“I don’t really want to talk about Ashley, Darren.”
“I’m sorry, Mina. Of course not! You were the closest friend she had. I just… I need to feel connected to her, you know?”
I sighed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. At least hanging out with Darren would distract me from thinking about Heathcliff’s kiss and all the confusing feelings I had. “Yeah, sure, we can grab a drink, as long as you’re buying.”
* * *
“This is from a microbrewery just outside of town.” Darren snapped a picture of his pint with his phone, then pulled out a battered Moleskine notebook and jotted down a note. “It really should be served in a tulip instead of this stein, but some people just don’t understand the importance of these things. It has a nice body, caramel and blackcurrant notes. I can see why Ashley liked it.”
I groaned inwardly. Darren wasn’t kidding when he said he got into craft beer. As soon as we arrived at the Cock & Fiddle, he begged me to spill on Ashley’s favorite local brew. Since I knew Ashley never gave a shit about craft beer – a beer company gave her two grand to pose in her swimsuit with their special release brew, and since then she developed a bit of a cult following among beer geeks so she’d attempted to prolong the charade – I chose one at random, and now he was treating it like the Holy Grail. Her drink of choice was vodka cranberry, which I was sipping now.
All I could taste was Heathcliff. His tongue. His lips. His musky, peaty Heathcliffiness.
Heathcliff kissed me. He kissed me.
That kiss was everything. No wonder Heathcliff had been immortalized as the great romantic antihero. Nothing like a brooding bad boy to make one’s toes curl and a hand reach under one’s panties. The sensation of his lips still lingered, sending a delicious shiver down my spine, followed by a shudder of disgust.
It was the most intense kiss I’d ever experienced in my life. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d read Wuthering Heights enough times to know that Heathcliff loved and hated with equal intensity. The way he spoke of his love for Cathy—
Cathy.
My harsh words and secret fears flooded back to me. Heathcliff left the book after he discovered Cathy planned to marry Linton. He never lived through her death. He’d never had to lose her. Which meant that in the back of his head – no matter how he felt about me or how many of those heart-stopping kisses we shared – the thought would linger that maybe she would come out of the book, too, and maybe in this world he could save their relationship, and they could have their happy ending and he wouldn’t become Heathcliff the psychopath.
He had the advantage of being able to read into the future and see all the mistakes he’d made. He got a do-over. If it came down to it, if he had to choose between me and Cathy, then of course he’d choose her. Of course. Cathy was Heathcliff.
That’s why he stopped the kiss, that’s why he said all those things to me, because I’m nothing but a distraction to him.
I pushed my chair back. “Darren, I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”
“But you didn’t finish your drink!” Darren tapped his pad. “I wanted to get your notes about Ashley’s favorite beers to add to my Instagram. I started one, you know, inspired by her, to become an influencer in the craft beer space.”
“You know what? It sounds like you knew Ashley better than I did.” I grabbed my jacket. “I’m sorry, Darren, I have to go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I hardly slept all night, playing that kiss over and over again and getting angrier and angrier. Heathcliff had no right. He didn’t even like me. He griped and grumped and groaned whenever I spoke. He kissed me for one purpose only – to shut me up, to distract me from the occult books and whatever secret he didn’t want me to figure out.
And yet, Quoth’s words stuck in my head. “You should embrace the chaos. It’s okay to not know what you want.“
I wanted the Heathcliff of the books, but who was my Heathcliff?
The next morning I emerged, bleary-eyed, into the kitchen. Mum slumped over the table, frowning as she punched holes into the calculator. “Did you get paid this week, love? I’m a little light on rent money while I build my sustainable business.”
“I thought you sold two wobblelators yesterday?”
“I did, but the profit on the first forty units goes toward paying off the cost of my order. As soon as I’ve sold thirty-eight more, we’ll be rolling in dough.”
“If you say so, Mum.” I filled the toaster with bread and pushed it down. “Heathcliff hasn’t paid me yet.”
