Сьюзен Виггз - The Lost and Found Bookshop

Natalie shook herself, realizing she’d drifted off into the past. She hated the reminder that memories were all she had now. “Sorry for all the reminiscing,” she said to Trevor.

“I like hearing you talk about your mother,” he said.

“Cherish your mom while you have her,” Natalie advised.

“Trust me, she’s a big part of my life. I think we’ve arrived.” He turned at a low-lit sign marking the vine-covered building. “I can’t wait for you to see this place.”

A valet whisked the car away, and they were led through the beautiful dining room to a shell-ceilinged nook overlooking an abundant kitchen garden.

“This is lovely,” Natalie said, scooting into the velvet-upholstered half-round banquette. “Amazing.” Everything about the place exuded discreet, tasteful luxury.

“Good,” he said. “You deserve to be amazed.”

“I’ve always wanted to come here,” she confessed. “Unfortunately I’d have to sell a kidney just to be able to afford it.”

He laughed. “In that case, I’m happy to keep you from self-mutilating.”

A sommelier appeared with pink champagne in crystal flutes, which she served with a flourish.

“To the Lost and Found Bookshop,” Trevor said. “Thank you for hosting me today.”

“Thank you for breathing new life into the shop,” she said.

They touched glasses and sipped. Heaven, with bubbles.

“The pleasure was mine,” he told her. “And thanks to little Dorothy Gallagher for getting us together. She made it all happen.”

“She did.” The mention of Dorothy made Natalie think of Peach, and thinking of Peach while drinking champagne with Trevor made her feel guilty. And feeling guilty was irrational. What on earth did she have to feel guilty about?

“That was quite a moment when she blurted out that she hates her parents’ divorce. You handled it really well.” She pictured Peach’s face, his clenched hand on the arm of his seat—that quiet, helpless agony.

“You think?”

“Totally. You’re a quick thinker.”

“Thanks for saying so. No matter how many kids I meet, someone always manages to catch me off guard. When you hang out with kids, you never know what you’re going to hear.”

“You had just the right touch. You took her seriously but brought the smiles, too.”

“I doubt I made her like her parents’ divorce any better. So damn hard on kids. I was tempted to say the flip side would have been her folks staying together and fighting it out for a few more decades, but I didn’t want to go there.”

A server came forward with an amuse-bouche. The tiny bite of house-smoked abalone with nettle pesto on a rustic waffle chip took far longer for the server to describe than it did to eat. It was delicious, though.

“So,” Trevor said, savoring the next wine pairing. “Do you think the patient will live?”

She frowned. “Oh. The bookstore, you mean.” Now that she understood the state of her mother’s finances, she would need to gloss over a few things. One successful book signing with a hugely popular author had been an incredible shot in the arm, but even that wasn’t enough to dig the shop out of the hole she’d found it in. She summoned a smile, bright with hope. The success of today’s event was something worth smiling about, for sure. “You were a godsend,” she told him.

His face lit with pleasure. He really is dazzling , she thought. It was a singular feeling, being with someone who was so completely everything —kind and smart, handsome and funny. He seemed focused on not just helping her, but spoiling her rotten.

“Are you always this nice?” she blurted out.

He laughed, and his laughter was as charming as everything else about him. “Trust me, I can be a dick sometimes. Not now, though. The fact is, I’m way into you, Natalie Harper. Way.”

She laughed, too. “What’s that supposed to mean? Into me.”

“That’s me just trying to tell you, in my super-immature way, that I have a crush on you. It feels really good. I haven’t been with anybody special in a while, and when you came along, my heart just about exploded.”

She was too flabbergasted to reply. And then she found her voice. “I have no idea what to say to that.”

“Just say you’re excited about this amazing food.”

“Trust me, I am,” she said. Trevor was perfect. Rick had been perfect. She was the one who was flawed. She was still processing this when the dinner started in earnest. The impeccably trained waitstaff made the meal a seamless experience. One by one, nine tasting courses with wine pairings appeared in a parade of indulgence. There were wildly exotic mushrooms and herbs she’d never heard of as well as luxurious bits of creamy cheese and local produce, sips of wine, even an entire array of exotic salts of the world in a formal presentation box.

“This,” she said, “is the meal of a lifetime. Seriously.”

“Glad you like it. I wanted to impress you.”

“It’s been a two-hour extravaganza,” she said.

He leaned back and patted his stomach. “Thank God for grappa,” he said, taking a small sip of the clear liquid.

The sommelier had given them a lesson about the stomach-settling qualities of grappa, a humble liqueur made from something called pomace. “A fancy word for what’s left after the juice is squeezed out of the grapes,” Natalie explained. “It was never a bestseller at my former company, but it has its place.”

“ Cin cin , as they say in Italy,” he said.

“Well, thank you a million times over,” she told him, relaxing into a comfortable state of tipsiness. “For the event today, for a glorious drive into the countryside—for just everything.”

He took her hand and brought the back of it to his lips. “I have good news, and I have bad news.”

“Oh?” She studied the back of her hand, where he’d kissed her.

“The bad news is, I just tasted nine kinds of wine and I’m not fit to drive. The good news is I have a room for the night.”

“Oh,” she said again. It wasn’t a question.

He smiled and reached forward to touch her shoulder, very gently. “Don’t go all Sabine on me. It’s a two-room suite.”

She flushed and laughed softly. “I’m impressed by the Sabine reference.”

“It’s something I remember from an art history book. When I was twelve years old, art history books were my Playboy magazine. The Rape of the Sabines was a two-page spread in The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Roman History . I couldn’t stop staring at all those boobs.”

“So what were you like as a twelve-year-old?”

“You mean besides obsessed with boobs?” He chuckled. “Like Huckleberry Finn, without the pipe smoking. No TV or video games. No internet. I probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, but I really did have a magical childhood, surrounded by books and nature.”

“Your folks ought to write a manual on parenting. How to unplug your kid. It’d be a bestseller.”

“Spoken like a true bookseller.” He polished off his grappa. “Shall we retire, madam?”

She felt a dart of panic.

He held her hand and drew her to her feet. “You’re channeling the Sabines again.”

“I’m not.” She kept hold of his hand as they strolled through the torchlit gardens toward the inn adjacent to the restaurant. The night air chilled her skin, and she flashed on a memory of the moon garden with Peach. Go away , she told him.

The inn was called L’Auberge Magnifique, a Victorian mansion with a wraparound porch that spanned the front like a white-toothed smile. Inside was a wilderness of chintz and flounces, cabbage rose wallpaper and ornately carved wood.