When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I thought about was Xander. The second thing I thought about was that this was the first morning in over three years that Joe hadn’t been the first thing on my mind.
I hadn’t had a chance to call Xander the previous day, so I had no idea how he was feeling about my working out his secret – if I had worked it out and wasn’t letting my imagination run away with me. I had jumped to the right conclusion though, hadn’t I? Xander might not have admitted to being Ruby Bell but he hadn’t denied it either. Lots of authors wrote in multiple genres under different pseudonyms, so it wasn’t that unusual. But I was never going to get to the bottom of it if I didn’t give him a ring.
I had found out why my father was back in York though – to ‘save the bookshop’ as he kept telling us throughout dinner, when he wasn’t telling me how much he’d missed me, which just made me feel terrible all over again for how thoroughly I’d cut my life off from everyone around me for so long. He’d told us about Paris and about how he was thinking of moving to Spain in the new year.
“I fancy some time by the sea,” he’d said as he and Mum had exchanged a look that I couldn’t quite work out.
Mum had already filled him in on everything Xander-related, including my unplanned night away.
“About time,” my father had said. “Welcome back to the real world.” He didn’t mean it unkindly; he could just be very blunt sometimes.
“Megan is organising a Regency Christmas Eve party in the bookshop,” Mum had said then, which had distracted my father from asking any embarrassing questions about my night at Graydon Hall and instead had allowed him to spend some time snobbishly criticising our love of romance novels (he and Xander would have a lot in common) and then invite himself to the next book group because he wanted to dance the quadrille too.
It wasn’t until we got back to the bookshop that Dad had taken me to one side and told me the news I’d been dreading.
“You know I can’t really save the bookshop, don’t you, love?” he’d said. “You know we’re going to have to sell it.”
I’d nodded sadly, because I did know. Deep down I’d known for a while that there was no other way out of this and so had Mum; we just hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Missy had mentioned the possibility of selling once to both of us, but Mum had just waved the idea away, saying we couldn’t do anything without Walter and walking out of the office. I’d known then that it was only a matter of time.
“It’ll take a while to sell though,” Dad had gone on. “Which will give you plenty of time to work out what you’re going to do next. Maybe this thing with Xander Stone will work out and if not you could come and stay with your old man in Spain for a while.”
“That would be great,” I’d said. “And I’m so sorry I never came to Paris. I hadn’t realised how much I’d cut everyone and everything out of my life since Joe died. I wish I could…”
“Shhh,” Dad had said gently, his hands on my shoulders. “It’s OK, I understand. We all do.”
When I came down to the bookshop on Tuesday morning Dad was nowhere to be found again, typically. I’d been wanting to talk to him about a pre-Christmas sale we could have in the shop. If selling the bookshop was the only way forward, we had a lot of stock to get rid of.
“He’s gone out,” Mum said, without telling me where he’d gone. “And you’ve got a visitor.”
“At eight-thirty in the morning? Who?”
“Who do you think?” Mum replied. “He’s in the cookery section.” Why on earth did everyone end up in the cookery section?
I turned into the section of shelves that housed recipe books and food memoirs. “Hi,” I said quietly to Xander’s back. He turned around, still holding the copy of Medium Raw that he had been flicking through.
“Hi,” he replied and smiled at me. My heart skipped in relief.
“Can we talk?” he asked. “Somewhere quiet.”
“Um… sure. Colin will be in soon to help Mum, so do you want to come upstairs?”
He nodded but didn’t really look at me.
“Where’s Gus?” I asked.
He looked around him as though he was trying to remember where Gus was. “Oh, um, he’s at Dot’s,” he said.
He seemed miles away and was still clutching the copy of Medium Raw, which I gently took from him and put back on the shelf and then I led him upstairs to the flat.
He started talking as soon as we stepped into the living room.
“I’m so sorry about yesterday,” he said. “The way I shouted at you and then was so rude and obstinate again. I know you didn’t go looking for the manuscript; I know it was an accident.” His hands were deep in his coat pockets and he looked almost as dishevelled as he had done at the breakfast table at Graydon Hall. “I have a tendency to be rather reactionary. And then regret my behaviour. You might have already noticed that after the supermarket incident.”
I had noticed of course, and I wondered why. Had he always behaved like that or was it something that had happened in the aftermath of his mother’s death? I knew I was a lot more hesitant since Joe died, unable to make decisions, anxious and shy – even more so than I had been before. Despite feeling more like the old me than I had in years I still wasn’t quite the same. I wondered if I ever would be.
