Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  “A Farewell to Arms. Signed?” Paul didn’t need a signed copy and he didn’t really like Hemingway. But he knew how much that little book cost. He’d seen one in a bookstore in New York City for close to twenty thousand dollars. “Cat’s Cradle. I don’t think he has any Kurt Vonnegut.”

  He moved to the next cabinet without waiting for her to answer. “You have a lot of children’s books,” he said, almost to himself.

  “The previous owner, Mr. Perrault, had always wanted children but he and his wife were never blessed with any. “ Alice came to stand beside him and turned, eyes bright. “Would you like to see my favorite?” Paul nodded. If she had asked him to step off a cliff, he might have agreed. She took a small key from a bracelet around her wrist and opened a low display case.

  She quickly tugged on a pair of white cotton gloves and brought out a cream-colored box. Inside was an artist’s portfolio. Leaning over, the rings on her necklace swung forward and he could see they were plain gold bands in two different sizes. She untied the ribbons and moved close to him so he could see. “It’s not really a book, but rather the pictures to a book. Little White Bird, by J.M. Barrie, was illustrated by―”

  “Arthur Rackham,” Paul breathed. He’d never seen anything so beautiful. Vellum gilt-edged pages, perfectly engraved plates of full-sized watercolors.

  “Only twenty were signed even though the publisher had planned for hundreds. As far as we know, there are only twenty total.” Alice sighed. “Probably money issues.”

  “I’ll take this one,” he said. “This will be perfect.”

  Alice opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She looked conflicted. “I hate to tell you this, but the price is more than a new car. It’s a very rare portfolio.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, smiling.

  “It’s almost sixty thousand dollars,” she said, already moving to put the folio back in the box.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. He wasn’t trying to impress her with his wealth but he felt great satisfaction in knowing that buying this piece would make up for being a real jerk earlier. “I think my friend will really like it.”

  Her hand stilled on the papers. He wondered if she’d hoped to save it for her own children, but then he figured she would have put it aside. Unless she couldn’t afford to put it aside for her future children when her store was suffering. Paul blew out a breath. He didn’t know which way to go with this woman. It seemed whatever he did was wrong.

  “Sorry, I probably seem like I don’t want to sell you a single thing in this store,” she said, rushing her words out. “I’m just surprised.” She glanced at him, smiling a little. “Not many people can buy a first edition like this. Let me get this wrapped back up in its box back to the register.”

  “Thank you,” he said, feeling his shoulders relax. Maybe meeting him wasn’t a complete disaster on her side. Money didn’t solve everything but it sure helped soften the blow. He glanced around the small room, unsure if they would get another chance to speak alone. He cleared his throat, feeling more nervous than he had in a long time. “And I wanted to say I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you earlier.”

  She looked up, meeting his gaze directly. “Don’t be. You were right.” Sadness touched her eyes. “Everything you said was right.”

  He let out a short laugh. “Not everything, surely.”

  She nodded. “Especially the part about―”

  A teen girl with long blond hair came in at a trot, already talking before she was through the doorway. “Hey, Miss Alice! Why is Darcy down from his spot? Did you get the broom?”

  “Darcy?” Paul asked. “I thought you didn’t have a cat named Darcy.”

  “No, I said that particular cat wasn’t named Darcy,” Alice responded, her lips tugging up.

  “You would have made a good lawyer,” he said.

  “Oh, my gosh,” breathed the teenage girl. She came forward slowly, blue eyes wide. “Are you Paul Olivier?”

  “Yes, I am.” He smiled and held out his hand.

  She grasped it, shaking it reverently. “Wow,” she said. “Just… wow. I never thought I’d meet you. I’m Charlie Soule. I’m, like, your biggest fan ever.”

  Alice stared from one to the other. “Are you an actor? I’m sorry, maybe I should have recognized you. I don’t watch TV.”

  He let Charlie’s hand go and smiled. “I’m not on TV. And I should have introduced myself but I think we started off on the wrong foot.”

