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The handsome, scowling, gorgeously green-eyed, grumpy man in the toy shop.
Oliver’s alarm went off far too early the next morning, beeping insistently until he rolled over in the dark and fumbled for his phone to turn it off. For a few seconds he took slow breaths, considering just going back to sleep—what was the worst that could happen?
With a deep, furious sigh, he rolled over and stumbled to the bathroom.
It was still dark outside and would be for at least another hour.
Oliver set the water as hot as he could to ease his aching shoulders, then when he was clean, flipped it to freezing cold to really wake himself up.
“Fuck, shit, fuck,” he muttered between clenched teeth.
Twenty minutes later he was stumbling out of the flat with a travel mug of good coffee and hair that was still slightly damp.
The bus to take him into town picked up at the end of the road. There was, at least, a shelter for him to huddle under with the nurse he got on the early bus with since he’d started working in the shop. They exchanged sympathetic smiles and Oliver’s nose twitched as he threatened to sneeze.
Even though it was early and Oliver was not a morning person, his mind was racing as he stared out of the condensation-frosted bus window.
He could be blasé about having deadlines, but the reality was, his agent could only do so much to keep his publisher happy. After the success of his first few books, Oliver had signed a contract for a five book deal, which was massive for him, and now he had to deliver on the last two books in that deal. When he’d signed he’d been full of confidence that he’d keep turning out two or three picture books a year, fully illustrated and ready to be nominated for even more industry awards.
The reality was slightly different.
The market for children’s books was an ever-changing beast and some of the concepts he’d pitched when he got his deal just weren’t commercially viable any more. For the first time in his career, Oliver was facing the very real possibility that he wasn’t going to come up with a book that was good enough and he’d be ditched by his publisher.
That wouldn’t be the end of the world. There was more than one publishing company out there. But Oliver would be going back to the drawing board with a reputation as someone who was utterly unreliable, and his agent would be working overtime to assure anyone who was interested in him that he could come up with the goods.
The days of five-book deals would be over. The best he could hope for would be to write and finish one book at a time and keep his fingers crossed that someone would want to publish it.
Oliver sighed heavily, watching his breath fog up the glass.
Maybe that would be better. Maybe he should just give up on the whole thing and be a ghost-writer for some boring, talentless celebrity who thought they could make some fast money hawking shitty books to kids.
The sad fact was, they could. And they did.
Oliver got off the bus just as the dark was starting to leech out of the sky, and made a quick stop to get a refill of coffee before he headed over to the shop.
Well. Calling it a shop was generous. It was an empty room with a tiny staff bathroom shoved underneath a staircase and central heating that rattled for hours after it had been turned on. It was a huge step up from working at a stall in the market, though, when he’d be forced to huddle around an electric heater in a glorified garden shed, wearing layers and layers of clothes while his fingertips turned numb from the cold.
The company who had hired this place hadn’t bothered to scope it out in person, Oliver was sure of that. He’d spent a full day cleaning it before he accepted the first delivery of books, gently relocating spiders and scrubbing dirt and dust off every surface.
People didn’t expect a full setup when they wandered in from the cobbled street outside. He was totally open about the purpose of the pop-up bookshop: to get rid of excess stock, selling it off cheap to Christmas bargain hunters. Not that his potential customers always got the idea.
No, he did not have copies of the latest footballer autobiography.
Or a kiss-and-tell from someone who’d been on Love Island.
Or Steven King’s latest.
Oliver flipped the sign on the door to ‘Open’ and left the door firmly closed. It would be another hour until the central heating did its job.
In the meantime, he could stare at the toy shop across the way and think. And wonder. And daydream.
Jack stormed down the street, furious at himself for oversleeping.
He’d been awake long past midnight, working on the plans for the bookshop upstairs and the instructions he’d give to the builders who had done such a good job on the toy shop. He was thinking of asking his granddad to make something for the bookshop too, like the counter, something that kept part of the Daly family alive in his newest venture.
The arrival of the pop-up across the street—even though it was only temporary—had put a boot up his arse to get on with his plans. There were other book shops in Bath, of course, plenty of them. Jack was going to make his even bigger and even better and even more…more.
It took him three tries to shove his key into the lock and he hissed
