Chapter Four
Jane and Sam worked out their dinner plans via text the next morning.
Sam: How about the place around the corner from your store? The one where they do the fancy hamburgers and have all that Star Trek stuff on the walls?
Jane: Caleb hates that place. He thinks it’s pretentious.
Sam: He thinks everything is pretentious. We haven’t started caring about that, have we?
Jane: Good point. Kobe-yashi Maru it is. 7?
Sam: 7
Jane slid her phone back into her pocket and went back to what was really important: deciding what top to wear for her second meeting with Handsome Dan.
She’d already decided on her favorite jeans because they made her butt look good. But her butt always looked pretty good, while the same couldn’t be said for her top half. She’d teased Caleb about preferring women with big breasts, but the fact was, most men did. She’d read somewhere that it was biological—big breasts signaled that a woman was fertile and able to nourish a baby, so men were hardwired to be attracted to that.
Which meant they weren’t hardwired to be attracted to her.
But she did own one padded bra, and it ratcheted her up from an A/B to a B/C and gave her something approaching cleavage. Pair that with the right top and she’d be in business.
She decided to go with a bookworm T-shirt—the one with a zombie librarian saying BOOKS . . . BOOKS . . . BOOKS instead of BRAINS . . . BRAINS . . . BRAINS.
There were three good reasons for her choice: wearing a T-shirt meant you weren’t trying too hard; this particular T-shirt had a V-neck that would accentuate her artificial cleavage; and it was funny. Not to people like Caleb, maybe, but to people like her and Dan.
She usually needed only one employee to close with her, but she’d asked Kiki to double up with Felicia today so she’d be able to focus on Dan even if there was a rush of customers . . . which, as a small business owner, she supposed she ought to be hoping for.
But to be honest, on this particular day, what she was really hoping for was to see Dan again.
And that this time, he’d ask her on a date.
On the subway from Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan, she found herself thinking about last night’s conversation with Caleb. Remembering it sent odd sensations running through her, little ripples of . . . something.
Was he right about her flirting abilities—or rather, her lack of them? It was true she didn’t do a lot of flirting with guys she was interested in . . . she was usually more focused on finding shared interests and in trying to have a real conversation.
A wave of depression made her slump down on the plastic seat. Across from her, a young woman—a student, judging by the backpack—was angry-texting on her smartphone, glaring at the screen like it was the boyfriend Jane was certain she was fighting with.
Relationships suck, Sam always said. People mistake lust for love, and then things get messy.
Maybe Caleb was right and she was wrong. Maybe guys didn’t care about shared interests. Maybe they cared about late-night flirting calls and big breasts.
Maybe Sam was right, and love would always take a back seat to lust.
But a few hours later, when she was surrounded by books and customers who loved them, her native optimism returned. Of course there were men in the world looking for real relationships. And some of those men were guy-nerds, men who watched Doctor Who and loved Harry Potter and could say at least a few words in J. R. R. Tolkien’s elvish language. Men who saw geekdom and a love of literature not as an impediment, but as the perfect bridge to romance.
By the time four o’clock rolled around, she was feeling downright cheery.
She didn’t even have time to doubt herself, to wonder if maybe Dan wouldn’t come. Because at 4:05 there he was, bringing not only his niece but his sister. And when he spotted her he came right over, smiling like they’d known each other for years and introducing Lisa (his sister) and Alice (his niece) as though he’d already told them about Jane and had been looking forward to seeing her all day.
The four of them chatted about books and authors, and Alice picked out an autographed copy of E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web from the rare-books case.
Jane’s one niggling concern was how she and Dan would get down to the date question—or at least the phone number question—with his sister and niece there. But before she had a chance to come up with a potential solution, Dan found one himself.
Or rather, his niece did.
“Come on, Mom, we’re going to be late,” she said, tugging on Lisa’s arm.
Lisa pulled out her phone and nodded. “You’re right, we are.” She smiled at Jane. “It’s your fault for being so charming. It was lovely to meet you, and we’ll be sure to come here for our Christmas shopping. Dan, will we see you soon?”
He nodded. “Not tonight, though.”
Jane’s hopes soared as Lisa and Alice left. What was he planning to do tonight? Could it be something he wanted to do with her? Dinner? Dancing? Drinks? All three? Of course she was wearing a T-shirt while he was wearing a maroon button-down over gray wool slacks, but she always kept a few pieces of clothing here at the store. She had a skirt hanging up in the back room should it become necessary.
Please let it become necessary.
