Page 28 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

After being invited to wave her phone at a reader displaying a disconcertingly large sum, Petra was back out in the street with her precious parcel. It was raining now, and cars swished through the puddles, the lights of the shops spilling out and reflecting back in the wet pavements. Petra shivered. Ross’s cottage, she now knew, was just beyond the outskirts of the town. That was a brisk twenty-minute walk away, which would have been a pleasure at any other time, on any other day.

Nope. Uber had not extended its tendrils as far as Portneath, her app confirmed. There was a taxi firm at the station, but she didn’t know its name. Petra was just pondering, swinging the entirely “ungirly” box of chocolates, as she chewed her lips in an agony of indecision. If she didn’t make some sort of plan she would be late, and that would be unforgivably rude—

“Going my way?” came a voice as a dark blue car drew alongside her and the car window slid noiselessly down.

Petra was about to give one of the withering replies she always kept handy for unwanted approaches in London—more common than she would like—when she realized who it was.

“I nearly punched you in the face,” she told Ross, sagging with relief. “I thought you were stalking me.”

“I kind of am,” admitted Ross. “Hop in. I just saw the rain and didn’t want you walking.”

“Shouldn’t you be slaving over a hot stove?” Petra asked, as she slipped into the passenger seat, shivering gratefully as the heat blasted her chilly legs.

“Probably. My soufflé will be ruined.”

“We can always send out for food.”

“In Portneath? You’re kidding. No delivery apps here.”

“No Uber either,” Petra observed. “It’s basically medieval.”

“Picturesque though,” said Ross, steering the car confidently back into the line of traffic snaking up the main street. “If you like that sort of thing.”

Chapter Twelve

“I hope you’re hungry,” he said, coming around to open the car door for her when they arrived. Petra wasn’t used to the whole gallant behavior thing and found it disconcerting. Were they on a date? She sure as hell wasn’t going to ask again. There was only so much crushing casual rejection a girl could take.

“This is soooo gorgeous!” she exclaimed delightedly as he ushered her in.

A low oak door with a heavy black wrought-iron knocker opened directly into a sitting room only perhaps twelve feet square, with a stone inglenook fireplace taking up the majority of one wall. On the hearth crouched a squat black woodburning stove, a fire already at its heart. The glow from the fire was matched by low light from two fat table lamps on either side of a squishy dark-blue velvet sofa, liberally scattered with cinnamon and orange silk cushions.

“I’m renting it for the winter,” said Ross, helping her out of her damp coat and hanging it on the back of the door. “It’s damp as hell, and dark too, but—with the stove going—it’s cozy, I suppose.”

“For you,” said Petra, handing him the chocolate. “I didn’t know what to bring.”

“Totally unnecessary, but—thank you—it looks beautiful . . . chocolate?”

Emily nodded.

“We can have some later, if you’ve got room,” he said.

“Something smells delicious,” Petra said, sitting as instructed on the sofa. It was so wonderfully enveloping with its deep, squashy feather cushions, she wasn’t at all sure she was going to be able to get out of it.

“Wine?”

Petra nodded.

“White? Red? Pink?”

The transaction agreed, settled in front of the fire, clasping red wine in a glass the size of a goldfish bowl, Petra was instantly relaxed.

This was nice. Really nice.

Ross disappeared into a warmly lit kitchen just through a doorway in the middle of a wall of bookshelves. After a few minutes of clattering and banging, he poked his head out. “Forks and bowls in front of the fire, or plates, knives, and forks at the table in the kitchen?”

“Bowls, please,” said Petra. Anything that delayed having to move.

“. . . which is the correct answer. Bear with me . . .” called Ross.