Apples, Actors and Axes

by Paula Lester

  Apples, Actors and Axes

  Beachside Books Magical Cozy Mysteries, Volume 2

  Lisa B. Thomas and Paula Lester

  Published by Paula Lester and Lisa B. Thomas, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  APPLES, ACTORS AND AXES

  First edition. January 30, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Lisa B. Thomas and Paula Lester.

  Written by Lisa B. Thomas and Paula Lester.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About Lisa B. Thomas

  About Paula Lester

  Chapter 1

  Paige pulled the book she’d just shelved toward herself just a touch to line it up perfectly with the others. She’d never known what a perfectionist she was until the responsibility of getting the inherited bookshop back in the black had fallen on her shoulders. Now, it felt like everything she did, including making the books look as attractive as possible on the shelves, was geared toward that goal.

  The feeling of a small, warm body rubbing on her leg made her grin, and she reached down to ruffle Casper’s fur. “Hi, cat. Are you trying to tell me it’s almost dinnertime?” She glanced at her watch. Sure enough, it was nearly noon. That’s when Paige usually fed herself and the white cat. It was easier on days when her assistant worked, but on off days, she locked the shop up for a half hour. “Okay. Thanks for being my lunch alarm. I’ll feed you in a few.”

  The bells above the front door tinkled, and Paige’s sister-in-law, Sarah, blew in like a hurricane, panting to catch her breath. She wore a plastic apron and a thin pair of latex gloves, which she peeled off and tossed into a garbage pail next to the checkout counter.

  Paige narrowed her eyes. “Is something wrong?” Sarah worked at Terrific Tresses, the hair salon a block over from the bookshop, Tuesday through Saturday, and she didn’t usually get a lunch break until closer to one thirty.

  “No. I’m just working on Emma’s roots. She has to sit for fifteen minutes.”

  Paige liked Emma. She was an elderly lady who came into Beachside Books at least weekly to look at the magazines and peruse the new release table. There was a pleasantness about her that drew people to her, and she’d even made a few sales just by chatting with other customers about books she liked.

  “Is she sticking to the jet-black hair?”

  Sarah nodded. “For now. She said something about going browner this fall.” She waved her hands back and forth in the air. “But I don’t have time to talk about that. While I was working on Emma, Sylvie’s daughter came in the shop to get some money from her mother. She said she saw on Twitter that Jordan Rake is in Comfort Cove.”

  Paige stopped sorting books and gave Sarah her full attention. Jordan Rake was the gorgeous man who had come into the bookshop a couple days earlier, responding to her Help Wanted sign. Why would Sylvie’s daughter follow Jordan on Twitter?

  Sarah bounced on her toes, waving her hands even more. She usually only got that excited about a new vegan recipe. “Emma piped up that she knew the new guy she’d seen working at Beachside Books yesterday looked like a celebrity. Is it true?”

  Casper meowed and placed his front feet on Paige’s leg. She nudged him off. “Yes, I hired a guy by that name on Tuesday. What do you mean ‘celebrity’?”

  Sarah squealed, and her feet actually left the ground while she clapped. Then she stopped and her forehead furrowed. “Did you just ask me who Jordan Rake is?”

  Paige shrugged and headed back toward the storeroom, Casper trying to take her down by weaving in and out of her legs as she walked. “Stop that, cat. If I break my neck and die, you’ll starve.” As she poured the kibble, she leaned back to glance at Sarah through the back room’s doorway. “I have no idea who he is. Other than the guy I hired to work for me. And believe me, that was a mistake. I might have to fire him when he comes in tomorrow.”

  “Fire him? Are you nuts? He’s only the hottest guy ever.” Sarah put a hand on her chest. “He’s an actor and model, and last year, a video of him went viral. You’ve got to see it. He ran into a burning building to rescue—get this—a dog!” She looked like she might swoon. “It was the cutest little beagle, and Jordan brought it out of the house all cradled in his hoodie, smoke billowing behind them. He had ashes smudged on his cheeks. Are you sure you didn’t see it?”

  Paige shook her head, returning to the front of the shop and leaning against the checkout counter. “I was in Italy. Not paying attention to American tabloids. And I don’t Twitter. Or tweet or whatever.”

  “Oh my word. You have to look it up. I’ve seen all of his movies. Twice.”

  “He’s done movies?”

  “Oh yeah. None of them have been huge, breakout hits, but he’s so gorgeous I don’t even care about the plots.” Sarah glanced at her watch and spun on her heel. “Oh dear, I have to go rinse Emma.” Suddenly, she stopped and glared at Paige. “Wait, did you say you might fire Jordan?”

  Paige sighed heavily and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s gorgeous—I’ll give you that. When he came in and said he was responding to my Help Wanted sign, I hired him within ten minutes.”

  Sarah cocked her head to the side and grinned.

  Paige laughed. “Yeah, yeah. I’m not immune to attraction. Anyway, he came in for his first day yesterday, so I showed him around and started training him. I’d talked about inventory, shelving books, dealing with customers, and how to take in shipments for, I swear, thirty minutes before he suddenly got this totally baffled look on his face. I stopped and asked him if there was a problem. Listen to this: he asked me what kinds of gigs I was going to be booking him for.”

