Eliza had laughed, calling Cat a pessimist without a romantic bone in her body. Cat had retorted that Eliza’s head was in the clouds, and then, to her own surprise, had told Eliza about Ryan. Eliza had shared about Greg. The two bonded instantly and had continued their almost-daily coffee tradition ever since.
Five years ago, after Eliza’s parents died in a horrific automobile accident, Eliza had moved in with Cat. She’d needed the support. So had Cat, who secretly hoped Eliza would stay with her forever.
“I can’t lose you, Eliza!” Cat said in a half-joking, half-panicked voice as they crossed through the store.
Eliza tucked her bag behind the register desk and glanced at herself in the wall mirror, smoothing her hair down and lifting her chin to make it appear firmer. “Oh, silly, you’ll always be my best friend. But I still believe, still have to believe, that the right guy is out there waiting for me. The next right guy after Greg, at least.”
“You’re such a romantic, Eliza. You need to stop reading all those romance novels.”
“Says the woman who writes them.”
Cat huffed. “I don’t write smut! Those were silly scribblings from fifteen years ago.”
“Methinks thou doth protest too much. And no, I don’t need to stop reading them. They’re what keep my hope alive, that someday my duke will come.”
“Then I hope for that, too. But not too soon, please.” Eliza raised an eyebrow.
Cat squeezed her close. “Because knowing me, I’d end up dueling him for your affections. And I’m no good with a pistol.”
Later that morning, Cat was walking back to her desk when she heard a soft, low voice. “You’ve got a wonderful poetry section here.”
Startled, Cat turned to her right, where the poetry books were shelved. A tall, lean man with dark, charmingly disheveled hair stood leafing through a book.
“Thank you,” she said. “My mother is a poetry fan and enjoys adding to our collection. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”
He glanced up from the book. His face rendered her mute—here was a beautiful man. He had chiseled cheekbones, the kind you only saw on models, with full lips and stunning blue eyes. Cerulean, or maybe azure. Definitely something beyond simple blue. Only the slight crookedness of his nose saved him from Greek god status. The stubble gracing his face and the casualness of his hair suggested he didn’t much worry about his appearance, though. She guessed him to be somewhere in his twenties.
“Your mother has good taste. Listen to this.”
He began to read, but Cat wasn’t really listening. She watched his lips move and wondered what it would be like to touch them. She marveled at the beauty of his features and the melodic tone of his voice. God, she wanted to listen to him all day. Or kiss him. But if I kiss him, he’ll stop talking. She tried to tune back into the words, but everything in her remained focused on those magnificent lips.
He stopped. “Isn’t that awe-inspiring?” His face lit up as he talked.
His voice hypnotized her, lulling her as if by some secret spell. She attempted to focus on what he’d read, something about having no fear. She locked eyes with the mysterious stranger. “It’s wonderful,” she mumbled. “Who wrote it?”
“W.S. Merwin.” At her blank expression, he added, “Former poet laureate of the United States. It’s called A Contemporary. I’ve loved that poem for years.” He looked back at the book, flipping pages as if searching for a specific piece. Cat struggled to think of something more intelligent to say, as her pulse raced and her nostrils flared at the clean, delicious scent of him.
What was wrong with her? A week ago she’d insisted to Eliza that she wasn’t the least bit interested in a man, and here she was, having gone out on a date with one—although said date turned out to be a bust—and now fantasizing over another, thinking thoughts that reminded her of the smutty story Eliza had found. She hadn’t paid attention to men for six years; what had her reacting to two in such a short time period?
Make that three. You can’t deny Ben Cooper caught your attention, too.
The door opened and an older couple walked through. At the sound of their voices, the man looked up and then checked his watch.
“Oh, I’m late.” He gave her a wolfish grin. “Gotta scoot.” Tucking the book back onto the bookshelf, he winked and sauntered out the door.
Cat stood there, breathing slowly to calm her flaming senses. Anyone would react to that man, right? Right? That mouth. She’d wanted to touch it, to feel those lips on hers. Goosebumps prickled her skin.
