escape. It was now or never. Harriet had to make her move and save the free world.
And get her revenge on the man who played with her heart.
The End
The end?
The end?
I searched for more pages, but besides a note about the next book in the series and a paragraph about the author, there was nothing. It was the dreaded cliffhanger. How could that bitch author do that to me?
It was the best book I had ever read.
It was even better than the first book in the series, which had been the best book I had ever read until I read the second book in the series.
The story had had everything. Adventure. Sex. International, luxury locales. I was hooked. I needed the next book, pronto, in order to heal myself from the shock of the ending. I had been sure that Hugo was Harriet’s soulmate. Her true love. They had been perfect for each other. He was the only man who could equal Harriet in hand-to-hand combat and her ability to read ancient cuneiform texts.
But it had all been a lie. A con. A scam. A betrayal. So typical of men.
Poor Harriet Hard. First the man of her dreams had chewed her up and spit her out, and then she was trapped in a factory with a mega-bomb that was about to blow up. Life was so unfair!
I had to get the next book in the series, immediately. I couldn’t survive without knowing what happened to Harriet Hard.
My stomach growled. Reading was great for my diet. I had been so riveted by the stories that I hadn’t eaten a thing besides the apple. It was horrible for sleep, though. I hadn’t slept a wink all night, and there was no time fo
r a nap before I had to get ready to go to work.
It wasn’t until I walked into the bookstore that I remembered that we didn’t have the third book, or at least we couldn’t find it. I didn’t have time or money to get to another bookstore and buy the book, so I rolled up my sleeves and promised myself that I was going to find it if it was the last thing I did.
I became an inventory animal. I ripped through the romance section like Superman dealing with the Penguin or whoever Superman dealt with. In any case, I was a superhero. Amazing.
There was no Hard to Die in the romance section, though. On to mystery. I got through half of the stacks when the customer from the day before came in.
“Did you find it? Did you find it?” she asked, breathlessly.
I wiped a few locks of hair off my sweaty cheek with the back of my hand. “No. I’ve been looking all day, but I’m not giving up.”
The woman’s eyes grew big, as if she was a cow on its way to the slaughterhouse. “Are you kidding me? I’ve looked all over this town, and nothing. Barnes and Noble didn’t have one copy, either. Amazon has a used copy for thirty-six dollars. I guess I have to get that. You know, the publisher canceled the series after the third book.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “They’re the best books I’ve ever read. They’re better than TV. What am I going to do after the third book?”
I had just started reading, and now I was being kicked in the teeth because of it. Television would have never let me down like this.
“I’m going to buy my used copy before someone gets it before me,” the customer announced and made a beeline for the door.
I continued to search through the mystery section. The store had never looked better. I was a mix of Martha Stewart and a person who was really good at organizing books. Every book was dusted and put in its place. I was the inventory champion goddess of the planet. Desperation had turned me into the employee of the century. Of the universe.