  “Gigs? What did he mean?”

  Paige rolled her eyes. “He thought Beachside Books was a booking agency and I was going to scout out modeling jobs for him. I guess he thought he was applying for a job as a swimsuit model or something. It makes more sense now that I know he does that kind of thing, but geez. Could the man not see the shelves full of books everywhere? Shouldn’t that have been a clue that this was a bookstore?”

  Sarah winced. “Not much behind the pretty face, huh?”

  “There doesn’t appear to be, no. He said he still wanted the job, though. Needs the money.”

  “Why is he in Comfort Cove?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t ask him that, but I didn’t know he was a dog-saving internet sensation either.” Casper wandered back up to the front of the shop and meowed. “Don’t worry, cat. I’m sure he’d rescue felines too. Anyway, I worked with the guy as best I could for the rest of the day, and it would take a lot for me to be able to trust him to run the cash register while I was gone. And he doesn’t really read, so he can’t recommend stuff to customers.” She paused and pursed her lips. “But he’s personable. Good with small talk. The folks who came in yesterday, especially the ladies like Emma, really liked him. I swear she bought stuff she didn’t even look at just because he flashed his dimples at her.”

  “I’d buy whatever he offered m
e,” Sarah said wistfully. Then she straightened up and hurried toward the door again. “I really have to go. But don’t fire Jordan before I can meet him and get a selfie, okay?”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  Sarah gave her a stern look. “I’m serious. You owe me! I took you in when you got here from Italy. Gave you a roof over your head and food to eat.”

  Paige thought that was debatable. Tofu roast chicken and hummus sandwiches were on the verge of not really being food. She bit her tongue, not wanting to hurt Sarah’s feelings.

  Sarah paused and added, “And I’m married to your brother.” She hurried to the door but stopped when she heard a loud clanging of metal. “What on earth was that?”

  “That,” Paige said with a sigh, “is the sound of my business going down the tubes. Apparently, the plumbing is shot. Brody, the Pipe Doctor, is in the basement checking the pipes. It will be a miracle if this fiasco doesn’t bankrupt me.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Sarah said and headed out the door.

  Paige locked the door behind her, hoping Emma’s hair wasn’t purple from having the color on too long. She headed down to the basement to find Brody wrenching on a pipe. “What’s the diagnosis, doc?”

  He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Looks like the old gal is going to need some major surgery, and that’s just to keep her alive. Now to get everything up to code . . .”

  “Don’t even say it.” Paige held up her hands. “What’s the minimum amount I’m going to need?”

  “I can’t do much for less than ten grand.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” Paige felt the bile rise in her throat. She didn’t have even close to that much in the bank, and the bookshop was barely breaking even. She’d used most of the money from her parents’ life insurance to pay for college and support her writing endeavors in Italy. She didn’t dare touch the small nest egg she’d squirreled away into a personal savings account. The last thing she wanted was to ask her brother for money since he and Sarah were saving up to start a family.

  Her only hope was to call the bank for a loan. But if business didn’t pick up soon, she might not be able to pay it back. She trudged back up the steps to the shop and said a silent prayer to her Aunt Nora, who had recently left her the quaint bookstore that had become her new home in Comfort Cove. “If there is anything you can do to help, please show me a sign.”

  And just like that, a sign indeed appeared.

  Chapter 2

  Paige bounced down the attic stairs from her small makeshift apartment with a renewed sense of hope. The sign she’d been hoping for had come the previous afternoon in the form of multiple customers—mostly women—stopping by to inquire when Jordan would be back to work. She assured them the fabulous Jordan Rake would be in the shop on Wednesday. If he was going to draw as many customers as she thought, he might need to start working every day instead of every other day and Saturdays.

  She stepped down to the main floor of the bookshop, coffee in hand and Casper hot on her heels. “Okay, cat, okay. When have I ever forgotten to feed you breakfast?”

  A knock on the shop’s front door stopped her from heading straight to the storeroom to pour food into the white fur ball’s bowl. She could see Jordan on the sidewalk outside, peering through the glass door into the shop. When he spotted her, his face lit up with a huge smile, and he waved.

  “Hold on, Casper,” she said, crossing to unlock the door and let her new assistant in. “Good morning.” Paige glanced at her watch. “You’re right on time. I like that.”

  “Sure thing, boss lady. I like to be prompt.”

  He was good at making eye contact when he spoke, and Paige couldn’t help but be struck by how clear and blue his eyes were. She stared into them for a few seconds longer than was necessary before forcing herself to shift her gaze. Her eyes were traitors, though, and they only moved further down the actor’s body instead of focusing somewhere else entirely. Jordan wore khaki cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a blue T-shirt the same color as his eyes. No wonder his peepers popped—the man knew how to dress himself.

  She frowned a tiny bit at his choice of shoes, but quickly decided not to make a case out of it. It was a beachside store, after all, and she wanted the atmosphere to be chill and peaceful. Besides, he obviously knew how to woo customers. Maybe she should start wearing flip-flops too.

