Virtually Yours: A Virtual Match Anthology

by Kait Nolan

  As if sensing her eyes on him, he looked up, brightening. “Cecily. Hey.” He pulled the glasses off as he stood, and she felt a pang of regret. “Did she like it?”

  Cecily blinked. “Did who like what?”

  “Blair. Did she like Dark Defenders?”

  “Oh.” She relaxed against the door frame. “Yeah, she loved it. We’re in intense debate about Cass and whether she’s good or bad and why she keeps showing up at all the stuff Mena is investigating.”

  Reed grinned. “You read it?”

  “Cover to cover.”

  “And what do you think? Good or bad?”

  “I think Cass has her own agenda and that Derrick knows more than he’s telling Mena. His reaction is way too vehement.”

  “Derrick is a pretty straight-forward dude. Very black-and-white. From his perspective Cass is a villain.”

  “Exactly. So how the heck are he and Mena supposed to work? She’s so gray. That’s part of what makes her good at what she does. I just don’t see how such a straight arrow can be a match for her.”

  Reed crossed his arms and leaned a hip against the desk. “I think she fascinates him. He’s keeping her secret for reasons even he doesn’t understand—and that makes for compelling conflict.”

  Cecily had the strangest sense he wasn’t talking about the comic anymore. Which was ridiculous.

  “Guess I’ll find out more in Volume 2.”

  He started around the desk. “I’ll show it to you.”

  “Later. That’s not actually why I’m here.”

  “Oh. Then what can I do for you?”

  You can stop being so damned appealing.

  She steeled her spine. “It’s more what I can do for you. Norah’s tied up with conference stuff, so she sent me in her stead. My marketing expertise is at your disposal.”

  “Really? Wow, that’s awesome. Nice of you to put in the time.”

  She could’ve said something about how it had nothing to do with her being nice and everything to do with her job. But he was being so gracious, she didn’t see the point in mentioning it.

  “Where should we start? Do you need to know the details of the author? It’s Tony Becker.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Mysteries, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s a solid, midlist author. Biggest one we’ve managed to land so far.”

  “That’s good. If he’s given any thought to this at all, he ought to have some kind of press kit we can use. But I’ll get into that later. If he hasn’t, I can make one. I’ve done it before.” I can piggy back on what I did for Aunt Dinah. Probably. She made a few mental notes on what might need tweaking there before turning her attention back to Reed. “But before we get into the specifics, I need to get a better idea of what kind of information dissemination infrastructure you have in place. So, let’s start with an assessment of where you are now. Just the basics. Do you have a website?”

  “Of course we have a website.”

  “Show me.”

  He gestured for her to come behind the desk with him.

  The office was tiny, with room only for the ancient wooden desk, a visitor’s chair, and a couple of file cabinets shoe-horned in behind the door. In order to get a look at Reed’s laptop screen, she found herself wedged shoulder-to-shoulder with him—or more properly shoulder-to-arm, as he was a good eight or ten inches taller than she was. She tried desperately not to notice as his body brushed hers.

  “It hasn’t been updated in a while, but it’s got all the basics on there.”

  The page loaded and Cecily actually felt faint. Frames. The website was built on frames. “Dear God,” she muttered. “It’s ancient. It’s the website that time forgot.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he protested. “It’s got our location and hours. Even a page of events. What more do we need?”

  Cecily just shook her head in pity. “Please tell me you’ve at least got a newsletter.”

  “Sure. It goes out in the mail once a month.”

  “Snail mail?”

  “Um. Yeah?”

  “Christ. You’re killing me. What about the social media?”

  His lips curved in a rueful smile. “I’d tell you, but I’m pretty sure you’ll hit me.”

  She took a deep breath. Which was a mistake because now she could smell his aftershave and felt a ridiculous desire to nuzzle just there beneath his jaw. “Okay. We’re just going to pretend you have nothing and I’m starting from scratch. We’ll talk further about what other features you might like once I have the basic framework in place.” Before she had more of her brain cells scrambled, she scooted out from around the desk.

  Reed followed. “Thanks, Cecily. Really. This is all way outside my scope of expertise.”

  “I’ll get to work on it this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t you work from here? It’d be a change of pace from the office, and you’d get a feel for the shop and how it fits into the community. Norah’s kept you so busy, you haven’t really had an opportunity to spend much time here.”

  Yeah, let’s pretend that’s the reason.

  Still, observing the shop in action over a period of days would give her the opportunity to see what was working for them and what wasn’t. She’d know better how to target things with that information.

  “Sure.”

  Reed took her out front and introduced her to Brenda. “Cecily’s going to overhaul our website and stuff.”

  “If that’s what you want to call dragging your business kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.”

  “Hey, I’m not screaming.”

  Cecily couldn’t resist a pointed grin. “Yet. Where should I set up?”

