The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(11)

And now I need to apologize to yet another customer for the things my children say in my bookstore.

But when I turn as I’m making my be quiet, all of you hiss, instead, I choke on my tongue.

“Bumgling is not shaking your bum for candy,” Zoe yells back at her brother. “It’s when grown-ups screw around drinking wine and being bums!”

I need to stop this, but my new customer is making my brain malfunction.

While my children yell about a hook-up app with a name that’s short for bumping uglies, my tongue is twisted sideways and my eyes are bugging out of my head.

Levi Wilson is standing there in jeans, loafers, and a black T-shirt advertising a local pet shelter with his trucker jacket hanging open. His eyes are hidden by amber sunglasses, his brown hair is windswept but still pop star quality, and his smile is growing amidst the dark scruff that’s too long to be scruff but too short to be a full beard.

“All y’all got it wrong,” Eric says with a smirk that I don’t have to see to know it’s there. I can hear it. “It’s when grown-ups hook up to do grown-up—aaaaaahh! Moooooom!”

“Customer!” I shriek.

Telepathy wasn’t working to shut them up.

Probably because my brain wasn’t working to transport the telepathic messages. Not that it works in normal times, but it especially doesn’t work when Levi Wilson is smiling at me.

“If they’re your customer, they know what we’re like,” Zoe huffs.

Piper squeaks.

So does Portia.

Levi tucks his hands in his pockets. “Ah, bad time?”

“No! No. Come in. We were about to close, but—oh. Right. You probably like shopping better at closing time, don’t you? Fewer crowds. Right. Pickles? Are you—are you alone, or—”

“Jeez, Aunt Ingrid, what’s wrong with you?” Shawn asks.

He’s eleven going on seventeen.

“Upstairs!” Portia shrieks. “All of you. Upstairs. Homework. Dinner. Let your mom finish her workday.”

She gives me the eyeball of I’ll be spying on you as she effectively rounds up all five kids and hustles them past the Penny for Your Thoughts merchandise toward the stock room, which is my secret entrance to the staircase to my apartment over the store.

If she could reach the store’s loft from my apartment, I think she would, but I refused to add a door there during renovations so customers wouldn’t accidentally wander into my home when one of my kids messed with the lock.

Trust me.

It would’ve happened.

But right now, I have to get my heart rate under control.

“Starting over.” I suck in a deep breath like I’m a grown adult who won’t go all starry-eyed over the pop god who just walked into my bookstore for the second time this month. Thank god I didn’t send that email I started last week. I could never look him in the eye if I had. “Welcome back to Penny for Your Thoughts. How can I help you?”

He chuckles, and the noise makes my spine tingle from my tailbone up and over my skull. “I was hoping you could point me in a direction for nice gifts for my niece and nephew.”

My ears go hot as lava and I’m pretty sure my cheeks are creating their own glow. “A n-nice gift?”

“No pickles. I’m a changed man.”

I didn’t send that email.

Did I?

I was in the middle of writing it when Zoe and Piper started fighting over who got to shower first, and I deleted it.

Or did I just mean to delete it?

And if I just meant to delete it and didn’t actually succeed, what happened to that note?

I must look like a deranged animal unsure what to do about the ice cream truck barreling toward me—you know, panicked over nothing since ice cream trucks move at the speed of glaciers—because his grin widens, but somehow becomes kinder at the same time.

Not like he’s amused that I’m a disaster.

But like he’s seen it enough that he knows how to handle me.

“I got your email,” he says. “My team didn’t pass it on to me until today, or I would’ve been back sooner.”

“I didn’t send you an email.” Oh, shit. I wouldn’t have drunk-emailed it, because Hudson has taught me that the minute I have a glass of wine, he’ll stick something up his nose or trip on something and crack his jaw and I’ll need to be able to drive to the hospital. And I’ve never sleep-walked, so odds of me sleep-emailing are slim.

But he’s approaching me and pulling a piece of paper from an inner pocket in his jacket, and oh my god.

“This wasn’t you?”

I scan it, wondering if it’s possible for my face to melt off and take the rest of me with it. I’d much rather be a melted pile of goo formerly known as Ingrid than tell my favorite singer on the entire planet that I did, in fact, chew him out over email for his horrible taste in gifts.

And then I get to the end of the printed message, where there’s straight-up gibberish, and I realize what happened.

Hudson.

Hudson happened.

“Yes. Yes, that was me, but I didn’t mean to send it, because you don’t really need a lecture about what you can and can’t get people as gifts. It’s none of my business. I was just…in a mood.”

“You have your hands full.” He tilts his head toward the back of the store where my family has disappeared, and where they’re probably each trying to sneak back down the stairs one by one to listen in.