Page 20 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Look, call me out for insurrection, but can’t the inventory wait a couple of weeks?” proposed Petra. “It doesn’t have to be done in February, does it?”

“Fair comment,” admitted Flo. “I’ve always done it at this time of year, but I’m sure Jules and Roman won’t mind. As long as it gets done by the financial year-end.”

“There you go! Loads of time,” said Petra.

Secretly, working with Flo the last two nights after closing—doing deathly dull work—she had been missing her time normally spent with Ross. They had fallen into a pattern where he would sneak into the shop and settle himself on the second floor toward the end of the day. Then when Petra closed the shop, they would sit together and shoot the breeze. At the beginning, she would bring up coffee from the little kitchen by the office, but then they both agreed the caffeine wasn’t the best idea at that time of day. Instead, Ross would bring beer, and—when they got chilly in the shop once the heating was off for the day—they would retire to the fireside in the sitting room upstairs.

That evening, Petra, accepting her fate, tried to persuade Ross to come with her to the pub. She was sure Freya’s friends were lovely, but she was still a little shy, plus—as she pointed out—Ross could maybe make some new friends too.

“I don’t need friends,” he declared.

“Everyone needs friends,” Petra replied.

“You’re my friend. I’m all friended up, thanks.”

“Not a verb. Anyhow you need to get out more.”

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“But people always want to know what people ‘do.’ What do I say?”

“Tell them you’re a spy,” suggested Petra. “A secret agent. It’s almost true. You’re incommunicado. They don’t have to know why.”

“Actually, I’m incognito,” corrected Ross.

“You’re both,” Petra appeased.

“And I’m pretty sure being incognito doesn’t include going around declaring you’re incognito,” Ross went on. “Or a spy.”

“You could perfectly well tell them you’re a writer,” Petra reasoned. “They don’t have to know what sort of writing. Or what you’ve done before. Lots of people are writers. It can be loads of things.”

Ross suddenly looked bleak. “Not even a writer anymore, though, remember?” he reminded her.

Petra looked at him sympathetically, her head on one side. “Why don’t you want people to know? If it was me who’d written that amazing book, I’d be proud.”

“Okay, well . . . I mean, I’m not not proud, but talking about it’s something else. Also, maybe I still think like a writer: I feel like I need to be invisible,” Ross admitted. “It’s freeing not having to join in. I like to be in the corner, watching . . . listening . . . God, it sounds really creepy when I say it like that. I just need to know that people are reading my words, not watching my life.”

“I get that,” said Petra softly. “So . . . you are writing?”

In reply, Ross stood up abruptly, ruffling his hands through his hair, pulling at the roots as if he would like to tear it all out. It had grown since his dramatic makeover, with a wave appearing that just made him look even more like Lord Byron, or a brooding hero in one of Petra’s favorite romances. “Maybe,” he said shortly. “Now, don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Chapter Nine

Time always flew when Petra was with Ross. Now it was late, and she had precisely ten minutes to get ready and present herself at the pub, or they would all think she was rudely not coming. Or—nearly as bad—they would think she was a diva who didn’t think twice about showing up late. And she minded, very much, what they all thought, even if she was going to be gone by the end of the summer.

Half-crouching in front of the sink in the tiny bathroom, Petra tried hard to see herself in the tiny, age-spotted mirror. It was just an evening in the pub, but the whole thing felt alien and ridiculously daunting. Even though she was “in public” in the shop all day, being “in public” at the pub felt like a bigger effort was required. She gave up on mascara because her hand was shaking too much and settled for just brushing her teeth and then sticking on a bit of lip gloss.

In the bedroom, as she pulled on a slightly dressier top and changed her shoes, Petra admitted to herself that she was out of the habit of socializing. She had had a loose group of London friends once, but she was either out in the evening at work events, frantically networking, or she was too tired to meet up with people at all. On weekends, she felt she should be reading for work, not out having what passed for fun when you had no money in London. In the end, people had gradually stopped involving her, so that had been that.

It seemed the whole of Portneath was going out that Friday evening. All around her, as she walked up the steep main street, she saw groups of young people, couples holding hands, families heading into the pizza restaurant or the posh burger bar that served sweet potato fries and better-than-average cocktails.

Hardly anyone was alone.

Her heart pounding, Petra pushed open the pub door and was immediately assailed by a wall of noise and the pungent, yeasty aroma of old spilled beer. The place was crammed already. With scrubbed floorboards and a long, wooden-topped bar all along one side, the pub seemed mostly to be filled with people standing, although there were some little groups sitting at tables. Petra’s heart sank. She couldn’t see Freya’s bright-blond hair anywhere, although that could easily be because her view was blocked by the crowds. She desperately wished she were taller so she could see over heads. Should she just turn tail and tell Freya she had developed a migraine and decided not to come? No. Apart from anything else, she knew Ross would ask, and she would sound impossibly lame if she admitted she had bailed, especially as she was hoping to maintain the moral high ground over his refusing to accompany her.

Starting to politely squeeze through the crowds, she quickly learned to gently barge with a hand on an elbow here, a dart through a narrow gap there. She was broadly heading for the fireplace that she could glimpse at the far end. When she got there, she sighed with relief to see Freya sitting in a group of five or six people on two sofas set on either side of the fire. Freya was laughing and slipping her hand through the arm of a handsome man sitting next to her. This was Finn, Petra presumed, Freya’s new husband of not even a year. She was grateful that Flo had briefed her a little on who might be there.