Not only was it quite overwhelming, but Sebastian was in a perfect position to look right down the gaping neckline of her T-shirt. As he opened his mouth to make yet another sarcastic remark, Posy put one hand on the centre of his chest and pushed him back. He was so warm, all bone and muscle and—
‘Careful, now. I think that counts as inappropriate touching,’ he said kindly.
‘You! You’re inappropriate! This is my parents’ room and you’re not going in there.’
Sebastian frowned. ‘Was. Not is. It was your parents’ room. They’ve been dead, what? Five years.’
‘Seven years, as a matter of fact.’ Though actually it was six years, eight months, one week and three days, because the exact date of their … parting was etched on Posy’s heart.
‘Seven years and you’ve got some weird shrine going on in there? How mawkish.’
Posy took a deep breath and tried to exhale through gritted teeth. ‘It’s not mawkish and it’s not a shrine and, again, it’s none of your business.’
Maybe it was a shrine and maybe the shop was too and that was why she was determined to hang on to it for dear life, but she couldn’t tell Sebastian that. He had the emotional intelligence of a goldfish. Not even a goldfish. Posy had heard tales of goldfish pining away after setting up home with another fish who’d then had the misfortune to die. No, Sebastian had the emotional intelligence of a gnat.
‘It’s not a shrine,’ she repeated. ‘I go in there. Vacuum, dust, that kind of thing.’
Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’ Those two syllables dripped with scepticism. ‘Are you telling me you possess a vacuum cleaner and, on occasion, actually use it? And you dust?’ Then because he was so much taller and more annoying than her, he reached over Posy’s head to run a finger along the top of the doorframe and held it out for inspection. ‘Look at that! It’s as black as my favourite Alexander McQueen suit.’
It was black. Black with years of accumulated grime and gunk, but who had time to run damp cloths along every nook and crevice? ‘Didn’t someone once say that after three years the dust doesn’t get any worse?’ Posy offered with a weak smile. ‘Anyway, a bit of dirt never hurt anyone. In fact, it helps to build a healthy immune system.’
She was preaching to the choir – she certainly wasn’t preaching to Sebastian, who had suddenly launched himself out of her orbit and was tearing down the stairs, shouting over his shoulder about estate agents and developers. ‘… have to replace all the windows and I’m pretty sure your electrics are about to blow. Whole place is a death-trap. Not worth spending money to bring it up to code when you’re only going to be here for another two years. Probably less than two years. Best you sign it over to me now and we’ll put it on the market as a redevelopment site.’
Posy caught up with Sebastian in the back office and had no choice but to grab his sleeve and yank him back so hard that he shrieked. ‘Not the suit! Don’t ever touch the suit!’
‘Sit down! Now!’ It was a voice she never, ever had to use on Sam, because he was a paragon among teenage boys and wouldn’t dream of doing anything so heinous that she needed to go all Wrath of God on his arse. She’d never used this voice on anyone in her entire life, but she was using it now and it seemed to work because Sebastian immediately dropped down on to the big leather swivel chair, though he swung this way and that with a grin on his face to show that he wasn’t completely cowed.
‘So stern. You remind me of a dominatrix, I once knew,’ he remarked, then lowered his eyes demurely and took a sip of his coffee, though he couldn’t quite hide a grimace as his lips made contact with a beverage that had started life as freeze-dried granules.
Posy shook her head. There was nothing for it but to tell Sebastian her plans for Bookends and do it quickly and, hopefully, painlessly. ‘I’m not signing the shop over,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s up to you what do you with the mews, but Lavinia left Bookends to me and I can manage perfectly well without your help. Did I say help? My mistake. What I meant was interference.’
‘What are you going to do with Bookends then?’ Sebastian asked. He gazed around the office, the one room in the building which was a model of efficiency and organisation – and that was down to Verity. ‘I mean, why on earth would you want to take on a failing business?’
‘It’s not failing!’
Sebastian snorted, rather elegantly, into his coffee. ‘I take it you haven’t seen the books then? If you had, you’d know that it’s losing money hand over fist.’
Those weren’t the kind of books that Posy had any interest in, though now she made a mental note to ask Verity to go through them with her. Or rather, hit the horrible highlights for her. ‘Obviously, I’m going to have to make some drastic changes, but Lavinia left me the shop because she knew what it meant to me and that I’d honour what it meant to her. It’s Lavinia’s legacy.’
‘Do you know how many bookshops have closed in the last five years?’ Sebastian pulled a phone out of an inner pocket of his jacket and held it aloft. ‘Shall I google it? Or leave it to your imagination?’
Posy didn’t have to leave it to her imagination. She already knew. Some people navigated their way around London via public toilets or branches of McDonald’s, but for Posy, London was a collection of bookshops with streets attached to them. They were fast disappearing now and Posy always felt a flicker of fear and foreboding each time she passed a shop where she’d once whiled away many a happy hour browsing the shelves only to find that it was now a coffee shop or a nail bar.
But she also knew that the rise of e-readers and the recession hadn’t killed off the printed word. People still loved to read. They still loved to lose themselves in a world forged from paper and ink. They still bought books and, with the right kind of plan and passion, they’d buy them from Bookends.
‘I don’t care,’ Posy said to Sebastian, though she cared very much. ‘Lavinia left the shop to me, I can do what I want with it.’
‘Yes, but she made me her executor. That means I act in the best interests of the estate.’ Posy wasn’t sure about that. The lawyer – she couldn’t remember his name – had said something about coming to his office to sign a few forms and then Bookends would belong to Posy. Was Sebastian going to contest the will, on the grounds that Lavinia was mentally diminished when she wrote it?
‘Lavinia said I had two years to make a go of things. If you’re determined to force me into giving up and handing over the shop to you, then you’re going against her last wishes. Do you want that on your conscience?’ Posy asked, though she wasn’t entirely sure that appealing to Sebastian’s conscience would work. In any case, Sebastian was on the move again, out of his chair and stalking back into the shop, pausing only to smile wolfishly at Verity as she came through the door.
Verity treated him to her patented dead-eyed stare, which she used to great effect on customers who assumed that because she worked in a bookshop she was there to help them with their bookish needs. Ditto, men who tried to compliment her, buy her a drink or engage her in small talk. It usually had the recipient backing away while apologising profusely, but Sebastian didn’t seem at all fazed. He shrugged, smiled to himself as if to say, ‘Well, you can’t win them all,’ then walked over to the centre table and stopped dead.
Traditionally, the large round table in the middle of the main shop was where they displayed new releases, but yesterday, in her first act as owner, Posy had broken with tradition. She’d bought a bunch of Lavinia’s favourite pale pink roses and placed them in Lavinia’s treasured chipped vase from Woolworths, next to a framed photo of Lavinia and Peregrine standing behind the counter, taken shortly after they got married. Then she’d typed out a notice and printed it on fancy card: