Nevermore Bookstore: Chapter 5

Do you think it’s time we meet in person?

Fox swallowed around a sandpaper throat as every word for NO in any language he ever knew became the only vocabulary available to him, forcing him into silence.

Because regardless of what his brain knew to be the truth, other parts of him were screaming yes.

It’d always been an intriguing impossibility, the reality of finding out what she looked like. A daydream he often entertained in the vast silence. A fantasy that brought him pleasure and release on occasion through empty physical solo operations.

The attachment—no, attraction to her had been perilous before he saw her for the first time.

It was lethal now.

As in actively killing him.

He’d known she was okay, because he’d beaten feet down here and arrived in time to find Gemma driving Cady home from the emergency room in a sling and helping her pop several painkillers.

Still, he had to pretend there was distance, so she’d never know he’d been close enough to reach out and touch her.

Which was one hundred percent more painful for him, he was sure.

To be fair…he could save himself the suffering by not committing several crimes as he gazed up from beneath the shadow of a tree as the silver half-moon battled with the ambient golden glow of her bedroom. But who would have guessed she’d be prancing around in there with her floor-to-ceiling window wide fucking open right after a break-in in which she’d been injured?

Taking a centering breath, he forced himself to not say anything that would give him away…such as Close your fucking windows, woman; every perv and perpetrator could just—

Shut it down, man. Tighten your shit all. The. Way. Down.

As he’d been securing the perimeter in the dark and simultaneously carrying on a (not so) casual conversation, Cady had wrestled the drapes and blinds open with one-handed enthusiasm, revealing herself clad in the furthest thing from seductive garb as one could get.

And yet…

Edison bulbs turned her riot of long hair into a golden corona fit for an angel.

Halo and all.

As she peered out into the night clad in yoga pants, a baggy tee with stacks of vintage books framing the words I HAVE NO SHELF CONTROL! interrupted by the shoulder strap of a sling, and hair mostly escaping her braid rather than being contained by it…

Fox had to remind himself that goddesses weren’t real.

Her head tipped in such a way that reminded him of a Florentine statue he’d fallen for at the Ponte Santa Trinita. An artist’s dichotomy of succulent details. Small mouth, plump lips. Wide, but heavy-lidded eyes. Pleasant, round cheeks, angular chin.

And a body to which he might dedicate the immortal poetry of Sir Mix-a-Lot.

Thank God she had clothes on (thought no one ever). The fact that she was head-to-toe covered still didn’t save him from being nine kinds of pervy fuck-knuckle for staring at an unsuspecting woman through his PVS-7 Focus Range Night Vision tactical binoculars.

But how else was he to gather intel on her interior layout and monitor every person who dared to approach the shop day or night?

Okay. Admittedly not helping with the creepiness factor. But even with the new locks, no one could deny that the sliding glass door to the waterfront walkway was the furthest thing from secure, storm windows or no storm windows. Fox had been lingering at the shop earlier, and now couldn’t get that smug lawman’s irritatingly astute observations out of his head.

Without a motive or a suspect, there was no way to accurately gauge what sort of danger she was in. And whenever he decided he should turn around and march back into the mountains, the notes of helpless terror in her voice that night would surge into his memory, planting his boots.

Harbor County, over which Ethan Townsend presided, had a handful of deputies to span about two thousand square miles. In the hours Fox had been conducting surveillance, he’d counted only two sheriff’s department cars driving by, and one from Townsend Harbor Police. Those safety checks would wane as more time elapsed after the incident.

Who would protect her then?

Well, Fox had nothing better to do, and could think of no purpose on this earth more important than Cady’s security.

And he would be a goddamn gentleman. Shouldn’t be so hard. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d kinked out on voyeurism. Hell, he didn’t even like strip clubs. Not that he disliked the idea of scantily clad women dancing beneath flattering lights and all, but he wasn’t a look-not-touch kinda guy. And, because his brain was his brain, he invariably noticed things about women other men didn’t.

Or maybe what they didn’t care to see.

Possible emotional damage. Boredom. Desperation. Fear. Vice. Sexual trauma. He believed with his entire self that women should be able to do whatever they wanted for money and be proud of it. But he just couldn’t get hard if a woman showed interest because it was her job.

This—admittedly—morally gray situation in which he found himself was something different. He wasn’t watching Cady for his guilty pleasure.

That was just a bonus.

What about that ginger-twatted sheriff? his inner Jiminy Cricket chirped. Sure, the guy was a boring Dudley Do-Right type, but muscled enough for some small-town vandals to be intimidated. Trained to protect and serve. Carried his gun like he was comfortable using it. (Though Fox would investigate range qualification scores, just to be sure.) The shiny-badged, clean-cut Townsendite struck him as more of a politician than an enforcer. Not to mention the all-American flagpole wedged so far up his ass he had to swallow around it.

Plus, the sheriff obviously wanted to fuck Cady, which meant Fox had forced himself not to spring into backflips when she didn’t take him up on the offer to come home with him.

Her best friend, Gemma, had smarts and cunning, if not so much physical strength, and was a fierce and protective ally who kept a close eye on Cady. That he appreciated, but even so, she was tucked into her own bed down the street.

“Fox?” Cady’s voice sounded closer, somehow, as if proximity made the connection between them stronger.

“Hmm?” Oh fuck. He’d maybe not-so-accidentally let his mind wander (run away screaming) from the suggestion that they should meet.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

That was where she got it wrong. He thought he’d lost her. And to live in a world where she didn’t exist seemed like as good a reason as any to take his own header into Hell.

Aaaaaand…there was the crux of why he wasn’t fit for human consumption.

He was broken.

“I’m here,” he murmured. “I’m right here.” An ache opened up in his chest, and he both anticipated and feared she’d look out into the night and spot him.

She wouldn’t.

“Did…did you hear my question?” A note of hesitancy crept into her voice.

“Your question?” He lamely bought himself some time to cast about for a “hell no” answer that would cause the least damage to her feelings.

“Do you think we should…meet? Maybe just for coffee or a walk by the water in the middle of the day, so it’s not even an awkward thing. It just… I don’t know. Does it feel like… Do you want… Does it seem like a good idea to you?”

Nevermore Bookstore was a beloved landmark and the proprietress a cherished townsperson. She had a good, full life here.

And he was a frag bomb waiting to shred her idyllic existence, leaving nothing behind but shrapnel wounds and chronic pain.

“I wish I could tell you why it’s a bad idea,” he lamented. Why it was a guaranteed train wreck.

Caused by a jetliner.

Followed by the Black Hawk it collided with midair.

And then all of that would crash into an overpass.

At rush hour.

That would begin to cover the regret she would eventually feel if she were to become entangled with him in any real-life situation.

“There’s a chance we’ve already met and didn’t even realize. Is Fox your first or las—”

“We haven’t.” That came out pithier than he’d intended. “Met, that is. We haven’t.”

“How do you know? I have a great memory for faces. What do you look like?”

“I look like…” He touched the hair he’d tousled and faded with powdered silt. His purposely grimy face. Wiped his fingers on clothes he purchased from the local Goodwill…and then beaten up. “Well, I look like hell. What do you look like?”

Backing away from the window slightly, she turned to her right and very obviously observed herself in a mirror out of view. Frowning, she sucked in her cheeks like a Kardashian and pinched at a roll of skin at her stomach. “Right now? I look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and Miss Piggy’s love child.” She laughed her own joke, and, time was, he might have too. Would have told her she was being silly, while appreciating that she could laugh at herself.

It wasn’t often a beautiful woman didn’t know exactly what that currency was and how to wield it. And well they should. He’d not been above leveraging his tough jaw, thick, dark hair, and size to charm a woman into asking him to do the things he wanted to do in the first place.

But he didn’t like that the question drove Cady back from the window. That she carefully tumbled into bed, pulled the covers to her chin, and tucked her knees together.

“I could tell you what you look like without ever seeing you,” he murmured, not waiting for a reply as she settled in. “Your eyes are wide and wild and wise, as open as they can possibly be, so they don’t miss anything. They’re the hue of a nebula, maybe. Like those pictures you see taken by the Webb. Such vivid, unusual colors that we haven’t even invented names for them yet. Your skin is smooth, as if spun by merchants along the Silk Road a thousand years ago when colors were pure. The color of moonlight.”

“Okay, Lord Byron, what color is moonlight?” she asked, audibly fighting for breath.

“It doesn’t matter. Moonlight is the most perfect color on any shade of skin.”

She covered a dreamy sigh with a huff of disdain. “Pretty words there, book man, but you don’t know if I’m a supermodel or a troglodyte.”

“I know what I like. And I know I’d like you.” And the award for understatement of the year goes toooooooooo…

“You have to stop!” she pleaded in a mock-plaintive whine. “Compliments from deep-voiced men give me the nervous urps.” She squirmed as if her skin had become suddenly uncomfortable. “Men always pretend a woman’s looks don’t matter, but that only works when they’re already physically attracted. So tell me, Mr. Fox, what are your preferences? What color do you think my hair is?

He had to be careful here. To not make her feel nervous or threatened. “B-brunette?”

She opened her mouth as if to disavow him. Then closed it, her lips twisting wryly. “Like brunettes, do ya?”

“I don’t care if a woman’s hair is forest green, if she feels herself in it.”

“Okay then, what about personal style?”

“Um…Michelle Obama power suits.”

“I wish!” She gave a soft scoff. “I’m a jeans and graphic tee kinda gal. I don’t even think I own a suit. I barely own matching socks. So…strike two.”

