Leather Bound

An old boyfriend once asked me if I kept my face natural because I wanted to show off how I looked without make-up or because I was lazy. I didn’t have the courage to admit that I kept my face ‘natural’ because I didn’t know how to do anything else with it.

Lily raised her hand again and flipped off what I imagined to be a whole wall of former exes. The blonde biker chick. The beautiful volleyball player who’d had a penchant for threesomes. The teacher who’d shown up at Leather Bound in her glasses and her button-up cardigans, but who Lily said fucked like a wildcat in heat. And those were just the ones I could remember recently.

‘Fuck love,’ Lily said.

‘Fuck love,’ I said. Right now, I couldn’t agree more. Love, or maybe the lack of love, seemed to screw everything up.

‘Maybe you just need a quickie,’ I said. ‘A loving fuck to say fuck love?’

This time she flipped me off, her throaty laugh filling the front half of the store with sound. ‘Seriously? Last time I did that, I almost ended up in Vegas saying “I do” to a vegan wiccan in front of a guy who didn’t look in the least like Elvis. Worst. Quickie. Ever.’

I laughed with her, even though I felt my own throat close up a little as she went on.

‘I mean, can you seriously ever see me getting married? Little white dresses for both of us? House with a picket fence? Adopting kids or fighting over who gets to be the biological mom? Jesus.’

Can you see me getting married? I thought. Because I certainly can’t. And, oh, Lily, my life is a little fucked up right now.

I’d never wanted to get married. I could easily give my entire life to a bookstore that was barely making ends meet, but couldn’t seem to handle a relationship that required anything more than delicious sex and maybe dinner a couple of times a week.

I used to think I just hadn’t met the right person, but now I wondered if something was wrong with me. Maybe I should think about getting married. Everything in my life was good, even if it was sometimes a little staid. Leather Bound was almost making enough money to keep us afloat. Lily and I worked well together. Kyle’s work as a tattoo artist was getting recognition. Our sex was great.

‘Actually,’ Lily said quietly after a moment. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.’

For a second I thought I’d been speaking out loud. My hands shook as they slipped the bills into their proper places in the register.

‘OK, stop talking,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll have to start the count over again.’

It wasn’t entirely true, but I needed her to be quiet because my heart was thumping too hard in the hollow of my chest and, every time Lily said one more thing, I wanted to cry. Uncertainty and confusion do that to me sometimes. It’s the little things that get me. When things are big and bad, I’m all strong and stoic on the outside. But when they’re small and confusing and complicated, well, just bring on the tears.

When our friend Conrad died a couple months back, I didn’t cry when he announced that he was sick, I didn’t cry at his hospice bed and I didn’t cry at the funeral. But when he shipped us a box of all the books he’d bought from Leather Bound over the years with a note thanking us for all the beautiful stories we’d given him, I fell down on my knees and wept until I’d ruined the letter with my tears.

Unwilling to think about that, I decided I’d tell Lily about my morning. Maybe she’d have more insight into the situation than I did.

‘Hey, Lil,’ I started. ‘Kyle asked me to –’

At just that moment, the front door opened, and Lily and I both looked up in surprise.

My first thought was a very articulate ‘I thought I locked that.’

My second thought was simply, ‘Yum.’

* * *

Despite the fact that Leather Bound is a brick-and-mortar store, we don’t get a lot of early-morning walk-ins. Probably because we only stock rare and old books. Obscure first editions and things signed by dead people are our speciality. So, things that people don’t typically browse for. They call ahead, see if we have what they want and, if we do, they come by and pick it up. If we don’t have what they want, I do my best to get it for them. It’s something I’m known for, finding the obscure.

When we do get walk-ins, they’re one of two kinds. The first is older men – book dealers, collectors, professors, the generation that still likes to fondle the books and eschew all technology, including the phone if they can. Lily calls them our Grounders, because she’s afraid to get up on a ladder in her short skirts, in case she gives one of them a heart attack.

The other kind are the Velvets. Also Lily’s name. They come in, usually looking either all sheepish or all professorial, and then they make their way, casual-like, towards the back of the store, like they’re invisible lions sneaking up on prey.

