Page 9 of How to Find a Romance in a Bookshop

“Oh yes, Portneath is famous for its food. You’ll see everyone in town on market days,” agreed Flo. “But for the boring stuff, you’ll want to pop over the bridge to the Co-op. And there’s Finn’s deli next to Freya’s too, of course. I shouldn’t say this, but he stocks goods from half the market stallholders, so he’s very convenient if you don’t manage to buy from the producers direct. His prices are slightly higher, naturally enough.”

“Of course,” agreed Petra vaguely, still half lost in her daydreams about what a wonderful life she would have if she lived here properly. She felt unable to pull herself away from the window, such was the allure and vitality of the scene.

“Why don’t you pop out now, with my basket, and find yourself some nice things to keep you going,” suggested Flo. “Now’s the time, before the baker sells out.”

“But I don’t want to leave you on your own,” said Petra.

“People only really drift in here once they’ve bought their fresh food and had a coffee in Finn’s shop. We won’t get busy until late morning at the earliest. You’ll see.”

“Really?” said Petra guiltily, but Flo had turned away, returning quickly with an old-fashioned basket like the one Diana had been carrying.

A minute later, wrapped up against the chill and giving Flo a grateful look, Petra launched into the crowds.

There was one stall selling nothing but mushrooms. She had never seen such a variety of shapes and sizes. They were all quite beautiful, but to Petra they seemed prohibitively expensive. The stallholder was a red-faced, beefy man, stirring a huge pan of steaming risotto that was glistening with mushrooms and speckled with herbs. It smelled absolutely delicious—earthy and rich. He was ladling it into paper containers, with little wooden forks to eat it with, and several people were standing around, warming their hands on their pots as they tucked into an unconventional late breakfast.

Petra bought a small portion of oyster mushrooms wrapped in a brown paper bag. She would fry them with butter and garlic and make them into an omelet for her supper that night. With her purchase stowed away in the basket, she moved on to the baker, who was standing, beaming, in front of shelves piled high with crusty loaves of bread. It was the huge trays of pastries in the stall in front of him that had piqued Petra’s interest. She sniffed appreciatively while she waited for him to deal with another customer, breathing in the delicious aromas of toasted almond, apple, cinnamon, and caramelized sugar, overlaid on a warming base note of yeast and flour. She was determined to have one of the puffy, lopsided, and utterly delicious-looking cinnamon buns. In the end, she decided on two, so she and Flo could have them with their coffee later and then—on impulse—she added a foot-long skein of Danish pastry twist, threaded through with chocolate pieces and dusted with a snowfall of icing sugar.

Speckled brown eggs from a comfortably plump and aproned lady at the next stall completed her supper plans, and there was milk and yogurt from the stall at the end of the street nearest Freya’s. The live crabs and lobsters at another stall made Petra feel terrible about the linguine she had eaten at Freya’s. She vowed to eschew seafood henceforth. With all these delicious alternatives—locally grown organic vegetables and a huge selection of cheeses—it would be no hardship. Petra didn’t feel she needed to eat anything with a face ever again.

That said, a life without bacon was no life at all . . .

Dreamily browsing a stall selling local honey in jars and chunky squares of honeycomb, Petra suddenly became aware she had left poor Flo on her own for ages. She had been drifting around the photogenic marketplace like the heroine in a rom-com montage, squeezing a perfectly ripe peach here, sharing a joke with a stallholder there. But this was real life, and she had a bookshop to run. She spun around to hurry back, accidentally knocking into a tall, dark man in a green army jacket with her basket.

“Oops, sorry,” she blurted. “Oh wow,” she breathed—hopefully not out loud—as he turned, and she looked up, her eyes locking with his. Never mind real life, she decided, if this was her rom-com meet-cute, then Petra was all in. This man was ridiculously beautiful, with his broad shoulders and sleek dark hair, brushed back, but with a heavy lock falling across his forehead as if designed to emphasize his sea-green eyes and chiseled, dark-stubbled jaw.

A bubble of nervous laughter escaped her. She made to break eye contact and found that she couldn’t.

“Hello,” she said inadequately. What was the correct response in these situations? Would it be rude to just go in for a full-on snog? Would a handshake be more appropriate? I mean, he’d seen the movies, right? He too must realize this was a moment full of huge portent. A moment dividing “then” and “now” as decisively as the big bang would have done.

“Do I know you?” she heard herself say, perplexed. She felt like she had definitely seen this ludicrously handsome face before, and yet that was nonsense because, if she had, she would hardly have forgotten. Only somehow—in her memory—she was seeing this same face artfully lit, jaw even more pronounced, eyes even more brooding . . . Oh God, she suddenly realized, it must be because he was an actual actor, someone who was probably used to playing the rom-com hero, and now there she was like a clucking superfan, simpering and claiming familiarity. He must be so bored with all that from practically every woman he encountered. And yet . . . “Have we actually met, in real life?” she asked, unable to stop herself. “Or are you a famous actor?” Or is this just me recognizing my life partner . . . soulmate . . . the man I am going to marry? she thought and managed not to say, but only by physically placing her fingers over her lips.

“Er, no,” he was insisting. “That is ‘no, I’m not an actor’ and ‘yes, we’ve met,’ first time when you were face down on a railway station platform.” A thought occurred to him. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

“Ha! Pirate man!” she exclaimed. And then, scraping what remained of her brain for further information, “You’re Russ,” she proclaimed proudly.

“Actually, it’s Ross,” he reminded her, emphasizing the “o” with a mouth so beautifully kissable, Petra realized she was staring at it with hers hanging open.

“Yeah, Russ,” murmured Petra, giving herself a metaphorical pat on the back. “Short for Russell, I assume?” she went on, hoping the witless inanity might pass for conversation.

“No, because it’s Ross, not Russ,” he told her patiently.

“Short for Rossell?” she asked, puzzled.

“No, just Ross—not short for anything,”

“Oh, come on, it must be short for something,” Petra’s mouth went on doggedly as her brain continued to refuse to engage. “Rossie, maybe?”

An indefinable expression washed across his face. Anger? Pain?

“Well—no—because ‘Rossie’ isn’t actually a name, is it?” he said, in a tone of superhuman patience. “Also, not even my mother calls me Rossie,” he told her firmly. “Thank God.”

Apparently, unable to stop herself from talking crap, Petra decided all she could gracefully do was apologize and explain: “It’s just that you suddenly look . . .” She gestured to his face, unable to summon further words.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’d been kind of . . . letting things slide.”

“Okay—well—now you look, erm . . . great,” Petra observed inadequately, certain he could feel the heat from her now flaming face. But that pirate-fetish motormouth had not yet done with her it seemed. “Ooh, I’ve just remembered a really funny joke,” she heard herself announce. “To ‘err’ is human, to ‘arr’ is pirate. Geddit?”

Silence fell. This was weird! Surely the man was not impervious to the best pirate joke in the whole world? Sheesh. Tough crowd.