“Okay, you must totally think I’m crazy for telling you all these things...and I think I am, not to mention the fact, that I could go on and on about your emerald eyes and your summery-looking hair, but I had to tell you. You are extremely beautiful. It’s not like I’m ever going to see you again, so I thought, why not? Right? I have nothing to lose. Well, except maybe my pride.” She blew out the breath she was holding.
Blake stood motionless, staring at this angel from heaven who was saying all these things no one had ever had enough guts to say to his face, and he couldn’t even speak. He’d been through the trenches, literally, and never once was there a time when he couldn’t think of something to say. Usually it was a smart-ass quip that always came out of his mouth, but looking into this woman’s sweet hazel eyes, he couldn’t think of anything. Sure, he was smiling but he was so extremely flattered that he just did not know what to say.
When he didn’t say more, Marilyn jumped into her Jeep, backed out and sped away. What was she thinking? Since laying eyes upon’; him, she had asked herself that over a dozen times and now she was so mortified, she couldn’t believe it. How could she say all of those things to a complete stranger? What was worse was that he didn’t even say anything! Okay, maybe she didn’t give him a chance to say anything, but still, what could be more embarrassing than spilling your guts to a complete stranger and not getting any response? At the moment, she didn’t think there could possibly be anything worse.
As she continued to drive toward home, she knew how mortified she was but a tiny part of her inner psyche was like, you go girl! She sat a little taller on the way toward her house. She couldn’t believe she actually told him all the things she had been thinking. She usually had a difficult time spitting out the right words exactly the way she meant them without them coming out as sounding confused or jumbled. Not in Lover Boy’s case though; she couldn’t help but grin. Yes, she was mortified but really, it wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again. What was done, was done. No point in dwelling on it, she thought.
Chapter Two
Windsor was an extremely cute town, its location was superb – ten minutes from the interstate as well as a ten to fifteen minute drive to the larger cities surrounding Windsor – Greeley and Fort Collins. Both of those cities were college towns and had a great deal of commercial businesses as well as residential properties. So if Marilyn couldn’t find it in town, she would go to one of those places. Because Windsor was nestled in between these cities but far enough away to hold its own town appeal, it was a great place to raise a family. The town was known for its beautiful lakes, stunning golf courses and a twenty-one mile trail that connected Greeley to Windsor, all the while wandering along the Cache La Poudre River.
Marilyn loved the people of Windsor too. As big, or small, as the town was, depending on how you looked at it, it still held the charm of a little town. One where people weren’t afraid to say hello, offer a smile and in some cases, lend a hand. She had gotten to know a variety of people that came in and out of her bookstore and the majority of them were very nice.
Marilyn loved this town. She loved her little house that was located in the old part of town. She loved owning her own business. She had always loved books. When a building had gone up for sale on Main Street, not too far from home, she had jumped at the opportunity. Because it was a little outdated, and the owners badly wanted to sell it, she got a killer deal. From there she put all her blood, sweat and tears into fixing it up. Some work she had to hire out and some her father had helped her with. When all was done, it had been made into a cozy used-book store.
She had always wanted to own a bookstore, even when she was eighteen and had just graduated from high school. All her friends were heading off to college and she stayed close to home. She stayed behind and took classes here and there at the local community college about business and finance and marketing and of course, literature. While she went to school part-time, she worked as a waitress. She busted her ass most evenings and every weekend and made tips like no other. She worked double shifts any chance she got and she penny-pinched every dime and dollar that came her way, using the bare minimum on what she needed, nothing she desired.
It was extremely hard work, hard to make every single person you served smile, to make each customer happy with the hope that, even if you did, you still may or may not get a decent tip. The weekends were the best time to work. People came out to eat and play and drink, and the more they drank, the friendlier they became and the looser their pockets got. She knew how to be friendly with a little side of flirtiness that had most of her tables loving her. Working as a waitress, right up until she opened the book store, had gotten her everything she needed.
She slowly began investing every spare dime she had into any used book she could find and began saving them in her unfinished basement. She scoured all of Colorado’s (it felt like) garage sales, flea markets and used book sales she could find. She slowly began putting them up, by genre, in the store on the built-in shelves her father installed.
Before she knew it, she had enough of an inventory to officially open. It was a little slow at first but once people saw what she offered - book reading groups, Wi-Fi and an espresso bar, business had picked up. She had book groups every Wednesday night, which was more of a social hour than anything. Mostly made up of women, they talked about what books they were reading, which ones they couldn’t put down and which ones they couldn’t wait to get their hands on. It wasn’t a real formal meeting. Marilyn started the group by talking about the latest book she had read and it went from there.
It was mostly the same group of women who came on Wednesday night. In total, there were generally 10 women at book group – one of whom was always there, Marilyn’s best friend, Amber. She and Amber had been friends since high school. Amber went away to college and they kept in touch and remained close friends. Amber had stayed in state for college so the farthest apart they were was an hour drive away.
