To my surprise, Rob is actually blushing. This is the guy who can bench-press a baby elephant, who opened up a gym to humans and (unbeknownst to said humans) werewolves—and who keeps that gym in shipshape condition.
And he loves reading romance novels.
I know I've mentioned this before, but my cousin is awesome.
“Anyway,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck and swallowing a little as he chuckles nervously. Once Rob starts blushing, it's hard for him to shift focus. “I always get my novels from that little mom-and-pop bookstore downtown—A Million Pages.”
“I went there when I was a kid,” I tell him, getting a little wistful.
“Yeah, well, it's still a really nice place,” he says, spreading his hands. “And when I was there, I started chatting with the new girl they just hired.”
I raise a brow at him. I suddenly know exactly where this is going.
“Her name's Loren,” he says with a big smile, “and she just broke up with her girlfriend,” he says meaningfully (perhaps a little too meaningfully). “She's totally your type, Becks. I mean, really, really,” he says, nodding.
“My type?” I ask him, head tilted the side. I love watching him squirm, but this time he doesn't. He only grins wolfishly back at me.
“Don't play stupid,” he says, raising a brow. “Legs for days, blonde hair—”
“Hey, now,” I say, raising a hand, “she doesn't have to be blonde—”
“Yeah, yeah, but you really like blondes,” he says dismissively, waving a hand. “Anyway, she's a lesbian, she's gorgeous, she's well-read, and she's single. If I'm not mistaken,” he says, grin deepening, “you've gone after chicks for far, far fewer ticks on that imaginary list of yours.”
It's true. I have. And as I sit back in the booth and consider that the rest of my Friday night plans consisted of consuming microwave mac and cheese...
“This is stupid.” I flick my gaze over Rob's shoulder again at Julie. “I could just go home with Julie,” I tell him with a little shrug. “We've been flirting forever, and I think she wants me.”
Rob snorts. “Sorry to break it to you, Becks,” he tells me with a laugh, “but Julie flirts with everyone. And she's about as straight as an arrow. You brightened up at the idea,” he says, waggling a brow at me, “and if I know you, you were thinking of having a Netflix marathon and eating a microwave meal, which, admittedly, sounds like a nice, relaxing Friday night. But after the day you've had? You don't want relaxing,” he tells me pointedly, holding my gaze. “You need something...nice.”
“Oh, my God, am I really thinking of taking the bus all the way downtown to pop into a bookstore to possibly see a girl who may or may not be interested in me, and I may or may not be interested in her?” I groan, rocking my head onto the back of the booth. “Is this what my life has become?”
“Ma also wanted to know if you wanted to come over for dinner,” he tells me with a wide smile.
I growl at him, shaking my head. “You're a dog, Rob,” I mutter, then stand, raking my hand back through my hair. “How do I look?”
Rob gives me the once over. “Good enough to pick up a chick for a one-night stand,” he tells me, flashing the thumbs-up.
I grumble a little as I shove my hands into my pockets and make my way out of the bar, toward the nearest bus station.
Overhead, the first stars of the night are glittering in that gorgeous cobalt blue sky. Far, far below those stars, a very disgruntled werewolf gets on a bus, aiming for downtown Boston and a bookstore on the slight chance that there will be a woman there who might interest her.
I have no idea what I'm in for.
Chapter 2: The Woman in the Bookstore
I get off the bus as a chill wind begins to blow between the many skyscrapers of Boston, right off the water. It's early spring—March—and that means that the weather is moody and unpredictable. I glance up at the still-ominous, heavy cloud bank that skirts along the horizon, visible now because of the full moon rising in the east, and I shiver a little. It was warmish today, but it just might snow tonight.
Halfway along the bus line, I almost hopped off the bus and grabbed the next one back in the direction of my apartment. Am I really heading all this way for a girl? And not just a girl, but the possibility of a girl? I blow my hair out of my eyes and dig my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket with agitation. Rob's right. I had a rotten day. I really want to go home, put my feet up and binge-watch about a million episodes of The L Word (hey, don't judge—I may have seen the show a thousand times, give or take, but they've never made another series quite like it, so I just keep rewatching it).