We’ve got velvet curtains hung floor to ceiling back there. And behind them? A little room, not much bigger than a closet, the shelves stuffed full of delicious naughtiness. Not new stuff, though. Old stuff. Ancient versions of the Kama Sutra and Victorian-era sketchbooks and Sappho and Anon. You’d be surprised how much less repressed they were in years gone by.

So, Grounders and Velvets. Those are the kinds of walk-ins we get, on the rare occasions when we do get walk-ins.

What we most certainly never get are walk-ins who show up before we’re open, sporting chocolate-caramel eyes and a lazy, dimpled smile that gave me a nearly irresistible urge to lick the corners of his mouth.

The guy in our doorway was beautiful, in that rugged, strong-jawed, day-old-stubble kind of way. Dark shiny hair that looked like it would tousle into perfect waves with a pair of hands in it. White T-shirt and grey button-down that brought out hints of gold flecks in his light-brown eyes.

I took hold of the counter while the air did that thing it does where it gets all thin and makes you dizzy for no reason at all.

Apparently Lily wasn’t immune either. Which was odd, considering I’d never seen her go gaga over a male before. Except maybe a male puppy. And even then she was hard-pressed to admit it.

Not to mention, this was the longest I’d heard her be silent in about a year. She was still standing in front of the door, pretty much blocking his entrance.

‘Lily,’ I hissed. ‘Let the man in.’

‘But we’re not open yet.’ Her mock whisper was all mock and no whisper.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Close enough.’ Plus, hello, who cared? A man like that walked in your door, and I was pretty sure you opened for him … opened the door for him … any time of day.

I swallowed and tried to right myself so that I could put my professional face on. Thankfully Lily beat me to it. Sort of. Her social skills, as a general rule, far exceeded mine, a fact that I was ever grateful for.

‘If you’re looking for the sex shop,’ she said, ‘it’s two blocks over and down on Mississippi. I can take you there.’

I tried not to gape at her. So much for that socially skilled thing. Why was she talking about the sex toy store?

She looked back at me for help and if I hadn’t completely understood her distress, I would have burst out laughing. Even back here, I was having a hard time thinking. I couldn’t imagine what it was like being so close to him. I wasn’t sure if I was grateful to Lily for being on the front line or jealous that she was in touching distance.

The man’s mouth was hanging open slightly, just like mine probably was. Somehow the expression didn’t make him less sexy. I had no idea how that was possible, but it was. It sent me off in a small daydream, thinking about all the things that mouth could do. Beautiful white teeth that probably nipped at the edges of things just right. Thick, full lips with just a hint of sheen, as though he’d already been thinking about you and it had made him lick his lips in anticipation.

‘The sex shop,’ he said. Somehow he made it not so much a question as a flavour. As though he was literally tasting the idea.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lily said. ‘I just thought you might be looking for Lashes & Lace.’

‘I know the place,’ he said. His mouth had closed slightly, and now wore just a hint of a smile. Something hidden and teased in the half-curve.

‘Well, people get us confused all the time,’ Lily said. She was trying to recover, I could tell. But she was failing. Any time she absently fingered the yellow rose tattooed along the curve of her ear, she was either deep in thought or thoroughly embarrassed. Right now, she was scrubbing at it so hard it was like she was trying to wash it off.

‘They do?’ he was asking her. ‘People come here accidentally to buy sex toys at …’ He looked at his watch. It was a beautiful leather and chrome piece, with what looked like a genuine antique face. The leather was old but so well oiled that I bet if you stood close enough you could smell it, animalistic and heady. I imagined myself leaning in to sniff his wrist, the place where the leather and pulse came together, that lovely heated skin.

Then I noticed the leather briefcase in his other hand, the copper clasps polished to a sheen. God, a man who looked this sexy who also appreciated old things? I was going to have to get a grip on myself.

‘… at ten in the morning?’ he finished.

I barely remembered what the two were prattling on about. Focus, Janine. Confusing us with a sex toy store at ten in the morning. Got it.

