Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

‘I’ve already got Nina lunch,’ Tom said with a little edge to his voice, like he doubted Noah’s intentions. ‘A smoked-salmon bagel from Stefan and a cinnamon bun for afters. Now, if we could have that talk … alone,’ he added pointedly.

Noah looked a little put out as he walked around the counter. ‘Actually I could do with some fresh air before that sausage roll,’ he said and Nina found herself smiling again.

‘It does get a bit stuffy in here,’ she commented as Tom glared at her.

He waited until the door had shut behind Noah then seized Nina’s hands in a very unTom-like way. ‘Am I going to have to write you up in the sexual harassment book?’ Nina asked, tugging her hands free.

‘No fraternising with the enemy,’ Tom said and Nina was about to point out that Noah wasn’t an enemy so much as an unregistered alien, when Tom took her hands again.

‘I wanted to say sorry about before,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’

Nina shook herself free again. ‘You mean your “employee of the month” routine? Honestly, Tom, I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a little bitch.’

‘Neither did I,’ Tom agreed. ‘I’m quite ashamed of myself. I say united we stand, together we fall, right? Shall we just do what we normally do when that Noah is around?’

‘God, yes! But maybe not quite as normally as usual,’ Nina suggested. ‘Probably less backchat when Posy and Verity are being particularly bossy.’

‘Sounds like a plan.’ Tom handed over a brown paper bag from Stefan’s Deli as if he’d been planning to withhold lunch if Nina had refused to stand in solidarity with him. ‘Also it was exhausting being so efficient. I can’t keep the act going for another minute longer.’

‘I am surprised you managed to last a whole morning,’ Nina said with a grin.

‘Although you and Noah looked quite cosy when I interrupted you,’ Tom remarked as he unwrapped his own bagel.

‘Interrupted implies we were in the middle of something and believe me, we weren’t in the middle of anything.’

‘I just wondered if … no … forget I brought it up …’ Tom shook his head.

Tom often did this. Started saying something tantalising and then clammed up so that Nina had to work really hard to ferret out a piece of juicy gossip or a spectacular example of bitchery.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘Don’t leave me hanging.’

Tom took his sweet time chewing a mouthful of bagel before he answered. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’

‘Tom!’ Nina growled.

‘I was just wondering, if you were cosying up to that Noah anyway …’

‘Hardly cosying up,’ Nina said indignantly.

‘Well, it certainly looked as if you were employing your feminine wiles,’ Tom said because he did like to sound like a nineteenth-century novel.

‘I would never do that,’ Nina said, although she had just been doing that. ‘I’m shocked at your low opinion of me, Tom.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t do that,’ Tom hastily agreed. ‘But if you were flirting to find out more information, going behind enemy lines, on behalf of the both of us, Verity too, then it would be for the greater good.’

Nina couldn’t believe what she was hearing. From Tom. Of all people. ‘You want to pimp me out to Noah? When he’s absolutely not my type. In his suit. With his business solutions. Ugh!’

‘I’m not suggesting that you have sex with him, but you are very attractive,’ Tom said quickly, fluttering a hand in Nina’s direction. ‘Just a little bit of flattery and sticking your breasts in his face. You know, that kind of thing.’

‘Tom!’ Nina was genuinely shocked. ‘What kind of girl do you think I am?’

Tom’s face was so red that it looked like he had third-degree burns. ‘I think you’re a lovely, altruistic woman who loves to stick her breasts in people’s faces anyway, so you might as well have a good reason for it.’

Well, when Tom put it like that … Nina always found it hard to resist a challenge. But Noah?

‘Bit too close to home for my liking. You do know that he’s friends with Sebastian, right?’

‘Just some light flirting,’ Tom persisted. ‘I mean, you nearly got down and dirty with that awful Piers. Taking one for the team, you called it. Verity told me.’

Piers had been a dastardly but quite hot property developer who’d come sniffing round Nina but only because it was all part of his nefarious plan to buy Bookends and turn it into a luxury block of flats. It hadn’t ended well. In fact, it had ended with Piers locking Posy in the coal hole under the shop and flinging grey paint around the shop two days before they reopened, then Sebastian turning up to rescue Posy and beat Piers to a pulp.

It had all been quite thrilling actually but also a timely reminder, not that she really needed one, that Nina had terrible taste in men. ‘That whole Piers thing was very complicated,’ she offered weakly. ‘Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m not going to waste any more of my precious time flirting with randoms. I want a soulmate, not a—’

‘Soulmates only exist in the pages of the books we sell. Anyway, Piers was evil and this Noah doesn’t seem evil at all, but how will we know for sure unless we have someone on the inside?’ Tom asked plaintively. ‘For instance, he might recommend that we become a solely online business and you know how impressionable Posy is. We’ll definitely be let go if that happens.’

Tom had a point. They could be very annoying but Nina enjoyed dealing with the general public in a face-to-face kind of way and if they became an online business, then Verity and Posy could easily manage between them.

‘Just a little light flirting, you say?’

‘Exactly,’ Tom said, patting her arm. ‘You know it makes sense. And it’ll give you some practice for when you find the right chap. Your “soulmate”,’ he added with airquotes and a smirk.

When Noah got back to the shop half an hour later, it was to find Nina creating a Valentine’s-themed window display, which featured a hell of a lot of red paper hearts and should have been done weeks ago. As it was, Nina stared down at the red card she was carefully cutting as she could hardly bring herself to look at Noah, much less shove her breasts in his face.

Tom was sitting behind the till reading Bridget Jones’s Baby and barely looked up as Noah came through the door. ‘Research,’ he muttered.

But Noah was not alone; two women followed him into the shop. ‘Yoo hoo! Tommy, dear! Have you missed us?’

Nina looked up just in time to see Tom’s face drain of all colour. He jumped down from his stool, opened his mouth, shut it again then dived for the safety of the office, door slamming shut behind him.

‘Does that mean that Tommy won’t climb up the ladder to get books down for us?’ the older lady asked, eyes gleaming behind a pair of diamanté-studded spectacles. ‘I particularly wanted something from the top shelf.’

‘I bet you did,’ Nina said, rising up from her kneeling position and shaking out her skirt so that tiny red-sequinned hearts rained down on the floor like confetti. ‘Wanted to perv at our Tom’s bottom, more like.’

‘Us? But we’re God-fearing ladies on our way back from church,’ the second lady said, and with her tight grey curls and sensible beige anorak, slacks and lace-up shoes, she did look as if she was more likely to be communing with the Lord than exhorting Tom to stretch a little further than was decent. ‘We would never perv.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Nina said fervently, not that she believed them. ‘But Tom’s very busy so I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me.’

Their faces fell, but only for a moment. Then they caught sight of Noah who’d been watching this exchange with a look of horrified amusement.

‘Nina, you naughty girl! You didn’t tell us you had a new man on the staff!’

‘We do still need a book getting down from the top shelf!’

Nina was tempted to throw Noah, who was clutching his iPad with white-knuckled hands, on their not-so-tender mercies but that would be unfair. Hilarious, but unfair, and not even a little bit like light flirting.

‘He’s not on staff and he’s terrified of heights,’ Nina said. She didn’t know if Noah was scared of heights but he looked the type who’d be scared of any activity that might crease his suit. ‘Anyway, you don’t need a man because I’ve already put some books aside for you. Janet, you said you were after medical romances and Hilda, I ordered some inspirational romance in just for you.’

‘Oh!’