  “No, it was my fault.” Alice put down the little box and took off her gloves. She held out her hand. “I’m Alice Augustine. Let’s pretend we just met. I’ll have better manners and you can buy anything in my store that you want.”

  He reached out and took her hand, feeling the softness of her palm against his. For just a moment, Paul forgot all about the portfolio and the argument and the teen girl watching them. And he forgot especially about the long-term boyfriend sitting at Alice’s desk.

  “Alice, are you coming or should I just go by myself?” Eric walked up, a scowl on his face. He took in the scene and his eyes narrowed.

  Paul let go of Alice’s hand. “We’re just finishing up. I need to get going, too. I have to meet a realtor about an apartment.”

  “You’re staying in town for a while?” Charlie asked breathlessly. Alice shot her a look.

  “For a few weeks. I’m from this area but haven’t been back in years. I thought visiting during the three-hundredth year anniversary would be a good time to come home for a while. Looking forward to things like the zydeco festival this weekend.”

  “I’m going to that, too,” Charlie exclaimed. “I mean, my mom mentioned it and I thought it sounded kinda weird, but if you’re going then I’m sure it’s a good idea.”

  Paul moved toward the entryway, even though Eric was blocking the spot, face like thunder. “Plus, we want to make sure the store gets off to a smooth start so we’re temporarily moving our home base here.” At the last second, Eric turned and stomped toward the middle of the store.

  “Which store is this?” Alice locked the case again and followed Paul out of the room. “Did you buy one of the local businesses? We’ll be neighbors, then. I’m on the historic district board so if you need anything, I’d be glad to help if I can.”

  “The ScreenStop store,” Charlie said, bouncing alongside of them. She looked thrilled to pieces. “This is Paul Olivier, the guy who invented the biggest online social platform ever while he was in college and sold it for like, a bazillion dollars. Then he started a company that designs some of the best games and got even richer! He has stores all over the country.” She paused, her voice dropping shyly. “I’d love your autograph. I can’t believe we’re actually talking in real life.”

  Paul was used to awkward introductions but this was probably the most awkward, if only for Alice’s expression. She’d stopped at the register, face blank with shock.

  “It wasn’t a bazillion,” he muttered. “That’s not a real number.”

  “ScreenStop?” Alice whispered.

  “Excuse me,” Eric called. He was only a few feet away but his voice was loud enough to reach the end of the store. “Are we going to lunch or not?”

  Alice whirled toward him and said in a low voice, “No, Eric, we’re not. I have a store to run. Whether you think this place is important or not, I do. I can’t walk away from a customer just because you want to order at exactly noon so you can eat your lunch in exactly fifteen minutes, and have exactly ten minutes to walk back to your office so you’ll have exactly eight minutes to flirt with your secretaries before patients arrive.” She paused. “In fact, since we’re having this conversation right now, I’d rather not have any more lunches with you again. Goodbye.”

  There was a beat of complete silence and then Eric sputtered something about not flirting with anybody, that she obviously she wasn’t hungry, and he’d call her later. He turned around and left the bookstore, letting the door slam behind him.

  Paul wante
d to offer Alice a big high five but the fierce expression on her face told him that now was not the right time.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said. Smoothing a hand over her hair, she sighed. “That was extremely unprofessional. It’s just… I suppose it was long overdue.”

  “Not a problem, really. I completely understand.” He shifted his feet. “You’d been together a long time?”

  “Huh. Not even six months. Miss Alice is impossible to please.” Charlie grinned, leaning against the counter. She was talking about Alice, but only had eyes for Paul. “In fact, she hates you, too.”

  “Charlie!” Alice glared at her.

  Paul knew they’d gotten off to a rough start but thought hate was a rather extreme response. “Well, maybe we’ll learn to appreciate our differences―” he started to say.

