The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)

by Laurie Gilmore

she noticed one of the pages was dog-eared. ‘What’s this?’ she muttered. Did people have no respect? They hadn’t even bought the book yet but they marked the page? She nearly added, ‘What is the world coming to?’ but she tried to catch her old lady tendencies as much as possible these days so she only thought it. She flipped open to the marked page and found a highlighted sentence. A highlighted sentence in one of her books! How totally unacceptable! Unbelievable! Someone just waltzed in here and defaced one of her books and hadn’t even bothered to buy it!

Her heart was racing, and only partially because she’d been caught reading smut during work hours.

‘Hazel hates sunshine. She’s like a vampire.’ ‘I am not! I just prefer to be inside. I’m an inside cat.’

‘Do you want to have a milkshake with me?’ she asked. ‘There is literally nothing else I’d rather do.’

Activity and noise and lights and bodies swirled around her, but Noah only saw her. It was as though everything else was blurred but Hazel was crystal clear.

‘Good books,’ she said after a minute, her gaze returning to his. ‘Good friends. Good food.’ He smiled up at her. ‘What more do you need?’

‘What more is there to believe in than love?’

‘I always bring a book, just in case.’ ‘Just in case of what?’ ‘Just in case the person I wanted to see gets very busy doing his job and I have to wait to talk to him.’

He was summer and she was fall. He was adventure and she was comfort. But right now, on the cusp between the two seasons, in this liminal space they’d carved out for themselves, they fit just right.

He flipped his book back open and lost himself in the pages. These epic fantasy novels seemed to be the antidote to his normally fidgety behavior. When he was in the story, everything else faded away. If you had told him a year ago that he would regularly be tearing through five-hundred-page books, he never would have believed it. But he loved these things.

It was a lot to take in. A lot to process all at once. So he made the healthy choice and grabbed his book, comforted in the fact that at least he didn’t have dormant magic powers or the tendency to turn into a wolf. He’d read just one more chapter and then deal with his own shit...

Hazel sighed. ‘To read. You know, in case there is a lull in the ... excitement.’ Noah smirked. ‘There won’t be any lulls, I can assure you.’ His gaze skimmed the top of the bag and delight lit up his face. ‘Oh, wait, you brought book three of the Wolf Brothers series!’ ‘It just came in.’ ‘Thank God!’ He hefted the book from the bag and hugged it to his chest with one arm. ‘The last one ended on a cliffhanger and I was dying to know what happened to the seer.’ Hazel grinned. ‘So maybe there will be a lull or two today?’ Noah nodded as he turned the book over and read the back. ‘Oh, yeah, there might have to be.’ He squeezed her hand and looked up at her. ‘Thanks, Haze. This is great.’

Hazel was everything. Hazel was getting lost-in-your-favorite-book good, sun-on-your-face good, the-perfect-cup-of–coffee good.

And it was fine that she had never sowed any wild oats or ever had any wild oats to begin with. She was thirty years old and she knew who she was. Hazel Kelly, bookstore manager, tea drinker, book reader, blanket snuggler, indoor cat. And she was also fun and flirty and sexy if she wanted to be. And sometimes she might get bored or antsy and that was fine, too, but Hazel liked her place here. She was allowed to be content. She was allowed to not want anything more than this. Because what more did one need besides good friends, good books, and the occasional cinnamon bun?

She brought him back to life, reconstructed him into a better version than the original. And he felt alive. He was alive. He was real.

‘You’re all I think about. All I want. Me and you until the end.’

He realized he loved her and that he probably had all along. But it had snuck up on him somehow even though she’d been perfect from the start.