Page 1 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

Chapter One

“I meant ‘bibliophile,’” protested Petra desperately. “I meant to say he was the publishing world’s greatest ‘bibliophile.’”

“Ah,” said Petra’s boss, Alistair, looking sympathetically at her over the top of his glasses. “Predictive text can be a nightmare. You deleted it?”

“Of course, I deleted it,” said Petra. As soon as her phone’s “do not disturb” clicked off, the tsunami of notifications had woken her. Bleary-eyed, she was initially excited that her final, late-night task of the day—generating some social-media content—had gained traction at last. The huge number of cry-laughing and shocked reactions was puzzling, though. And then there had been the comments . . . And then the sickening re-reading of her post . . . So—yes—she had deleted it. And her account. Not, however, before her mistake had been screenshotted and shared thousands of times.

Petra swallowed, eyeing Alistair’s wastebasket queasily as she wondered, in horror, if she was going to be sick. But, on reflection, why even worry? Calling your best client a “bibulous pedophile” beat vomiting into your boss’s wastebasket hands down on the “most unthinkable things that might happen” scale. At least when the most unthinkable thing happened, you could stop worrying about the most unthinkable thing happening. There was that.

“I mean, I don’t think I actually know what ‘bibulous’ means,” Alistair went on. “It might even be a compliment.”

“It means ‘drunk,’” Petra informed him.

“I did not know that,” mused Alistair.

Yup. She had not only gratuitously called her most lucrative client a child molester, she had in fact called him a drunken child molester.

“Have you spoken to him?”

Petra nodded miserably. The telephone call had been distinctly one-sided. And shouty. The gist of the conversation, she explained to Alistair, was that she was extremely fired.

“Clients come and go,” sympathized Alistair. “And being a little bit infamous? That can be a good thing in our line of work.”

“Yeah . . . ?” said Petra, trying—and failing—to reflect his positivity. “At least I still have Isabella May,” she said. Isabella was her second-highest-earning client, although she was also a spoiled, demanding woman who took up a huge amount of Petra’s time and pretty much all of her patience. Actually, patience had been in short supply lately, she admitted to herself.

“Ah,” said Alistair again. “You haven’t read your emails then?” He screwed up his face into an exaggerated mask of sympathy.

“What? How so?” Petra exclaimed.

“I suspect Henry Atherstone might have gotten to her,” Alistair suggested. “He’s been hovering.”

“That’s illegal,” protested Petra. Unfortunately, as she knew full well, poaching each other’s clients wasn’t literally a criminal act, but it was seriously frowned upon. As was insulting your own authors online, unfortunately.

“What do I do now?” she asked, her question being directed not so much at Alistair but more at the universe—a universe that had just dumped on her from a great height like a passing seagull would.

“Lie low,” he said. “This too shall pass. And even before this happened, I’ve been thinking you need a change of scene. A fresh challenge.”

At this, Petra’s eyes filled with tears. She sniffed and gazed out of the window, hoping he hadn’t noticed. So now he wanted to get rid of her. Fair enough.

“I’m resigning, obviously,” she began.

“Whoa, easy, tiger,” he chuckled. “I’m not asking for your badge and gun. I’ve had an idea . . . Did you ever come across a lovely young woman called Jules Capelthorne on your travels? Assistant editor at Farquarson and Trimble?”

Petra shook her head mutely. Publishing was full of lovely young women. They came and then—often—they went. It was a tough industry.

“Jules was one of the ones who got away,” Alistair went on. “Moved to Devon, started running a bookshop by the sea, just got married to the local Romeo . . .”

“Living the dream,” snarked Petra. And then she was ashamed. God, she was turning into a miserable person; she couldn’t even feel positive about the good fortune of a woman she had never met.

“So,” Alistair went on, undaunted, “apparently Jules and her new husband are off on a huge honeymoon trip, taking in all the great bookshops of the world, and they need someone to mind the shop for six months. I saw it on Facebook. You get your own little flat above the shop, a reasonable salary, and all the books you can eat. Devon’s a funny old place,” he mused. “Full of eccentrics . . . I think it would be perfect for you.”

Ouch, thought Petra. Rude.

“I’ll put in a call?” Alistair’s hand hovered over his phone, as he sought her permission.

Petra gave him a tiny nod of acquiescence. Fine. It wasn’t like she had any choice. Six months surrounded by books, which were now—she had decided—her personal nemesis. Great. And at the seaside too. With her luck, those incontinent seagulls were going to be forming an orderly queue.

Alistair had seemed mighty keen on getting her out of the office, Petra reflected miserably as she sat on the train. She didn’t blame him. She was a Jonah now—a sailor’s bad-luck omen—likely to cast their literary agency’s boat onto publishing’s rocks of failure if she was left to contaminate their little enterprise a minute longer.