“I probably shouldn’t have started to read the manuscript though,” I replied. “When it fell out of the bag I should have just put it back and forgotten about it.”
“You’re a reader,” he said, looking at me for the first time. “It’s natural that you’d want to read it.” He stood hesitantly in the middle of the room.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked. “Can I get you a cup of tea? We’ve only got teabags though, I’m afraid.”
He smiled. “Then no, I’m OK.” He took off his coat and sat on the sofa.
“Well we can talk about your unbearable snobbery later,” I teased, sitting next to him. “Is there anything else you’re like this about or is it just romance novels and tea?”
“Well,” he replied quietly, “I have a snobbish inability to admit, as you’ve already worked out, that I write romance novels under the pen name Ruby Bell.” He slumped against the back of the sofa miserably.
“If I was a best-selling romance author and a Booker Prize nominee I think I might be quite happy about my achievements,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you like Ruby Bell?” he asked.
“You know I do. It’s you who sneers whenever I mention her name. Dot’s the big Ruby Bell fan though.” I paused. “As you know.”
“She doesn’t know. I’ve never told her.”
“Who does know?”
“Philomena, of course, my brother and sisters and my ex-wife… and my mother knew.” He paused. “And now you.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said.
“I know. I trust you.”
“You do?” I asked. I didn’t feel as though he’d known me long enough to trust me, and then I remembered all the things that we’d talked about when we’d been stranded in the blizzard. Perhaps some people were easier to trust than others.
“I do,” he said. He turned to me and took my hand in his. I felt the familiar electricity at his touch. “I reacted very badly to you finding that manuscript. I’m struggling to finish it, to be honest, and I’d just read an awful review of Mists of Our Waters in The Sunday Times. When I saw you with the manuscript it just made me feel…” He paused. “Vulnerable, I guess.” I could tell by the way he said it that it was almost killing him to admit this to me. “I don’t do vulnerable very well, I prefer to try to be in control of things.”
“I’m beginning to realise that,” I said. “I’m sorry about the bad review though.”
“Oh don’t be,” he said, looking down at our hands. “It’s part of the job and Philomena had warned me about it. I should know better by now than to read these things.”
“I’m sorry you’re struggling with the new Ruby Bell book,” I said, not moving, not wanting him to take his hand away from mine. “Is that why there wasn’t one this Christmas?”
He nodded. “I’m under contract for one more and I just… I don’t know. Romance is bloody hard to write.” He smiled.
“Thank you! Most of my authors at Rogers & Hudson were romance writers and I got so sick of hearing about how easy romance must be to write, as though there was a magic formula or an assembly line. There are still the same character arcs and motivations to work out, the same plot holes, the same struggles to get the pace right. Writing books is hard, whatever the genre. I’m not sure I could do it.” I looked up at him. “Although when you first arrived in the bookshop you were extremely scornful of romance novels yourself.”
“Yeah I know.” He pulled a face. “When I first met you in the supermarket I was doing some Christmas shopping as a favour for Dot and I had no idea who you were and then when I arrived here and realised who you were, I was so angry with myself for being rude to you the first time that I ended up being rude all over again. I was pouring scorn on everything, not just romance novels.”
“You were particularly scornful of romance novels though,” I reminded him. “You told me we had an awful lot of them and from your tone I didn’t take it as a compliment!”
“Perhaps so,” he admitted. “I’ve struggled with the whole romance writing side of my persona for a while. It’s been really hard and…”
“Are you embarrassed about being Ruby Bell?”
“Sort of, but there’s more to it than that.” He looked away from me and shifted in his seat, but he didn’t let go of my hand.
“I mean, there’s a big difference between Boxed and A Night to Remember,” I said, referencing the two debut novels of his writing alter egos. “But you should be really proud of them both. They’re great books in their own way… although the sex scenes in A Night to Remember are definitely racier.”
“Yes well, let’s not think about those too much,” he interrupted. “This story of how I came to write as Ruby Bell gets particularly weird if you think too much about the sex scenes. Do you think you can handle it?” I swallowed, trying and failing not to think about Xander having written those sex scenes.
“I think so,” I said.
“Believe it or not, I read a lot of romance novels when I was growing up. I mean, I read a lot of novels but my mum loved romance novels so our house was full of them. Whenever I ran out of library books I just picked one of those up. I was probably too young to be reading them, certainly at first, but they taught me a lot.”
I felt myself blushing again at the thought of what he learned from his mother’s bookshelves. For heaven’s sake, I had to get my face under control.