  He paused, glancing at an incoming text and laughing under his breath before shifting his attention back to her. “Wherever floats your boat. There’s better plug access up in the front room, near the graphic novels.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She thought maybe he’d hover or come up with some other reason to keep checking on her, but instead he went on about running his business. Cecily felt caught somewhere between relieved and deflated.

  Don’t be stupid. You made it clear you didn’t want to date him. He’s respecting that. Just do your job.

  An hour into customizing an out-of-the-box Wordpress theme, the bell chimed and a gangly kid in jeans that had probably acquired the rip in the knee from actual wear came barreling into the store. Excitement was pumping off him so hard, Cecily could feel it from ten feet away. As he rounded the corner, into the room where she was working, she figured there was some awesome new release in comics, and he’d just gotten his allowance. But instead, he made a beeline for the counter.

  Behind it, Reed grinned. “Hey kiddo. What’s up?”

  “I finished the first issue of my comic!”

  “Yeah?” Reed shoved a pen behind his ear and dropped whatever he was doing to give the boy his full attention. “Will you show me?”

  Intrigued, Cecily shamelessly eavesdropped. The pair of them dropped companionably onto the floor, cross-legged. The boy pulled a sketchpad out of his backpack and handed it over. Reed paged through, reading with the kind of focus he might devote to a best-seller.

  “The artwork is fantastic, Austin.”

  The kid perked up before giving a wary frown. “But?”

  “Well, you’ve created a guy who’s a hero straight out of the gate. That doesn’t make for a real interesting story. Why are we supposed to root for him?”

  Austin jerked a shoulder. “I don’t know. ’Cause he’s awesome. That’s why he’s called Captain Awesome.”

  “But surely Captain Awesome wasn’t totally awesome from the get go. Something made him awesome.”

  “Like radioactive sludge?”

  “A classic for a reason,” Reed agreed, “but I’m talking about character arc.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, instead of starting your character out here, think about building him. No hero starts off
as a hero. You gotta give your readers somebody they can relate to in the beginning, more their level, who grows into being a hero. Think about Peter Parker. He started out a little geeky dude. Smart but picked on by others. And then he gets bitten by that spider, gets super powers, and suddenly has the skills to start helping people.”

  Cecily watched him, head together in deep discussion with the boy, and her heart sighed.

  Brenda came to perch on the arm of the sofa, her embittered face softened with a smile. “He’s always doing stuff like this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s a big softie. Always going out of his way for other people. Can’t think of a single other reason he’d have hired me after my divorce. I’m sure there were other more qualified people, but he saw me in a jam and gave me a way out.”

  Reed Campbell knew the value of investing in people. Except, instead of investing money, he invested his time—possibly a rarer, more valuable commodity. Her family would like him. She liked him. It was just too damned bad that he’d never be able to get past the family ties she couldn’t escape.

  Chapter Four

  “—I built the site with Wordpress, which is really user-friendly, so I can show you both how to update things once you decide who’s going to be responsible for what.”

  When Cecily glanced up at him, Reed fought the urge to point at someone else in a Not me gesture.

  “I swear, it’s not that bad once you know what’s what.”

  “What kind of stuff would we update it with?” Brenda didn’t look anywhere near as alarmed as he’d expected. Maybe a challenge would be good for her. And generating website content would keep her focused on work instead of him. She’d stopped outright hitting on him, but there was still a low-level flirtation that made him uncomfortable.

  “That’s up to you. There’s an integrated calendar, which will enable people to add an event to their calendar at the click of a button. You could use the blog to share book reviews. In fact, that might be a great way to really make your customers feel like they’re a part of things here. Give them a chance to write a guest book review for the store blog. Free content by local people. They’d be proud of what they did and tell all their friends, which gives you word-of-mouth traffic to your target audience.”

  Reed nodded, seeing the brilliance in that. “I know at least a dozen people who would be all over that. What else?”

  The phone in his pocket buzzed. As Cecily named a half-dozen other things that had his head spinning, he slipped it out and read the text from Selina.

  What are you up to?

  Reed: Having my mind blown.

  Selina: Not sure how to take that…

  “— the sort of thing that would be easily cross-posted on all the integrated social media.”

  Reed’s head shot up. “We have social media now?”

  “Sure do. And you’ve already got followers on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.” She clicked over to show them.

  He stared at the numbers. “How?”

  “I piggybacked on the city’s social media to notify folks in Wishful that Inglenook has entered the world wide web. I’ve generated enough content to get you through the next two weeks. That’ll give you some ideas about the kind of things you can post, and see what sorts of things your clientele is into, and also where they’re hanging out. I’m anticipating you’ll see the most action on Facebook.”

  “Okay, Facebook I get.” Brenda looked almost excited. “I can deal with Facebook.”

  Cecily shot her a warm smile. “I’ve made a list of resources you can use for scheduling content across platforms. You don’t want to automate everything, but that way you can drip things into your various feeds at optimized times of day so that there’s something going on. And you’ll cruise through a couple times a day to actually interact with your followers so they know you’re a human, not a bot.”

