Nevermore Bookstore (Townsend Harbor Book 1)

Guardian

(GÄR′DĒ-ƏN) NOUN. A PERSON WHO GUARDS, PROTECTS, OR PRESERVES.

It’d been dark for a while when Fox closed the book, but he’d been so engrossed, he barely noticed the time pass.

Jaw cracking on a yawn, he considered turning in.

The second the thought landed, his body seized. The ghosts of his morning nightmare had been exorcised with punishing physical labor.

Until now.

Swallowing around a constricting throat, Fox closed his eyes and reached down into his ever-dwindling reserves for fortitude. For disassociation. For…for something he’d stopped believing in.

Peace.

If only he didn’t know where it could be found.

Above a bookstore in the—and he never used this word—cutest goddamned town in the entire planet.

And he’d seen most of this world.

Three more nights.

The soft peal of an outgoing call ringing through physically startled him.

When had he reached for the phone?

When had he dialed her number?

Hang up, he commanded himself. Hang up, you selfish fu—

A click. A feminine sneeze. A crash.

“Oh, shitsnacks.”

Fox sat up, every muscle tensed as her faraway curse was muffled by the sounds of her fumbling with the phone.

“Cady?” He cleared the rust from his voice again. “Cady? You okay?”

“Sorry! One sec!” Another sneeze. A plaintive meow. A sound like falling marbles. And…either he’d called a WWII-era radio, or the receiver was being dragged against sandpaper? “Um…oof…ouch. Sat down too fast.” At least, that’s what he thought she said.

“Cady?” He willed his heart to slow. Pain injected a concerning note into her voice. But he detected no fear…probably. It was hard to tell.

“Ugh. Balls.” It seemed like the receiver might be making its way in the right direction, as he heard that loud and clear. “Why do you have to be such a weapons-grade dick? I mean, whoops. I mean—” The phone finally made it to her mouth. “Um, thank you for calling the Nev—”

“Who’s being a weapons-grade dick?” he barked in a voice he’d not used since… Well, it didn’t matter how long. You did not use that tone with a woman.

Ever.

Before he could apologize, she answered, unconcerned, “Fox? Ohmigod, did I forget it was Thursday?”

Brow furrowed, he tossed the book into the dirt, his entire energy homed in on her voice. Was she drunk? Had she hit her head? Had a “weapons-grade dick” done something to hurt her?

Was she currently in the room with a dead man?

“Cady…it’s Monday. What’s wrong? Are you alone? Say, ‘Order for the Christmas season,’ if you’re not safe.”

“Oh… I’m all the way safe.” She giggled.

“Did you suffer trauma to your head?” He only asked because she wasn’t acting like herself. “Are you experiencing—”

“I mean, I wouldn’t claim trauma, per se, but I did almost clothesline myself getting out of the Lyft earlier.” The giggle turned into a rich laugh, and suddenly he could breathe a little.

But something was off. Seriously off. Cady Bloomquist was a shy, sensitive soul with an acute awareness of her place in the world and how she moved within it. While she was a ray of sunshine, he’d only heard her giggle when he made her nervous.

Not that he blamed her. He made everyone nervous.

It was kinda his thing.

“I’m so glad it’s you.” The words gusted on the breath of someone who’d just sprinted up several flights of stairs. “I was about to make the most awkward apology ever… Well, maybe not ever, but ever over the phone at a bookstore in the middle of the night on a Monday.”

Was it the middle of the night?

She was glad he called?

“Who was being a dick?” He managed to keep the primitive bullshit out of his voice this time.

Barely.

“My spine.”

He blinked. “What happened to it?”

She paused a beat too long. “Mmmmust have wrenched it or something. It’s NBD—speaking of Mondays, did you lose your calendar?”

Adorable that she thought she was misdirecting. Almost as adorable as her habit of using text acronyms in her everyday speech when she had such a literary mind.

“Cady…” His voice was as soft as it could ever get. “Drowning a rough Monday in alcohol?”

“Au contraire, mon frère,” she said in the worst possible French accent. “Celebrating a splendiferous Monday with a root beer soda made with—get this—the devil’s lettuce. We put it over ice cream, and it tasted like cream soda, and now I’m the most highest because I didn’t know that there were ten regular servings of THC in one bottle. And I had thirds!”