“What sort of romances did your mum like?” I asked.
“Anything and everything from Georgette Heyer to Jackie Collins. She really loved medical romances though; she used to get a subscription box of those. She read medical romances the whole way through her chemotherapy and beyond, even when she was in palliative care. You’d think she’d have been sick of anything to do with hospitals by then but she could never get enough.” He smiled sadly at the memory.
“So you read a lot of romance as a teenager, but what made you start writing it?”
“That was Mum again,” he said. “While I was doing my degree I started writing – short stories, poems, anything really, but it wasn’t going anywhere so Mum challenged me to write a romance novel.”
“And the rest is history?”
He laughed. “Well my first draft was terrible, even Mum couldn’t put a good spin on it, but she suggested some changes and between us we wrote the book that became A Night to Remember.”
“But that didn’t come out until after your mum died,” I said.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “I suggested trying to get it published but she always said no, even after Philomena signed me and I got my book deal for Boxed. She always said it was just for fun and some days I wish I’d listened to her.”
“What happened? How did you come to publish them?”
“I wrote all five of the published Ruby Bell novels with Mum. We started years ago, before she got ill, and we just carried on right through her treatment until she was too sick to concentrate on much. It was our thing. My siblings thought it was hilarious and mortifying in equal measure – I guess finding out your mother and brother are writing sex scenes like that is the epitome of awkwardness, and to be honest I loved embarrassing them all.” He smiled. “But from their point of view it was another reason to take the piss out of me – especially after I became Xander Stone and Boxed was being reviewed in every newspaper – and it helped to distract us all from what was happening with Mum.”
He stopped talking for a moment and took a breath.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s hard to talk about this sometimes, you know. I miss her so much.”
“I know,” I said. “Trust me, I know.”
“After Mum died, during my darkest days when I was under contract to write a third Xander Stone book and wasn’t writing anything at all, I told Philomena about the books I’d written with Mum. I don’t know why I told her – I think I just wanted to talk about Mum, to keep her alive – and she jumped on it and talked me into sending her the manuscripts. Before I knew it she had a book deal all sorted for this character she’d invented called Ruby Bell. It happened so quickly I barely realised. My first book deal had taken so long to get I didn’t even know that you could get a deal that fast but romance and digital-first publishers are a whole different world.”
“And she’s never told anyone,” I said quietly, thinking about loud, outrageous Philomena and the secret she’d kept for so long.
He laughed softly. “You wouldn’t think she’d be able to keep a secret for so long, would you?”
“No I…” I paused, not really sure what to say. “Thank you for telling me. I know this must be really hard for you.”
“It actually feels like a huge relief to tell you. I should have done it yesterday.”
“Would you have told me if I hadn’t found the manuscript?” I asked.
“I’d like to think so, yes.” He paused. “Eventually anyway.”
“Fair enough.” We were still sitting facing each other; he was still holding my hand. “And Dot really doesn’t know?”
“She has no idea,” he replied. “I know she was disappointed there wasn’t a new Ruby Bell this Christmas but I’m not sure I can do it anymore, not without Mum.”
“But you’ve started,” I said. “And that’s the hardest part. There’s a first draft sitting in the back of your car.”
He sighed. “It’s absolute crap though. Utter nonsense, and I’m saying that because it’s rubbish, not because I’m being derogatory about romance novels.”
“Hmmm,” I murmured, the kernel of an idea coming to me. “Maybe I can help you out.”
“Really? How?”
“Well, I used to edit a lot of romance novels you know. So if you liked I could take a look at it, give you some pointers.”
He beamed at me, looking like his normal self for the first time that morning. “You’d do that?”
That flicker of who I used to be burst into a flame just for a moment. Yes, I would do it; I wanted to do it. For the first time since the day of Joe’s diagnosis I wanted to get my teeth into an author’s manuscript again, if the author wanted me to, of course.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Besides, you might be doing me a favour.”
“How do you figure that out?”
“Well, remember on Sunday night when I admitted that I didn’t want to work in a bookshop forever?”
He nodded, his eyes on mine.
“Things have escalated.”
“In what way?”
“The bookshop is doing really badly,” I admitted. “We’re barely breaking even and I’ve known that for a while.”
“It’s a really hard time for bookshops at the moment.”
“Particularly this one.”
“It’s a wonderful place you’ve got here, Megan,” he said. “I see a lot of bookshops and this one is really special. There are loads of amazing books coming out in January. Philomena will know exactly which authors will fit in with your aesthetic here. I know she’ll be able to help.”