  Reed: Have you ever met an author or artist who’s a master of their craft and had a conversation wherein they make it seem like what they did was easy?

  The phone buzzed again as Cecily began describing some of the other tools they could use to jazz things up.

  Selina: I got to meet Stephen King once. That was pretty cool. And intimidating.

  Reed thumbed a reply. Well, this is like that, but with marketing. He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Cecily, this is awesome.”

  She held up a finger. “Not done yet.”

  “There’s more?” What else could there be?

  “I’ve set up a proper mailing list for you, so when you have that newsletter to send out, you can send the same information out to them via email. And there are already fifty-four people signed up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’ve even designed a template to match the design of the website, so everything is neat and branded.”

  Reed nodded. “Brenda, can I borrow your notebook and a pen?”

  With a look of faint surprise, she handed it over to him. He flipped to a clean page and did a quick sketch, being sure to cover his work so neither of them could see. Then he ripped the sheet out, grabbed a binder clip, and stepped over to Cecily. She didn’t step back—couldn’t because of the counter behind her—and he was aware he’d invaded her space again. She smelled like cinnamon and oatmeal cookies today, and he had to resist the urge to lean in for a taste.

  She tipped her head back, looking more quizzical than disturbed, as he reached out to fasten the paper to her collar. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Adding a piece to your uniform.” The backs of his knuckles just barely brushed the soft skin of her throat.

  Her short, sharp inhale was barely audible. Reed’s gaze flicked to hers, holding long enough to see her pupils dilate before he stepped back.

  Cecily recovered quickly, looking down at the Superman shield he’d drawn with a big C in the middle. Her laughter rang out, bright as a bell. “I dig it. I’d be quite happy to add this as a formalized part of the uniform.”

  “You earned it.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Still. I should have expected it. You are Norah’s protégée, and everybody knows she’s a marketing genius. Clearly the apple doesn’t fall far from the professional tree.”

  She shrugged it off, but her cheeks pinked at the praise. “That is why I came all the way from Chicago to work with her. I’ll miss her when I go.”

  Reed dimmed a little at the reminder. She had plans for her future and they didn’t include Wishful—wouldn’t, unless he could come up with a way to convince her to stay. “Any luck on the job search?”

  “Not yet—”

  He held in his fist pump.

  “—but I sent out another round of resumes this week. Something will turn up. Anyway, we still need to talk about the book signing. This was all setting up infrastructure to actually tell people about it.”

  The door opened and a babble of voices carried back to them.

  “That’ll be the book club ladies. I’ll go see to them.” Brenda headed up front to greet people.

  Reed took one of the stools behind the counter and patted the other. “Did you get the press kit I forwarded to you?”

  Cecily didn’t hesitate before joining him. “Yeah. It’s really bare-bones. Have you read Becker at all?”

  “I read his debut. He’s not bad. The shipment of his latest arrived a couple days ago, but I haven’t started it yet.”

  “We’ll come back to that. How about instead you tell me what your vision is for this place?”

  Now was his chance to make up for the poor impression he’d given at the lake. “It’s not just a store. Not just brick and mortar and books. I want it to be a focal point in the community. A gathering place. To an extent we already do some of that. Like the book club out there. My grandmother’s knitting circle meets here once a week. The high school writer’s guild meets here twice a month. But I want to go beyond that. I want to be the next Square Books.”

  At her blank expression, R
eed remembered she wasn’t from the area. “Square Books is the independent bookstore up in Oxford. It’s a local institution up there, located right in the heart of town. I’m pretty sure I was in there at least every other week for a reading or signing from some author or other, when I was in college at Ole Miss. They do such a great job of community engagement, with carrying on the literary tradition. I want to do that. I want to bring that kind of culture here. Except with a slightly less literary bent because we aren’t a university town and that’s not our demographic.”

  She beamed and thumped him on the shoulder. “Look at you using marketing lingo.”

  “Norah is almost a part of my family. I’ve picked up a little by sheer osmosis.”

  Her lips curved, her eyes warm as she looked over at him. “You love it. The store. The life you have here.”

  “I really do.”

  “It’s a good life.”

  Looking into her face, Reed could see that she really meant it and that she remembered what he’d said all those months ago.

  “I like to think so.”

  “You understand that a town without a bookstore isn’t really a town. That it’d just be fooling itself.”

  “Not a bad paraphrase from American Gods. I didn’t know you were a Neil Gaiman fan.”

  Cecily shrugged. “I read a lot of different things. And I can’t say as I disagree with him. Bookstores are important, and I think the fact that you’ve worked so hard to keep this one going, during a time when independent booksellers across the country are closing their doors, is a very admirable goal.”

  Reed preferred to believe he didn’t need validation of his life choices. He knew what he wanted and went for it, regardless of what anyone thought. But the fact that Cecily understood it, that she admired that choice, soothed something in him. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a real investment in the community. And it’s my job to sort out the best means of maximizing that investment of time, effort, and capital. I’m just not quite there yet.”