by Kait Nolan
“I’ve had seriously craptastic luck with the last several guys I’ve been out with. The dating pool is not that big here, as you well know, and it’s shrinking. Leo Hamilton is one of the last unknown quantities out there in our age bracket. I’d hate to go out with him and find out there’s no chemistry, or worse, that he’s some kind of closet asshole.”
“Leo’s not an asshole,” Jessie assured her.
“Maybe not,” Brooke agreed, “but I’d rather enjoy him just hanging out on the horizon as a very pretty possibility than get confirmation he’s a frog instead of a prince.”
That was an attitude Cecily could get behind. Wasn’t that exactly what she’d done with Reed? It was just too damned bad that she’d kissed him. Now there was no erasing that first-hand knowledge that Reed Campbell’s poet’s mouth knew exactly how to drive her crazy.
She cursed her traitorous body for glancing back at him. One kiss. It was one kiss. So why the hell couldn’t she get it out of her system?
Naturally her friends noticed.
“Now that’s a prince I thought for sure would take,” Avery said. “I was positive you and Reed would hit it off, or I wouldn’t have dragged you both to the lake.”
Victims of Avery’s less than subtle matchmaking, Reed and Cecily had been invited as the lone singles to a couples weekend at a cabin up at Hope Springs. According to Avery, a weekend away was just the thing to finally ignite the slow burning fuse of attraction that had been sizzling between them during months of casual flirtation. And she’d been right. That latent spark of fun and humor had burst into something a whole lot hotter. Which was part of the problem. Because then he’d opened his mouth and ruined everything, giving her a glimpse into exactly how much of a train wreck a relationship with him would ultimately be if she let things continue. Reed could never handle the truth about who she really was. Cecily had no desire to get more attached to him before that happened, so she’d politely but firmly put on the brakes.
She jerked a shoulder. “There’s no sense in me starting some kind of relationship when I’ll be leaving whenever I land a new job.”
Jessie arched a brow. “And that merited avoiding him for the last three months?”
“I haven’t been avoiding him.”
“Really? So the fact that you conveniently had other plans or had to work late every time a social occasion came up where he’d be there is just a coincidence?”
Cecily fought the urge to squirm beneath Avery’s gaze.
“Why don’t you give him another chance, honey?” Jessie suggested. “He really is a good guy.”
“I’m not arguing that he’s not a good guy.” He was one of the best ones she knew, which had made her disappointment all the keener. “He’s just not for me.” She was saving them both a lot of grief by acknowledging that on the front end. “And, as I said, I’m leaving, so the whole thing is an entirely moot point.”
But as the conversation finally turned to other topics, Cecily couldn’t resist glancing back toward him and thinking how much she was going to miss this place.
Chapter Three
The new issues of M & S arrived on Monday. Reed had almost forgotten about Christoff having bought them all, but the mystery came flooding back as he pulled them out of the box. Since Brenda was manning the register, he paused in the midst of racking the rest of the shipment to look it over. The cover story was about billionaire philanthropist Cecil Davenport. Like the Vanderbilts or Rockefellers, Davenport was a household name—the kind of name that spoke of old money and breeding. People who lived stratospheres above the normal world. But unlike many of his contemporaries, Davenport was more often in the news for the good things he did with his wealth. Reed dimly remembered having read something about an enterprise he’d entered into with Warren Buffet last year. Something to do with trying to correct the latest debacle in public education.
As he studied Davenport’s picture on the front of the magazine, Reed couldn’t shake the sense that the guy looked familiar. Probably from having seen him on the news. He began to flip through, skimming articles and by-lines, wondering what had prompted Christoff to wipe out the local supply. Reed turned the page and suddenly he knew exactly why Cecil Davenport looked familiar. Because his gray eyes were staring out of the smiling face of…Cecily. Her picture was right there on the page of this national magazine.
“What the hell?”
Reed hurriedly turned back to the start of the Davenport story—a photo essay and interview designed to humanize the man by introducing the rest of his family.
