I ran from the counter toward the back room, but my legs wouldn’t move fast enough.
Rachel grabbed my arm, annoyed. “We’ve got customers, Jeraline.”
“I have to pee!” I practically screamed.
Boss lady let me go with a grunt of disgust.
I threw the door open to the back room.
Josh was there, alive, unharmed, no bullets.
But . . . he was about to open the padlock with the key.
“No!” I yelled as if he were about to set off a bomb.
Josh turned to me, shocked and surprised.
I took hold of the padlock and Josh’s hand. “Let me, please.”
His eyebrows crinkled in outright confusion. I needed a reason. I needed an excuse.
I blurted, “It’s just I have some personals in there.”
Always with the freaking period. What was wrong with me?
But it worked. Josh’s whole demeanor relaxed as he assuredly remembered yesterday’s proclamation of my monthly cycle.
“You know what? I’ll hang it up in one of the other lockers. I don’t need a lock. I think it’ll be okay.” Josh snapped the padlock closed, and I self-consciously took my hand off of his.
I hadn’t even taken a second to acknowledge that we’d been touching that long. I had been so worried about the bag, I barely had time for my belly to do flip-flops from our close proximity. Okay, yup. There were the cartwheels.
He handed me the padlock key. “Thanks anyway.”
“You’re welcome.” Um, what was that? What did that even mean?
Smiling, Josh left, and I hit my head with my fist after he was gone. “You’re welcome?”
Emma popped in, leaning against the lockers, smiling. “Now, I don’t know about that counting as a conversation, but the hand touching was definite progress.”
Rachel peeked in, and Emma disappeared. “Finished?”
I nodded and hurried out to the store, not wanting to face the wrath of Rachel any more than I had to.
Before embarrassing myself any further, I grabbed the wheeled cart full of books next to the counter and pushed it into the stacks to return all the books to their rightful places. After I cleared the first row of returns, there was a tap on my shoulder.
Fully expecting it to be Rachel with some sort of critique on how I was shelving the books wrong, I jumped slightly when it was Josh.
“Sorry,” he apologized.
I eyed him nervously. “It’s okay. I guess I was just really into this.” Good. Words. Progress.
“It’s dead in here. Let me help,” Josh suggested.
Excuse me? What? Help? Would that require talking? Which I was technically supposed to do with him today, but now that the opportunity was here, all I wanted to do is run. “What about the counter?” Good. Make him run, much better.
Josh’s demeanor was friendly and carefree. “Rachel’s got it.”
Oh, good. Now I was stuck with him.
Taking a deep breath, I took a book from the cart and placed it onto the shelf.
So far, so good. I could do this.
Josh grabbed a novel and read the title. “Ooo, The Gateway to Winterbrook. I love that movie. It was the only movie my mom bought on iTunes and was pretty much my babysitter most of my childhood.”
My fear of Josh vanished as my heart began to race for an entirely different reason. Could it be? Could I finally have found it? Barely able to hide the shake in my voice, I asked, “Is there a gold-leafed door on the opening page?”
Josh opened the book and shook his head. “Nope, just black and white.”
Everything deflated.
Fail.
No dice.
I sighed in disappointment. “It was a long shot anyway.”
“Something rare?” Josh raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
Nodding, I explained, “The author, Sofia Blackmoor, originally only published three hundred copies in 1907. No one would publish the book because back then publishers didn’t think readers would buy fantasy from women, so she published it herself by selling her house. It was picked up later by a pretty big publishing house when they saw how successful she was on her own, but they were too cheap to print the gold inlay. It’s like my Holy Grail.”
Josh’s eyes lit up as he thumbed through the book. “It’s crazy that this book almost didn’t exist.”
“I’d give anything to see that gold leaf page. Some people even say that it’s an actual door to Winterbrook.” I wanted to gush more, but I restrained myself.
“I never read the book, only saw the movie,” Josh admitted. “I should pick this up. You seem to like it a lot, so it has to be good.”
I wanted to pinch myself because I was sure I was imagining this wonderful conversation. “The movie didn’t do it justice. It left so much of the good stuff out.”
Yeah. That was perfect. Insult him. That was better than a pinch.
Josh shifted his feet nervously. His face said it all: he wasn’t sure if he had insulted me or not, so I tried to fix my blunder by saying, “I love the movie too.”
His shoulders relaxed, and he sighed in relief.
I continued, “I just love the book more. My mom used to read it to me every night. I still have a copy too; it’s a beat-up mess. She used to say that one day I’d find the first edition. I keep thinking I’ll find it here. You see, look . . .” I gently took the book from Josh and opened it to one of the beginning pages. “‘Fate had brought Olivia to the front doors of The Hidden Corner bookstore. It had called to her in her dreams, and she knew that everything she had ever wanted was inside its walls.’ Still gives me goosebumps.”
Josh showed me his arm, and sure enough, he had goosebumps too. “Makes me feel better about working here. You think Rachel named the place because she’s a fan of the book?”
“I thought that too when I first started working here, but when I brought up Gateway to Winterbrook to ask her, she just got really angry and told me not to talk about ‘nonsense books.’” My face burned at the memory. I had hoped it would be a bonding moment, but it