  “Nope. Never gonna happen.” Charlie jerked her head in Alice’s direction. “I heard her on the phone yesterday, trying to track down who gave you that building permit. She wants to kick ScreenStop out of the historic district. She’d be happier than a clam if she could kick you all the way out of Natchitoches. She says people like you don’t belong in a place like Cane River.”

  Paul turned to Alice, brows raised. People like you. She saw him as the poor kid he had once been, ignored unless he was being ridiculed, denied passage into the nicer parts of the city. No, Alice had never met that boy. She was looking at a rich businessman.

  So she really did hate him before today. Then she hated him when he showed up in person. The only version of him she seemed to like was his fake identity. It was a triple ego-whammy. “We received the building permit in the usual way, going through all the regular channels.”

  Alice’s face was pink but her voice was steady. “Impossible. Everything has to be passed by the board. I never saw any plans for that store.”

  “Not everything goes by the board. Believe me, my lawyers looked at the city bylaws very carefully.” His gaze dropped to the portfolio she still held in her hands. “You’re not going to sell me that, are you?”

  Alice narrowed her eyes. “If I didn’t, that would be spiteful,” she said. “But will you think you’ve bought me off like everyone else in this city if I do? Because I don’t have a price. Not even one this high,” she said, holding up the Arthur Rackham illustrations.

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she went on. “I do have a question, though.”

  “Go ahead.” It couldn’t get much worse. He had nothing to fear.

  “The realtor you’re meeting. Is she June LaTraye?”

  He frowned. Maybe Alice was going to warn him off the woman. There were crooks in every city, every profession. “Yes. We’re supposed to meet in about ten minutes. There’s an apartment in the historic… district…” Paul’s voice faded away.

  They stared at each other for a moment. “Listen,” Alice said, coming around the counter toward him. “You don’t have to buy this portfolio. And you should probably find another place to rent while you’re here. The Judge Porter House is a very nice bed and breakfast with full suites and it’s right down the block. I wish you the best of luck.”

  Paul said nothing. The last few hours had been some of the strangest of his life, but he hadn’t gotten where he was in the world by ignoring his intuition. Over and over he’d made decisions that weren’t completely explainable, especially to his board of directors or to Andy. They’d learned to trust him and everything had always come out for the better. He didn’t take her hand.

  “I’d like to buy the portfolio. And I’d like to see the apartment,” he said simply.

  Relief, confusion, and something else flashed over her face. “If you’re sure…”

  “I am,” he said. “I have no interest in trying to avoid a constant rotation of nosy tourists or sleeping in a canopy princess bed for a month.”

  “I won’t promise to stop fighting your store.”

  “You should give me a chance to change your mind. Maybe you just haven’t found your inner tech-loving geek.”

  His chest tightened when she let out a soft laugh. She was more than pretty when she laughed. She was beautiful.

  “I’m fairly certain I don’t have one. Even if I didn’t believe your company is changing society for the worse, your store just doesn’t fit here, especially in the historic district.”

  Paul said nothing aloud. Challenge accepted, Miss Alice Augustine. Her words seemed to echo every time a resident of Natchitoches had told him that he was unwelcome, every single spoken and unspoken slight. He hadn’t listened. He’d worked hard, devoted everything he had to proving them wrong.

  “It’s like I died and went to heaven. You’re going to live upstairs? Right above the store? Are you going to have parties? Will they have cosplay?” Charlie put both hands to her face and let out a little shriek.

  “Maybe.” He couldn’t help smiling at this girl’s enthusiasm. He was just a guy who owned a gaming company and this sort of excitement never got old. He turned to Alice who had moved back around the counter and was wrapping up the portfolio in tissue, and placing it in a larger box.

  Charlie leaned in, chewing her lip. “Listen, I know everybody must ask you stuff like this, but I’ve been on the new Ultimate Voyager game you created for, like, two weeks. I got that expansion pass and I got some awesome gear and weapons, but I can’t get past the Planet of the Wolf Army. I’m just stuck in this forever cycle of injuries and recuperation, and I’m wasting all my time in that little canyon near the jump station. At this rate, I’m never gonna become Legend.”