Does this mean I'm getting old, that I'd rather stay in than take a girl back to her place? God, I hope not. But that thought, wondering if I am possibly getting too old for this crap (I'm in my thirties, but I might have early-onset grumpiness)—that was the final straw that kept me on the bus, heading toward downtown. I had a rotten day, my mother compared me to a toy poodle, and I'll be damned if I start thinking I'd rather eat in and watch shows on my laptop than live a little bit.
I remember where A Million Pages is, which is kind of funny, considering I can't recall if I grabbed my keys in the morning on the way to work without checking my pockets, but it's just one of those things: I've got a weird memory for places. If I'm taken anywhere just once, I remember how to get there. And my mother took me here a handful of times when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure she wanted me to be the kind of kid who loves reading, who voraciously tears through books and keeps a to-be-read stack beside her bed… And I tried to be that for her. But I was more of a rough-and-tumble kind of girl; I'd get holes in the knees of my new jeans after one afternoon of roughhousing at the park. I rarely picked up a book nowadays, though I did enjoy reading them when I was small.
So I round the corner now, and there's the bookstore, looking just like I remember it, as if no time has passed at all. A Million Pages is one of those charming, hole-in-the-wall kind of shops, complete with a big bay window for displays next to its antique front door. The window display currently in that front window is made up of a lot of stuffed animals, all different types of dogs, each of them reading a book and stacked up on a freestanding wooden set of stairs. It also appears that someone used pipe cleaners to fashion little reading glasses for each pup. The effect is charming, and I find myself smiling a little as I let myself into the store, the set of jingle bells on the knob ringing out merrily as I open the door.
Of course, I'd already steeled myself for the possibility that the store could be closed by the time I reached it—luckily, it's not—or that the new girl Rob told me about might not even be here. But if she's off, I figure I can just buy Rob a romance novel for being such a good sport and listening to me gripe about our family—again. Since there are only a million straight romances in the world, chances are pretty good that the book I choose for him won't be one he's read yet, so that's the plan.
As the door swings shut behind me, I'm struck immediately—as I always am upon entering a new setting—by the scent of the place.
A Million Pages is a used bookstore, and that's what hits my sensitive wolf nose first: the smell of all those books. Literally thousands of well-loved, well-read pages that have been gently turned over the years are sheltered within these walls. The thick fantasy novels with their creased spines; the thin, yellowing poetry books stacked up on the back shelves; the haphazardly organized picture books in the little kids room (still painted to look like a jungle with cartoon monkeys climbing the walls): they all have their own perfume, and not only can I make out the scent of those pages, but I can detect traces of the people who have touched them, read them, held them.
It's a riot of sensation. And, as usual, my senses race ahead of me, scouting everything out, absorbing the space and making order of all of that information in my head.
The bookstore smells much like I remember it. There are a few added additions—and some visual changes, too. They use an iPad now to c
heck out customers, rather than the gorgeous antique cash box that they used to have. The guy at the front register is tapping at his phone; that wouldn't have happened in the nineties, which is probably the last time I visited.
But there's something else different tonight, too.
It's a subtle thing: I pick it up because I'm paying attention, like I always pay attention when I walk into a new situation (it's just the wolf in me—I can't help it). There's something rising above the dry, leaf-like scent of book and ink. Something infinitely softer but more noticeable, because it's so fine.
I lift my nose to the air, and I inhale, closing my eyes.
Soft white flowers. Little blossoms, unfurling. The very beginning scent of spring. That's what I smell when I close my eyes. Something so light and lovely that I'm a little taken aback by it. It's a perfume—that much I can tell—and I should be used to smelling perfumes in public spaces.
But this one is, somehow, different. Maybe because, beneath the gentle white tones of the flowers, there's something more: the warmth of skin, of a woman's skin. Immediately, my eyes are open again, and I'm glancing down the aisle to my right.
But there's no one there.
The perfume eludes me as I place one foot in front of the other, led through the bookshop by this bewitching scent...