“Nothing wrong with jeans and t-shirts.” It was sort of his style too. In the summer, anyhow.

She paused, and her lower lip disappeared between two teeth.

She very obviously didn’t mean for it to look porny, but here they were. “What about…what about size? You have any poetry there, Longfellow?”

“No. No, I can only say with absolute dead fucking honesty that there could never be enough of you in this world. No matter what size.”

She sniffed, and he watched her run her fingertips across her face as if to wipe away an errant tear. Lifting his binoculars, he zoomed in on her face and watched a tiny pool of moisture gather her lashes into spikes.

“Men don’t usually want to hitch their proverbial carts to a woman they can’t carry across the threshold.”

Sure, too many men allowed society to tell them whom they wanted to fuck, but Fox had always been stronger-willed than that. His sexuality was tied to more primitive notions of beauty. His pecker was old-fashioned, he supposed, because the larger the curves (especially those related to biological fertility imperatives), the more physically interested he became.

“I could do it,” he boasted with a certainty he shouldn’t have. “No problem.”

“Psssh. You don’t know how much I weigh.”

“Doesn’t matter. I could do it.”

Her answering scoff contained multitudes of disbelief. “You can’t even reliably claim that! What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong.” He’d already done the math.

“I-I’m a big girl.” It was the first time she’d said so to him.

“I’m a big man.”

Giving in to a halfhearted sound of frustration, she shifted on the bed, writhing awkwardly as she fluffed (punched) her pillow one-handed and grunted into a more comfortable position. “I wish you were here so I could win this argument…” She paused, blinking back over to the window. “I mean, even if I lost the argument, I’d still be happy you were here. I’d feel safer, I think, which is weird, because I’m not entirely convinced you’re not some kind of phantom…or serial killer. You act a bit sus sometimes.”

“Honey, I ache to be there.” The confession was ripped from his throat in a voice made of equal parts velvet and steel. After clearing his throat, he added. “Also, I’m not a serial killer.”

“Oh, well in that case, you could come over…”

Every muscle in his body clenched as his eyes latched on to her face. She sounded as though she were teasing.

But she looked dead serious. Hopeful, even.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Was she inviting him to be a shoulder to cry upon?

Or a booty to call upon?

Did it matter in terms of desire? Not one fucking little bit. The reasons he shouldn’t/couldn’t were losing a bit of their contrast. Fading into something less substantial.

But they’d never disappear. “Funny that you seem more worried about what you look like and don’t seem that worried about my appearance. For all you know, I could have leprosy. Or a mullet.”

She coughed out a laugh, then a moan. “Do you have either of those things?”

“No, but that’s not the—”

“Well, barring any breach of CDC protocol, I vow that you can just walk right up to me and say hi, and you could look like the love child of Rowan Atkinson and Steve Buscemi and I’d still kiss you like a returning WWII hero.”

Christ, you couldn’t just go around saying stuff like that to a guy in his current—engorged—physical condition.

“First of all, both those men are stallions, and you’ll never convince me otherwise,” he joked in an attempt to break the tension as thick as a Howitzer and just as terrifying. “And second…I can’t.”

“You. Can’t,” she repeated, chewing on her lip. “Are you sure you’re not married?”

“You know a married man with the time to read as much as I do?”

“Good point.” She sighed, rubbing at her forehead. “Then why—”

“I can’t because I’m not— I have one intensely important job, and if I fail— Well, I can’t fail. It’s the truth. I promise.”

“Oh.” Her brows drew together, and she shook her head as if berating herself. “Some other time, maybe.”

“Cady, I—”

Down the frigid, deserted Water Street, a pack of women spilled out of Olive or Twist, the town’s only late-night, underground speakeasy. They tottered in strappy heels he wouldn’t trust his own ankles in, whooping in exaltation at a friend’s newfound, and probably well-deserved, freedom from an unhappy marriage.

“Hey, I’ve got to go, Cady. You get some rest, okay?”

“O-okay.” She sat up, her face pinched with concern. “Talk to you next we—”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” He disconnected the call just as the noises of a half-dozen women came closer.

Another second on the line with Cady and she’d have known he was close by.

With a breath of relief, he looked up toward his campsite, pleased to see that he’d hidden it well from this vantage.

When he pitched his tent here, so to speak, he’d been pleased to find such a tactical vantage in the middle of town. Water Street, where Nevermore Bookstore was located, ran along the Pacific shoreline and sometimes even out over the tides with several piers, boardwalks, and shop/apartment balconies.

The rest of the town crawled up a hillside where pretty, old Victorian homes bared their beams like painted ladies pulling up can-can skirts. A five-story stone staircase built into the slope of the hill connected Water Street to the residences, other shops, and churches on the hilltop, an area locally known as “Uptown,” as opposed to Water Street’s “Downtown.”

