The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts: A feel-good funny romance. Annie Darling

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      ‘Thought I’d have a proper look around before I make any decisions,’ he called from the stairs. ‘Come on! I haven’t got all day.’

      Posy took off after him. ‘What kind of decisions?’ she panted as she took the stairs far too fast for someone who hadn’t finished their first pot of tea. ‘This is my home, you can’t just barge in here without asking.’

      Sebastian was currently peering into Sam’s room. ‘Really? Why not? What unspeakable things do you get up to in here? Have you got a man on the premises?’

      The last man on the premises had been Tom, when he’d come upstairs to mend a dripping tap. Though he hadn’t mended it so much as looked at it, then at the screwdriver Posy had given him, with a quizzical expression, and shrugged. ‘Just because I’m a man doesn’t mean that I know how to do useful stuff,’ he’d said and gone back downstairs.

      The tap still dripped and Sebastian didn’t seem like the sort of man who knew how to do anything useful either. His speciality subjects were being rude and having absolutely no respect for people’s personal boundaries.

      ‘It’s none of your business what I get up to in my spare time,’ she told him indignantly. ‘I could have a whole football team up here if I wanted.’

      Sebastian pulled his head out of Sam’s room, slammed the door and turned to her with a knowing look. ‘Highly unlikely. I think footballers tend to prefer their women in something a little more alluring than sagging pyjama bottoms with turds on them. You really are an odd girl, Morland.’

      ‘They’re not turds! They’re Christmas puddings! These are my Christmas pyjamas!’ Posy tugged at the offending pyjamas even as she knew she’d never wear them again. First chance she had, she was going to burn them.

      ‘But it’s February,’ Sebastian pointed out helpfully as he brushed past her into the living room. ‘This place is a fire hazard. Why do you need so many books? Haven’t you got enough of them downstairs?’

      Posy followed him into the room. ‘These are for my personal use,’ she said primly, as if she had never, ever read a stock book very carefully so she didn’t crease the spine, then placed it tenderly back on the shelf. ‘Anyway, there’s no such thing as too many books.’

      ‘Oh, yes there is,’ Sebastian assured her as he strode over to one of the bookshelves set into the alcoves on either side of the fireplace, where the books were triple stacked. ‘I’d say you reached peak book several years ago. There are books everywhere!’ he added in disgust as he made a sharp left turn and sent a pile of novels crashing to the ground. ‘You must be personally responsible for the destruction of at least three rainforests.’

      ‘I recycle a lot, so I’m sure it all evens out,’ Posy said and as Sebastian was obviously intending to stay there for some time – he was currently switching the main light on and off, though she had no idea why – she decided to leave him to it and make a fresh pot of tea. Not wanting to be thought completely devoid of manners, she asked, ‘Do you want a brew?’

      ‘Coffee.’ Sebastian stared down at the coffee table where last night’s dinner plates still sat and his beautiful cupid’s bow of a top lip curled. ‘Sumatran beans, if you’ve got them. If not, I’ll have Peruvian.’

      ‘Does this look like a branch of Starbucks?’

      ‘No, it doesn’t. If this was a branch of Starbucks, it would have been closed down by Environmental Health months ago.’

      ‘You can have instant coffee out of a jar – and it’s your lucky day, sweetheart: the Douwe Egberts was on special offer,’ Posy said and she swept out of the living room as grandly as anyone could when they were wearing Christmas pudding pyjamas and bunny face slippers.

      She didn’t want to leave Sebastian unattended but anything was better than having to see the sneer etched on his face and listen to him pass judgement on her soft furnishings and lifestyle choices.

      Lavinia had had the roof replaced a few years ago after she’d ventured upstairs and seen the bowls and saucepans positioned to catch the various leaks, but the flat hadn’t been redecorated in all the time Posy had lived there. Redecorating would mean having to pack up everything and put it into storage; it didn’t bear thinking about, so Posy never thought about it.

      She made a fresh pot of tea and poured Sebastian’s coffee into a Penguin Books The Invisible Man mug – wishful thinking on her part, especially when she discovered that Sebastian wasn’t in the living room any more. With sinking heart, she padded down the hall to find him in her room, lounging on her unmade bed and staring at the pile of clothes heaped on the pale blue Lloyd Loom chair. Or maybe he was staring at the pile of clothes heaped on the floor. Or the clothes spilling out of her open drawers. Or the teetering stacks of books by the bed and under her bedside table and next to her bookcases, which were straining under the weight of yet more books.

      It was odd, a whole wide world of odd, to have Sebastian of all people stretched out on her candy-striped sheets in another impeccably cut, verging on obscenely tight suit – this one was light grey tweed, accessorised with sky blue shirt, pocket-square, socks and shoelaces. It had been a long time since she’d had a man on her bed, but it wasn’t as if Sebastian had seduction on his mind, thank God. Not when his attention was riveted on the half-eaten Double Decker, a sticky and congealed tub of Vick’s Vapour Rub and a balled up pair of socks on her bedside table. Posy might just as well have a sign above her bed that said, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

      ‘Not a word,’ Posy warned him. ‘Or you’ll be wearing this coffee.’

      Sebastian held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Oh, Morland, there are no words.’ He leaned back on his elbows and eyed yesterday’s bra, which was hanging forlornly off one of the knobs of her old-fashioned headboard where Posy had thrown it when she’d got undressed the night before. ‘That’s twice in three days that I’ve seen one of your bras. People will start to talk.’

      ‘My bras are no concern of yours.’ Posy made a little shooing motion and slopped coffee over an upturned copy of Valley of the Dolls. ‘Come out of here!’

      Sebastian bounded off the bed, snatched the mug from her and was out of the room and all set to sweep into the room next door, when he came to a halt. A locked door would do that.

      ‘What’s in here?’ he demanded.

      ‘It’s none of your business because you’re not going in there,’ Posy told him. She tried to look stern. ‘Anyway, you can’t just barge into my shop, my home, and start snooping about like you—’

      ‘Is this where you bury the bodies?’ He rattled the door handle again so forcefully that Posy feared for its safety. She insinuated herself between Sebastian and the door and then wished she hadn’t because now they were nose to nose. Or rather, her nose was somewhere in the vicinity of Sebastian’s chin and she could take great whiffs of him. He smelt heavenly; a heady mixture of mossy forests, warm leather chairs and smoky gentleman’s clubs.

      Not only was it quite overwhelming, but Sebastian was in a perfect position to look right down the gaping neckline of her T-shirt. As he opened his mouth to make yet another sarcastic remark, Posy put one hand on the centre of his chest and pushed him back. He was so warm, all bone and muscle and—

      ‘Careful, now. I think that counts as inappropriate touching,’ he said kindly.

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