‘You’d be surprised. It’s an honest mistake.’ I could practically hear the purr in Lily’s voice as she got a hold of herself and started to turn on the classic Lily charm. She surreptitiously wiped her palm on her skirt before she stuck her hand out. ‘I’m Lily Marshen. Welcome to Leather Bound.’

He slipped his hand into hers. A shiver of want wiggled through me as their skin touched. I wondered what his skin felt like. How his long fingers would feel against mine. What he smelled like when his skin heated up.

I shook my head and focused. What was wrong with me? Yes, I was a sexual creature, and happily so. But I wasn’t usually a drooling idiot around anyone, especially not around someone I hadn’t even met. Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have enough lust and love trouble at the moment. I was not about to pile on even a tiny bit more. I had a feeling that this guy was a whole lot more, in both lust and trouble departments.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And while I’m a fan of a good sex store …’ Did Lily actually blush when he said that? I could have sworn I saw some pink flash over her perfect, pale cheeks ‘… I’m actually in need of a book.’

‘Oh, you’ll want to talk to Janine then,’ Lily said. And bless her if she didn’t sound just a little sad to let go of his hand.

For the first time, the man glanced my way. His eyes were the kind of thing you look at first and then can’t stop looking at, the irises showing swirls of golden honey and caramel all rimmed in black. His lashes were so thick and dark, it almost looked like he was wearing eyeliner. Thank God he wasn’t. Not that I minded guys in make-up, but having two people in the same room as me who knew how to use eyeliner better than me would have killed what little make-up ego I had.

He smiled at me. Watching him smile was like opening a book for the first time. That slow reveal, full of promise, just inviting you to come closer, to learn all the nuanced secrets that awaited within.

I tried to smile back, but my lips got stuck on my teeth somehow and I could just tell that I was grimacing at him instead. Lily cleared her throat. It was time for me to introduce myself, to be professional, to come out from behind the safety of the counter, but I couldn’t quite remember how to make my feet do the thing they were supposed to do.

I remembered Lily’s shoes with the book titles on them and imagined my own soles were covered in verbs.

Step, Walk, Move all too quickly became Kiss, Suck, Fuck.

I shook the mental image from my head, since it clearly wasn’t helping, and forced my feet forward until I was standing before him. This close, he was taller than I’d thought. Even with my heeled boots on, I had to look up a little. From here, his eyes were more complicated, an overlay of honeyed caramel flecked with nearly hidden hints of green and gold.

I could hear Lily breathing somewhere near me, but I was having trouble focusing on anything beside those warm eyes and that dimpled smile.

Think of Molly Bloom, I told myself. Think of Hester. Think of Lolita.

No, wrong ones.

Thinking of literary characters was my usual trick in getting through panicky situations, but every time I thought of one now, it was a woman and she was not exactly doing innocent things in the recesses of my brain.

I had to break eye contact and look over his shoulder, to the street outside where normal people were doing normal things. A woman walked by with a white dog the size of a teacup curled in her arms. A couple stood arm-in-arm just outside the window and kissed briefly, his lips touching hers with a familiarity that made me feel like a voyeur.

Looking away, I forced my gaze to land on his, taking in his unusual eyes, his attentive expression. After a long moment, the air righted itself so that I could breathe and then again so I could talk. Soon enough I could even stick my hand out, worrying only a little whether I’d been sweating.

‘I’m Janine Archer,’ I said, quickly, before he could take my outstretched hand and render me speechless yet again.

He spoke as his hand settled in mine. His skin was as warm as I’d imagined, a soft heat that seemed to sink into my palm. His fingers were firm, confident. He didn’t shake my hand so much as hold it, tight and secure, as though it was an important package that had been given to his care.

He’d said something.

‘I’m sorry?’ I said. I hadn’t heard him at all. What I did hear was Lily giving a quick, sharp laugh behind me and then trying to hide it with a cough.

‘I said …’ He enunciated each word carefully, as though I was eight, but a smile played lightly at the corners of his lips as he spoke. And besides, I guessed I deserved it. I was certainly acting like I was eight. Or at least eighteen. ‘I’m Davian Cavanaugh.’