He didn’t realize how tight his skin had stretched across his tense expression until the explanation of her unusual mood threatened to relax his lips into a smile. “Someone with you?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she remonstrated with half-mock petulance. “I’m a strong, independent woman. I can hold my substances. I don’t need a man to babysit me.”

He’d stepped into some shit in his life, and he could smell it on his shoe now. “No—uh—I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business, I just…” If his team could see him like this—they’d take his man card, rip it up, and throw it in the fire, then piss on the ashes, wait for them to dry, and dump them from a plane into the most remote center of the ocean.

And that was if they were feeling pity.

“I’m teasing.” She laughed again, and the sound lifted every hair on his body. “I mean, I’m alone. No one needs to witness this chaos.”

He didn’t want to identify the bleak note beneath her pitch when she said alone…

Nor could he analyze the relief he felt that another man wasn’t in her shop in the middle of the night.

“Shit, I called too late, didn’t I?” It was too cloudy outside to tell the time. When she said middle of the night, he’d assumed hyperbole. “I was going to leave a message with my order if you’d closed,” he explained, hoping relief wasn’t the only fond feeling she had toward him for an unexpected call.

“If? I closed five hours ago.”

Regret shanked him in the sternum. “Fuck. Sorry. You just getting home from…a party?” Had she started forwarding her landline to a cell? She wasn’t aware he already knew the number to her mobile, but he never used it.

“Yeah, it was Myrtle’s fifth fifty-fifth birthday, and Vee threw her a not-sixty party.”

“Sounds”—fucking weird—“fun.”

“So fun,” she strenuously agreed. “I had three root beer floats. Did I tell you how much cannabis that was?”

“You sure did.” Jesus Christ, she was adorable on a regular day. Inebriated? He’d met certain sociopaths who would be charmed by her.

“Say what you want about that generation, they know how to handle their weed.”

A gruff sound escaped him, somewhere between a cough and a grunt. Could have possibly been interpreted as a laugh? It’d been so long, he didn’t remember. “What are you doing at the store instead of partying or sleeping?”

Her gusty sigh ended on a breathy little groan. “Oh…you know, gathering data for taxes, profit and loss statements that are due to my accountant tomorrow that I forgot about until my Google Calendar sent me notifications at midnight. You know…the sexy stuff…”

Fox bit down on both of his lips. When her voice went liquid like that, his veins turned from ice to honey.

She’d never done that before.

“Oh yeah?” He hoped his own groan sounded a little teasing as well. “Tell me what your dividends are wearing.”

Nope. No. Negative. Abort. He had no business talking to her like this.

“To be honest? Not much.”

For the billionth time, he thanked the Nine Princes of Hell she couldn’t see him. Or read his filthy mind. Or knew anything about who he was or what he’d done.

“Wanna hear how low and nasty these numbers are?” She saw his tease and raised him one of her own.

“Only if you go real slow.” He’d listen to her read the phone book in that voice. Keep talking. It’s the only thing connecting me to my sanity. The only thing connecting my mind to my body.

She cleared her throat as if to prepare, but what came out was shy. “Hey, so…why are you calling on a Monday?”

After he was done being disappointed, he’d be grateful she was the one to break the spell and pull them away from a ledge he’d vowed to avoid. “Out of books early,” he answered honestly, eyes going to the embarrassingly colorful cover almost glowing next to the faded exterior of his unzipped sleeping bag. “Couldn’t put down that last Lady Lavender mystery.”

It used to hurt to say it. Like someone poured napalm down his throat. Lady motherfucking Lavender. Victorian spinster archaeologist and amateur sleuth.

Probably crack was less addictive.

But something like six weeks ago he’d asked Cady what book she thought he would like the most. Fox’d nearly given birth to an entire cow when she suggested the title, obviously marketed to women.

While the plots could be a bit melodramatic, it read like Downton Abbey meets Game of Thrones, and he’d ordered the entire twenty-one-book series.

“OMG. The next one was just released early—I’ll overnight it to you, no charge.”

A harsh laugh burst from him in another surprising gust. She was too sweet for her own fucking good. It was going to get her in trouble. “The overnight fee will be four hundred percent of the book’s actual cost.”

“I know, but you have to read it yesterday! This isn’t a spoiler, but it has this twist that will make your soul jizzzzzzzz.”

