Page 68 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he said, his mouth close to her ear.

Daisy wondered if it was possible for a laugh to sound lust-filled.

Mistingham was a canvas of twinkling Christmas lights, most of the buildings adorned like frosting on a yule log, and Sophie’s window displays stood out in the darkness, the Christmas notebooks, foil-covered and beribboned, lit from below with soft spotlights. Daisy had a sudden vision of the bookshop window like that: a total renovation, the double-fronted window displays changing with every major new release or local publication, using glass paints to create something special each time, careful lighting that would draw passers-by closer.

‘OK?’ Avery asked, and she realized they’d reached it. All the windows showed off now were cobwebs and dust smears on the glass.

‘Great,’ Daisy croaked out. She was an experienced interior designer; she had never considered taking over her dad’s shop. But after reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, being completely absorbed in it, the way it had taken her mind off the complications in her own life … books were necessary, weren’t they? And the shop was still owned by the Anderly family. ‘Going to do your special trick, then?’ she asked, forcing herself back to the present.

‘Thought I’d save that for later,’ Avery murmured, but he was bending down, already working away at the lock.

‘You have your lock-picking kit with you all the time?’

‘It’s not that sophisticated.’

Daisy turned on the torch Harry had made her bring, so Avery could see what he was doing. She glanced behind her, but there was nobody else about. Batter Days and Penny For Them were both closer to the seafront, so even if they were busy, the customers would hopefully be too far away to notice them huddled at the door of an abandoned building.

‘This is technically breaking and entering,’ she said.

‘Nothing technical about it. But it’s your shop, so I doubt it would hold up in court.’

‘What if Harry presses charges?’

‘He wouldn’t do that. Look, you just need to get these two metal rods in either end of the mechanism. Some people can do it with a paperclip, but these are stiffer, so you just …’ Daisy watched as he twisted them, his large hands dexterous in ways she didn’t want to dwell on. ‘Then you …’ his words trailed away, and a couple of seconds later she heard the distinctive click of a lock turning. He stood up. ‘There we go.’

‘Amazing.’ Daisy wondered how she had got from shopping for elegant dresses on Regent Street to late-night lock picking with the man she was casually kissing. ‘Can we go in?’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Avery gestured for her to go ahead, and she turned the handle, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Even with her torch to light the way, the space was gloomy, bits of paper and bubble wrap scattered on the floor, left over from when the remaining books had been packed up. The shelves were still there, though, and Daisy remembered the shape of it, the bigger rooms at the front, a maze of smaller sections at the back housing niche titles and subjects: Mind, Body and Spirit; International Affairs; Translated Poetry.

Her dad had sat at the desk in the centre of the space, facing the door, and had talked to everyone who came in. He had long discussions between sales, treated every new customer like a long-lost relative while his grieving teenage children fended for themselves in the big empty manor.

‘It’s a great space,’ Avery said quietly as they wandered through it. He kept a couple of feet between them, as if realizing this was emotional for her, that she was spiralling through a hundred different memories.

‘It was a treasure trove,’ she said, ‘and I understand why Dad was so proud of it, why it was an escape for him.’

‘Everyone deals with grief differently, but he still had a responsibility to you.’

Daisy shrugged. ‘He did, but he just … couldn’t. And I didn’t come back when he got ill, nowhere near as often – or for as long – as I should have. I let Harry do it all. I said I was too busy and I stayed away.’

‘Nobody could blame you for that.’

‘I do,’ Daisy said. ‘But I also wonder if …’

‘What?’

She turned around, finding him in the gloom: a solid silhouette, warm and caring and irresistible. ‘I wonder if we could reopen the bookshop? If we could bring it back to life, to honour him and Mum? Harry was right, Mistingham is a lot more welcoming – or that’s how I feel about it now – and I …’ She pressed her hands to her chest. ‘I have this urge to resurrect it. To bring books back to Mistingham.’

Avery stepped towards her. ‘All of this because of The Hound of the Baskervilles?’

‘It’s a great book,’ she said with a laugh. ‘But it’s not just that. It’s …’ Everyone. Lars and his café. You and your house. She didn’t want to be transient in her job any more, flitting from project to project, making places beautiful for other people then moving on. Before, when she had been with Stefan, she had their home. Here, now, she had this overwhelming desire to renovate the bookshop. To care about it, to fill it with books, welcome customers from down the road and miles away. To stay here?

Avery’s grey eyes were fixed on her, warm and amused, and she wondered what it would be like to do this for another month then return to London. This was a secret holiday kiss, but she already knew he was worth so much more than that. But for her? Or would some other lucky woman end up coming home to him every night?

‘You do realize, don’t you,’ Avery said slowly, ‘that if you decide to take on the bookshop, you’ll be tied here for a lot longer than the time it takes to plan a Christmas ball?’

‘I know. I’m not sure if this is real, or if it’s just a … a fantasy.’