It was actually Amber who had suggested that Marilyn put in an espresso counter in the bookstore because, according to Amber, who didn’t love a latte while they looked at books or did some work? Marilyn agreed, she just hadn’t made it a priority yet, although she knew she’d have one at some point. Once Amber helped her research the costs associated with the machine as well as the syrups, milk, coffee and cups – it was a no brainer to get it done in the beginning rather than wait until later. The markup on espresso-based drinks was huge. So huge, in fact, that it accounted for thirty-five percent of Marilyn’s profit every month. Lusting after Literature had officially been open for two years now, and life was good.
As Marilyn pulled into her driveway, her mind switched to the hands-down-most-gorgeous-guy-she’d-ever-seen that she had run into earlier. Although she was extremely proud of herself for speaking the words that were on her mind, at the right moment, she was also a little disappointed that she didn’t try the get-to-know-you approach and asked if he wanted to meet again. Now, plain and simple, she just wasn’t ever going to see him again and that realization made her chest burn a little. Oh well, she thought, what could she do about it now? Not a thing.
Besides, someone as amazing-looking as Blake was, he was probably married with children or at the very least, had some hot and wonderful girlfriend. What could he possibly want with someone like her? Okay, she thought she was good-looking. She was confident that she could at least hold her own to any other female on the block. But she didn’t think she was smoking hot. She was almost five feet six inches, she wasn’t super skinny by any means, but she was fit and she loved the fact that she had curves in all the right places. To her, her best assets were her legs. She ran four miles almost every day and she had beautiful legs to prove it. Oh, how she would have loved to wrap them around Lover Boy! Enough already, Marilyn thought; she was going to make herself crazy!
Marilyn’s house wasn’t anything fancy. It was a small two-bedroom home that had been built in 1914. She shut the Jeep off and a
dmired her home. All hers. She was excited to have the day off and have time to herself.
Her driveway took up the entire side of her house, while the lawn started in the front and curved around to the back from the opposite side. She had a cement sidewalk that led from the driveway to the front porch as well as straight from the porch to the mailbox out by the street. She had two white rocking chairs on her porch that offset the beautiful sky blue color of the house. With the white pillars on the porch and the white trim all around the house, Marilyn had loved it before she had ever stepped foot inside. The house held all the appeal of old town charm and the size was perfect for a single woman like her. Not too much lawn to take care of and not too much house to clean.
She unlocked the front door and walked in, kicking off her shoes right across the threshold. She threw her keys and her purse on the antique sideboard she had painted turquoise and headed to her bedroom to change into her gardening clothes. She stripped down to her bra and panties and heard the familiar ringtone from Otis Redding’s song, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay and ran out to her purse, fumbling through it. Why couldn’t a person ever find a phone inside a purse, she questioned and answered just before it went to voicemail, “Hello?” answering before she saw who it was.
She wished she would have checked. Tyler.
“Hi, how are you?” He had been trying to get her to go to the local brewery with him, claiming he had some big surprise to show her, but she just didn’t have it in her to see what that surprise was. At least, not yet.
“Hey Marilyn, I’m doing great.” And typical of Tyler, he spoke almost nonstop, not allowing her to get a word in edge-wise. She walked back to her room, shimmied into her running shorts, all the while listening about how great his upcoming weekend was going to be. Yawn. She rummaged through her closet and found a hot pink tank top and with her free hand, stretched it out and pulled the phone away from her ear and threw it over her head, pulled it down and put the phone back up to her ear, never missing a thing.
“Tyler, that’s great. I know you are excited about getting me to go to Poudre Hops with you but it’s just really not a good time this weekend. I’m super-busy with the store and I’ve got more books I need to scan into the system. This weekend is just not a good time. Yeah, I know, I will, I promise.” Next weekend she would go with him to the brewery. “Okay, bye.” What did he have up his sleeve, she wondered. It must be something pretty good because he usually didn’t press the issue too much, once she’d told him no.
Her bedroom was located right off the formal dining room, though she didn’t have it really formal for all intents and purposes. Her house had a pretty open floor plan that allowed the family room and dining room to be one large room. Both bedrooms were located off the main area of the house. Her room opened into the dining area while the second bedroom was located off of the family room. There was a smaller door from the dining room, past her bedroom that led into the kitchen. Her dining area was also another work area. What she couldn’t fit into her computer room, which was the other bedroom, spilled out into the dining room. She had a square white table with four chairs, even though she never ate meals in there. Atop the table currently were all of the books that needed to be inventoried this weekend.
Her central bookkeeping system was housed out of the store but with her laptop at home she was able to manually input barcodes and print labels for the books because of the shared network. She didn’t have a hand-held book scanner at home, just for the sake of keeping costs down, but she could manually type in the barcodes, create an entry for the book, see how many copies she had on hand, how many she had in total inventory and how many, if any, were on hold, all from home. Once input, the system printed out a new barcode/label that had her store name and phone number and the cost of the book, which once scanned, would show what she would be inputting this weekend onto her computer screen.
