Page 13 of A Witch in Notting Hill
“Hello?” I asked, reaching up and waving a hand in front of his eyes. “Anybody home?”
“You can’t be serious,” he said. Still no blinking.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your grandmother,” he said, so slowly it sounded like he was talking to a toddler, “turned her nurse... into a cat?”
“Is that not what I just said?”
“Willow, you cannotbe serious.”
“Did we not just establish I was serious? What’s happening here, exactly?”
He shook his head, and now it was my turn not to blink. “I just... I didn’t realize you believed in all this stuff.”
“Thisstuff?” I asked. He gestured around the shop. “You mean thestuffyour entire shop is built for? You don’t believe in it?”
“You do?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is only our second conversation, so you’re the only one to blame for whatever assumptions you’ve made about me.”
“You just don’t seem like the type.”
“Do you generalize all your customers?” I asked. “Or just the famous American ones?”
He ran a hand through his hair, and I tried to focus on being glad he was frustrated instead of being distracted by how good he looked. But with his hair on end like that, it was hard to ignore.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said, taking a step back. “Apologies.”
If he was backing down, I supposed it wouldn’t kill me to lower the guns, too. “You really don’t believe in it?”
“Nah, not a bit, if I’m honest. At least not anymore.”
“Then how’d you end up with the shop?”
“Dead uncle. How does anyone end up with a shop like this?”
His wry smile gave me permission to laugh, but that was the beginning and the end of my relief.
“But the website says you help people find books and things.”
“I don’t have to believe in witchcraft to read titles, Willow.”
“But you don’t believe in anything you’re selling.”
“That’s business, isn’t it?”
How could someone so cynical run a shop so charming? It must all have been his uncle’s doing, and he just kept the lights on. Still, if he had any connections that might be useful to me, I wasn’t ready to burn this bridge just yet.
“So are you going to help me or not?”
“I thought I was going to close up while you had a look around.”
“I’d be out of your hair faster if you gave me a hand.”
“Maybe I like you in my hair.”
I took a step back as harsh wind whipped the windows, rattling the candles perched in the sills and breaking our eye contact. Eye contact that was charged in a way I felt all the way to my toes. Tingling, warm, unfamiliar.