“Thank you,” I said, “but…”
“You don’t want to work in a bookshop forever,” he said.
“No, and I don’t think Mum does either. This bookshop was Dad’s passion – well his parents’ really. Dad just took it over from them when they got too old to run it. I think we might all be holding on to it in a sentimental way. Dad owns the building and he thinks it’s time we sold it.”
“God, I hate it when bookshops go out of business. It’s heart-breaking.”
“I know,” I said. “I haven’t even begun to sift through all the mixed feelings selling this place is going to bring. Dad told me last night that it will take a while to sell so I should have plenty of time to work out what to do, but I’ve always needed more than this bookshop – it’s why I went to London in the first place. I’ve known for a while that I can’t stay here forever, but now Dad wants to sell up, I need to start thinking about what to do next.”
“And you think my shitty manuscript can help you?”
“Perhaps putting my editing hat on again while I read your manuscript will help me work things out.”
He didn’t say anything, he just sat there looking at me, his thumb gently massaging my knuckles.
“What?” I asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
“You look happy and excited,” he said.
Whenever I thought about editing again, that spark of life flared up inside me. “I guess I’m ready to get my teeth into something new,” I said.
“Well, if my terrible attempt at a sixth Ruby Bell novel can make you smile like that and might even help you work out what to do next, then I’m happy to let you read it.”
“Thank you,” I said. I felt a bit overwhelmed, but in a good way, as though a cloud had lifted.
Xander was still looking at me.
“Megan,” he said. “On Sunday night when we were talking in the bar… I told you that any man who was worthy of you would wait…”
“Don’t,” I interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you?” His voice was low and soft and I felt all of my nerve endings fire up. I suddenly couldn’t take my eyes off him either.
I’d known on Sunday night that he’d been talking about himself. I’d felt the chemistry between us. I wasn’t so switched off from the world that I didn’t recognise chemistry. I felt Xander’s fingers brush my hair again, just as they had on Sunday. There was nobody to interrupt us this morning and a part of me, the part that was still scared of the huge changes that were looming up ahead in my life, wanted to stand up, make some excuse, put some distance between us. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it. I wanted him to kiss me.
His fingers moved to the back of my neck, massaging the muscles in small, sensual circles. I felt my breath catch in my throat…
And then I heard the creak of the floorboard in the hall outside and footsteps on the stairs. I’d been wrong about there being nobody to interrupt us.
I sprung up, ignoring the look of disappointment that flashed over Xander’s face, but when I looked out into the hall there was no one there.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.” He had no idea how sorry I was. “I thought I heard someone on the stairs and my dad arrived on Sunday and he’s been asking all sorts of awkward questions about you and I just…”
“Walter Taylor is here?” Xander asked.
“Sorry, I didn’t tell you that bit, did I?” My voice sounded flustered. “He turned up while I was with you on Sunday. He’s here to sell the bookshop, like I said and…” I paused because I was babbling. “Do you know Dad?” I asked.
“I’ve met him at a couple of events over the years but I don’t know him.” He picked up his coat. “I should go,” he said. “Check that Gus isn’t destroying Dot’s house.”
“Xander,” I began.
“It’s OK, you don’t need to explain.”
“I do,” I said. I didn’t really know why, when I’d wanted Xander to kiss me, I’d jumped up at the faintest sound. Was I really bothered if Dad walked in? I was a grown woman, after all. I felt as though I was stuck on that carousel again, unable to get off no matter how much I wanted to.
And for the first time in three years I really, really wanted to.
“Look, I really like you, Megan – I think that’s fairly obvious – but I’m not going to rush you.” Xander walked up to me and gently placed his hands on my shoulders. “We take things at your pace.”
But I didn’t want him to go, not without knowing when I would see him again. I wasn’t sure I was ready but I was sure I wanted to see what happened.
“Are you free this evening?” I asked. “I can take you to the Two Teas, the tearoom I was telling you about. You can talk Lapsang Souchong with Ben.”
He nodded slowly. “I could meet you there,” he said. I watched him take a breath. “Maybe we could have dinner afterwards?”
“I’d love to,” I managed, my voice not really sounding like my own.
“Seven-ish?” he asked, and I nodded like an idiotic nodding dog, not really knowing what else to do.
“I can see myself out and I’ll see you tonight.” As he left he pressed a kiss on the top of my head and I collapsed on to the sofa, suddenly completely exhausted.