Two chuckles in a row she’d caused. This woman was some kind of witch.

“I won’t be checking my mail for another few days, so no overnight necessary.” If this was how she conducted business, no wonder her store suffered financially.

“Okay, well, when you read it, you have to call me and tell me what you think. I have questions. I have big thoughts for you. Yuge thoughts. The most tremendous thoughts ever thoughted. No one has ever thought about a book like I think about this one…” she said, adopting a flat-toned spoof they often used as an inside joke before dissolving into giggles.

He had something yuge for her, too, something twitching against his thigh and threatening to become a fucking problem.

Slamming the iron bars closed on that thought, he realized she’d not stopped talking.

“…know when you reach episode four. Because don’t watch before you finish the book. There are spoilers,” she was saying. “But call me after, because you are going to shit your mind! I bet it would be fun to watch high. The colors would be like…” She made a noise between an explosion and a sea wave.

“Episode?” He struggled to grasp her meaning through a haze of sudden lust-fog.

Being a dude sucked sometimes.

“You know, Lady Lavender on PBS. It’s an abomination, but they won six Emmys this year. Don’t tell me you’re not watching. The whole fuckin’ world is watching…”

“The whole fucking world minus me.”

“Ugh, I can’t let this stand. Go and watch episode one right now! I’ll wait up. You can call me back. I can’t believe this. It’s as if you missed Star Wars or something. Do you even exist if you haven’t seen it?”

“Ummmm…” He glanced around the smooth rock face cluttered by his sleeping roll, bag, lantern, bow, rifle, and pack. The entirety of his possessions weighed just over seventy-five pounds. “I can’t manage an episode tonight, I’m afraid.”

“It’s okay. You can catch up while I send the book off, but again, don’t touch season three, episode four or there will be consequences.”

Why that silly threat turned his body into a fucktangle of desire was beyond his mortal understanding. But here they were—her having an innocuous conversation, and his hand moving restlessly from his chest toward his cock.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Sorry. Can’t,” he rasped, hoping she couldn’t hear the strangled note of need.

A mock noise of disbelief. “Wait just a minute, Mister Fox… Do not tell me you’re one of those people who are all, ‘I don’t watch TV.’”

“’Fraid so.” Why watch GoT when his own memory was dripping with just as much blood, geopolitics, and betrayal?

“Ugh. Gross!” She laughed. “Can we even be friends?”

“Hey. Aren’t streaming platforms sending bookstores like yours out of business?” he quipped with his own chuckle. Three in a night. A recent record.

“Touché!” Her voice glowed with warmth and laughter, and suddenly the night didn’t press in so close. “Monday you is mean.”

“I’m mean every day.”

“I’m sending you something extra,” she announced, as if the decision had just struck her.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, it’ll be so fun. It’ll keep you occupied. Hold on a sec, I have to switch to the store landline—my cell is about to die.”

Several clicks later, she reappeared, sounding a little further away. He liked her fascination with all things analog, including the antique turn-of-the-twentieth-century rotary phone with one of those mile-long twirly cords.

“Want to know what I sent?”

“Man like me doesn’t get many surprises. Let me want it for a while.” Christ, even his voice wasn’t that deep. If she didn’t hear the impossible, unarticulated sex in it, she needed to get her hearing checked.

“Can I ask you something?” The tone of her voice pierced his warm haze with doubt.

Running a hand over his still-drying hair, he tugged with frustration at his uncharacteristic lack of control lately. “Nothing good ever follows that question, but…yeah.”

“Are we… And tell me if I’m totally up in the night…or if I’m reading things weirdly…or if… Well, I’ll just ask it. Are we, like, flirting? Er. Were we just flirting? I felt like we were flirting, but I’m not always super great at telling. I swear, in order to get me to realize someone is interested in me, I’m pretty sure they’d have to bash me over the head and carry me back to their Neanderthal cave.” Her nervous laughter repeated when he didn’t instantly reply.

He surveyed his surroundings. He’d bash his own brains out before rendering a woman unconscious, but a Neanderthal cave?

That, he had covered. Kinda.

There was no way around it. “Yeah. One could say we were flirting just now,” he answered carefully.

“Okay, phew, I just didn’t want to be inappropriate with a…a…? Customer? Frrrriend?” Her audible swallow charmed him more than that little fawn and her obsession with his bell.

