Page 16 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“I too have nothing,” she intoned, trying to make a joke of it, but he just waited calmly. Expectantly. His unfathomable green eyes resting on her face.

So she told him.

And, damn him, when she got to the bibulous pedophile bit, Ross threw back his head and laughed, on and on. “Not saying you were right about the child molestation bit,” he said eventually, wiping away tears of mirth, “but—if it’s any consolation—I have heard that guy is a complete tool. But then you’d know that?”

“He wasn’t the easiest,” she admitted.

“A relief, then?” He screwed up his face.

“Yeah, phew,” she deadpanned. “I mean, who wants a career anyhow?”

“You ran?”

“I ran,” she admitted. And there it was. Ross couldn’t doubt the veracity of her sympathy over his own predicament. They were the same. Fellow victims of fate.

“I mean, it wasn’t just that,” she admitted, remembering the exquisite feeling of what she now realized might have been relief when Alistair suggested she might need a career break. Her eyes moistened again at the memory. “I kind of . . .” She cleared her throat, loosely disguising an eye dab as a nose scratch. “I had already kind of lost my mojo a bit.”

She felt his gaze. She felt seen, and also—for the first time—able to perhaps articulate a feeling she had hardly dared even acknowledge until now. “I had started to struggle,” she went on. “I . . . stopped being able to read.”

“You can’t read?” He was incredulous. “Why? Galloping myopia? Late onset dyslexia?”

Petra smiled wanly. “I don’t know . . . Picking up a new manuscript, every time, the weight of expectation, the stress of finding I had overlooked a unicorn—like yours—the even bigger stress of taking on some material and then not being able to place it, or placing it and then watching it fail, not because of the work, but because of something I’d done, or something the publisher failed to do, and I couldn’t make them, because I wasn’t good enough . . .”

She glanced up and was affronted to discover that Ross was silently shaking with laughter again. “What now?” she demanded. “That’s funny? Listen, I’m pouring my heart out here.”

“You have to admit, it is a little bit funny,” he said, trying and failing to stifle his mirth. “I mean, look at us! We’re a writer who can’t write, and an agent who can’t read . . .”

Petra giggled reluctantly. He was right. It was absurd.

Ross was now so amused that he was wiping tears from his eyes. There was something so contagious about laughter. God knows, she’d barely raised a smile since she had left London. Whenever they had nearly managed to suppress their hilarity, they caught each other’s eye and set each other off again.

There was a near hysterical component to it, Petra felt. And then something even more ridiculous struck her. “Plus,” she contributed, “we’re stuck, in an actual bookshop!”

“Oh, the irony,” he agreed, clearing his throat and trying, unsuccessfully, to stop the laughter bubbling up again.

It had felt good to laugh. If there was any remaining awkwardness between them, the hysteria had melted it away. Afterward, they chatted for a couple of hours about everything except their former work: families (minimal on both sides), hobbies (same), aspirations (confusingly nonexistent). They were both—they agreed—in a liminal space where the future they dared to expect had disappeared and not yet been replaced by anything else.

So . . . same.

Petra smiled as she got ready for bed. It was a relief to have gotten past the ridiculous breathless wanting to giggle all the time at how devastatingly handsome Ross was. Now, thankfully, what came out of his mouth felt more important than the distractingly kissable appearance of his lips.

Friendship. That was what it was now. Thank goodness. Romance was the last thing she needed.

She slipped into bed and, sitting up against the pillows, opened Jane Eyre with reverence. It really was a lovely edition, printed in nineteen fifty-three, she saw. There were color plates with beautiful watercolors of key scenes and—better than that, even—settling in to read, Petra was immersed instantly into the life of ten-year-old Jane and the horrors of the red room.

Gripped by the familiar tale, Petra read until the early hours, waking the next morning to find the book still open on the bed.

Tears pricked at her eyes as she got up and put the book reverently on the chest of drawers beside the bed, ready for nightfall. She already couldn’t wait. Ross didn’t even know what his thoughtful present had done for her. It was a tiny first step—but she was reading . . .

One of the things on Petra’s “Ask Flo” list next morning was the entry about the Portneath Book Club. It was in the shop diary for the coming Tuesday evening.

“I think it would be good if you were there,” Flo told Petra. “Things are getting a bit fraught, and people behave better if there is a guest.”

“Not sure if I like the idea of being a United Nations peacekeeping envoy,” admitted Petra. “What do you mean ‘fraught’?”

“Insurrection,” Flo offered darkly. “You’ll see . . .”

Petra was intrigued, but the day turned out far too busy to interrogate the older woman more thoroughly. She barely had a chance to get through the list of “need to knows” in between serving customers and putting book orders through their antiquated computer system. The day flew by pleasantly, and Petra was weary when she came to shut up shop, although she was pleased when Ross arrived for a chat.