Page 49 of A Novel Love Story

RTS_FINAL_COPYEDITS.docx.

When I brushed off the ivy from another one a few feet away, it readIDEAS FOR #5.docx.Another one readMAYA romance.docx. GARNETCOMPANIONv8.docx. JUNIEHEA_other.docx.

GarbagePickings.docx.

On and on.

Whatwasthis place?

I moved across the carpet of clovers under my feet, to the shade of an oak with quite a few statues beneath it. The ivy wasn’t as overgrown over here, so I picked the closest statue and tore the vines off the face—

I gave a start.

The impossibly cold stare of Anders looked back. Or, at first glance itlookedlike Anders, but the nose was wrong, and there wasn’t a scar on his lip. The hair was too messy, and the eyes weren’t quite right. It was like looking at a fun-house mirror that was so subtle, you didn’t notice the change at first.

DidAndersmake all of these? I pulled the ivy off another one. The ears were too big, the scowl too ugly. No, he couldn’t have made these. They looked old. Worn from all the weather and rain.

This couldn’t be the kind of place I was thinking of—that was impossible, wasn’t it? A graveyard of deleted scenes?

And if Anders knew about it, and he knew this place was a story, then whowashe? I still couldn’t place him, no matter how much I tried.

He was annoyingly attractive, grumpy as hell, had a developed backstory, an appealing profession …

Wait—fuck.

What ifhewas supposed to be the main character in Rachel’s last book, but his story had never truly gotten started? Left in some limbo, somewhere in the dark night of the soul?

I began to pace across the courtyard, my mind whirling.

It made sense, in a weird way. Helookedlike the kind of hero that Rachel Flowers would write. Gangly limbs, bright eyes, handsome face picked out easily from the crowd. Her heroes always had charming qualities, even if they were a bit of a wreck at the beginning of the books, with a sad or mysterious backstory. Maybe she just went a little …harder… on the unlikable qualities this time around. Overkill. Something her editor would have highlighted and asked her to tone down.

Maybe this was why I felt that zing of tension every time I saw him, why I stared at his lips. It wasn’t me. He was a would-be hero walking around exuding bookish sexiness with no heroine to use it on …

Ohhh. Is that why he’s so protective of this town? Because it’s his story?I thought.

It had to be.

BecauseIdefinitely wasn’t interested in him. He wasn’tinteresting. Not in that way, not to me. I didn’t want to have a crush. I didn’t need one.

No, he was the hero of the fifth book. His allure was simply baked into the plot—whatever this plot was.It wasn’t me or my faulty heart at all. Tall, wiry, broad shoulders, and a penchant for glowering. Mint eyes and blond hair and a scar on his lip from a childhood accident. He was probably an orphan—most of Rachel Flowers’s main characters were—and his long fingers had probably been dreamed up just for gratuitous descriptions about the way he licked his thumb and turned the page in the book he was reading. Oh yes, I could see it now. I didn’t know how I’d missed it before.

But then why didn’t he want anything to change, tomove? Surely he wanted to find his heroine and his happily ever after, right?

I closed the gate behind me as I hurried out of the courtyard, and through the garden of the Daffodil Inn. The sky looked like it was going to rain soon, so I picked up my pace, determined not to get caught in it again, as I headed back to the bookstore to prove myself right.

16

Heroic

THE BELL ABOVE THEdoor jingled as I let myself into the bookstore. “Anders?” I called, and stepped inside. “Hello?”

He wasn’t at his usual haunt behind the counter. I searched the first floor of the shop. In the office, in the rare editions alcove, in the reading nook with the fireplace, but he was nowhere to be found. Neither was Butterscotch.

“Anders?” I called again. “Butters? Here kitty, kitty.” I clicked my tongue to the roof of my mouth, but there wasn’t even a peep. Just the bookstore, creaking in the evening heat. A rumble of thunder shook the rafters, distant, but getting closer. I frowned. Where the hell could they be? If Anders was out, then wouldn’t he have flipped the business sign toCLOSED?

I pursed my lips, frustrated. I’d be gone from Eloraton tomorrow morning, once Frank fixed my car, so this was really the last chance I’d have to ask him.

I turned the sign over for him, about to leave the bookstore, when I heard athump.

---