“I was hoping you might be able to help with that,” he said in a low rumble.
“OK.” I started towards the stacks. “Fiction or non-fiction?”
“Definitely fiction. Don’t want to bore her with something dry and dusty.”
“Well, a lot of non-fiction is much more exciting than that, especially stuff like true crime. That’s a huge genre right now,” I said, leading him further into the shop.
“No blood and guts,” he said with a decisive shake of his head. “It’s a courting gift, so I don’t want it to send the wrong idea.”
“Right, well, what about romance?” I asked, walking towards the biggest part of the shop. “It’s what my shop is known for. I have a massive selection of both trad pub and indie romance.”
“That sounds like more what I’m after. What’re your best selling titles?” he said, giving the spines of my precious books a cursory glance.
“It depends.” I cocked a hip, knowing a lecture about romantic fiction was misplaced right now, but deciding that, with the day I was having, it was coming, no matter what. “Women are the largest consumers of English language books in the world, so ‘romance’,” my fingers formed speech marks in the air, “is too broad a category to really narrow down a selection for you. Do you think she’d like historical romance, contemporary romance or paranormal? Clean and wholesome?” His lip curled at that. “Steamy? Spicy? Erotica?”
His eyes flashed then. Damon’s elbow went up and came to rest on the top of the bookshelf. I frowned slightly as he leaned towards me a little, then took a firm step backwards.
“Definitely something with lots of hot scenes,” he said, shooting me the kind of boyish grin that was supposed to gain my sympathies. The jury was still out about whether or not he was successful or not. “But it needs to send the right message.”
He straightened up, the smile fading, and for some reason I felt that it was as though he’d been wearing a mask that slipped for a moment, something raw and hungry rising up in his expression, which I assumed was his need for his omega. Alphas teetered on the edge of rut during the whole courting period, torn between the urge of tossing an omega over their shoulder and whisking her away, and actually doing the work to court her. The real emotion on Damon’s face, that look of vulnerability, did more to gain my sympathy than anything before this.
“What about an alpha romance?” I said, selecting a few books. This was my catnip, so I was pretty sure I knew which ones would turn an omega to mush. “They usually involve an alpha pack running into their omega when she comes to town. They know she’s the one for them as soon as they meet her. Unrealistic, I know.”
I looked up to see he’d stepped closer, looking over my shoulder now at the books I held.
“But they’re full of the push/pull of the chase as they try to woo their omegas and all the spice that comes with that,” I said, turning and holding them out for him to look at.
“What about this one?” he said, instead pointing to the book featured in a display on a table at the end of the aisle.
“Knot Now?” I asked. “That’s an extremely popular title, but I’m not sure how well it will go over with your omega. The pack falls in love with a beta, not an omega.”
He just nodded at that, almost absently, then he picked up a copy, consulting the blurb before setting it on top of the pile I still held.
“I’ll take the lot,” he said, glancing up, those green eyes daring me to make any further comments.
“OK.” I wasn’t going to challenge him. Sales were always welcome, no matter how they came. “If you hold onto the receipt, you can always bring it back if she doesn’t like them. Did you want the books gift wrapped?”
He did, standing on the other side of the counter and watching me wrap them up once he’d selected the paper and ribbons he liked. People did it all the time, but somehow this felt stranger, more intimate than it usually did, and I knew why.
Something, some kind of niggling impulse, it flared up under my skin at regular intervals, mostly around ovulation. It made my muscles loose, my skin hot, and forced my eyes to rake over whatever men I came across in my day, weighing them up. If the shop had been empty, if Soph and Leo weren’t waiting for me, if Damon hadn’t said he was getting something for his omega, I’d have been tempted to flip the open sign around and drag this tall, smoking hot alpha into the backroom and re-enact some of my favourite scenes from my books. But, instead, I taped up the last flap of the wrapping paper, then put the man’s books in a bag, handing them over.
“Your receipt is in the bag,” I said, all professionalism. “Just grab that out before you give your omega your gift. Best of luck and I hope she enjoys them.”
Damon shot me one last serious look before nodding and then turning to go.
“Daaamn…” Sophie hissed when I came back to the table, the shop bell jingling behind him as he walked out the door. “Who the fuck was that?”
“An alpha buying some books to help woo his omega,” I said, then turned to Leo. “Now, tell me: what the hell can we do to ban this bloody Logan guy from having anything to do with my daughter?”
Chapter 14
“Carmen, is there any chance you could look after Evie this afternoon?” I asked down the phone line. “Leo has set up an initial meeting with Ben.”
“I’d intended to keep her until tomorrow morning, darling,” she replied. “Evie’s having a fine time making herself sick at that chocolate fountain place.” I winced at the mental picture. “I figured I needed to take responsibility for the sugar induced coma that will come as a result. Go to your meeting, then rest, Lily. Don’t let Sophie bring you any more wine.” She’d obviously seen the empty bottle and wine glasses. “That won’t help, but rest will.”
“Thanks so much—”
“Don’t mention it, please. You are my daughter, just as Sophie is, and Evie is my only granddaughter to spoil. Perhaps the only one I’ll get, with the strictures put on female lawyers trying to climb the ladder. This is a gift you give to me, Lily, don’t forget that.”