Page 46 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Leo

Ross & Co. had been so quiet for months I’d occasionally looked around for the invisible librarian who was shushing everyone.

But now everything was an explosion of sound and color, new faces and loud voices.

Hands reached out to shake mine, slap my shoulder hello, mouths moved to say “Congratulations!” and “I’d forgotten about this place!

” and “This is wonderful!” Punters and authors blew around me like the spring storm buffeting the leaves outside the store, and I’d tune in for moments of two teenage girls comparing their stacks of signed YA novels, Graham listening attentively to Mr. Gissing explaining about the SOE’s code-making in France during the war, Tommy telling stories about his first thriller being adapted into a terrible film, making his conversation partner Folarin laugh so hard he wheezed.

And all I could think was that Alexander would have loved every second of this, tried to speak to every single person there, would have wanted to be at the heart of it all.

But I wasn’t my grandfather. Despite all his coaching and badgering, I never would be.

I was glad that other people were glad. But it wasn’t the same as being happy myself.

“Hi,” Mari whispered from where she’d snuck up next to me.

She’d been a green-and-brown blur with a clipboard under her arm all day, marshaling people to go to the next talk, joking with speakers, pouring coffee, crouching down to talk to a little boy with brown hair who looked up at her utterly awestruck.

I knew the feeling.

Now I brushed a quick kiss over her ruby-colored mouth that tempted me beyond belief. “You should wear lipstick more often.”

She snorted. “Why, because you like getting it all over your face?” She rubbed her thumb over my bottom lip and showed me the crimson stain she’d left behind.

“You can get all over my face anytime, darling.”

Her cheeks blushed a lovely complementary shade of pink. “Promises, promises.”

I grinned at her. “You know I’ll keep them.”

A roll of applause from the gallery burst over us, and Mari looked toward the noise. “That’s Tommy and Folarin. They’ll sign books, and then… we’re all done.” The last words were a happy sigh.

I knew we weren’t completely done. Judith had been giving me significant looks throughout the day, and I wasn’t sure what awaited us. But Mari had achieved what she’d set out to do, and a surge of pride went through me.

An hour and a half later, after Tommy and Folarin had signed everyone’s books and the last punter had left, Mari closed the door and turned to us all. “We did it!” she yelled, starting to clap.

All the stress of the day broke in our claps and hoots, and Catriona let off a wolf whistle that would have woken the dead.

“Thank you so much for all your hard work over the last few weeks!” Mari continued. “Every single one of you is a superstar. Now, packing up and loading out is tomorrow morning at eleven.”

“I don’t want to see anyone here before half nine,” I chimed in, going to stand next to her. “We all need a lie-in after today.”

“And a drink!” Graham shouted, and we all laughed. “But first, three cheers for Leo and Mari, who made this whole festival happen.”

As her brother led the raucous call and response, Mari’s eyes found mine, shining bright as stars. I tangled my fingers with hers, wishing with every bit of me that this joy, this feeling of rightness, could last.

“Coming?” Graham said as Catriona and the others headed for the front doors.

“In a bit,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

“I need to talk to these two,” Judith said, threading her arm through mine. “Then they’ll be on their way.”

“All right, we’ll be at the Duke when you’re finished.” Graham grabbed Mari and hugged her tightly. “I’m so glad you found us.”

“Me too,” she said into his shoulder.

Ten minutes later, we were up in my office, me in Alexander’s old chair and Judith in one of the visitors’ seats. Mari leaned against the wall of bookshelves, her hands in the pockets of her dress.

“Why don’t you sit down, dove?” Judith asked. “It’s been quite a day.”

Mari shimmied a little, then folded her arms. “Too much adrenaline in my system, but thanks. What’s up, Judith?”

Judith rubbed her hands across her thighs. “First, I wanted to say that it was an absolutely beautiful day. It was wonderful to see the old place full of happy readers. Alexander would have adored every minute of it.” She took a deep breath. “But now I think we should consider selling.”

“What?” Mari and I both blurted.

She nodded to me. “Your friend Vinay came to visit me at home. He was very apologetic. But he explained that he’d been talking to you about selling the building, and he needed an answer in the next week. That you hadn’t been answering his messages.”

My stomach fell through a trap door into nothingness.

