Page 23 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“You brought yourself up?”

“I did,” Petra agreed brightly. It was fine. She didn’t need pity.

“Are you close now?”

“Ha!” The exclamation escaped her, expressing more than she intended to say. “We really aren’t,” she admitted. “Mum lives in Spain. She says I’m welcome any time, but after the first day, we’ve basically got nothing to say to each other. If we could just meet for a quick cup of tea, we would probably do it fairly often, but—all the way to Spain . . .” Petra didn’t finish. It occurred to her in that moment that she hadn’t told her mother what had happened, hadn’t thought for one moment that she should escape the fallout from her smashed career in Spain. That she might flee to her remaining parent for comfort and reassurance. The possibility hadn’t even registered as an option. Which said it all.

“What about your half-siblings?” Ross persisted.

Petra puffed out her cheeks. “I think they’re up north somewhere. We don’t know each other at all, really. Maybe one day . . . What about you? Siblings?”

“Just me,” he told her. “Can you imagine? Their one and only child announces he wants to be a writer. Watching their little faces . . . the hope fading that their son would ever make anything of himself . . .”

“Except that you did,” Petra reminded him. “They must have been so proud, no?”

“Yeah, yeah . . . Mum enjoyed telling all her friends when I started being talked about, winning awards . . . I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up in conversation much when I was starving in a garret for years before that.”

“Do writers still have garrets?” Petra teased.

“It’s the law,” he said. “It’s only the absence of a garret that hinders my writing now, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Petra agreed cautiously. Right from the beginning of their friendship, there had been an omertà over anything other than the most frivolous jest touching on his writing and her agenting. “What even is a garret?” Petra mused, steering the conversation away.

“God knows,” he said. “But I think they have to be freezing, whatever they are, and it’s so cozy in here that I don’t want to leave,” he said, getting up to poke the fire and shove another log on.

“Supper?” asked Petra, emboldened. Usually, Ross took himself off after two hours or less, being apparently reluctant to impose on her evening routine.

Or possibly reluctant to relinquish his.

“It’s only baked potatoes with cheese and beans,” she admitted.

“My favorite,” Ross declared. “But I’m inviting myself . . . that’s not right. I should be cooking for you.”

“Then do,” said Petra. “That would be very nice. But not tonight.”

In truth, Petra thought later—when Ross had left, after a supper eaten in comfortable near silence—he had never even invited her to his rented cottage. Instead, they invariably met in the shop, and then the little flat. She had once proposed a coffee at Freya’s, but he declined with something approaching fear in his eyes. Despite their easy rapport, there was still a guardedness about him, and as far as she knew, she was still his only friend around Portneath. However repressed he might be around her, it would seem he was even more insular with everyone else he might encounter.

Petra had lined up cake and prosecco as a treat for the Beach Reads Book Club and was laying it all out when Diana, ever glamorous, had wafted into the shop looking cool and elegant in ice blue cashmere with a matching scarf.

“Darling, I’m positively freezing,” she declared to Petra as she air-kissed. “Shall we put the kettle on?”

“Of course,” said Petra. “I was thinking the same.”

By the time the two women had made tea for themselves and laid out the wine and fresh cream gateaux, the others had arrived, stamping their feet to warm them up and chattering about their weekend plans.

Petra and Flo, on the other hand, knew they would be working a busy Saturday in the shop, with the remains of the inventory on Sunday. Valentine’s Week coincided with school vacation, and they were expecting to be busy as the population of Portneath soared during the holidays, and not just during the summer as Petra had previously assumed.

“So,” declared Petra, when all had full glasses and cake plates in hand, “there is a reason for our generosity this evening. Capelthorne’s is turning over its window and its most prime selling space in-store to the best romance stories ever, and we want to know from you which ones they are. And,” she said, looking around the group, “we want a particular focus on commercial fiction, although,” she added hastily, “remember, even the classics were the commercial fiction of their time, so nothing is really off limits, right?”

“Right!” they all chorused, their faces filled with eager anticipation at the task ahead. Flo, having finished distributing the cake, was now womaning the flip chart, with her marker pen at the ready.

“So who’s going to start?” prompted Petra.

“Frenchman’s Creek,” declared Diana, “and we’re in du Maurier country too, so it’s perfect. I’m fed up with du Maurier always meaning Rebecca,” she went on. “Not that I don’t love it too, obviously.”

“But Rebecca’s less of a love story,” agreed Flo. “Although I suppose you could say Max and the Girl . . .”

“Hmm,” chipped in Mungo, “not the most equal relationship. And more coercive control than love, I’ve always thought.”