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“Tell me you understand.” Autumn’s eyes were so uncertain that Summer felt her sister’s unease as if it were her own. Summer was a giver by nature, and Autumn tended to be a bit of a taker—but her huge heart made up for it. And having a big heart sometimes meant that you had to follow it.
“I get it. I mean, Paris,” Summer whispered.
“I know, right!” Autumn said, and their through-the-ether twin thing must have been one-way right then because her sister clearly wasn’t reading the room. “Which brings me to a little favor.”
“How little?”
“Depending on how this thing goes, I might need to borrow some money for the trip.”
Summer flopped on her bed. “How much?”
Autumn rattled off some insane amount and Summer sat straight up. That bad feeling turned acidic. “You said just a couple of extra days. Why do you need that kind of money?”
“If Paris goes well, I might end up going to Prague, and then Berlin, and I’m a little short on cash.”
“So am I.” Summer had spent a huge chunk of her savings buying the bookstore from her mom and auntie. Then there was the remodel she’d done to the shop, not to mention the small business loan she’d taken out. “All that I have is my wedding fund.” A fund that had taken her a lifetime to accumulate.
“Which is why I’ll pay you back with my end-of-quarter bonus. Please, Summs. I’ll even tack on interest.”
Summer felt herself caving. It wasn’t like she was getting married anytime soon, and her sister might be a little flaky when it came to the little things, but she never broke a promise. And while Summer was cash-poor, she was passion-rich. So if she could help her sister fulfill one of her dreams, then she was all in.
“How about you let me borrow something romance-worthy from your closet and we’ll call it even?”
Chapter 4
the beast
“Are we talking Gumball Pink or Cotton Candy Pink on those cheekies?” Summer’s best friend, Cleo, asked. She was sitting on the checkout counter handing Summer novels for the bookshop’s new front window display.
“Does it matter?”
It had been six days since her run-in with the brooding British villain and she was still irate. Sure, his workers no longer parked in her lot. Instead, they were taking up all the street spaces, their big, obnoxious trucks blocking her storefront from passersby.
Still, the bookshop was full of customers, some perusing the shelves, others relaxing with friends in the reading area over espressos while talking about their latest reads. In the far corner was the Smut Club, who were engaged in a hot debate over how many chili peppers their latest book pick should receive.
“Definitely a five,” Mable, the club’s fierce leader, said.
“Just because they used C-O-C-K over M-A-N-R-O-O-T doesn’t make it a five, Mable,” Claire pointed out.
“If you’re spelling out the words, it makes it a five-chili-pepper read,” Mable shot back.
Mable was a grandmother and nine-time bass fishing champion. Claire was a college student getting a degree in botany. Yet every month the two came together, with a group of other erotica enthusiasts, to talk about a shared passion. They bickered and hugged it out like they were family.
That’s what this was, Summer marveled. A family. Started by her grandmother, nurtured by her mother and auntie, and now blossoming under Summer’s watchful care.
“It absolutely matters!” Cleo said, bringing Summer back to the conversation at hand. “When it comes to men, details matter. See, Gumball Pink means you’re playful in bed and you don’t mind a little blow action. Wild Orchid hints at the fact that you own a red room and there’s a ninety percent chance you have a hidden runway behind your lace that’s ready for takeoff. Tickle Me Pink, well, that’s self-explanatory. Fun fact. Did you know that ninety-five percent of women find that ear play is as erotic as rear play? It gives the whole ‘little tickle behind the ear’ new meaning. By the way, my secret tickle place is—”
“Not important to this conversation.”
“I forget you’re a prude.”
“I sling some of the best smut on the East Coast. We’re talking reverse harems, BDSM, shapeshifting unicorns with unearthly large and magical horns. That sounds pretty Wild Orchid to me.”
Cleo snorted, so Summer went back to her window display. She took her displays seriously. It was a customer’s first impression, and she worked hard to showcase every author in a way that captured the uniqueness of their works. The way the words intertwined, the subtle rhythm of the sentences, the lyrical quality of each paragraph—every author approached writing in their own special way. Then there was how each story was woven together, the careful balance between humor, heartache, and hope.
Hope was what had gotten Summer through some of the hardest times of her life, and encouraged her to shoot for the sky and reach the stars. When Summer was little and her family had lost their home, and Summer had to leave her school and friends behind, her dad had told her that the universe had something even better in store for her—and that year she’d met her soul-sister, Cleo.
Years later, when Summer was a junior in college and her mom had told her the heartbreaking news that the bookstore was in trouble, Summer had quit college, taken out a loan, and revived All Things Cupid, making it the center of the book community in Ridgefield. Last year, her little shop had been named one of the best bookstores in Connecticut.