“Be as inappropriate as you want.” He needed to hang up. Hang up now! Think of a reason to let her go, you sack of shit!

He opened his mouth to inquire as to why she was doing her financials so obviously impaired when she cleared her throat. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Of course.”

“Why don’t you ever, like—I don’t know—send me pictures of your dick?”

Fox had been choked by many things, but swallowing his own tongue was entirely new. “Do you…want pictures of my dick?” Because they didn’t exist—he had no camera, and also, why the fuck would anyone send one without a very obvious request?

She paused. “No?”

“Was that a question?”

He could feel her squirming in her chair, so strong and obvious was her silent distress. “You’re different from most guys our age, that’s all. We’ve been talking for months, and…you’re always… Well, you’re just…you know, you’re so… Well, you’re great.”

“Great?” The word tasted like “I love you like a brother.” Which should have been fine…but also made him want to lick a skunk’s ass to get rid of the flavor.

“Fffffffantastic?”

Ouch. He’d prefer weapons-grade dick. “Do you know how many question marks would be in this conversation if someone transcribed it?” he joked, trying to give her a way out of a very perilous situation with levity.

“I can’t land on a word!” she complained, as if she couldn’t decide which chocolate to pick from a fancy box. “Something exciting and attractive and considerate and intense and mysterious. I daresay enigmatic.”

It’d been an entire eternity since Fox blushed, but a warmth creeping up his neck and into his ears told him he was the most pathetic human alive. “You’re landing on a whole mess of words there, Cady.”

Audible swallow. “Too many?”

“Not if you mean it.” He literally bit down on his lip so hard he tasted blood. Stop. Fucking. Talking. Man.

He should just walk into the sea. End it.

There was torture he could take. And then there was this. This inconceivably exquisite torment.

Somehow his hand had worked its way to the waistband of his pants.

Fox sat listening to her fight for breath as he grappled with his own lungs. All her feminine thoughts audibly vibrated through him with detectible delicacy, like cogs in the most intricate watch.

He should say something.

“I’d never send you a picture of my dick.”

He should have said anything but that.

“Well, now I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with it.”

“Trust me, woman, it gets the job done.” Was that a sexual challenge? From him?

How did they get here?

“I-I’m not— I didn’t mean— I’m not requesting—” Laughter warmed her embarrassment as she took a moment to find the words. “Well, the whole point of the question was, like… We’ve been chatting for several months. Friendly. Er…flirting, one could say. And you’ve never tried to take it further or push boundaries.”

Well. Yeah. “Is that bad?”

“Not so much,” she said after a pause. “It’s refreshing, actually. But I guess I just wondered if… Well, I thought we might… I mean, since you have your deliveries picked up by hand, you might be local-ish…”

A wave of dread threatened his teeth-clenching arousal. Here it was. The capital-T Thing. The conversation that would shatter the purity of what they had.

He couldn’t ask her to dinner. A movie was so far out of the question that the very thought of it made his ass itch.

He certainly couldn’t take her home.

He couldn’t love her. Touch her. Talk to her.

He could not want her.

He’d never wanted anything so bad in his life.

“Cady… I can’t—”

“Shh!”

“I’m sorry?” Did she just shush his gentle rejection? Had anyone dared shush him in his entire godforsaken life? His rancher mother, from whom he’d derived a tough hide, the work ethic of an ox, and a backhand Conor McGregor would envy, was the lone person in his memory.

And when she shushed, you shushed the fuck up.

Or you would answer to his father. A quiet, simple, patient man with a green thumb and fists the size of jackhammers.

A paternal trait he’d inherited. The fists, not the green thumb.

He was better at killing things than making them grow.

“I thought I heard something downstairs…” Cady took a moment to listen, and he took a moment to not lose his entire mind. “It’s fine—it’s probably just Gemma.”

“Probably?”

“Yeah, no one else comes here this time of night. She’s probably making sure I got home and into bed okay.”

Probably was his least favorite word. “Why would she do that?”

“Um…” She hesitated.

As much as Fox’s well-honed instincts told him he could trust Cady, she was a woman who kept a secret from him. One he wasn’t entitled to know…

One he ached to discover.

“You know how fierce female best friends can be. We take care of each other.”

He couldn’t think of anything sweeter. “I guess we’re both about to yell at you for not locking your doors this late.”

