Page 6 of Christmas By The Book

Haley had been listening to the conversation from the far side of the room, and, when he was gone, she practically dived back over to me to see what it had been about.

“What did Wharton want?” she asked. “I thought I heard him asking about buying the bookstore, but you would never sell to him, right?”

All at once, and before I could stop myself, I felt a swell of emotion hit me. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to get out of this, how I was going to be able to handle whatever he threw at me. If he exposed me to the council for not exactly being on time with my house taxes these last couple of years, I wouldn’t be able to keep the place anyway. Dammit, this was becoming such a nightmare.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes before I could stop them, and I swiped them away quickly. Haley didn’t need to see me like this. I was supposed to be her boss.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, but she shook her head, reaching out to give my hand a squeeze.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” she promised me. “What’s going on? You’re going to sell to him.?”

“I don’t know if I have a choice,” I confessed.

She frowned. “You always have a choice.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand,” I murmured. “I...the store has been struggling lately, and I used my savings to keep it above water. I kept waiting for everything to pick up. I thought I could build my savings up again, but I... I’ve missed a couple of payments on my property taxes. And if I don’t have them paid up by the end of the year, the council will be all over me.”

“Oh, they don’t care about stuff like that,” she replied, waving a hand. “You’ll be fine.”

“Not if he goes and tells them,” I replied, maudlin. “That’s what he’s threatening me with.”

“He said that to you?” she asked, eyes wide.

I sighed. “No, not exactly,” I replied. “He just... made it clear that was where he was going to go if I didn’t sell the place to him.”

I stared down at the envelope he had left me. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It felt surreal, almost impossible, like it must have been happening to someone else.

“That’s ridiculous!” Haley exclaimed. “He can’t just... he can’t just walk in here and tell you how things are going to be. Like he doesn’t own enough of this town already! When is it going to be enough for him? Someone needs to stand up to him, put their foot down so they can just...”

As she ranted, I couldn’t take my eyes off the envelope in front of me. I didn’t see a way out of this. I mean, how was I supposed to find a way around this, without making a mess of everything? I couldn’t lose the store, but I couldn’t lose the house, either, let alone to someone like Wharton. But if I dug my heels in and refused, chances were I was going to lose both.

This morning, I had been so full of the Christmas spirit, and now, I felt empty, like someone had reached into me and hollowed me out and left me with nothing. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. How did I get out of this? Was there even a way I could make that happen, or was everything already in motion?

“He can’t just do this, especially at Christmas!” she continued. “Do you think this is why he’s going it now? Because he knows he can make more money off the place than he would otherwise?”

“I have no idea,” I muttered. I just knew he wasn’t stupid, and he was likely well aware that he would make a good profit if he made a move on this place sooner rather than later. I wished I could rewind time just fifteen minutes or so, before all of this had happened, when I had been able to convince myself that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out okay after all.

“Here, let me get you a tissue,” Haley told me as she patted my shoulder. I was glad she was here, and she was being really sweet about all of this, but she had to be worried too. Her job was on the line just as much as this store was, and it wasn’t as though there were a whole lot of openings going on in Mastin Falls. Perhaps it would be better for her to get out of here, find a job somewhere else, somewhere that could offer her a more secure line of work, so she wouldn’t have to deal with comforting her sobbing boss when she found out that she was nearly out of money.

Just as she returned with a tissue for me, the door chimed again, and, when I looked up, my stomach flipped when I saw who it was. No way! It was the man who had been in earlier that morning, the man who had caught me when I had taken a plunge from that tree. Seth? That was his name, right? Oh, I couldn’t let him see me like this. As though this day couldn’t get any worse.

I ducked down and rushed into the back office before he could lay eyes on me. It might have felt like everything was falling apart around me, but that didn’t mean I had to allow him to see me in such a state.

I slammed the door behind me and leaned up against it, catching my breath, the envelope clutched to my chest. I figured I was going to have to read through everything eventually, but right now, all I wanted was to burn this thing and pretend I’d never seen it at all.

If only all of my problems could have been solved that easily.

Chapter Five

Seth

I STROLLED INTO THE store with a grin on my face, already sure of what I wanted to say to her.

I had been running it through my mind all afternoon, what I would tell her when I laid eyes on her again. Because I had been thinking about it from the moment I left the store, after I’d grabbed my book. I didn’t know what it was about this Jorja girl, but I liked her. I wanted to get to know her. And, hey, I should make some new friends in this town if I was going to be staying a while, right?

Though, the way she looked, I figured it would be hard to keep it at just friends.

But, as soon as I laid eyes on her again, her face paled, and she grabbed something from the counter and then vanished into the back. Oh, that wasn’t exactly the welcome I had been expecting. She had seemed a little shy before, but professional, and anyone who worked at a place like this had to share my love of my books.