She didn’t understand what was happening to her, why she was suddenly so aware of men, when before she’d managed to convince herself they were just part of the scenery. No doubt her sister would say it was her biological clock, tick, tick, ticking away.
Cat wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was her stories, the ones Eliza had unearthed from that box. She had written them, after all. Perhaps reading them again had sparked something within her, made her realize that at one point, at least, she’d been very, ahem, interested in men and sex. And love.
She glanced around the store, noting the couple bent over a book together, their heads nearly touching. The woman was chatting excitedly about something in the book, her finger pointing at it. The man gave her a quick kiss on the forehead.
He looked up, noticing Cat watching them. He tipped his head in greeting, and Cat could see his brown eyes sparkling. “Still the love of my life,” he said, as his wife tittered beside him.
Cat smiled in return, but it was forced. A wave of loneliness engulfed her. Would someone love her like that when she was their age?
Chocolate brown eyes swam before her.
The next afternoon, Cat handed Eliza a stack of fluorescent-colored papers. “Help me hang these up, will you? We’ll put a few here in the store. I was hoping you could also tack them up around your department and the university libraries. The coffee shop, too.”
Eliza took the papers and skimmed the top one. “Poetry Night. Sounds fun. I bet we’ll get all sorts of interesting types in here. Some people will use any excuse to get up in front of a mic.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I got the idea from my mystery poetry guy. I thought maybe it’d help pull in the college crowd.”
“Oh, yeah, Mr. Merwin.”
“Not Mr. Merwin, silly. He read me Merwin.”
Eliza studied her. “Are you hoping he’ll come?”
“You’d be hoping he’d come, too, if you’d seen him, Lizzie. He is that good-looking.”
Cat moved over to the table, setting a Poetry Night table topper at its center. The door opened and a man walked through. Cat glanced at him briefly, and then her eyes flew back to him in shock. It was the poetry guy, the man about whom she and Eliza had just been speaking. How was that possible? Her cheeks tingled, though she knew he hadn’t heard them.
“Hello, again.” He addressed Cat, coming to stand before her.
“Hel-lo!” interrupted Eliza, eyeing her friend as she hurried over to them both.
The man turned toward Eliza. “Hi,” he said.
Cat was surprised when his gaze came right back to her. Usually, men lingered on Eliza. “Do you have any works by Anne Haselhoff?” he asked her.
“Hrm. The name is not familiar. Is she a poet?”
“Yes. I’m considering including some of her works in my dissertation.”
“Dissertation? So you’re in the English department here, too? How have I not seen you before?” Eliza interjected. Cat regarded her friend with surprise as if she’d forgotten Eliza was there.
“ ... Right.” Eliza held up the papers in her hands, giving Cat a knowing grin. “I’ll take these flyers on over to the library, then. It was nice meeting you...”
“Grayson.” He stuck his hand out in introduction.
Eliza shook it. “Right. Grayson.” Then, with a wink at Cat, she walked out the door.
Grayson turned back to Cat. “I should have introduced myself earlier. I’m G
rayson Phillips. You can call me Gray.”
“Catherine Schreiber. Or, as most people call me, Cat. Nice to meet you. I could check the computer, but it’s probably faster to look this way.” She walked over to the rows of poetry books. “Haselhoff, Haselhoff,” she muttered as she ran her fingers along the book spines. “Hey, we do,” she noted with surprise. “My mom must have ordered it for us.”
“Great.” He pulled the volume off the shelf and started scanning through its pages. Cat stood there awkwardly, unsure whether to try to make more conversation as he immersed himself in the text.
After a moment he looked up at her and smiled. The force of his grin nearly made her heart skip a beat—a notion she’d only read about in books, and which she’d mocked Eliza about plenty of times in the past. But there was something about him. He was so ... intoxicating.
“Here, listen to this,” he murmured.
“‘An arm passes a leg in darkness.
