The Bookshop on the Corner (A Gingerbread Cafe story) Read Online Free Page B

their mannerisms, but this guy had me stumped. All I could imagine was that little man crease thing, right where his jeans hung. Note to self: stop dropping gaze to his nether regions.
    I was doing it again. The mute, bamboozled, mouth-open thing.
    “I’d say you’re a thriller man.” There. Done.
    He shook his head. “Wrong.”
    Folding my arms across my chest, I said, “What do you mean ‘wrong’? You have thriller written all over you.”
    He made a huge show of looking for the word thriller on his clothing; he pulled his tee shirt out, and, oh, good God…his six-pack rippled, exactly as it did on the hero of a Harlequin cover.
    This time I shook myself as though I’d just come out of the ocean. I couldn’t keep clearing my throat and coughing; he’d think I was sick, or worse
contagious
, or something.
    “Are you OK?” he asked, tilting his head.
    I moved from behind the counter, and headed towards the front door. It was steamy in here all of a sudden. I made a mental note to open some more windows in future. And maybe stock an ice pack or two.
    “I’m totally fine. Just a little hot.” I needed some space. This guy had me dreaming Harlequin, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to do that and keep the giddy, dreamy look off my face.
    He followed me, leaning against the opposite door jamb. “Let me guess, you’re more of a romance reader?”
    I double blinked and hastily said, “I am not!” Please tell me I didn’t say out loud his abs rippled. “I mainly read true crime. And horror. The gorier, the better,” I big-fat lied. For some reason he looked like the kind of guy who’d belittle romance readers, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing.
    He gave me the once-over, a very slow up and down, that made me shrink under his scrutiny. “You look more like a romance reader to me.”
    I squared my shoulders. “And what
exactly
does a romance reader look like?”
    “Let’s see.” He scratched his chin as if he was contemplating. “She’s tiny, like a doll. Has perfectly cut black bangs, which highlight her mesmerizing doe eyes. Nervous around strangers, unaware that her hands flutter like the wings of a butterfly when she’s thinking things she doesn’t want anyone to know…”
    I gasped, and put my hands behind my back.
    “Her voice is husky, betraying her desires…”
    “OK, stop. What’s with all the flowery prose? Are
you
a romance writer? Are you one of those men who moonlight as Cindii Lovenest, or something, to help sell more books?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
    He laughed, throwing his head back, and showed his perfect white teeth. No actually, this
wasn’t
a romance novel, let me adjust that — he laughed, throwing his head back, showed his perfect white teeth, which would one day in the near future, possibly ten years or so away, be not as white. There.
    “I am a writer. Just not a romance writer. I’m a reporter from New York.”
    “A reporter from New York, hey? Aha, let me guess, you want a self-help book? How to have it all? How to avoid living the cliché? No, wait, how to make every minute count?”
    He put a hand to his chest and scoffed. “I detect sarcasm! Do you think us New Yorkers are that bad, really?”
    I shrugged. “I only know what I read.”
    “Which is romance.”
    “Bloody, gory, zombie-loving horror with chainsaws, and ninja stars, and a little true crime, remember.”
    “Liar.”
    It was not like me to be so extroverted, and I didn’t usually think so…
lewdly
. This stranger had some weird kind of pull over me, eking out a different Sarah from the one who actually existed. Gone was the girl in a corner, nose in a book, somehow replaced with a girl expertly flirting, using fast-paced banter with someone who was
definitely
not my type. Too handsome was
too
hard.
    But he smelled good. Not of the tree-bark, glorious man-sweat, musky he-scent, rather