Holy shit. Cecily was Cecil Davenport’s granddaughter?
Reed tried to imagine her in that privileged, private world and absolutely failed. She was so…real and normal, without a shred of pretension.
What the hell was she doing in Wishful working for an hourly wage at City Hall? She could be doing…anything…anywhere. And yet she was here, hanging out with the likes of his small town, not giving off a single inkling that she was so much more than a displaced Yankee with a beautiful smile and a brilliant mind. Of course, that was making the gross assumption that the family fortune trickled down. For all he knew, she was having to work to get by the same as anyone else.
Reed started to rack the magazine, then stopped, whipping it back to beat against his thick skull as he realized, with an abrupt clarity, exactly what he’d done to earn her ill opinion.
“You idiot,” he muttered.
That night under the stars, after that one, glorious kiss, they’d talked about careers and life. She’d asked him what prompted him to take over the bookstore. And instead of talking about his desire to make it a hub of the community and his pleasure in spreading his deep love of books, he’d talked about how it was a big screw you to Annelise Arrington, his money-worshiping college girlfriend, who’d wanted nothing to do with his small-time, small town life.
There’s no such thing as a woman raised in the lap of luxury, who has even the remotest grip on reality. Ivory tower princesses, the lot of them.
Jesus Christ. Why had he said that? He’d needed some giant cartoon cork shoved in his pie hole to save him from his own stupidity.
After rejecting him, Annelise had gone back home to the coast and ended up marrying some Pretentious Playboy the Fourth. Some heir to a beer distributorship or some such. Which Reed knew because they'd been smack dab on the cover of the Mississippi Magazine wedding issue two years ago. He'd spent three months being slapped in the face with the image, seriously considering discontinuing the entire periodicals section of the store the whole time.
He didn’t love Annelise anymore. The only reason he’d even been thinking about her at all was because he’d seen an article in The Clarion Ledger society pages talking about some political fund-raising gala she was chairing and the sight of her picture had stirred the whole noxious mess back up, reigniting all those feelings that his life was too small, that he was too unworthy. Instead of thanking God that he’d narrowly escaped a miserable marriage, only to be granted the gift of interest from a much better woman, that sense of inadequacy and bitterness had come pouring out.
All he’d done was prove to Cecily that he was small-minded, petty, and prejudiced against the wealthy. Why on earth should she think he’d accept her after that?
The phone in his pocket buzzed. He slipped it out to find a text from Selina.
Hey cutie. How’s your day going?
Reed glanced instinctively toward Brenda. Zach’s plan had worked like a charm. As soon as she’d found out about his “girlfriend,” she’d backed off. No confrontation. No awkwardness. Well, not more than a tolerable level, anyway. Thank God.
Because he had no one else to talk to about his discovery, he texted Selina back. You ever have one of those moments when you realize you stepped in it big time, and there may not be an apology eloquent enough to make things right?
Her response came quickly. Seems like eloquence is less the point than the expression of honest regret to the injured party.
He owed Cecily an apology. But how could he make one without admitting he knew her secret? And she clearly wanted to keep it a secret or she wouldn’t have had Christoff buying up all the evidence linking her to her family. Did she even have a cousin Blair? Or had that whole interlude been an excuse to run interference while Christoff made the purchase? Did that mean Christoff knew?
Didn’t matter who knew. Either way, Reed needed the opportunity to do some damage control, to prove that he wasn’t the narrow-minded reverse snob he appeared to be. And there was only one person who had the power to give that to him.
She answered on the first ring. “This is Norah.”
“Hey, it’s Reed. Have you got a minute?”
“For you I can make two. What’s up?”
Reed glanced uneasily at the counter, where Brenda was affixing sale stickers on a pile of hardbacks they needed to move. He didn’t want to discuss this here. “Can you meet me at The Grind?”
He could all but hear her curiosity pique in the silence.
“Sure. See you there in fifteen?”