The way her exchange system worked was that any time a customer brought in a new-to-her-store book, she would scan the barcode, see how many copies she had and, if she was willing, take it on as inventory. If so, the customer would receive a quarter of the credit of the book’s printed price. She would then turn around and sell the book for half off the printed price. Then, once that same book had been catalogued and another customer bought it, they could use half of their credit to buy the book and the remaining balance with cash. If she had too many of the books in stock, the customer had the option of keeping the book or giving it to Lusting after Literature to donate to a variety of organizations. Her favorite organizations were geared toward helping victims of domestic violence.
Marilyn went into her kitchen and filled a glass up with some iced tea and headed out the back door. She couldn’t help admiring her home as she cleaned up the yard. She was so proud and amazed at herself that she was able to save enough money to finally have a place to call her own as well as being able to own her dream business.
At first, her parents weren’t exactly optimistic that she could save enough money being a waitress to buy a house, let alone a business. But once she opened her mouth about what she wanted to accomplish and got so much negativity from them about how hard it would be, she knew she had no other choice but to do it and prove them wrong. She knew she could conquer that challenge. It had been hard. There were many nights she lay awake asking herself if she was crazy, willing herself not to give up. But somehow, she pushed through it.
She was pretty close with her parents and they had always been supportive of her but they were also realists and always looked at any situation on a how hard it will be to make-it or break-it basis. She was lucky enough that they helped her with college as well as buying her the Jeep. They allowed her to live with them until she had saved enough of a down payment for the house. Her dad was still concerned enough about her living alone that, as a moving in (or out) gift, he signed them both up for a concealed carry class so she could legally carry the Glock nine millimeter he bought for her along with the class. She wasn’t surprised. She grew up with guns and rifles in her parent’s home all her life. Her dad was an avid hunter as was her brother, James, and numerous uncles and cousins. She knew how to be safe with a gun, whether it be a shotgun or a handgun, long before the class but it was the thought that touched her the most. That her father, even at her twenty-seven years of age, still considered her his baby girl that he needed to protect. For Christmas last year, he bought her a really cute Smith and Wesson three-eighty because he knew that she put the nine millimeter underneath the counter in a locked box at her store. This much smaller handgun fit nicely into her purse’s secret zipper compartment.
It was a beautiful day out for early May. There was a clear blue sky and the temperature was somewhere in the seventies. Colorado weather was completely unpredictable. This time last year there was still snow on the ground and if she remembered correctly it had even snowed again about the middle of May. Now, she had already been watering her lawn since the last week in April. She should get a dog, she thought. It would be perfect to have a dog that wouldn’t run away, because she didn’t have a fence. She could take him to the store with her and he could be one of those dogs who are content to call home anywhere as long as there are people to give him attention. He could sleep out here in the yard while she did her yard work. Maybe she would look into that, she thought. What kind of dog would she get? A big one or a little one? She would definitely get a big one, she couldn’t imagine a tiny dog running around the store jumping on people and bothering them nonstop whereas a big dog, depending on the kind, would just stroll around and remain fairly calm.
Sitting outside, she decided that was the next thing she would do. Buy a dog. She enjoyed her glass of tea and basking in the Sun for a little while longer before duty called. It was a beautiful day to be out, but she needed to get those books done.
The rest of her day went by in flash. She input over a hundred books that had accumulated on her table and noted it was well past six o’clock. She rolled her head around to
get the kinks out of her shoulders and neck and went into the kitchen to find something to eat. She made a turkey sandwich and took it into the family room to watch some TV. Oh goodie, her favorite movie was just starting. She ate her sandwich and watched the love story and couldn’t help but think about the man she ran into today at Rumors. Would she ever find someone to love her like the man loved this woman in the movie? Would she ever find someone that made her heart skip a beat? As she watched the couple on the screen explode into a passionate kiss in the pouring rain, she could hear her mother’s words telling her that love happens when you least expect it. She only hoped that was true.
Chapter Three
“Just start bringing them in and we can put them on the shelves once I’m done here,” Marilyn told her assistant, Kay.
Kay was a retired school teacher who now worked pretty much full-time for Marilyn. She was a Godsend! Marilyn trusted her explicitly and knew she could have a day off here and there and Kay would take care of the store. She had two other employees; both were part-time girls who went to school at the local high school and helped at the store on evenings and weekends. The girls, Mackenzie and Sophia, worked alternating nights and, depending on their weekend schedules, worked the weekends as well. With the exception of Wednesday night’s reading groups, the bookstore was only open until seven thirty on weekdays. The girls could come in after school and work for a few hours each day. Lusting after Literature was closed on Mondays, leaving Saturday and Sunday as major money-making days for the store.
“Yes, thank you so much for coming in. And don’t forget to stop in for our Wednesday night reading groups. They are a lot of fun,” She smiled at her last customer as she walked out the door. “That woman comes in here at least three times a week and always orders the same thing: medium non-fat caramel latte, no whip cream and extra caramel sauce on top. I keep trying to get her to stop by our book reading groups. She’s super nice,” Marilyn told Kay.
Gun Shy Page 2