  Paul wanted to laugh at Alice’s expression. He was torn between outright laughter and wishing Charlie would leave this topic for another time. Alice’s aversion to technology wouldn’t lessen when people wandered around speaking the language of game culture. But he’d never been able to resist a gamer in trouble.

  “There’s a cheat. Use a broadsword on the first Wolf soldier. Nobody follows him if you do.” He nodded at her protest. “It’s true. If you’d tried every weapon, you’d have been able to get out.” He held a finger to his lips. “And don’t tell anyone I told you that or I’ll deny everything.”

  Charlie was grinning hugely, bouncing on the toes of her shoes. “Man, this is awesome. Do you wanna play sometime? My name’s UltimateStarCrossed. You can friend me and we can go on a raid sometime. I have a group I join every night for about three hours. They’d be so stoked if you dropped in.” Her cheeks went pink.

  Paul cleared his throat. He always hated this, when someone wanted to know his username. If he gave it out to everyone, then he’d never actually get to play. It would be all messages and friend requests. But he kept an alternate character in almost every game and that’s the name he’d use if he ever played with Charlie. He’d always looked young and his love of T-shirts and jeans probably made him seem even younger. He was used to teen adulation at gaming expos and he was well aware that Charlie might not think he was too old for her, even though he was long out of college and sliding toward thirty.

  “Sure, I’ll friend you when I get set up here. I always like to meet new groups of players.” He hoped his emphasis on “groups” would erase any assumptions on her part. He turned to Alice. “There are two apartments above this building, right? Is the other empty also? Maybe I could rent that side for my CTO who came with me. We’re good friends but maybe he’d like his own space.”

  Alice looked up, her mouth open a bit. She seemed confused. “No, it’s―”

  “Miss Alice lives on that side. You guys are gonna see each other all the time,” Charlie said gleefully.

  “Oh,” Paul said and tried to keep his face neutral. He should have known. He’d already said that she lived close by when he was being his jerky self earlier. And now he knew for certain the apartment was going to be as low tech as she could get away with and still be up to code. They would share a wall, this woman with the dark eyes and throaty laugh. The one who thought he was destroying society with his frivolous company. The one wh
o had already grabbed his heart and squeezed it so hard he wasn’t sure if he’d known her for a day or for a year.

  Her gaze locked on his. A small smile touched her lips, as if she were daring him to back out now. It was silliness to think being next door neighbors would even matter. He desperately wanted to prove to her, and the rest of the Natchitoches elite, that he belonged here as much as she did. But staying within feet of each other might be last the drop of awkward to fill the bucket of bad feelings, spilling over into hate.

  He held her gaze until she started wrapping up the box once more. As she reached for a larger box, he saw the bookshelf behind her. It was the picture she’d sent, with the colorful mysteries, the big science fiction with the dragon, the worn copy of Austen’s Emma and the collector’s edition of Wind in the Willows. And next to it was the little leather volume that he had on his own shelf. He felt the room tilt, as if the axis had shifted, and he looked back at this beautiful woman who sent personal bookshelf pictures to anonymous book-loving men. He thought of how the emails had made him laugh, made him feel as if he’d made a real connection with someone new for the first time in years.

  It didn’t matter if this apartment was a throwback to the Paleolithic era. He was going to take it.

  “Nice to meet you, neighbor,” he said and smiled.

  Chapter Nine

  Technological progress has merely provided us

  with more efficient means for going backwards. ―Aldous Huxley

  Alice let Charlie’s excited chatter wash over her. She felt numb. She’d learned she might lose her store, made a fool of herself online, met the most infuriating man, broken up with her boyfriend, sold an incredibly expensive manuscript, met the man whom she was fighting to keep out of the historic district, and met her new renter. One person was responsible for almost all of those dramatic happenings. One clever, stubborn person.