“I’ll concede raw book sales isn’t the most comprehensive measure of managerial competency, but let’s face it, from here on out, the winner will be leveraging what the other has brought to the place. Without me, you’d have a bookstore frozen in 1988. Thanks to years of my influence, you have a beautiful space to welcome and sell to your customers, brimming with inviting, personal touches; an accessible, intuitive layout by genre and subgenre; and an entire calendar year of already-scheduled events and book signings. Thanks to me.”
“And thanks to me,” he says, “you have an HVAC system that isn’t singlehandedly melting the polar ice caps, costing a small nation’s GDP in a utility bill and driving customers away with its inability to regulate temperature; a data-driven inventory expansion strategized by key segment customers; oh, and of course, that minor detail, a payment and bookkeeping system that belongs in the twenty-first century.”
I sniff. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“The air-conditioning blew a fuse twice a week, the radiators were a ticking time bomb, our inventory had no basis in consumer analytics, and that ancient bronze abacus you called an ‘antique’ was both inefficient and the culprit for countless mischarges.”
I gasp. “Gilda. I miss her.”
“Gilda.” He glances up at the ceiling, as if in a plea to God for patience. “You were manually entering prices on a Victorian cash register.”
“A gilded Victorian cash register. Gilda had character!”
“She caused an IRS audit!”
We glower at each other. Our faces are dangerously close. Shit, he smells good. Like evergreens and winter air and woodsmoke. I feel an embarrassing rush of heat stain my cheeks.
Jonathan’s gaze travels my face—my chin defiantly tipped up, my tell-tale flush. His jaw ticks. His brow furrows. Silence stretches, raw and taut, between us.
“Well?” I ask, desperate for this to end, for space from him, because I’m livid and I’m also unspeakably aroused. Everything I fantasized last night, everything I’m feeling now—his heat, his scent, the raw energy thrumming between us, makes me want to wrap my legs around his waist and drag his mouth down to mine until we hate-kiss so hard, we black out from lack of oxygen.
I shut my eyes, mentally cutting the cord between heavenly Fantasy Jonathan and his hellish reality. “You’re in my personal space.”
“You started it,” he points out.
I open my mouth. Then shut it. He’s right, I did. “Fine. Well, I’m done with personal-space time now.”
He’s a foot away from me in one smooth step. “Better?”
“Much.” I push away from the table and dust myself off. “Now what do you have to say about my terms, Mr. Frost?”
He folds his arms across his chest and stares down at me. “Just book sales?”
“Just book sales,” I confirm.
Damn him and that condescending arched eyebrow. “You do remember some of the best psychological thrillers in recent memory came out this year or are about to be released.”
“Four words for you, Mr. Frost: children’s books and holiday romances.”
“Technically, that’s five—”
I stomp my foot. “You know what I mean! Now answer me already, do you accept these terms or not?”
Tense silence stretches between us, punctured only by the wall-mounted clock ticking down the minutes left in this miserable merry-go-round of our professional enmity.
Finally he says, “I accept them.”
“Excellent.” With a disingenuous smile, I slip by him and return to my half-destroyed display of holiday romances.
“On one condition.”
Grinding my teeth, I glare at him over my shoulder. “What?”
Jonathan leans against one of the polished wood columns that soars up to the store’s vaulted ceiling and watches me, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets. “If it turns out the financial future of the shop isn’t so dire after all, and both of us can stay on after the new year, we form a truce.”
He pushes off the column, stalking my way until he picks up one of my favorite Regency Era historical romances from the table. His fingers drum across the winter-themed cover, then slip it open to reveal the step-back—a scantily dressed couple surrounded by snow, wrapped in an epic clinch.
I stare at them, the shirtless man gazing down at the woman he holds with unbridled longing, his muscular arm clutching her waist; the woman, leaning in, so pliant, eyes hazy, mouth parted. They’re a four-and-a-quarter-by-almost-seven-inch ode to sensuality.