  Casper meowed, and Paige remembered she was supposed to be feeding him. Then she realized he wasn’t talking to her. Instead, he rubbed in and out of Jordan’s legs, chatting away to her new assistant and gazing up at his face.

  Apparently, it wasn’t only human women who were smitten with Jordan. Annoying but loveable shop cats could be affected too. Jordan grinned and leaned down to pet Casper.

  “Could you please give him a scoop of food? His bowl’s in the storeroom.” If the furry traitor wanted to be friends with Jordan, he might as well help her with the less enjoyable cat-ownership chores.

  “Sure thing,” Jordan said, and Casper followed him eagerly to the back room.

  The shop’s bells jingled steadily all morning. After about an hour, Paige began to notice the day’s clientele skewed toward teenaged girls and young women, who all seemed to make a beeline for the new assistant. She couldn’t seem to help anyone no matter how hard she tried. On the other hand, customers were leaving the shop with armloads of books and magazines. She had listened in when one customer asked Jordan for a book recommendation. He’d complimented her hair, pulled a random romance from the shelf, and told her she would love it. She bought it. What a salesman!

  Paige busied herself working on financial spreadsheets and checking people out while she kept one eye and ear on Jordan’s customer interactions. Before long, it became clear to her that the recommendations he was making were based solely on books’ titles and covers. He hadn’t read anything he was suggesting the customers would love.

  Whether she was the only one catching on to his methods or the ladies simply didn’t care whether or not they were buying books they would actually like, Paige wasn’t sure.

  She wondered if Jordan had had a lot of practice in his life with pretending to know things he didn’t. He was a pretty good imposter reader—but what else had he faked his way through in life? Mentally, she shrugged off the thought. Business was booming at the moment, and Beachside Books needed as much income as possible to support the loan she needed to fix the plumbing.

  During a lull in customers, Paige approached Jordan. “We got a book shipment in a couple days ago, and I haven’t had a chance to do anything with them yet. They’re in boxes stacked in the storeroom where the delivery guy left them. Would you please bring the boxes in from the back and help me unpack, record, and shelve the books?” She turned away and then stopped, looking back over her shoulder at him. “Careful, it’s kind of dusty in that corner of the storeroom. I need to get in there with a vacuum once that spot’s empty again.”

  “No problem,” Jordan said. Before Paige knew what was happening, he’d pulled the T-shirt over his head and draped it across a chair in the reading nook. He grinned at her. “Now it won’t get dusty.”

  She wanted to reply, but only a small choked sound came out. Not only that, but her brain wasn’t offering any intelligent words for her to say anyway. She knew her eyes and mouth were wide, but she was absolutely physically unable to do anything about it. Jordan’s chest and abs were magnificent—like someone had poured his flesh into a mold and they came out absolutely perfect.

  He winked at her and walked into the storeroom, but Paige didn’t move. She couldn’t move because her brain didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders, able to direct her limbs like it usually did. In fact, when Jordan returned to the front of the bookstore carrying a large box, the muscles in his arms all bulging and defined, Paige was still standing in the same spot. And the sight of his flexed muscles seemed to trigger all the sweat glands in her body to begin overproducing. She felt a sheen of liquid on her forehead, and the ro
om seemed to have gotten twenty degrees hotter.

  Okay, this wasn’t acceptable. Little by little, she forced her brain back into gear. Starting by closing her mouth and looking away from Jordan, she followed up by taking a deep breath and forcing her feet to move toward the checkout counter.

  Dimly, Paige was aware that she should tell her employee to put his shirt back on. Weren’t there laws about shirts in retail establishments? She shook her head in an attempt to clear it further. No, that was just restaurants. No shirt, no shoes, no service. It was totally fine for him to go shirtless in a bookshop, she was pretty sure. Maybe she should make that his dress code. She giggled, and the spell finally seemed broken. But she did try to keep her eyes diverted as he brought the rest of the boxes out. Once she saw him pull his shirt back on, she felt able to cross over and begin unpacking the boxes.

  Who knew her brain could be hijacked so quickly and utterly? She added it to the growing list of traitors that had more loyalty to Jordan than to her, which now included her brain, her eyes, and her cat.

  The bells over the front door sounded, and Paige felt a wave of relief. Maybe her brain just needed the distraction of a customer to get totally back online. She straightened up to greet the shopper, but it was Sarah, sashaying in wearing her beauty shop apron and a huge smile. She walked right past Paige without so much as a “Hey, sister-in-law. How are you today?” Stopping in front of Jordan, Sarah said, “Hi! I’m Sarah Murphy.” Finally, she acknowledged Paige, but only with a jerk of her thumb as she said, “Paige’s sister-in-law. Nice to meet you.”

  Jordan rewarded Sarah with a movie-star-quality grin and a firm handshake. Paige watched Sarah’s hand squeeze into a fist as soon as the actor released it. She looked like she was barely resisting the urge to jump up and down.

  Paige leaned forward and cleared her throat, but Sarah didn’t respond, so she tried again. “Jordan’s busy unpacking books right now. Did you need something?”