‘I’m Janine Archer,’ I said. Again.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You told me.’

This time, Lily didn’t even bother to try and hold her laughter in, damn her. Did I mention she’s the world’s loudest laugher? I wanted to turn around and pinch her earlobe or hide her away in the back room. Or something. It was impossible to be angry with her, though, once she started laughing. Shaking my head, I smiled apologetically at our potential customer.

‘Please excuse us,’ I urged. ‘We’re usually far more professional than this. It’s just been … one of those mornings.’

I fully expected Lily to make some kind of crack about me smelling like sex. Then I would have to kill her and stuff her into the back room.

She was blissfully quiet. For once.

Davian lifted his brow into a high arch, his expression clearly stating his disbelief that we were typically more functional than this. I couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t exactly seen us at our best. The old me, or rather the young me, would have written this entire conversation off as a disaster and fled the room with her cheeks burning and tears threatening to fall. But this was the new me, the adult me, the me who had a business to run and bills to pay.

Think Scarlett O’Hara.

That worked. I straightened my back and let go of Davian’s hand.

‘So, what book are you looking for, Mister Cavanaugh?’ I asked. ‘If it’s rare, first-edition, banned or signed, I guarantee I can find it for you.’

He took a moment to look around the store, letting his gaze linger over the shelves before he turned slowly back to me. I was struck again by the caramel swirls of his eyes, the way they seemed to radiate heat.

‘It’s none of those things, actually’ he said. ‘The book I’m looking for doesn’t exist.’

CHAPTER 2

I barely missed a beat.

‘Luckily for you, books that don’t exist are my speciality,’ I said.

If he’d expected me to balk or turn down his offer, he didn’t let his surprise show.

‘I’ve heard that about you,’ he said.

Which caught me all off-guard.

‘What? You have?’

He shook his head, his smile turning slightly guilty. His eyes flashed darker with amusement.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I thought you were kidding. So I was kidding too.’

‘Actually, I was kidding.’ At least I thought I was. Now I was confused. Had I been kidding? Mostly. Hard-to-find was my speciality. Doesn’t-want-to-sell was also my speciality. Signed by a dead person in archival blue ink was also something I’d found once, at quite a price to the buyer. Was non-existent and completely bizarre my speciality? If this morning was any indication, it just might be.

I took a quick breath in through my nose, trying to get myself back onto a professional business track. I was well aware that Lily was making noises of shuffling papers on the counter behind me, but what she was really doing was recording all of this for later with her impossible memory. I’d hear about every single nuance of this as soon as she and I were alone.

‘In truth, I expected you to turn me down,’ he said.

‘I haven’t said yes yet,’ I countered. ‘But I like challenges.’

I especially liked challenges from men with caramel-coloured eyes and more than a little wickedness in the pages of their smile. More importantly, I liked the kind of challenges that forced me to use my brain, the kind that could distract me from my current challenge, who was probably still sleeping in my bed, dreaming about wedding rings or something.

This guy would either turn out to be a crackpot – chasing down a book that didn’t exist was one of the favoured pastimes of those with too much time, money or craziness, or all three, on their hands – or he’d turn out to be actually looking for something that didn’t exist. Either way, it was something to keep my mind occupied and my field of vision focused somewhere other than my love life.

‘You like challenges,’ he mused. There was something in his gaze that implied so much, and yet managed to still remain above board. I liked that, the sexuality that seemed aimed just at me, while maintaining a sense of decorum. It made me wonder what he’d be like at an elegant dinner party, all dressed up and making small talk while fingering you under the table.

‘Even impossible challenges?’ he asked.

I still had visions of his fingers, and what they might to do to me. The idea lent my voice a low tease that I didn’t mean it to have.

‘Let’s just say I’ve believed impossible things before,’ I said.

‘Even before breakfast?’

Was he ever going to stop throwing me for loops so I could get my brain in order? I felt suddenly and fiercely like Alice going down her rabbit hole.

‘Did you just misquote Lewis Carroll at me?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

Curiouser and curiouser. A lot of our customers covet books like fine art or hot women, but never actually read them. This man was not just looking for a book. He actually read books.