Reed tipped the phone away from his mouth. “Brenda, are you okay to watch the shop on your own for a bit?”
Startled, she looked up. “Sure. It’s been pretty slow today, and it’s another hour or so until the after-school traffic trickles in.”
He spoke back into the phone. “Fifteen.”
By the time he’d walked across the town green, Norah was waiting, a large coffee in one hand, a lemon square in the other. Even in her heels, she barely came to his shoulder, but nothing else about her was small. Norah Burke had a habit of commanding a room. Or a town. She’d earned her nickname by taking down the big box warehouse store that had tried to invade back in the spring, almost single-handedly turning the economic tide in Wishful after a multi-decade slump. And she’d fallen in love with his cousin in the midst of the war.
He made his own order, and they retreated upstairs for some privacy.
“I need your help.”
“Name it,” she said instantly. “Is Inglenook in trouble?”
The bookstore wasn’t exactly a cash cow, but it was holding its own. Reed shook his head. “This is a more…personal matter. And before I go on, I need your assurance that you won’t say anything to the rest of the family. Not even Cam. It’s a matter requiring discretion.” Clearly Cecily valued that.
Her dark eyes sharpened. “Color me intrigued. Okay, I promise.”
“I know you tried to set me up with Cecily.”
One elegant brow arched. “I did no such thing. I made introductions between two people I happen to care a great deal about and then stepped back to let nature take its course. Which was apparently nowhere.”
Reed winced. “Yeah, well, that’s my fault. I said something that left her with a bad impression. And I want the chance to fix it.”
The other brow climbed up. “Why now? It’s been three months.”
“Because I only just figured out what I did wrong.”
“Better late than never, I suppose. What does this have to do with me? Why not just apologize to her like a big boy?”
Reed glared. “Because…reasons. It’s more complicated than that.” He didn’t know if Norah was aware of Cecily’s background, but if she wasn’t, he wouldn’t be the one to break her secret.
“So…you want me to do what, exactly?”
“Get her to work with me. I just need the chance to spend some time with her, so she can see that I’m not… Well, just so she can see me without my foot shoved halfway down my throat.”
Norah angled her head and studied him. “You know Cecily’s internship is over, right? She’s hanging around working hourly for me only until she lands a full-time position elsewhere.”
He’d known that objectively. But that was before he felt the flare of hope that he might be able to earn a second chance. “Why can’t that be here? Don’t you want her to stay? Keep the dream team together and all that?”
“Of course, but we don’t have it in the budget to hire her full-time at the rate she merits. She’d have to do something other than work for the city.”
“Well, don’t you at least want to stack the decks to give her more reasons to stay than go?”
“Do you?”
“I want the chance to try.”
“You believe you might be a weight on the side for staying?”
He thought about that flare of desire he’d seen in her eyes at the shop last week and that potent glance they’d shared at Los Pantalones. “I think there’s something between us, and we didn’t get a proper chance to explore it before I inadvertently screwed things up. I need the chance to make it right.”
Norah nodded. “I understand the need for that. I’ll arrange for the set up, but the convincing will fall wholly on you, cousin.”
“That’s all I can ask for.” He’d just have to make the most of it.
~*~
“You wanted to see m—oooh my God, I’m sorry.”
Cecily hurriedly shut Norah’s office door, but not before she had a flash of a bare-chested Cam Crawford pressing a kiss to his bride-to-be’s bared shoulder. As she stood in the hall, listening to hurried movements on the other side of the door, she couldn’t help but think it’d be nice to have someone to be that reckless with. Her brain conjured up an image of Reed.
Bad. Idea.
The door opened and Cam stepped out, fully dressed and pink all the way to the tips of his ears. “Sorry about that. We, uh—”
Feeling the heat in her own cheeks, Cecily waved him off, careful to keep her eyes above the equator. “Almost married and crazy about each other. I get it. Sorry I interrupted.”