“Well, get it off him today, would you? There’s a good girl.” She handed me the peanut butter. “I’ll pay you back as soon as my wobbling business takes off.”
Great. Now not only did I have to work in the same silent bookshop as Heathcliff after our kiss, but I had to ask him for money.
On the way to Nevermore Bookshop, I stopped by the bakery for our usual coffees. I added some croissants and date scones to the order. Might as well butter him up with actual butter. While I waited in line for the croissants to be toasted, Jo walked through the door, her purple Docs trampling mud onto the mat. “Good morning, Greta. I’ll have my usual, thanks, and a coffee to go. I’ve got a fresh corpse on the way—”
She stopped short as her eyes met mine. She bowed her head and hurried to the other side of the room, bending down to stare at her phone screen, every pore of her body broadcasting the fact she didn’t want to talk to me.
My heart plummeted. What happened to us having a coffee when she got back from London?
I knew what happened. Professional distance. The police had some new evidence. They now saw me as the chief suspect.
Will I be blamed for the corpse Jo had in the mortuary today, as well?
Heart pounding, I grabbed the coffee and food and hurried off to the store. At the door, I put the tray down to insert the key. The smell of stale beer and rotten eggs hit my nostrils. A pale hand reached out of the bushes, grabbing for the bag of croissants.
“Get your hands away from that!” I snapped.
A head snapped up from the bushes, wrought with guilt and shame. It was the homeless dude, Earl Larson – the man we were certain had been inside the shop on the night of Ashley’s murder.
He did it. Of course he did.
My stomach flipped as I stared into the eyes of a murderer. Torn between anger and terror, I froze. Earl took the opportunity to grab my food bag.
“Hey!” I grabbed his wrist, jiggling it up and down until he released the food. “I need to talk to you.”
“Leggo. I ain’t done nothing!” He tugged at his hand, his eyes wild with fear. I kept my grip firm around his tiny wrist, surprised at how light he was. I forced myself to ignore the empathy welling up inside me. This guy killed Ashley.
“You were here the other night when Ashley was murdered.”
“I told the police, I didn’t see nothing!” He snapped his wrist back, wrenching it from my grasp. He grabbed his bags and shuffled away, peering back over his shoulder.
My mind ticked over, weighing up my possible actions. Jo’s anxious face flashed in my mind, and I made my decision. I shoved open the front door, yelled “coffee’s up,” placed the tray on the floor, and took off down the street after Earl.
I peered around the edge of the bakery. Earl shuffled along the high street, darting between pedestrians and peering into windows. Shop owners came out of their stores to shoo him away. He darted a look over his shoulder, but I flattened myself against the wall. When I peered around the corner again, he stood outside the market, staring into the window. A woman exited the shop and said something rude to him, but he didn’t move, didn’t react.
He thrust his hand into his pocket and set his face with an expression of determination. Flinging open the market door, he marched inside.
My heart in my throat, I crept around the corner of the wall and peeked in the market window. Earl wandered the aisles, picking up boxes and holding them against his chest. His lips
moved in continuous conversation with himself. Again and again he plunged his hand into the front of his jacket.
He had money in his pocket. Heathcliff’s money.
Rage bubbled inside me as Earl walked to the counter with a couple of boxes. He pulled a set of crumpled bills from his pocket and tossed them on the counter. The man picked up each note between his thumb and forefinger as if they might explode and laid them in the till. Earl shoved his boxes into his trench coat and hurried out of the store.
Right into me.
I grabbed his lapels and slammed him against the wall. Up close, the stale beer smell overpowered his usual rank aroma. “Where’d you get that money?”
“Tooth fairy.”
“I’m not playing games here, mate. The police think I killed Ashley. I know I didn’t, and I also know you were there that night, and that the person who killed her might’ve known she had a lot of money. So if you don’t want me to drag you down there and tell them what I know, you’d better tell me straight what’s going on.”