Could he possibly get any sexier? A better question was: could I trust myself to behave like a professional around him? I thought I could, but standing right here, right now, I had to admit I would have bet on anyone but myself to win that argument.

I figured I’d better get him into my office and put my work face on before I delved too deeply into questions I didn’t really want answers to.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Come on back, and we’ll see if I can help you make your unicorn of a book magically appear from thin air.’

From behind me, I heard Lily give another quiet snort of a giggle, but she suppressed it so fast I was hopeful that Davian hadn’t heard. If he had, his face didn’t change expression.

‘I would appreciate that,’ he said.

‘Right this way,’ I said.

* * *

While Davian followed me back towards the office, I kept wanting to turn around to look at him again. I resisted the urge, but barely. I could hear his fingers brushing the occasional book as he went by them, the soft whisper of skin to spines that you only hear in bookstores and libraries.

I wondered, as I often did, if books could feel us, if our very touch was enough to bring them alive. And I wondered, specifically, if they could feel Davian’s hands on them, what the soft stroke of his fingers felt like to their bindings, to the edges of their pages.

‘Here it is,’ I said, turning to face him again, one hand out towards a wide set of built-in bookcases, full of oversized first editions.

Davian lifted that single eyebrow again, clearly confused.

Yeah, I’d felt that way the first time I’d seen my office too. Of course, it hadn’t been my office then, but it was still a huge part of the reason I’d fallen in love with this space, long before we’d rented it and turned it into the store. Before Leather Bound was ours, it had been a bank, complete with a hidden swinging door for getting into the super-secret vault without attracting attention.

Friends had helped us turn the hidden door into a hidden bookshelf door for us before we opened.

I couldn’t help showing it off sometimes. I kind of loved the moment of revelation. It made me feel all Nancy Drew.

While Davian watched, I slipped a book from the shelf to expose a single keyhole. We’d had it made to fit the same skeleton key that opened the front door.

Suddenly I realised that, in my secret joy at showing off the hidden door, I’d put myself in a dilemma. I had to either try and remove the key and ribbon from around my neck – an action that was sure to end up with my hair or my earrings caught in tangles and leaving me looking incredibly stupid in front of this man – or leave the key in its current place and bend down in front of him to open the lock.

After a brief hesitation, realising that he was watching me far closer than I would have liked at the moment, I chose the latter option. If he was going to look at my ass, that was fine, but I didn’t think I could stand to look like a fool in front of him. Again, I meant. Considering I’d already done it once. Or twice. I couldn’t quite remember.

I bent and slipped the key in the hole. The skirt of my dress suddenly felt too short and too flimsy to cover my ass, even though I knew it did. Please let this look good on me, I thought stupidly, selfishly. Not at all professionally.

Lily and I had secret codes for lots of things – ‘I have a stone in my shoe’ meant ‘You have something in your teeth’ and ‘I need a raspberry lemonade’ meant ‘It’s time for us to leave this party/bar/guy’s house.’ But we didn’t have a secret code for ‘the hot guy behind you is staring at your ass in that skirt while you bend over in front of him.’ So I couldn’t tell if he was or not. I also couldn’t tell if I would have minded.

I stood, giving my butt a quick shake to make sure the fabric fell back into the right places, and then slipped the key back into its place between my breasts.

The bookshelf opened outward, exposing the small office hidden behind it.

‘Nice,’ he murmured, and I couldn’t tell if he meant the hidden door, the office or my ass. Was it so wrong that I secretly hoped it was all three?

I held the door for him, noting that he was tall enough that he kind of had to duck to get through it. Thankfully, the ceiling was higher, and he could stand upright as soon he got inside.

I followed him, stepping into a room that, if anyone cared to look, showcased more of my personality than any other place in the world.

A big ancient solid oak desk took up all of one corner of the office. I’d bought it at a garage sale and then paid all my and Lily’s friends in pizza and beer to help me get it in here. It was so big we’d had to take the secret door off its hinges just to fit it. It had one leg shorter than the others, a flaw that our friend Conrad had fixed for me by stuffing an old book under it. I loved it like no other piece of furniture.