I round the corner of the final aisle.
And there she is:
A blonde woman, standing on a stepstool, straining to reach the top shelf for, I assume, a particular book. She's wearing black flats and is standing on tiptoe at the very edge of the stool, causing the stool to tilt precariously, supporting itself on two legs instead of the usual four. She's leaning far forward, her long fingers straining to reach the spine of a just-out-of-reach book.
Within seconds, I take in the fact that the woman wears a black pencil skirt that follows the curves of her rear and thighs with such precision that my eyes can't help but trace her shape. A satin cream blouse is tucked into the skirt, or it would be, but since she's straining so high to reach the book, the front of the blouse has come untucked, showing off the pale skin of her stomach. Her blonde hair falls around her shoulders in soft ringlets, and even though the hallway is darker than the rest of the shop, I can just make out that she's wearing a dark red lipstick as she frowns, leaning forward...
I clear my throat, and I take a step toward her. “Can I help you?” I ask, but then everything happens very quickly, because the woman is startled by my voice, and her flat slips on the stepstool, and then she begins to fall to the right with a sharp gasp.
I don't think; I simply act. I'm lunging forward, and then all of the time I've spent at the gym pays off, because, wonder of wonders...I actually catch her. Out of midair.
She stares up at me from my arms, surprised, her full mouth (which is wearing this really gorgeous, dark red lipstick) in a round “o” of astonishment, and I'm about to say something, but the book that this woman was reaching for on the shelf apparently came loose when she took a tumble, because something very hard smacks my head.
It was so damn unexpected that I (completely embarrassed to admit this, by the way) topple myself, and then we're both lying crumpled on the bookstore floor.
The woman sits up quickly and glances at me in shock, leaning forward. I know I shouldn't be noticing this kind of stuff right now, but her long blonde hair falls over her shoulder toward me, and with it comes that light floral scent. I inhale deeply, then groan a little, putting my hand to my forehead.
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” she asks me. I can tell that her voice is normally warm, but right now she sounds alarmed.
I don't want her to be alarmed—it was just a clock to the head—so I sit up and smile at her, knocking at my forehead with my knuckles. “I inherited my Ma's thick skull. No worries.”
We were apparently more entangled in each other's limbs than I first recognized, because she tries to get up, but her long legs in their black tights are tangled up in mine. As I try to get up to help her, my arm ends up grazing her bare stomach. Her shirt got pushed up when she fell, and she tugs it down now with an apologetic smile, but I'm realizing that I'm feeling kind of warm. And dizzy. It's not from the hit to the head, right?
I mean...the world only began whirling when I touched her skin. Her soft, floral-perfumed, warm skin...
The woman picks up the book that hit me, and she offers me a hand, which I take, and then we're both standing together.
She laughs, shaking her head apologetically. “I feel so stupid right now! I could lie and say that I'm normally graceful...” She trails off and flashes me a devastating smile. “But I'm kind of a walking disaster. I'm not even supposed to use that stepstool—boss's orders,” she says, gesturing to the stool. “But a customer just called in search of this book, and I wanted to get it ready for her.”
The woman holds out the hardcover to me, and I take it from her hands, glancing down at the cover in surprise. It's a pretty, old copy of White Fang.
“Oh, hey, I read that when I was a kid!” I tell her, flipping it open and running my fingers along the pages.
She smiles another brighter-than-the-sun smile at me. I'm going a little weak at the knees over those smiles. “Me, too,” she says, glancing down at the book in my hands. “This one's an early edition and in nice condition.” She leans forward, her blonde curls falling over her shoulder in a dizzying curtain of gold, bringing the floral scent in my direction. “See,” she says softly, turning the book in my hands so that we're both looking at the spine now, “the spine isn't even cracked...” Her fingers are over mine, and I'm suddenly aware of how very close we're standing, and of how much blood is being pumped through my body at an unnerving pace... “Oh, sorry,” the woman says with an apologetic grimace, “you probably aren't interested in nerdy book talk. Um, can I help you find something?” she asks, spreading her hands.