Norah stepped up behind him, looking considerably less embarrassed, with only her hair remaining a bit mussed. How did she do that? “Someday you’re going to remember to lock the door.” She brushed her lips over his.
Cam stroked a hand down Norah’s cheek in a lingering caress that made Cecily’s heart sigh. “See you in New Orleans, Wonder Woman.”
Norah stood and watched him, love shining in her eyes, until he was out of sight. Then she straightened and gestured Cecily inside. “You might as well come on in and get the mocking over with.”
“Why would I mock? If anything, I’m envious. You two are adorable. And God knows you deserve it after how your ex treated you.”
“I won’t argue with that.” With practiced fingers, Norah twisted her hair back up and secured it with pins. “Just as well you showed up. I need to be getting on the road and he wasn’t in any hurry to let me.”
Cecily smirked. “You were fighting him off so hard.”
Norah flashed a wicked grin. “Come help me haul stuff to the car.”
Fifteen minutes later, Cecily loaded the easel and shut the trunk. “That’s the last of it. Do you have the PowerPoint?”
“On a flash drive and loaded on the hard drive of my laptop, just in case. I appreciate all your hard work on this presentation. With the dramatic turnaround we’ve seen in Wishful this year, everybody wants to know how to duplicate our results.”
Cecily dimpled. “Do they know they’d best be investing in cloning technology? None of it would’ve happened without you.”
Norah swung an arm around her shoulders. “You either. Who knew this time last year that I’d be speaking as an expert at a small town redevelopment conference?”
“We’ve come a long way from Chicago. When are you back?”
“Not until Tuesday. Cam’s driving down to meet me Friday night, and we’re taking a long weekend in New Orleans, so I’m leaving you to man the fort while I’m gone.”
“You can count on me!” Cecily gave her a sharp salute.
“I always can.” Norah grinned. “Oh, I almost forgot. I promised Reed some marketing services for the book signing he’s got coming up at Inglenook. With all the prep for the conference, I haven’t had a chance to even look at his stuff, and time’s running out. So I’m taking boss’s prerogative
and dumping it on you while I’m gone.”
The smile on Cecily’s face turned brittle. “You want me to do the marketing for the bookstore?”
“Cakewalk compared to what you’ve been doing. It’ll be a nice change of pace. He’s expecting you sometime today.”
As Cecily stared, Norah rushed on, opening the car door and sliding into the driver’s seat. “You’re a lifesaver. I need to get going. Long drive. See you next week!”
Before Cecily could come up with a viable reason why she couldn’t do the job, her boss was driving away.
Crap.
She put it off until after lunch, fortifying herself with one of Mama Pearl’s chocolate chip milkshakes from Dinner Belles, the local diner and biggest gossip competitor to The Grind. By then she’d just about convinced herself to put on her big girl panties and get it over with. Procrastinating wasn’t doing anything but making her more nervous.
An attractive woman in her late thirties was stocking shelves when Cecily stepped inside the bookstore. She dimly remembered seeing her during the evidence-wiping mission she’d run with Christoff the week before.
The woman looked up and smiled slightly as Cecily approached. “Can I help you with anything?”
“I’m looking for Reed, actually.”
Something flickered over the woman’s face—a quick darkening of expression before she seemed to shake herself out of it and reaffix her customer smile. “He’s in the back, in his office.”
Wondering what that was about, Cecily wandered toward the back of the store. In some long ago lifetime, the building had been someone’s home. She wandered through the wide, cased openings, past row upon row of shelves and the comfortable furniture grouped here and there to invite people to sit and stay a while. The overall effect was one of warm welcome. The only thing missing was the scent of baking cookies from the kitchen they might not even have.
As the woman had said, Reed was in his office. She found him at his desk, a pair of horn-rim reading glasses perched on his nose as he peered down at a catalog of some kind. The sleeves of his button-down shirt were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms. The muscles in one of those arms flexed as he made notes with an honest-to-God fountain pen. Something in her brain short-circuited and her mouth went dry. God, the sexy professor look worked on him.