She shoots Levi a ‘so there’ kind of look, then turns back to me.
“You know how I’ve been keen for us to start hosting more author visits and signings?” she says. I nod, knowing what’s coming, but hoping against hope that I might be wrong.
For once, though, I am not wrong.
“Well,” says Paris, squeezing Ed so hard that he jumps out of her arms and stalks off, disgusted. “It turns out that Elliot Sinclair wants to do a signing while he’s here in town. And he wants to do it here. At Hart Books.”
I step behind the counter and hang up my coat and bag, silently trying to process this information.
“I’m surprised you’re on board with this,” I say to Dad, speaking low enough that only he can hear me. “I thought you hated Elliot?”
Dad freezes in the act of polishing his glasses, which he’s finally realized he was wearing the entire time.
“Oh, I wouldn’t saythat,” he says casually, not looking at me. “I didn’thatehim. I didn’t think he was the right man foryou, is all.”
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.
“He’s very much turned out to be the right man for thestore,” though, says Dad, unable to hide his excitement at this. “For the whole town, really. Just think of how many of his books we’ll sell with him here to sign them! I wonder what people would be prepared to pay for a signed copy, plus a chance to meet the man himself?”
“I’d pay alot,” confirms Levi, who’s been blatantly listening in. “Like, I already have a copy of every edition they’ve ever released, obviously, but a signed one trumps them all. D’you think he’ll do a Q&A?”
“I wonder if he’d take a selfie with me?” says Paris, forgetting to look bored for once. “Will you ask him for me, Holly?”
“Oh, stop it, all of you,” I burst out, unable to listen to this for one more second. They all stop what they’re doing and look at me, surprised.
“Elliot Sinclair isn’t going to be taking selfies with anyone,” I begin. “Or TikToks, or … or whatever it is I can see you planning, Levi. He’s not doing a Q&A. Honestly, if it was up to me, he wouldn’t even be allowed to cross the threshold of this store. I wouldn’t let him. ”
The bell above the door suddenly bursts into life, interrupting me with a loud blast ofDeck the Hallsas the door swings open.
“Hello,” says Elliot Sinclair, stepping across the threshold in exactly the way I just said I wouldn’t allow him to. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“Look, I’m sorry to barge in like this,” Elliot says a few minutes later, once the excitement caused by his arrival has died down a smidge, and Dad, Paris, and Levi have all been banished to the Coffee Corner. “I just wanted to check if you were okay after last night. And, well, this morning. Whatwasthat this morning, by the way? With the car horn?”
He smiles; a ghost of his old smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“I don’t know, Elliot,” I say frostily. “You tell me. Whatwasthat this morning?”
“Uh, that’s… that’s what I just asked you?” he points out, not unreasonably. “Or did I just imagine that? I was asking what you were doing, honking your car horn at me?”
“I wasn’t honking itatyou,” I reply indignantly. “I was honking itbecauseof you. I, um, just happened to see you, that’s all. Coming out of that house. With that woman. First thing in the morning.”
There’s a good chance I could go on like this forever, in short, staccato sentences that come out sounding more like accusations than statements.
Luckily, though, Elliot steps in to stop me.
“Katie,” he says, his ghost smile fading. “Her name’s Katie. Katie Hunter.”
He looks at me as if this should mean something to me, but it doesn’t, so I simply nod, not knowing what else to do with this information. He’s not denying that he was coming out of this ‘Katie’ woman’s house so early that it suggests he must have spent the night there. Then again, I don’t want him to think Icareabout who he spends the night with. Because I don’t. I definitely don’t. It’s nothing to me. It’s…
“How’s your ankle, by the way?” Elliot asks, in a change of subject so abrupt that it almost gives me whiplash. “That’s the main reason I came in.”
“It’s fine, thanks,” I reply. “It was just a sprain. I put frozen peas on it.”
“Peas. Right.”
Elliot isn’t listening. He’s stepping a little further inside the store now, gazing around and ignoring the three musketeers over there, who are lined up on the sofa gaping at us over their giant mugs of coffee.
“This place is looking great,” he says, sounding like he means it. “Really. It’s different, but the same.”