“What’s weird is that I swear I did,” she said in absent wonder. “Like, I remember because I am watching Mr. Henery’s cat, Kevin Costner, and he’s a wily little escape artist.”

“Kevin Costner? Or Mr. Hen—” Whipping his blanket off, Fox bolted upright, struck by a dark bolt of dread. “Last time we spoke, you said Gemma doesn’t have a key.”

“Oh yeah.” Hesitancy crept into her tone. “Um… Hey, Gem?” she called out. “Gemma, is that you? I’m on the landing.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, woman, don’t give away your position!” he barked.

Calm down. It’s probably just the fucking cat.

“Oh, please, this is Townsend Harbor—we have fewer break-ins than Fort Knox,” she replied. “The last violent thing to happen here was before I lost my—”

The abrupt cessation of her words jarred him into action. “Cady?” he said as he surged to his feet. “Cady, what’s happening? Talk to me.”

“They—they broke something,” she whispered.

Fuck.

“It’s not the cat?”

“I just remembered I shut him in Fern’s old parlor.” She sounded so small. And so fucking far away.

Nine miles, to be exact.

His blood froze, heart plummeting from a cliff into a void. The flat of his hand struck the stone. He wanted to punch, to roar, and destroy.

But he needed to save his knuckles for a deserving face.

“Get behind a locked door, Cady,” he said in a tone measured with precise elements of authority, gentleness, calm, and urgency. “Get behind a locked door and call 911.”

“Okay.” Uneven footsteps echoed across the line, and she made several concerning sounds that reminded him of her wrenched back… She was moving waaaaaay too slow. How bad was it?

The thought of someone accosting her while she was injured sent his vision swirling into crimson chaos.

“Fast as you can,” he urged her, fighting a strange squeeze in his chest. He needed intel and had exactly no time to gather it. Blueprints of her store. Her place in it. Tactical positions close by. “Do you see them? How many?”

“Don’t know.” Frightened tears choked off her whisper. “More than one.”

Jesus Christ, he’d never been so alarmed and frustrated at one time. “Locked door. Where is it?”

“Over there.”

He closed his eyes, fighting a surge of visceral panic at the idea of anyone being trapped. It was for her safety. She was hurt and inebriated. Extra vulnerable. Panicked and confused.

And this world was full of men who struck at the first sign of weakness.

“Lock yourself in,” he managed around a closing throat.

“But…but the phone cord won’t reach that long.”

“Now, Cady! I’m going to call 911.”

“No. No! Don’t leave me alone!” If he could have reached through the connection between them and clapped his hand over her mouth, he would have.

“I have to get help there,” he explained. “Is there a weapon close by?”

“What about— No, that won’t work. This stapler is kind of heav— Nope. Oh, wait! I’ve got it. War and Peace! Hardcover with super-pointy edges.”

“No, dammit, you need—”

“I can almost reach it.”

“Cady—”

“Got it.”

Her triumph was interrupted by a cry that ripped his heart from his chest and tossed it, still beating, into the snow.

“No! Oh no! Nononono. Don’t. Please.”

He roared her name, but his voice was lost to a sound like an avalanche.

Then a dead line.

Stringing together every curse word in every language he’d learned, he dialed her number.

Nothing.

Again.

Same.

And just like that, a calm stole over him, as still and frigid as the crystals sparkling in the frozen air. He pulled it around him like a mantle of ice and dialed 911. Somehow he was able to connect with a dispatcher with a smoker’s voice named Judy. As the woman sent law enforcement to Nevermore, Fox kicked snow and dirt over his fire, donned his boots, checked and secured his gear, and abandoned anything nonessential that would slow him down.

As he began to march, dark emotions swirled beneath his disassociation. What if she—?

Nope. Shut it down.

His heartbeat became the syllables of her name. Cady. Cady. Cady.

If one hair on her head…

Keep it together, Fox. Lock it away. Casualties are inevitable. The person next to you might matter most, and if they went down, vengeance was swift and merciless.

Only then he could think about grief.

Nine miles would take him at least three hours over this terrain. He could sustain that, no problem. He wanted to run. To sprint. To plunge headlong into the increasing wind and hurl himself through the inky black until he landed at her feet.

He had to be smarter than that. He couldn’t arrive too exhausted.

In case there was blood to be spilled.