With Love from London(15)

He grins. “You’re a reader, I take it?”

“A ravenous one,” I replied.

“I had a suspicion. I am too.”

I gazed up at the high ceiling. “Thank you for the map,” I said. “It’s the only chance I would’ve ever found my way here. How did you…?”

“Know about this place?” He shrugged. “A boy gets bored when his parents drag him to the club for dinner every Thursday night. I’d sneak down here and pass the time reading.”

He spoke so vividly of the memory that I could picture young Edward right here in this room, running his fingers across the books the way I was doing now.

He leaped behind the bar and took a visual inventory. “It’s how I became interested in literature. By accident, really.” He set a bottle of gin on the counter. “How about you?”

I continued tracing the spines of the books long enough to make a decision. I decided to take him into confidence about my and Millie’s dream, the one we’d had since we were thirteen. “My best friend and I have always had a dream to open a bookstore of our own.”

Edward listened intently as I told him about the literary haven I’d created in my mind. “Maybe someday,” I said wistfully.

He smiled as he placed ice in a cocktail shaker, mixed me a martini, and handed me a glass, a layer of ice on the rim. “Not maybe,” he said. “If it’s your heart’s calling, it will be.”

Somehow, his confidence was enough to boost my own. If Edward believed my dream would come true, I could, too.

“Cheers,” he continued, clinking his glass against mine. “To dreams and books—and new friendships.”

I took a sip—the gin was strong and botanical, like the first whiff of a fresh-cut Christmas tree.

“Your dress, it’s…” he said, pausing for a long moment. “Eloise, I’m afraid you’ve rendered me speechless. What I’m attempting to say is that you look stunning. Blue is definitely your color.”

“Thank you,” I said a bit nervously as we settled into two overstuffed chairs upholstered in emerald-green velvet.

“Tell me, what books will you sell at this bookstore of yours?” he asked.

“Some will be new,” I said. “But most will be well-loved favorites. Did you know that most books—particularly, the very best ones—are likely to pass to an average of seven readers in their life, sometimes more?”

“Fascinating,” he replied, absently touching the edge of his shoulder where he’d showed me his tattoo the night before.

“You’ll always hear music,” I said, smiling, “and I’ll always hear stories.”

“Or maybe we’ll each hear both,” he said, his eyes fixed on mine.

I looked away—I had to. It felt as if his gaze was piercing into the very depths of my soul. Maybe he felt it, too—that moment of knowing. In any case, he navigated our conversation to new and divergent places—his favorite curry houses in London, the trip to Africa as a child where he learned to whistle, a friend from college who died last year under mysterious circumstances. With each revelation, I felt as if I knew him more deeply, but even more peculiar was the lingering feeling that I’d always known him.

He told me about his two younger sisters, both married with young children, and that after getting a joint graduate degree in business and law, he was employed by one of London’s biggest real estate development firms, but that he mostly found the work (“making rich people richer”) entirely unfulfilling.

“Then what sort of work might you find fulfilling?” I asked him.

He was quick to reply. “The simple life,” he explained. “It might sound crazy, but I’ve always craved a Beatrix Potter sort of existence—away from the city. You know, an old cottage in the country, with a big garden and ample front porch where you can sit at night and have conversations with the stars.”

I smiled. “Charming. But what would you do?”

“Why, tend to my tomatoes, of course,” he said with a grin.

“Naturally.”

“Let’s dream together for a moment, shall we?” he said, leaning in closer as my heart beat faster.

Yes, let’s dream together.

“Picture the two of us,” he began, “in our front porch rocking chairs. I’ve just shooed away a flock of menacing rabbits, while narrowly managing to secure a bushel of tomatoes for canning, and while you recount your day at the bookstore.”

I smiled at his fictional vision, wanting to linger in it longer. “I’d tell you about the village children who insisted upon waking up the store’s cat, who much prefers sunning himself in the window to childish attention, and the window boxes that I just replenished with geraniums, oh, and also Mrs. Maltby, the preacher’s wife, who comes in often under the guise of looking for books for her grandchildren, but instead, secretly lingers in the romance section.”

Edward grinned at me for a long moment until my cheeks flushed. “The farmer and the bookseller. We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”

I merely nodded, though I wanted to reply with an emphatic yes. Yes, to this beautiful little storybook life that we could make our own. Did Edward want that, too, or were his words merely flirtatious ramblings that, perhaps, he’d uttered to his date last night, even? I decided to play coy. What did I know of love or the intentions of men?