Page 6 of Fate, Interrupted

“In my experience,” I say, with a steadiness I’m awarding myself full credit for, “we’ve never sold a single book on engines. Now we do have a pretty decent DIY section if you’re interested in decoupaging old lamps.”

He glances up from the manual he’s not reading.

“You’re skimming that,” I say.

“I don’t skim. I’m considering it.”

“You haven’t absorbed a single line. You’re checking out the room.” I push off the shelving unit. “Are you stalking someone, or are you actually here for a book?”

He closes the manual carefully and shelves it with the attention of someone who notices how things are kept. He gives me a sorta smile. The suggestion of one, offered briefly and then reconsidered.

That is somehow worse than an actual smile because I can’t read this guy yet. I want to, which might be the more interesting problem.

“Books,” he says.

“You keep saying that,” I say, “and yet.” I turn and look over my shoulder at him. “Come on. There’s a kettle in the back, and you can tell me what you actually came in for while I pretend tea and a chat is a normal thing I offer.”

He looks at me for a beat. His composure slips just enough for surprise to show before he reins it back in. “All right.”

And as much as I’m shocked that I invited a strange man—a wolf no less—into my back room, I’m even more surprised at him agreeing. That’s how Silas Coulter ends up in the back room of my bookshop on an afternoon in July, right before closing time, sitting on my stool with his large hands around a mug of tea he didn’t ask for.

The back of the shop is mine, built entirely to my taste. Hot plate, kettle, a shelf of mugs with slogans I’ve collected that can only be described as a political, philosophical, and emotional statement piece. Across from the electric kettle is a long, low shelf running the length of the wall, holding what I’m reading, what I’m planning to read, and what I keep meaning to return to the floor and never do.

This is not a customer’s space. I bring him back here, anyway, because the front has a second wind of last-gasp browsers and my sales associate, Mark, has everything under control. I also might be more than a little intrigued by this stunning man who seems as gob smacked as I am that he is sitting on a stool that, with him on it, looks like it belongs in a kindergarten classroom.

There is also the inconvenient fact that bringing him back here has put us on opposite sides of a table barely wide enough for my lunch. His knees could touch mine if either of us moved a few inches. I am trying not to be aware of that. I am failing.

I finally connect the dots. “Coulter Cleaners,” I say, settling across the small table from him with my chipped mug that says Book Nerd, in large black letters. “That’s your family.”

“It is.”

The Coulters are a name in this city. Not a loud name, but the kind that comes up in certain conversations in certain neighborhoods and carries its own gravity. They own the largest dry cleaning and laundromat operation in Larkin. Their main operation is a warehouse on the other side of the city. Word is it that they have the lion’s share of hotel and restaurant contracts for linens. It’s a big family-run operation.

Whatever made this man wander through my door this afternoon, I’m choosing not to examine it too closely.

“Not what I would have guessed for someone who came in for engine manuals.”

“We run delivery trucks,” he says. “Commercial clients. Things break.”

“And you fix them.”

“I try,” he says, and the word has more weight than it should, and I have the clear impression we’re not entirely talking about trucks.

“Silas Coulter,” I say, trying the name like a title before I commit to the book, feeling for what it tells me.

“Norah,” I say, and tap my name tag. “But you knew that.”

“Read it when I came in,” he says.

“Most people don’t even notice. Or care. Nametags are antiquated. There is an entire generation out there that thinks you’re trying to label them if you ask them to wear a nametag.”

He chuckles lightly, and I smile too.

He leans back on the stool and stretches his blue-jeaned legs out in front of him. I get a full view of his muscular thighs, and my brain takes a detour it has absolutely no business taking. I think about what it would feel like to slide off my stool, straddle his lap, and lock my hands behind his neck. That would be one way to find out exactly how solid he is up close.

The thought arrives so easily that it startles me. This is not how I usually meet men. I don’t sit across from strangers mentally testing the width of their shoulders with my hands or wondering what their thighs would feel like under mine. Apparently, today I do.

I fixate on the shelf behind him because now I’ve noticed his hands. They’re big, broad with long fingers. I could dream about those hands—where they might go if I gave them some options.