She lifted her cup. “That’s what I’m here for. Spencer will be here too.” She said it the way she always said his name—easily, as if it belonged in every sentence, which at this point it basically did. Spencer Cassidy had become as much a fixture in our lives as Lucy herself, which was saying something. “I’ll sic him on Eric if he gets out of hand. He’s very tall and very loyal, and Eric probably remembers him from school but doesn’t know him well enough to read him, which is its own kind of useful.”
The sky dimmed, and the flameless candles took over, their amber glow folding the room into something warmer. The reflections turned the glass into a mirror—shelves and flowers and candlelight doubling back on themselves, the whole shop looking like something out of one of its own books. I stood behind the counter with my script in my hands and didn’t really read it. Lucy had taken up position near the front door like my own personal bouncer, coffee in hand, expression pleasantly unreadable.
Guests started arriving, including Spencer, who gave me a wink and a thumbs-up. I was tempted to sic him on Eric anyway, but that would have been wrong. I was an adult. I could handle him myself.
Grandma and Grandpa came in first. Grandpa saw me from the door and crossed the room without stopping, pulling me into a hug that lasted longer than I expected. He pulled back and held me by the shoulders, looking at the room, then at me. His eyes were a little bright.
“I’m proud of you, honey,” he said. “My mother would have loved to see this.”
“Grandpa.” My throat tightened. I pressed my lips together and hugged him again, quick and fierce.
“I mean it.” He squeezed my shoulders once and let go, looking around again with the quiet, satisfied expression of someone who had been waiting a long time to see something and was glad it had finally arrived.
Grandma slipped past him to hug me next, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “You look beautiful,” she said. “And the shop—” She shook her head. “Everything is amazing.”
Grandma’s best friend, Joyce, arrived right behind them, already talking, her reading glasses pushed up on her head. Piper followed with Ren, who held the door for the people behind him without being asked. Nancy arrived a few minuteslater with Hannah, and the two of them came in laughing about something.
I stepped back and watched the shop fill. The conversations layered over each other—chairs scraping, cups being lifted, the quiet rustle of the clue envelopes being examined and set carefully back down. The candles caught people’s faces as they leaned toward each other. The lavender and the tea and the shortbread all blended into something I didn’t have a word for.
“This looks perfect, Cara,” Piper said, stopping beside me.
“Thank you.”
“You’ll do great.” She squeezed my arm once and moved toward her table.
I looked up, and my brain did something unhelpful where it stopped processing the rest of the room entirely.
Jasper filled the doorway for a second before stepping through it, one hand still on the door, and I had a moment of completely unguarded awareness that I was grateful nobody was watching me have. He was wearing a dark Henley, sleeves pushed up, and he looked—he looked good, was the simple truth of it, in a way that my nervous system apparently felt was worth interrupting everything else to report. He took in the room the unhurried way he did everything, genuinely taking it all in, and I watched him clock the tables, the candles, the handwritten signs, and the people already settling in, and something in his expression softened.
Then his gaze crossed the room and found mine, and stayed.
I became aware that I was standing very still in the middle of my own bookshop holding a stack of clue envelopes against my chest like a shield.
I stepped out from behind the counter.
“You came,” I said, which was not the most sophisticated thing I’d ever said to another person, but it was what came out.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” He came closer, and I stayed where I was, which required a small amount of conscious effort because every instinct I had was doing something contradictory—half of me wanting to close the distance and half of me very aware that the room was full of people who knew me. He looked around once more, taking it in, then back at me. His expression was the quiet, open kind that was harder to deflect than a compliment. “You pulled this off,” he said. “I knew you would.”
A small laugh slipped out before I could arrange it into something more composed. “It hasn’t even started.”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice was easy, certain. He was close enough now that I could have reached out and touched his arm without moving much. I was aware of that in a way that made it difficult to remember what I’d been about to say. “Look at it.”
I looked at it—the warm light, the full tables, the handwritten cards I’d stayed up until midnight finishing—and felt something loosen in my chest. “Thank you,” I said, quieter.
His eyes came back to mine and stayed there, and for a second, the room went a little soft around the edges. “Where do you want me?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “Back table. Your Aunt Nancy and Hannah are already there. They’ll keep you in line.”
Something warm moved across his expression. “That’s an interesting strategy.”
“I thought so.”
He held my gaze for just a moment longer than he needed to, the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, near enough that I could see it properly, and then he turned and headed toward the back and I stood there for a second watching him go and reminding myself that I was hosting an event and had things to do and that this was not the time.
Lucy appeared at my elbow. “I like him,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