I feel you move over me, slowly, carefully.
I brush your face and your stubble kisses my fingertips.
Your mouth descends onto mine in soft hello.
I move my hand across your back, feeling the muscles
turn as you dip to greet my stomach with your lips,
your beautiful lips.
Your hair whispers across my chest, telling me of love.
I am listening.’”
“That’s nice,” Cat mumbled lamely, not sure what to say. “I like ‘your mouth descending onto mine ...’”
Gray’s eyebrows went up and a slow, suggestive smirk spread across his face. Realizing what she had implied, Cat wanted to sink into the floor as her cheeks burned a Code Red. “I ... uh ... that’s not what I meant. Um ...”
“I know,” he said, still grinning. “But the imagery is striking, isn’t it?”
Cat wasn’t sure if he was referring to the poem, or to what she’d inadvertently said. She smiled weakly and turned to walk back to her desk. Anything to get away from the mixture of embarrassment and desire that was flooding through her veins.
“I’m researching various twentieth-century female poets,” he continued as he followed her, once again the intellectual. “I’m writing about their takes on sexuality and feminism and how these views have evolved and changed in their works over the course of the last fifty to one hundred years—the kind of pre- and post-feminist movement view, as it were.”
“Really?” Cat asked, her voice echoing her surprise. “I wouldn’t think that topic would interest most men. The feminist part, at least.”
“What a sexist statement!” He chuckled as she nearly dropped the remaining flyers she still held in her hands. “Do you mean men can’t be interested in feminist thought? Or that men are only interested in sex?”
His eyes raked her as he waited for her answer.
Good Lord, when he looks at me like that, I feel as if he’s about to devour me. She folded her arms and the papers across her belly in a defensive position. “You really want me to answer that?”
“You just did,” he retorted. “But it’s fine. You’re certainly not the only one to think that. Any modern magazine would say the same.”
Cat relaxed a bit.
“I blame my mother,” he went on. “She was quite active in the feminist movement in the 1970s. She never thought she’d get married. Didn’t have me until she was in her forties. Said she was too old to have more, so I ended up an only child.”
He turned back to the book without seeming to want a response.
“Well, um, maybe you’d like to come to our first Poetry Night?” Cat thrust a flyer into his hands, wanting him to look at her again with those gorgeous azure-colored eyes.
He took the flyer and examined it. “Sure. It’s a date.”
“It is?” she said. “Oh, I mean, yes, we’re hoping to have lots of people there. It’d be great if you could read something.”
He grinned again, seeming to enjoy her discomfiture. His eyes dropped to her lips, and then rose back to her eyes. “It’s been a pleasure seeing you again, Cat. I’ll take this book. And I’ll see you next Tuesday.”
Chapter 7
“So, would you sleep with him?” Eliza said the next morning, as she and Cat settled into their regular booth. “I might if I got the chance.”
“Shh!” Cat choked out, nearly tipping over her coffee mug. “Someone might be listening.” She peeked around the room. No one seemed to be paying any attention.
“Well, they wouldn’t have much to hear, would they, if neither one of us sleeps with him. I thought you said you wouldn’t mind a little action,” Eliza shot back. “It’s exciting to see you finally noticing men again. It’s been a long time.”
“What do you think I am, a Cat on the prowl?” She snickered at her own bad joke. “I know most people will sleep with whomever whenever these days, but I’m not like that.”
“Despite what you wrote in that Carreling story, huh?”
Cat gritted her teeth. “That was a story.”
“Ha, ha, I know. But, hey, Grayson is a grad student, right? What’s wrong with hoping a little fantasy can come to life?”
Cat tensed. She’d thought of the similarities between the grad student and her story, too. She couldn’t help it, not after her crazy thoughts about Derrick and that high school story. Of course, meeting a grad student didn’t mean she was destined to sleep with him. Grad students were a dime a dozen in Charlottesville. And her story had been about a guy named Nick. In the library. Not about a guy named Grayson in her bookstore.
