Well Met(72)

“Okay,” I finally said. “I can handle it.” She was probably taking advantage of having an employee while she could. I couldn’t blame her for snatching a few hours off here and there.

The bell over the front door chimed, and I caught my breath as Simon walked in. After all this time, we hadn’t interacted much outside of Faire. (Unless you counted one pretty significant interaction in his bedroom the night before last. I for one counted the hell out of it.) He looked like a strange amalgamation of his identities: the crisply ironed shirt and immaculate jeans of Simon Graham, but with the longer hair and face-framing beard of Captain Blackthorne. The juxtaposition was . . . well, I squirmed a little and fought the urge to hop the counter and wrinkle that shirt in the best possible way.

Simon stopped short inside the doorway when he saw me, and Chris nudged me with her shoulder. “Now, I know for a fact you can handle him.” While my face flamed with mortification and Simon’s eyebrows knit in confusion, she snickered at her own joke and walked out of the store with a wave. Simon held the door for her, then turned back to me.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” I dropped my head to the counter and let the cool glass soothe my forehead. “God, it’s like working for my mother.”

“What was that about?”

I shook my head as I stood back up. “She knows. Apparently, the whole town does.”

“Knows?” After a beat his expression cleared and his eyes widened. “About us?”

“Yeah.” I bit the inside of my cheek and waited for his reaction.

“Huh.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction Chris had gone, as if he could still see her. “Well, if Chris knows, that’s as good as taking an ad out in the paper.” He tilted his head, thinking. “Do people still do that?”

“Do what?”

“Take ads out in the paper. Do people still even read the paper?”

“I . . . I guess?” I was a little confused by the direction the conversation had gone, but now that he mentioned it I was curious too. “I mean, my mother does. The Sunday paper has coupons, you know.” Coupons that she still clipped and sent once a week to April and me, inside greeting cards where the coupons fell out like oversized confetti when we opened them.

He considered that. “Seems like a dying thing, though. So will the idiom change? Should we start saying things like ‘posting it online’?”

“‘Create a banner ad’?” I suggested, leaning my elbows on the counter.

“See, I like that better.” He mirrored my pose and he was close, so close to me that my heart pounded. I was no match for his smile. “Close to the original idiom, and it implies the same thing—spending money to make an announcement.”

I allowed myself a second to be lost in his smile before I laughed. “Good God. Once an English teacher, always an English teacher.”

“Guilty. I can’t help it, I love language.” He straightened up again, which brought him too far away. I missed him. “That’s why I’m here, actually.”

“Because you love language?” I gestured around. “Well, it is a bookstore.”

“Because I’m an English teacher. I wanted to check on the summer reading inventory. Make sure kids are actually doing the reading.”

“Or at least buying the books?” I tried not to let my disappointment show, since I thought he’d come to see me. Seeing him today had lit up things in me that I hadn’t even realized were dark, and all my doubt had fallen away once he walked through the door. But now the dark came creeping back, like a cloud over the summer sun, and it chilled me just as much, because he wasn’t here to see me. This was just business.

The display was relatively picked over, but there were a few copies of each book left. I straightened up the books left on the table. “Looks like you’ve got some slackers in your class this year. Unless they’re putting it off till the end of the summer. I hope they’re speed readers.”

“No, this looks about right.” He picked up the annotated Pride and Prejudice and flipped idly through it. “A lot of kids are moving over to e-book versions, especially of classics they can get cheap or even free. Or they get them out of the library.” He put the book back down. “I order fewer books than I have students, and I still end up with too many. I’ll assign it again in a few years, and Chris will sell them to a new group of kids.”

I stared hard at the book display. “Recycle your assignments. Sure.” I didn’t want to talk about his students or their reading lists. But that seemed to be where we were.

“Hey.” His voice dropped an octave, and when I looked up he was studying me with concern in his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

I shrugged out of the hand he started to place on my arm. His touch was too confusing right now.

His face fell, but he didn’t reach for me again; his hands went into his front pockets. “Come on, Emily. Talk to me.”

Oh, God. I’d put that uncertain look on his face, and I hated myself for it. Give the guy a chance, April had said. Okay. I took a deep breath for courage. “I need to know how you want me to play this.”

“Play what?” He looked flummoxed.

“This.” I fluttered a hand in the space between the two of us. “I told you, Chris knows. The banner ad, remember? So how do you want me to act on Saturday? Just . . . same as ever?” I choked on those words, because that was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be kissing him right now. But I soldiered on. “Because I can do that, if that’s what you want. Go back to that. If you want.” My breath came fast in my chest and I was repeating myself, babbling like a robot starting to break down. But the thought of going back to the way things had been with Simon hurt more than I had thought possible.