Page 61 of Power Play

Tess got this incredibly wise look on her face. “Mom said that Liam works very hard for his money and I can’t take advantage when he wants to buy things.”

Hmm…her mom was a better woman than me.

“Okay, I think three books is a good number of books.”

Tess nodded and took off back to the kid’s section. The bookstore was super charming. The kids’ section had a carpet and big stuffed animals and a fantastic selection. There were twocats prowling around and the staff were smiling and attentive. There was even complimentary tea and coffee. Was this heaven?

There was a bookshelf of signed books by local authors. I pulled out an Antony Renard cookbook. My dad and I met him back in the good old days when we ran with that kind of crowd. Some New York foodie charity event. He’d been charming and unbelievably handsome. He’d gone a little more silver judging by the picture on the front of the book, but he was still gorgeous.

The bell over the door rang and Liam walked in, filling the doorway. He was smiling his excited boy on vacation smile and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back at him.

“There are tacos in these food trucks. And falafels,” he said, like he’d discovered gold.

“Falafels?” Tess lifted her head over one of the bookshelves.

“You like falafels?” Liam asked.

“Yep.”

One of the guys who worked at the shop, pointed at the cookbook in my hand.

“His wife makes them. Or she used to. Passed down the recipe though, so they’re just as good,” he said. He was a teenager with long hair and glasses. He looked like a camper who only drank out of Nalgene bottles.

“Antony Renard’s wife? Used to make falafels out of a truck? You’re kidding me,” I said and added the cookbook to my stack.

I liked cooking when I had the time and these full color hardcover cookbooks were the kinds of things I usually checked out of the library. But it was signed and I was on vacation.

And…after this was over, I was done. Any money I saved would be for me. Any money I spent, wasn’t money I should have been giving to someone else. It was mine. The sense of liberation was jarring. And oddly, the rush of gratitude I felt to Liam, for handing this to me, was profound.

“You ready?” Liam asked, and a little shell shocked, I nodded. Tess was at my elbow with her own little stack of books. We walked up to the counter and Tess put her books down. Liam pulled out his wallet.

He looked at the stack in my hands and pointed at the desk where Mr. Camper Guy was checking us out. “That’s okay,” I said. “I can buy my own books.”

I hoped my expression conveyed what I felt in that moment, because what I felt was…pride. The exhilaration of no longer being in crippling debt. I felt weightless.

“Okay. I get it. But this is for Tess,” Liam said, pulling my bird book off the stack and putting it on the counter. “This one…” He looked at the cookbook and back up at me. “You cook?”

“When the spirit moves me,” I said.

“Well, if the spirit moves you while we’re here, then this one benefits me and Tess.”

I was reluctant to give him the cookbook because my last book would be revealed. I wasn’t one of those romance readers who was embarrassed to read romance because of a hot guy on the cover. No. I read my smut on the bus with the cover on full display. But there was something about the energy between Liam and me that felt like revealing my romance addiction was going to tip it further into danger.

But he was stronger than me and I wasn’t about to wrestle him over a book in the middle of a bookstore. He pulled away the cookbook and looked down at my romance novel with the cartoon cover of a girl holding a dog and – shit – a hockey player.

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked, his voice low, his eyebrow quirked.

“Do you think it’s a book?” I asked.

“I think it’s a romance novel. About a hockey player.” His smile went from flirty to deadly in no time. “Are you into that kind of thing, Kit?”

I was. I was deeply into that kind of thing.

“We’re at the beach,” I said with a casual shrug, like I wasn’t an avid fan of this whole series by my favorite author. “I thought I’d get something fun to read while we’re here.”

“Is it a hot one?” he asked. He took it and started leafing through the pages.

It was in fact a hot one and I knew the second he landed on a page that interested him.

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