Page 92 of Safe With You

She wanted to do it again.

I smiled.

Somewhere between lunch and the afternoon rush, Denise wrote back too.

She was in.

By the time I left Chapter & Charm that evening, the second Open Mic had two returning poets, a date on the calendar, and the beginning of a plan.

I carried my purse to the car and tossed it onto the passenger seat before sliding behind the wheel.

My phone connected to the speakers automatically.

For a second, the screen displayed my recent notifications.

Ellis’s name was still there.

That’s all I need.

I looked away and started the car.

Tomorrow morning, he would be back at Chapter & Charm.

With his camera.

To take pictures of me.

I immediately remembered the green blouse waiting across the back of my bedroom chair.

“Lord.”

I backed out of the parking space.

Tomorrow’s problem.

For real this time.

By seven-fifteen Wednesday morning, I had already regretted the green blouse twice. The first time happened in my bedroom mirror, and the second came when I caught my reflection in the darkened front window of Chapter & Charm and decided my mother had no idea what she was talking about.

I tugged lightly at the hem before unlocking the door. There was nothing wrong with the blouse. It was fine, and so was I.

More importantly, I had approximately forty-five minutes before Ellis arrived, which was plenty of time to stop thinking about what I looked like and remember that these were pictures for my business.

Not me.

Well.

Some of them were technically of me.

But that wasn’t the point.

I pushed through the door and reached for the light switches. The bookstore came alive around me one section at a time, and almost immediately, I felt better.

I set my purse beneath the counter and carried my coffee toward the back. Naomi wasn’t coming in until closer to opening since Ellis and I had already planned to start with the empty-store shots. She’d been deeply offended by this arrangement until I reminded her she was still getting paid for the same number of hours.

That had healed her quickly.

Somehow I still found myself wiping down a counter I’d already cleaned ten minutes earlier.