“The skinny guy,” Mari said to herself, her voice thin. “Of course he wasn’t just your friend.”

Could I crawl under my desk, the way I’d crawled under it as a child? Hide from the consequences of my own stupid indecision?

Judith’s tone shifted, from bluntness to something softer, sadder. “This was never what you really wanted, Leo. Alexander decided your future for you before you had a say.”

“Judith, that’s not what happened,” I started protesting.

Her palm smacked the table. “ No. Remember how you wanted to go to art school? Remember how you wanted to take a year off after university to travel? How you weren’t sure about courting Rebecca?

Because I remember being in the other room as Alexander badgered you into a life that kept you close, that tied you to him.

One of my greatest regrets is that I didn’t stand up for you.

“Now this is your chance to be free. Unfettered, all financial worries over. And you need to seize your freedom. More than anything.”

“But I love this place.” My voice came out small, like I’d de-aged two decades in the space of two minutes.

Judith leaned over the desk. “I know you do, but the shop is just bricks and mortar with books in it. Do you love Ross and Co. because of what it is, or because of what it represents ?”

History. Legacy. Alexander, all his huge smiles, his banter, his flawed charisma.

If we sold… I could let it go. All of it.

But Mari . Mari was so quiet. I looked over, and my heart climbed up my throat.

Her face was an empty sheet in my sketchbook, smooth, blank. But the tips of her fingers had gone white from how hard she was gripping her biceps, and her eyes were muddy and dull.

“I need to think,” I said to Judith.

Judith looked over at Mari. “You need to do more than that, surely. We should all be on the same page.” She pushed herself out of her chair.

“We’ll speak soon. Mari, please know it meant a lot to us, what you did.

We needed an outsider to come and show us what was really important.

I hope you’ll listen to what Leo has to say. ”

Mari gave a small nod but said nothing as the door opened and shut. As Alexander’s old desk clock ticked away on the shelf. As she breathed, high and thin, on the edge.

Regret had me crawling out of my chair, kneeling at her feet. I studied the scuffs on her boots, the ribs of her black tights. I’d loved trailing my fingers up those ribs, desire lines that led to my favorite places on her body. “I’m sorry, Mari. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Why?” she finally exhaled now, like I’d punched her in the stomach. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a serious offer?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, shame coloring my cheeks. “Because I didn’t want to sell, in the beginning. Right after you’d got here, I told Vinay to fuck off.”

She wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “And then later?”

After I’d kissed her. After I’d been inside her. After I’d held her and soothed her when she cried for everything she’d lost, everything she’d never had. She didn’t say the words, but I could see them written across her pale, stricken face.

I knew why I hadn’t confessed. It was because I’d been happy, for the first time in forever.

I’d fallen so low before she’d arrived. She hadn’t been the one to drag me out of the hole, but she’d made me want to scramble up the sides, get mud on my shoes and under my fingernails and actually live for once.

“Because you’d said that you didn’t want to know, back in the park. And I didn’t want what we had to end.”

She shifted an inch away, an inch that felt like a mile of land, blighted and scorched. “You let me organize everything,” she whispered. “You let me try so hard. And it was all going to be for nothing. It was pointless. I was pointless.”

“It’s not pointless.” What I craved most sprung out of my mouth. “Come back, and I won’t sell. Come back and run the shop with me.”

The laugh that escaped her was sharp, jagged. “My plane ticket has a date on it, and my three months are up.”

I got up off the floor. “But you don’t have to go forever.”

She shook her head hard. “What do you mean? You know I’m going back to take over my own bookstore. You can’t keep this place just for me.”

The crevasse between us was widening, but I couldn’t help but reach for her. “You could return later in the year, once there’s been enough of a lag for the Home Office. Autumn here is beautiful. We could go watch the fireworks, walk on the Heath.”

“I can’t keep going on vacation from my real life,” she snapped.

“It wouldn’t be a holiday!” Exasperation filled every word, and I tried to rein myself in. “You could have a life here, if you wanted it. You have Graham, and Jamie, and the rest of the Becketts.”

Mari’s eyes closed, her mouth turned down. “I don’t know them. They don’t know me.”

“They want to know you,” I cried. “They want to love you, if you’ll let them.”