“All right,” Earl yelled, his whole body trembling. “I did it. I took the money from the till! But I didn’t kill that girl. I never even touched her. I never hurt no one.”
“Then why did you steal from Heathcliff? He was nice to you and you took advantage of him.”
“I didn’t wanna, I swear it. I like Mr. Heathcliff. He’s good to me, he lets me sit in his shop and read the books. But I saw you go into the shop an’ I thought it’d be nice to sleep in the warm an’ I was just sitting in my chair and I kept thinking about the money, an’ he wouldn’t ever have to know it was me.”
“I bet Heathcliff would have given you some money, if you’d just asked for it.”
“It ain’t for me, see.” Earl opened the flap of his coat. Inside, wrapped in a tangle of rags, was a tiny ball of grey fur. Two brilliant eyes peered up at me, and a mouth opened to reveal a pink tongue. A kitten.
“Mew?” It squeaked, tilting its head to the side. Its eyes grew wider.
“Oh, how adorable!” I touched the kitten’s soft cheek, hoping Grimalkin wouldn’t smell my betrayal later. No wonder he had his hand in his jacket, and he was reading that cat book, and no wonder Grimalkin hissed at Earl when he was in the shop. She must’ve smelled the kitten.
“Vet says he’s sick, an’ he needs a special kind o’ food.” The homeless man said, shoving one of the boxes he just purchased into my hands. “An’ that weird kid from the market lives right above the butcher’s shop, so he could find me if I stole. So I need money to pay for it, only I don’t want to ask Heathcliff on account of he’s already been so nice to me. I didn’t kill that girl an’ I didn’t see nothin’.”
“But you were in the shop at the same time she was! You must’ve seen or heard something. Was Ashley in the shop when you came in, or did she come in after you?”
“Weren’t no one around,” he said. “But I did pass a lass standing outside. She tap-tap-tapped on her phone an’ she was looking up at the windows.”
Ashley.
“Did you see anyone else?”
“Nope,” he said. “I stopped under that streetlight on the other side of the butcher to count the money. No one came past.”
The kitten dug his claws into Earl’s trench coat and mountain-climbed up his arm to bat at the package. “Oh, he wants his dinner.”
I slunk away. “Then you’d better feed him. I’m sorry for accosting you like this. I’m just… scared I’m going to be accused of a murder I didn’t commit.”
“‘S okay,” he shrugged. “I know what it’s like when people assume the worst about ye. Most people assume I’m a bad sort. I’m a good person, missy, just don’t have a roof over me head. An’ like, I reek of beer, but I ain’t even a drinker. Someone tossed a couple of cans into the gutter outside the shop, an I was putting them in the bin yesterday an’ got it all over me.”
“I believe you, Earl. If you and your kitty friend ever need a quiet spot to read, feel free to come into the shop,” I said, feeling bad that I’d assumed so much about him.
“Don’ worry, my luck will be changing soon. Just the other day this woman gave a presentation down at the shelter, an’ she had these vibrating exercise machines an’ she was saying how what she made millions selling ‘em, and she reckons I’ll be the best salesperson.”
I groaned. “Take my advice, stay well away from that woman.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Heathcliff can’t intimidate me. I’ll be stern and state my case. He’s my boss. It’s not right for him to make an advance like that on me, and then to turn it around and act like I’m the bad person. I’m not going to let it go this time. I’m going to march in there and tell him what I think, and if that means I can’t work in the bookshop or see him anymore, than I’m just going to have to live with that.
Ignoring the stabbing sensation in my chest, I forced the front door open. “Heathcliff,” I yelled, letting the door slam behind me.
No answer. The only sound was the faint gurgle of the upstairs pipes. The coffee had disappeared though, so at least I knew he was nearby.
“I’ve come to talk about yesterday. I think you know how highly inappropriate it is to make an advance like that on an employee. I know things have been stressful for you lately, but just because I know your secret and you know mine doesn’t mean you get to treat me that way—”
“What’d he do to you?”
