Page 17 of One Touch

The McCoy brothers were sort of like local celebrities in Bluehaven Beach. They weren’t actually famous—except for Jack, of course, who was an NHL bigshot—but they were kinda larger than life. For a start, they were non-identical triplets, which was clearly unusual, and all of them had these big, beefy physiques. They were all at least six feet, and Ethan was the tallest, which clearly appealed to me. As a statuesque woman, there was nothing sexier than finding a guy who didn’t make me feel like the Incredible Hulk.

The brothers had a huge impact on the town, too. There was Cole, who did almost all the building work in Bluehaven Beach with his dad, including the refurb of Happy Ever Affogato. Jack had been the talk of the town when he’d signed for the Montreal Canadiens. And Ethan ran an auto shop that was an iconic local landmark.

Had a breakdown? Call McCoy’s Motors.

That was written on a billboard on the edge of town for a while. The words had been scrolling through my mind a lot lately.

Had I been fantasizing about Ethan McCoy ever since the crash because I was having a breakdown? Was Ethan filling some kind of Vlad-shaped hole in my mind? I barely knew him really, other than the guy whose wife had tragically died in a car addicent. A handsome, older, untouchable guy. A brooding widow. A busy single dad. But yeah, I’d always thought he was hot. He came into the store quite a bit. Never for romance novels—just for drinks. He always ordered macchiatos and was the only person in town who ordered them. I had to learn how to make them specially for him. I always liked serving him. So much so, in fact, that I purposefully took a little too much time making his drinks. Tamping the coffee for slightly longer than necessary. Making a big show of cleaning the milk steamer’s nozzles before firing it up. Slow-pouring his milk foam onto the short, black espresso.

Was it weird that even thinking about macchiatos made my tummy feel a little bit funny?

“Snap out of it, Lily!” I growled at myself. Determined to get something done, I picked up a small box of stock and an inventory list, then I walked back out to the store. I started unpacking the books and putting them on the shelves, before checking them off the inventory.

Normally, I’d be excited to open the boxes of new books. I’d ogle the guys on the covers and read the blurbs on the backswith a giddiness in my heart. Now, since swearing off love at my wedding, I could barely bring myself to look at them. They just didn’t feel like novels anymore. They felt like lies. Designed to trick people into thinking things like romance and happily ever afters existed, so that they’d ruin their lives in the pursuit of something that wasn’t real.

Maybe I should pivot the store’s theme, I mused, and ditch the romance angle altogether. Convert the space into a true crime bookstore, or a sci-fi emporium. Anything but smoochy stories about so-called soulmates. No more brother’s best friends. No more fake relationships. Not a single mountain man, snowed-in, billionaire, secret baby novel in sight.

I rubbed my temples and set the clipboard down on the counter. I took a slow lap around the store, trailing my fingers along the spines of the books.

“Will I ever enjoy reading one of you again?” I sighed.

My phone buzzed. I dug it out of my pocket, knowing exactly who it would be before I even glanced at the screen. Vlad. Again.

I swiped through the barrage of messages, each one more infuriating than the last.

Lily, the insurance company needs the police report.

Is the car fixed yet?

I’m going to be late for band practice if you don’t handle this.

Not an apology. Not an explanation. Not even a half-assed attempt at justifying his actions. Just demands about the damn car, as if I had nothing better to do than clean up his messes.

I wrote a single reply.

The car is mine. Don’t message me again.

I tossed the phone onto the counter, fighting the urge to scream. How could I have been so blind? Vlad was an idiot. He always had been. Even when he’d walked in here one day and proposed to me with that dumb song.

“Love is like a tire fire, burning hot and bright,” he had sung, strumming his guitar out of tune. “We’ll ride the passion highway, baby, all through the night.”

I should have known then. Who proposes with a song about a tire fire?

Tears blurred my vision as I looked around the store, taking in the lackluster displays and haphazard stacks of books. The “New Releases” section featured titles from three months ago, and the “Staff Picks” shelf hadn’t been updated since before the engagement.

“What am I going to do?” I whispered to the empty store, my voice cracking.

Just then, my phone buzzed again, this time with an email.

Despite Ethan’s protests, I’d photographed the destroyed Ferrari at the auto shop and sent it to a garage in Goldharbor Bay. Ethan had refused, point blank, to tell me how much it would cost to fix the damage. I wasn’t accepting that, though. I was going to pay him back if it killed me. After all, how much could it be?

I scanned the email.

My jaw dropped.

Twenty. Thousand. Dollars.

Maybe it would kill me to pay him back.

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