She wanted to laugh at how presumptuous it sounded, to think a man like that might want to sleep with her. Her body flamed at the thought, imagining those lips trailing down over...
She shook her head. Stop it, Schreiber! That’s never going to happen!
Still, it was odd that she’d met a quarterback mechanic and a sexy doctoral student within days after reading stories—stories she’d written—about people who bore more than a passing resemblance to those main characters. Wasn’t it?
Eliza grimaced. “Well, I like the idea.”
Cat was grateful Eliza had misinterpreted her headshake—no need for her bestie to know she was drooling over a man. Any man. Or that she was having bizarre thoughts about those stupid stories.
“I want you to live a little,” Eliza said. “Let passion in your life again. Let love ... heck, let lust!” Her eyes bore into Cat’s. “Don’t let Ryan win. He didn’t deserve you then, and he certainly doesn’t deserve the power he still holds in your life now.”
“Power now? What are you talking about? I’ve moved on.” Cat set her coffee mug down defiantly. “He was a deceiving jerk, and I wouldn’t give him the time of day if he walked in here right now.”
“Maybe not,” Eliza conceded. “But you haven’t moved on. You’re treading water, just trying not to drown. And you’re convinced no one will help you, that you can’t trust anyone to throw you a line, because he hooked you so deeply, reeled you in, and then left you gasping for air.”
“Oh my Lord, drama queen. No wonder you’re an English major. Enough with the swimming-fishing analogies. And enough about men. I don’t want to talk about it. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”
Cat took a bite of an enormous blueberry muffin. She usually didn’t indulge in sweets in the morning, but a downed computer system meant she didn’t give a fig for moderation. “Did you do anything on the downstairs computer last night?”
Eliza looked up from swirling her coffee. “Me? No. I was in bed by 9:30. Exciting life I lead, I know.”
“Ugh. Guess I’ll have to call Mike. I don’t want to shell out for computer repairs, but I think we’re going to have to. An order came in last night for that Winnie the Pooh book, but I can’t get the Internet working to see where to send it. That’s an $11,000 sale. Lord knows we need the money.”
She sighed as she took another bite of the muffin.
Eliza had suggested a couple of years ago that th
ey branch out into the online market. Cat had resisted at first—wasn’t that everything her father had fought against?
“There’s nothing like a real book,” he’d stated. “You’ve got to touch it, to feel it, to be able to absorb its essence.”
How could one do that buying off a screen? But knowing such sales could save the store, they’d started offering rare and antique books on the Web—they couldn’t compete against Amazon with the popular stuff, anyway. Sales were infrequent but did boost revenue. They certainly had enough inventory; Frank’s favorite pastime had been buying crates of old books from auctions and estate sales—his own form of treasure hunting, he’d joked.
“Did you call the cable company?” Eliza asked.
“Yeah, that’s the first thing I did, but they say everything’s fine on their end—that it must be something with our computers.” Cat nervously shredded her napkin.
“Excuse me. Did you say eleven grand for a book?” came a male voice at her right side, causing Cat to knock over her coffee.
“I’ll get some napkins,” Eliza exclaimed, leaping up and heading to the sidebar.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The man leaned over the table and started sopping up the mess with his own napkin.
Cat turned toward the source of the voice. “Oh, it’s you. Hi, Ben,” she said, swiping at the coffee with her napkin, as well.
He was so close Cat caught the surprisingly delicious smell of his skin. She inhaled, trying to determine the scent. It was pleasant. Masculine. With undertones of something she couldn’t quite identify. She ducked her eyes when he looked at her questioningly.
“Someone will really pay that?” he continued. It was a relief he was asking about the book, seemingly unaware of her olfactory fantasies.
“It’s a 1926 American first edition, one of only two hundred copies, signed by both Milne and his illustrator,” she rattled off. “So, yeah, collectors will pay for something like that. But I can’t ship it if I can’t get on the site.”
The Magic of Love Series Page 6