Dan started to say something and then stopped. He fiddled with his glasses, which made her think about how often she fiddled with her own glasses when she was nervous.
Was he nervous? About asking her out, maybe?
After a moment he took the glasses off, polished them with the hem of his shirt, and put them back on again. “Jane—”
“Little sis!”
There was no mistaking the exuberant voice of Samantha Finch. Normally Jane would have been just as happy to see her, but her timing at this moment was so spectacularly awful that Jane shot her a glare that, if looks could kill, would have taken down a bear at twenty paces.
Sam, of course, paid no attention. She strode through Jane’s store like a brisk wind blowing through a quiet town, a huge grin on her face. When she reached her sister’s side, she wrapped her up in a bear hug that reminded Jane that Sam was eight inches taller and thirty pounds heavier—every bit of it toned muscle.
“Look at you!” Sam cried out.
Her voice, as always, sounded too loud in the quiet bookstore. Sam always seemed larger than life, so full of exuberant vitality that just being around her could leave Jane feeling sort of wan and pale and tired, a thin sapling next to a mighty oak tree.
“Caleb says you guys have something fab planned for my birthday. This is the big three-oh, Janey. I’m not even sure I want to celebrate it.”
“That’s good, because what Caleb has in mind will never, ever happen.”
Sam gave a mock pout. “Now you’ve made me want whatever it is.”
“That’s because mentally you’re still eight years old.”
“I’m rubber and you’re glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and—”
“Okay, six years old.”
Sam’s big personality was enough to distract a person from anything—even a cute customer you had a crush on. But now that the first greeting was over Jane remembered Dan, and when she stole a glance at him, she saw that he was staring at Sam as you might stare at a car wreck on the side of the road, wondering how it happened and unable to take your eyes off it.
Sam must have caught her glance, because she turned the full wattage of her toothy grin on him.
“I’m so sorry, Jane, I interrupted you with a customer.” She stuck out a hand, and Dan took it, looking a little dazed. “I’m Samantha,” she went on. “Are you a regular?”
“This is just my second time here,” he answered. “It’s a fantastic shop.” He looked from Samantha to Jane. “You two are sisters?”
He sounded dazed, too.
Sam grinned at him. “I know, we don’t look anything alike. Except for our eyes,” she added. “They’re the exact same shade of blue. Cobalt, according to our mother. I’ve never seen any cobalt, so I just take her word for it.”
She turned back to Jane. “I got downtown sooner than I expected, so I stopped by to give you a hug. Also, I wanted to ask if we can have dinner a little earlier than we planned. Like, say, right after you close up shop. I’m starving. Caleb’s on his way. He’ll meet us there.”
“But it’s only—” She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that, somehow, it was five minutes to six. How had that happened?
“You still close at six, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” Sam gave her another huge hug, this one hard enough to make her ribs creak. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes or whenever you get there. Burgers and my kid sister—what could be better?”
And then she blew out of the store like the tail end of a hurricane, the impression so strong that Jane half expected books to blow open, their pages fluttering, as though a literal wind had swept through.
Damn. Jane had been thinking that if Dan asked her out for tonight, she’d have plenty of time to text Sam and Caleb that she needed to reschedule their dinner plans. Now, obviously, that was out of the question.
But that was okay. She and Dan could still do something after dinner, like drinks or coffee. Or they could just make plans for a different day. This wasn’t a big deal, just a short-term disappointment.
She turned back to Dan, hoping they could pick up where they’d left off.
He was still staring after her sister, even though she’d left the store and was out of sight. Not that Jane was surprised. It usually took her a few minutes to recover equilibrium after a Sam encounter, and this was Dan’s first one.
He turned back to her after a moment.
“Samantha,” he said, sounding bemused.
“Yep, that’s her name,” Jane said.
This might actually be a good thing. They could talk about siblings, since they both obviously had them. And Jane’s plans with Sam might lead to a discussion of plans in general, which might lead to a discussion of plans, specifically. As in plans for a date.
“She . . .” Dan trailed off.
Jane nodded. “I know. Sam can be kind of overwhelming.”
Dan was quiet for a moment, his eyes almost blank behind his glasses. What was he thinking about? The fact they had only another five minutes? Was he wondering whether to ask her out, or if they should just exchange phone numbers? Or—
The blank look transformed into something else. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she thrilled at the contact. It was the first time they’d touched since yesterday, when their hands had brushed on the counter.
“I was wondering,” he said.
Jane’s heart began to pound.
“Your sister. Is she seeing anyone?”