My breath caught in my throat. Morrie stood at the top of the stairs, patting his hair dry with a towel. He wore nothing but his wicked grin. Aphrodite, save me.
“I… er…”
“He’s not here,” Morrie said. “He slunk away twenty minutes ago, mumbling about some appointment. Judging by the flames coming out your ears, I think he wanted to get out of the line of fire. I repeat, what did he do?”
“I really need to talk to Heathcliff.”
“Don’t look so glum. I’m here instead, and we’re going to have the best day. Yesterday was terrible for me, as well. I spent three hours infiltrating the department store only to discover those rings are so popular there’s no way to find out what store it came from or who purchased it. But today will be better! Let’s start by rearranging all the books so they’re alphabetized by the third letter of the author’s first name. Oh, or…” his eyes glinted with mischief as he descended the stairs. “We could glue all the furniture to the ceiling.”
I snorted. “Don’t, Morrie, please. I—”
“What did he do?” Morrie was only a few feet away now. This close, his fruity scent overwhelmed me, sending me straight back to that alley in London, to his lips on mine and his hand down my pants, touching me until my body shuddered with the best orgasm of my life. My stomach flipped and I stared at the ground. Big mistake. I copped an eyeful of muscled thighs and the largest half-erect cock I’d ever seen.
I snapped my head up and focused on a spot on the wall behind Morrie’s earlobe. Calm down, just breathe. “I… we had a disagreement,” I managed to choke out.
“A disagreement? You didn’t want his tongue down your throat?” Morrie stepped closer. Heat rose off his body. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I guessed, and you confirmed my supposition.”
Damn you, Morrie. “You should put some clothes on. The door’s unlocked. A customer could come in any minute.”
“Why? You don’t want me to put clothes on.”
Heat flushed in my cheeks. “I do.”
“Give me some credit. The flush in your cheeks, the quickening of your breath, the subtle change in your scent as your pheromones kick in… It’s a simple deduction.” Morrie drew up in front of me, not touching me but holding his body so close it felt like touching. All I had to do was fall forward and we’d be locked together, the magnetic pull of our attraction drawing us in.
Time stopped. I focused on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Morrie’s wicked grin held the w
orld.
“What… are you going to do?” I whispered.
“Nothing,” Morrie said. “Until you make your own move. I won’t touch you until you beg for it, Mina. But I promise, you will beg for me.”
I won’t touch you until you beg for it, Mina. By Isis, my name sounded glorious on his lips.
I tried to laugh it off, but it came out like a high-pitched squeal. “This is ridiculous. I barely know you, and everything I do know tells me I should run away.”
“You do like running from your problems, don’t you?” he chuckled, and even though he was ribbing me, the sound sent a shudder of pleasure through me. My nipples hardened, the tips just brushing his skin. Heat pooled inside me. Astarte, help me, I’m going to come right here.
“It’s complicated.” Heathcliff’s name circled in my head, but as my stomach clenched and the heat rose inside me, I struggled to remember why I needed to talk to him.
“Not from where I’m standing,” Morrie whispered. “All it takes is for you to make the move, and things will becomes exquisitely simple.”
Don’t look down don’t look down don’t look—
I looked down.
Morrie’s cock stood to attention, thrusting out from his body like a man on a mission. As long as my forearm, and hard as a rock.
Hard for me.
He wants me.
He knows about my eyes, and he wants me.
He knows I’m a failure and that I gave up my dream, and he wants me.
He knows I kissed Heathcliff, and he wants me.
He knows I’m suspected of murdering my best friend, and he wants me.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
“You weren’t scared the other day, in the alley.”
“That was different. Before…”
“Before Heathcliff kissed you and then ran away with his tail between his legs?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Sweet Mina, he only ran away because he’s scared like you. But the only people here now are you and me. Do I look like I’m afraid you’ll bite? I hope you bite.”
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