Okay, I gotta admit—at this point, I'm completely charmed. This woman is kind and warm and quirky and...let's be honest here, she's beautiful, too. I know I just got bumped on the head, but I'm finding myself feeling a little woozy, and I don't think it's from the wallop I just took. I shake my head and try to focus on the task at hand: asking out this woman...Loren. I'd better not get lost in thought right now, because I'm liable to blow it. I've got to pull out my best charm...
But Loren's charm is making my head spin.
“Well, I was hoping to buy a book...” I begin, rocking back on my heels and digging my hands deep into the pockets of my leather jacket. “A book for my cousin—a romance novel?”
“Oh, great!” she tells me, her smile wide, a hundred watts. “What sort of romances does she like?”
“He loves all of them, I think,” I tell her with a little grin.
“Sorry, he. I shouldn't have assumed,” she smiles earnestly. “Our romance section is right over here.” She waves her hand, and setting the copy of White Fang on the counter, she begins to walk toward the romance section while tucking the shirt back into her high-waisted pencil skirt. I try not to watch how her rear moves in that damnably sexy skirt, but it's hard not to.
“Okay,” Loren laughs, indicating a row of impeccably arranged shelves. “So, I'm a Virgo and kind of like to keep everything in the store super-organized. We've got subgenres within subgenres.” She points to the top row of the shelves. “There's cowboy-cowgirl romance, cowboy-cowboy romance, cowgirl-cowgirl romance—”
I blink, surprised, and then I take a step forward, pulling one of those latter books off of the shelf, intrigued in spite of myself. I chuckle at the cover, which shows a painting of a woman in chaps and a ten-gallon hat sweeping a woman in a corset off of her feet. “Loretta's Lassoed Lass?” I ask, raising a brow.
Loren grins at me. “I've read that one. It's cheesy—but cute.” She takes another step forward and stands on her tiptoes as she looks up at the shelf. “My favorite is...this one,” she tells me, pulling a book off the shelf and handing it to me.
I read the title, and then I f
eel every last drop of blood leave my head. I gulp.
The book in my hands features a cover with a wolf howling to the moon, A Lesbian Werewolf in London arching around the moon in white letters.
“I know, I know,” Loren groans, tucking an errant curl behind her right ear as she smiles sheepishly at me. “It's an awful title, but the story's really sweet, about this librarian who moves to London to spice up her life, and she meets a mysterious woman, and they start to fall in love...” Her voice trails off for a moment, and when I glance at her, I'm surprised that her eyes have taken on a faraway look, and her hands are clasped in front of her. Her voice is practically breathless. Her eyes focus, and then she's locking her gaze with mine. She has beautiful, bright green eyes, surrounded by long black lashes. “It's only after they've spent a whole weekend together,” she continues, “that the mysterious woman reveals she is a—dun, dun, dun!—werewolf!” She says the word dramatically, curling her hands in front of her into claws.
I swallow. “Sounds...dramatic,” I manage.
“Oh, don't worry,” she says with a shake of her head and an impish grin. “It ends happily, as all good stories should.” She turns away from me, and I watch her golden hair move over her shoulders again, revealing the perfect curve of her neck as she leans forward at the waist, glancing down at one of the lower shelves.
“Hold on a second,” she says, then glances up at me quickly. “Um, what kind of romances does he like to read?”
That question could be interpreted all sorts of ways (especially since we're looking at the subgenre of wild west romances), but I get what she means in a heartbeat.
“He's straight,” I say with a light shrug, “if that helps. But he reads anything as long as it's got two people falling in love. He's always been a really nice, awesome, open-minded guy,” I tell her with a smile.
“That helps,” she tells me with a nod, and then she's pulling another book off the shelves. “We just got this one in, brand-new,” she says, and she's holding the hardcover out to me. The title on the bright pink book reads Kiss Me Already and features a silhouette of a man and woman about to kiss, but it's not the silhouette that draws my eyes. When I read that title, my gaze can't help but flick to Loren's mouth, her dark red lips that are turned up in a gorgeous, full smile.
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