Page 36 of Love Walked In
“Yeah. The success story of the last few years has been little neighborhood stores like Orchard House. They don’t make tons of money, but they employ a few people and stock books that their locals want to read.
They’re like the minnows I told you about.
They swim around doing their own thing, too tiny to attract the attention of the sharks and trawlers. ”
Leo put his hands in his coat pockets, not exactly a picture of enthusiasm. “That sounds like it would be a lot of hard work without much payoff.”
He wasn’t totally raining on my parade, but I felt a little cold and damp anyway.
“You wouldn’t do it for the money,” I said, my voice a little bewildered.
“You’d do it because putting the right book in the right person’s hands gives you joy, and sending them home holding a new little piece of possibility fulfills you.
” I hesitated at his blank face. “Isn’t that why we do this? For love?”
He looked away instead of answering, and I felt like I’d opened a closet where I’d expected to find treasure and in stead found cobwebs and broken furniture, chilly gloom.
I’d never thought about what drove him, what kept him coming to the shop every day, putting out fires and hustling to keep things going week in, week out.
“I suppose working in the shop in Bloomsbury is all I’ve ever really known,” he said finally. “And the building is part of what makes Ross and Co. what it is. Alexander always called it our castle. I don’t think I could work anywhere else.”
“I mean, you’ve definitely got the turrets and the gargoyles.” But then I thought about what he was submerged in, all day, every day. Pictures of his ancestors watching him trying to keep the store afloat. Obligation. Duty.
Now Leo gave the little store a good hard look. “You’re right,” he said carefully. “This place would be amazing for someone.”
But not for him, I realized with sadness. My mouth opened, to ask him what he really wanted. I thought about him with his sketchbook, about his sisters begging him for drawings. About how stuck he’d been when I’d first arrived, like he’d been dropped into a murky swamp without a compass or a clue.
Would he have stayed at the store if Alexander had given him a choice?
But that question was as loaded as an incendiary bomb and way too intimate for whatever this was between us, this bubble of sex and cinnamon toast and waking up in each other’s arms that all too soon would pop.
“Too bad I already have my own place to run,” I said calmly instead.
After I’d bought a few things at the grocery store to dress up instant ramen for our dinner, we walked back up the market and set out across the park.
I was telling him about the latest contemporary romance I’d been reading, about a PA returning to the small Virginia town where she’d grown up and falling for the town loner, when I realized Leo wasn’t listening, or even next to me.
He was a few yards behind, staring straight ahead.
His lips parted, his face white. What was he seeing?
I turned around to look up the path and saw a delicate woman our age who looked like the second coming of Audrey Hepburn, carrying a small bouquet of daffodils.
A big man a decade older than her, with graying reddish-blond hair and haphazard features, held her other hand, a leash attached to a sheepskin rug of a dog in the other.
He said something in an accent I didn’t recognize that made her giggle.
She shook her head, turned away from her lover, looked over my shoulder, and did a double take of astonishment. “Oh my God, Leo!”
She ran past me and hugged Leo hard, paper and flowers crunching between them. Leo’s body language was board-stiff, and his eyes were closed, like he was wishing for invisibility.
“Becca,” he finally forced out.
My mouth gaped. The universe must have been laughing its head off. Leo’s ex-wife was now holding his upper arms, and out of nowhere I felt the urge to smack them off him.
“It’s been ages since I’ve seen you,” she blurted. “How are you?”
“Fine,” he said like he was squeezing the word out of an empty toothpaste tube. “Busy.”
A silence made of history fell. “I’m sorry, we’re being terribly rude,” she said with a big smile. “This is my hus band, Paul.” She raised her eyebrows at Leo. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“You got married,” Leo said bluntly, not taking the opening, which was fine. Totally fine.
“We did,” Paul said, his voice mellow. “Went to the registry office just before Christmas.” He nudged his wife. “This one wanted to make an honest man out of me.”
Becca smiled and rolled her eyes. “We were living together already and I didn’t see the point of waiting around, or doing anything fancy. I hated all that fuss at our wedding, remember, Leo?”
Leo unstuck his jaw and said quietly, “I remember.”
I stared into space, wishing for invisibility. I wasn’t supposed to be here. This wasn’t my place.
Paul bent and kissed Becca’s crown. “As long as you let me make a fuss sometimes, I’m happy.”
Well, weren’t they absolutely adorable. A starburst of hurt came out of nowhere, but what was I hurt for? I’d seen plenty of couples come into Orchard House, pointing out novels they’d read and grinning at each other over piles of new books at the register.
Was this what Leo really wanted? This warm, chatty woman had been his first love. He’d planned to spend the rest of his life with her. I didn’t think I had the capacity for marriage, but for the first time in my life, I felt that lack.
I regretted it.
A low woof woke me up, and a cold, twitching nose pressed into my hand. I smiled down at the shaggy dog, grateful for the distraction from Leo and Becca’s tension. I crouched to scratch his ears, and he whined softly in pleasure.
“Looks like someone’s fallen in love,” Paul said above me as the dog pawed me for more affection.
I shook my head and looked up, pretending that the last word hadn’t been like a static shock. “Nah, the big guy just knows a sucker when he sees one.” Buoyed a little by doggy sweetness, I said, “I’m Mari, by the way.”
“I’m Paul, and this is Rug,” he said with a wry smile, reaching to shake my outstretched hand. “Because he looks like one.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I like the literalness. Where’d you get him?”
Paul started to tell me the story of driving down a busy road near his parents’ house in Belfast and seeing a matted mess of a dog limping down the shoulder, and it was really heartwarming and made both Paul and Rug impossible not to like, but I could see Leo staring at his feet, Becca looking at him imploringly.
If two people ever needed space and time, it was them.
“Can I play with him?” I asked abruptly.
Paul said easily, “Of course, he’d love that.” He pulled a chewed-up tennis ball out of the pocket of his coat and Rug immediately leapt to attention, dancing on legs like springs. “Over here, where there’s space for him to run.”
I glanced over my shoulder, then jogged to keep up with Paul’s long stride and Rug’s trot, ignoring the pull I felt toward Leo, the urge to take his hand.