Page 25 of Christmas By The Book

“Not long,” he assured me, though, for the first time, I was sure I could hear some doubt in his voice. I scanned the streets, looking for anyone who might be interested, but they were empty.

“It’s early yet,” he remarked, noticing my angst. “People will be out soon enough.”

“Hope so,” I muttered. And, sure enough, within an hour or so, people started coming up the street. A few of them cast their eye over the table full of books, but nobody seemed interest in actually buying anything.

The best we got was a couple of people pausing to pick up a book, flip it over in their hands, read the back, and then return it again. Every time they did, I held my breath, hoping this was going to be it, that this was going to be the moment that they actually purchased from us, but... no such luck.

As the morning wore on, I stuffed my hands into my pockets to try and keep warm, doing everything I could to keep from panicking. I could practically see the look on Wharton’s face when he had stormed into the shop a few days earlier, how angry he had been with me, how he had told me that I was going to pay for this. Was all of this, somehow, his doing? I tried not to let my mind stray somewhere so dangerous, but it was hard not to. I was sure he’d had a hand in making sure the print shop screwed up my order, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had thrown out some orders for people to keep away from this book fair in the hopes of backing me into a corner he knew I wouldn’t be able to get out of.

“You could make another post on social media,” Seth offered, as the clock ticked on toward midday. “Let people know what’s happening.”

“I don’t think anyone’s coming out,” I replied, shoulders sagging.

“They were probably just planning for the blizzard,” he suggested. “And they weren’t intending to go out today. If they’ve got a reason to leave the house, they’ll come. I’m sure of it. And there’s always tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, always tomorrow,” I replied, trying not to let the pain of that show on my voice. I hated how this was going, hated how all the hope I had built up was starting to drain away, all at once. I had convinced myself, in that moment when Seth had been looking into my eyes, that everything was going to be okay because that’s how he made me feel. He made me feel as though that might have been possible, but now, I could see all too clearly that it wasn’t—that it was far from fixed yet.

I went to put up another post on social media, hoping this would be enough to attract a few customers. Keeping watch on the table outside as I worked, I chewed on my lip. Okay, I needed to calm down, I needed to stop myself from getting lost in my head. Everything might still turn out all right.

I put up the post, but as I did, I heard voices outside. I glanced up, to see Seth bickering with someone standing next to the table. I hurried out to see what was going on, and, as soon as I stepped outside, I noticed that the sidewalk beneath my feet was slick with something.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

The man, who looked seriously irritated, was holding a hose in one hand and a large scrubber in the other. “I’ve been sent here to clear the sidewalk,” he replied. “So you’ll need to move the table to—”

“We have a permit to be here,” Seth protested. “You can’t do this some other time?”

The man shrugged. “I’ve got my orders.”

“Your orders?” I replied. What was this, the military?

“Who from?” Seth pressed, though I already knew the answer to that question.

“Mr. Wharton,” the man replied, like it should have been obvious. “Look, I can do the rest of the street for now, but in an hour or so—”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Seth told him firmly. “Tell Mr. Wharton—”

“Look, I’m not dealing with him,” he replied, shaking his head. “I’ll work the other side for now. But after that...” He shrugged, and then moved away from the table.

I watched as he began to spray the sidewalk with the power washer he held, and felt my stomach sink.

“Nobody’s going to want to come down here while he’s spraying water around,” I muttered to Seth. “Plus if it turns to ice, this place is going to be a deathtrap.”

“I know,” Seth replied quietly, his eyes narrowed. “Wharton must have planned this.”

“Of course he did.” I sighed. We should have expected it. We had advertised it all over social media, so it wouldn’t have been hard for him to track down information about when and where this was happening, and throw some of his cash around to disrupt it.

Not that there was much to disrupt in the first place, anyway.

Seth took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t let it get to you,” he murmured. “It’s going to be okay. That guy doesn’t want to be here anymore than we want him to be. He’s not going to cause us any trouble.”

I tightened my grip on his hand, hoping to the heavens he was right, because I really needed to believe it right now. But, as the day wore on, there were still no people visiting our fair. A few people glanced at the books, but that was it.

My heart sank and sank and sank until it felt like it was hanging out somewhere around my shoes. I had put so much hope in this—so much hope that Christmas would bring around the miracle that I had needed to keep the store open, but the more time that passed, the less and less likely it looked like we were going to pull this off.

Just as we were about to pack up and call it a day, a sleek black car pulled up in front of the store, and a handful of men in fancy suits stepped out. Seth and I exchanged another glance. Was this another one of Wharton’s attempts to upstage us?

“Excuse me, you’ll need to move this table,” one of the men told us.