Townsend Harbor left the wilderness on each side of the staircase as untouched as possible. A thick swath of forest in the middle of the city. Fox had found a perfect, body-sized plateau on which to take up residence. It took an act of God to get a permit to cut down a tree in this place, so the pleasantly overgrown wildland in the middle of town had been there long enough to produce thick layers of moss on the trunks of the trees.

The area had been dubbed a sanctuary for the deer herds that moved into Townsend Harbor proper, and decided they were now city folk. They could be seen grazing on park lawns and getting fat on the gardens of wealthy retirees. Not to mention juncos and titmouse, bunnies, squirrels, coyotes, and foxes, the occasional stray cat…

And, for the indefinite future, one feral human.

Because, just like coyotes and foxes, once he sank teeth into his prey, he didn’t stop shaking until it was broken and dead.

With the divorce party bearing down on his position, Fox didn’t pause to appreciate the bronze fountain in the middle of what was considered the “town square” from which the staircase led. A replica of Galatea bared perfect bronze breasts to anyone who might wander past. He recognized the sculpture from what he’d seen of the original back in the day.

Not because he wasn’t interested, but because the women had begun to teeter toward the steps as well, and from what he could make of their conversation, they’d collectively hand the next man they came across his ass in their own personal version of The Hurt Locker.

After leaping up the stairs two at a time, he ducked beneath the iron railing and climbed the face of the hill on all fours, careful not to disturb the darkness with his shadow.

Cresting the plateau upon which he’d spread his bedroll, he sank down on his haunches and scanned the night. He could almost see all of the hamlet from his vantage. The tall steam stacks of the paper factory belching puffs of vapor into the atmosphere. The bright lights of the small hospital on the south hill of town. The various masts from the harbor, many of them singing a haunting song as the evening breeze picked up.

Scents of late-night pizza and the brine of the cold sea mingled with a cloud of incredibly expensive perfume carried to him from the Pilates- and spin-class-honed battalion of ladies taking the stairs like it was the beaches at Normandy.

“…does that guy think he is refusing a drink from us—from you, Stefanie?” The faint gas-lamp-style lights perched on each stair landing glowed off the speaker’s brassy hair and smeared makeup. “I don’t know what you saw in him. I’d take a bottle brush to my own vulva before letting a man whose tattoos indicate he’s obviously been to prison think he had a chance with me.”

Ears perked, Fox crouched and listened closer to the Real Housewives of Townsend Harbor.

“Those were too pretty for prison tattoos,” sighed another. “So much color.”

“So much muscle,” purred an accented voice from somewhere south of the border.

“So much fucking attitude,” growled the first. “New guy doesn’t realize how shitty a place like Townsend Harbor can be if you don’t make friends.”

“Judy told me the town is getting a new master mechanic to replace the last one. He’s from one of the desert states, I think.”

“I’m about sick of all these Californians relocating and claiming to be climate refugees,” the first one spat. “They’re driving up the house prices and bringing their Botox, fillers, and lash extensions like it isn’t hard enough to get laid around here.”

Someone’s heel broke, and the most sequined among them lost her balance, clinging to the iron railing for dear life. The part of Fox raised by his mother urged him to leap to her rescue. Instantly, the women rallied around her, pulling her to her feet and saving her from a tumble, so he settled.

Besides, in this crowd, his help would be as welcome as a turd in a hot tub.

The night stilled when the party eventually reached the top of the stairs and disappeared into their respective homes.

Fox sat on his bedroll and immediately stood as something beneath dug into his ass muscle. A tree root, maybe? Scouring beneath his bedroll, he found something smallish and cylindrical. As he held it up to the light, his brow furrowed with a sense of trouble.

The butt of a cigar. Half smoked. Half chewed. Had it been a cigarette, he might have assumed some local kids came to ditch class and used this a haven for their youthful discretions.

But he’d never met anyone under twenty smoke a cigar halfway and not end up praying to the porcelain god in heaving gags.

Glancing back over to Nevermore, he felt a sense of unease lance through him.

What if someone else perched here with the same intent? To watch Cady.

It wasn’t easy to see her entire loft from this vantage, but with binoculars, her place was basically exposed.

Speaking of… He lifted the lenses to his eyes and checked the bed.

She’d fallen asleep with a book on her chest.

Fox’s own constricted as his heart doubled in size.

Seaside tourist towns always had their share of indigent and un-homed—which he technically was. If he kept to himself and kept his head down, he could protect Cady without threatening her sense of serenity further. For a man as large as he was, he’d always been adept at remaining unseen.

With humans, the trick was to make yourself so pathetic, people couldn’t help but look away.

He wouldn’t stay long. Once he’d dealt with any threat to Cady, he’d take himself back off to his mountain and stay there.

But he had to be the one to deal with it.

Because the sheriff would put the perp in jail…but Fox?

Fox would put him in the ground.