Tom’s face was so red that it looked like he had third-degree burns. ‘I think you’re a lovely, altruistic woman who loves to stick her breasts in people’s faces anyway, so you might as well have a good reason for it.’
Well, when Tom put it like that … Nina always found it hard to resist a challenge. But Noah?
‘Bit too close to home for my liking. You do know that he’s friends with Sebastian, right?’
‘Just some light flirting,’ Tom persisted. ‘I mean, you nearly got down and dirty with that awful Piers. Taking one for the team, you called it. Verity told me.’
Piers had been a dastardly but quite hot property developer who’d come sniffing round Nina but only because it was all part of his nefarious plan to buy Bookends and turn it into a luxury block of flats. It hadn’t ended well. In fact, it had ended with Piers locking Posy in the coal hole under the shop and flinging grey paint around the shop two days before they reopened, then Sebastian turning up to rescue Posy and beat Piers to a pulp.
It had all been quite thrilling actually but also a timely reminder, not that she really needed one, that Nina had terrible taste in men. ‘That whole Piers thing was very complicated,’ she offered weakly. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m not going to waste any more of my precious time flirting with randoms. I want a soulmate, not a—’
‘Soulmates only exist in the pages of the books we sell. Anyway, Piers was evil and this Noah doesn’t seem evil at all, but how will we know for sure unless we have someone on the inside?’ Tom asked plaintively. ‘For instance, he might recommend that we become a solely online business and you know how impressionable Posy is. We’ll definitely be let go if that happens.’
Tom had a point. They could be very annoying but Nina enjoyed dealing with the general public in a face-to-face kind of way and if they became an online business, then Verity and Posy could easily manage between them.
‘Just a little light flirting, you say?’
‘Exactly,’ Tom said, patting her arm. ‘You know it makes sense. And it’ll give you some practice for when you find the right chap. Your “soulmate”,’ he added with airquotes and a smirk.
When Noah got back to the shop half an hour later, it was to find Nina creating a Valentine’s-themed window display, which featured a hell of a lot of red paper hearts and should have been done weeks ago. As it was, Nina stared down at the red card she was carefully cutting as she could hardly bring herself to look at Noah, much less shove her breasts in his face.
Tom was sitting behind the till reading Bridget Jones’s Baby and barely looked up as Noah came through the door. ‘Research,’ he muttered.
But Noah was not alone; two women followed him into the shop. ‘Yoo hoo! Tommy, dear! Have you missed us?’
Nina looked up just in time to see Tom’s face drain of all colour. He jumped down from his stool, opened his mouth, shut it again then dived for the safety of the office, door slamming shut behind him.
‘Does that mean that Tommy won’t climb up the ladder to get books down for us?’ the older lady asked, eyes gleaming behind a pair of diamanté-studded spectacles. ‘I particularly wanted something from the top shelf.’
‘I bet you did,’ Nina said, rising up from her kneeling position and shaking out her skirt so that tiny red-sequinned hearts rained down on the floor like confetti. ‘Wanted to perv at our Tom’s bottom, more like.’
‘Us? But we’re God-fearing ladies on our way back from church,’ the second lady said, and with her tight grey curls and sensible beige anorak, slacks and lace-up shoes, she did look as if she was more likely to be communing with the Lord than exhorting Tom to stretch a little further than was decent. ‘We would never perv.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Nina said fervently, not that she believed them. ‘But Tom’s very busy so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me.’
Their faces fell, but only for a moment. Then they caught sight of Noah who’d been watching this exchange with a look of horrified amusement.
‘Nina, you naughty girl! You didn’t tell us you had a new man on the staff!’
‘We do still need a book getting down from the top shelf!’
Nina was tempted to throw Noah, who was clutching his iPad with white-knuckled hands, on their not-so-tender mercies but that would be unfair. Hilarious, but unfair, and not even a little bit like light flirting.
‘He’s not on staff and he’s terrified of heights,’ Nina said. She didn’t know if Noah was scared of heights but he looked the type who’d be scared of any activity that might crease his suit. ‘Anyway, you don’t need a man because I’ve already put some books aside for you. Janet, you said you were after medical romances and Hilda, I ordered some inspirational romance in just for you.’
‘Oh!’
‘Praise be!’
Noah was forgotten as the two ladies hurried to the counter and Nina produced the small pile of books she’d weeded out for them.
Janet had spent forty years working in Patient Services for the NHS and yet still had an appetite for medical romances that featured chisel-jawed surgeons and sassy nurses, whereas Hilda loved ‘clean’ Christian romance novels, which seemed to feature an awful lot of mail-order brides, not that Nina liked to judge.
As Noah did his usual observing, Nina good-naturedly answered the two ladies’ questions about her tattoos, stuck out her tongue piercing and waggled it while they shrieked in delight, and admitted that she had yet to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour. Then she finally rang up their purchases so they could leave and Tom could emerge from his self-imposed exile.
It was an average afternoon that followed, despite Posy and Verity being MIA. Nina worked on her window display, Tom rearranged the new-releases shelves and in between, they took it in turns to serve any customers who ventured in on what had become a blustery, wet day and all the while, Noah took notes. Nina marvelled at how quickly she’d got used to his presence, like a reality TV show contestant forgetting that there were cameras filming their every move. That was probably why she treated Tom to an interpretative dance to ‘My Funny Valentine’ when he said that the big heart in the centre of her window display was wonky.
Posy and Verity didn’t get back from their trade show until Nina was flipping the shop sign from open to closed. They barrelled through the door, nearly knocking Nina down in the process, both of them pursed of lip and red of cheek in a way that had nothing to do with the chilly evening air.
‘Pub!’ Posy growled, flinging her handbag at the sofa, and didn’t even make it a hopeful question like Nina did. ‘Pub. I need so much alcohol.’ She turned to Verity, who’d shrugged out of her coat and had thrown it on the sofa opposite, an act which went against Verity’s whole brand ethos. ‘You’ve driven me to drink!’
‘Well, I need a lot more alcohol than you do,’ Verity snapped back. ‘Honestly, someone should send you to tote-bag rehab.’
‘How many new tote bags did you order, Pose?’ Nina asked with a grin. Ever since they’d first started planning the transformation of Bookends into Happy Ever After, Posy had been obsessed with tote bags. They currently had five exclusive designs on sale and Verity had banned Nina and Tom from saying anything in Posy’s hearing that might work well as a cute literary slogan on a tote bag. ‘I was thinking only the other day that the first line from Shirley Conran’s Lace – you know, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” – would look amazing on a tote bag.’
Posy failed to take the bait. ‘Never mind tote bags. I can’t even buy a book of stamps because Very refuses to hand over the shop credit card. Even though it’s my shop, so really it’s my credit card.’
‘Yes, and it will be your bankruptcy hearing that