She pulls a dog-eared paperback out of the box. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier—one of her favorites. Yet the classics never sell. She’ll be lucky to get a dollar for this one. A dollar isn’t enough to keep a business going.
“What’s going on back there, Cassie?”
The voice of Cassie’s friend and business partner Zoe Malloy floats out from the front of the store. Zoe was Cassie’s college roommate, and when Bookland fell into Cassie’s hands, she decided to offer a share in the business to Zoe in order to get her help. Cassie’s accounting degree helps her in balancing the books （or trying）， but it’s Zoe who knows about sales. It’s a fact that when Zoe is at the front of the store, they sell more books than they do when Cassie is there. Maybe it’s Zoe’s glowing personality. Maybe it’s her sales technique or her degree in Communication. Whatever it is, Zoe is a better saleswoman than Cassie will ever be.
“Are you done yet?” Zoe yells. Bookland is absolutely tiny, yet you can somehow get lost inside it. Everywhere you turn, there are shelves filled with books—Grandma Bea managed to stuff a ridiculous number of bookcases in this small space, and sometimes Cassie worries they’ll all go tumbling down like dominos. “Cassie?”
“Just another minute!” Cassie calls back as she shoves the last of the books on a shelf.
Cassie wipes her hands on her skinny blue jeans as she walks back to the front desk where Zoe is sitting on one of the stools she set up in front of the cash register. Stools are not very comfortable, but the old chairs literally fell apart six months ago, and she found these two stools on the street in front of a brownstone downtown. Zoe helped her drag them to the store.
Cassie hates to admit it, but Bookland is in a bit of financial trouble. She hasn’t managed to drag it out of the hole it was in when Grandma Bea died. But she will.
One way or another.
Zoe’s got a paperback cracked open in front of her. Zoe loves to read as much as Cassie does, but she likes the newer stuff. Her current cover features a picture of a woman with a drop of blood dripping from a fang jutting from her lips. Vampire novels are not Cassie’s thing, but Zoe devours them—and they sell much better than the classics. Zoe looks the part too, from her jet black hair cut in a bob around her face, dark red lipstick, powder-white skin, and black nails. Zoe is gorgeous and only slightly frightening.
Zoe insists they’d sell more books if Cassie would let her do her makeup, but she’s resisted so far. All Cassie ever wears is a layer of lipstick if she remembers—and sometimes she doesn’t even remember that much. Today is one of those days she didn’t remember.
It’s not just the makeup though. Zoe is simply friendlier than Cassie. Zoe knows how to chat up a customer like nobody’s business—everyone is her friend. She’s even befriended the homeless woman who occupies the empty gap between the book store and the drug store next to them. Apparently, her name is Maureen.
“HD,” Zoe murmurs. “Three o’clock.”
Sadly, Cassie knows exactly what this cryptic code means. HD stands for “Hot Doctor.” Bookland happens to be located a mere block away from a large teaching hospital, and tends to get its fair share of young physicians and medical students, looking for various medical textbooks. Unfortunately, Bookland doesn’t carry medical textbooks. So while Zoe enjoys this eye candy, Cassie mostly finds it frustrating.
Still, she follows Zoe’s directions and looks in the direction of three o’clock, and… well, this guy is definitely an HD if there ever was one. The green scrubs give away the doctor bit. And the hot bit… yeah, that one isn’t up for debate. Thick, dark hair slightly tousled from the wind, eyes the color of the ocean, and a pretty nice build under those scrubs.
“Dibs,” Zoe says. Even though she’s got a boyfriend.
“Fine.”
Zoe taps her shiny black fingernails. She has the longest fingernails Cassie had ever seen, although she claims they’re mostly for self-defense. New York is a dangerous city. She says the fingernails save her a bundle on mace. “You can have him if you really want him.”