Love Between the Pages: 8 Romances for Booklovers Read online

  Then a dispiriting though occurred to her. Was he embarrassed by her? Regretting the impulse that had landed her here? She wasn’t his usual type, she knew. Well, that was fine. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who would attract a man like him. But she sure as hell didn’t want to be considered an embarrassment to him — to anybody. She simmered a little but held her tongue.

  “I am so pleased to meet you, Ms. Perkins,” the gaunt man said. “I am the owner of this establishment. My name is Giuseppe O’Toole.”

  At her expression, he grinned, and the grin transformed his face. All the lines seemed to fall into place and instead of gaunt and melancholy, he seemed happy and welcoming. “My mother, bless her soul, is the Petrucci after which this establishment is named. She taught me how to cook.”

  “Ah.” So he was not the maitre d’, or at least not only the maitre d’, but also the owner. And, apparently, the cook. She eyed his gaunt frame. She was still not entirely convinced about the food.

  “Yes. There really is no such thing as Irish cuisine, so I could not very well open an Irish restaurant,” he said with a wink for Jordan that hinted at a private joke between them. “If you will follow me, I have a lovely table tucked away, perfect for the two of you.”

  Tucked away? Sadie brushed her hands over her jeans. Was she that unpresentable? Without thinking, she brought her hand to her hair in a universal gesture of female distress.

  Giuseppe must have caught the movement and interpreted it correctly because he added smoothly, “A cozy corner where you will not be interrupted.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Jordan said, as if the remark had been directed at him. Did he naturally assume he was the center of everything? Or had he already forgotten she was there, as he had the previous day?

  Sadie sighed and followed Giuseppe through the shadowy dining room to the lovely tucked away table. Some of the tables they passed were occupied, the people seated at them speaking in low, intimate voices, but most were empty, owing either to the time — late for lunch, early for dinner — or the cuisine. Sadie really wanted to know which it was, preferably before she took her first bite.

  The table Giuseppe brought them to was located in an alcove that had probably been a broom closet in a previous incarnation. She’d gone on a date once with a businessman (never again, thank goodness) who had complained about everything from the location of the table to the failings of the menu to the taste of the food when it was delivered to the table. But Jordan said nothing, just glanced around and sat down.

  She took the chair Giuseppe held out for her and watched as he leaned over to light the candle in the center of the small table. Not a Chianti bottle, like the Italian restaurants she was accustomed to, but an actual crystal candleholder. Instead of a cheerful red-and-white checked cloth, the table was draped with dazzling white damask. She kept her elbows off and let Giuseppe unfurl the cloth napkin and place it on her lap. The well-set table didn’t quite mesh with the run-down exterior or the otherwise plainly furnished dining room they were seated in.

  She wondered if a menu would appear but wasn’t surprised when Jordan and Giuseppe had a solemn conversation about the meal without asking Sadie what she wanted. Maybe she’d fake a food allergy when dinner came, to educate Jordan on the dangers of making assumptions. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she was too hungry to pull off such a ruse. Another time, maybe. She’d almost certainly have plenty of opportunity to educate Jordan on the dangers of making assumptions.

  “Very good,” Giuseppe finally said, withdrawing without producing a menu or a wine list, giving Sadie a warm smile before he turned away. Giuseppe liked her. Maybe she’d have a romance with him. Every adventure, even this one, needed a romance. She glanced at Jordan, who was studying the main dining room with an intense expression on his face. He wasn’t going to romance her, even if she did like the way he kissed and wouldn’t mind hugging him again anytime. So if there was romance to be had, she was going to have to look for it elsewhere.

  The waiter appeared, not Giuseppe but a reassuringly rotund young man named Antonio, who looked like he enjoyed each and every meal he ate. He was carrying a platter of fresh bread and a dish of olive oil, which was the best thing she’d seen all day. He placed it on the table, then poured glasses of wine before leaving a carafe with them.

  “It’s a Lombardy red,” Jordan explained when she took a sip.

  “Northern Italian,” she said. On slow days at the shop, sometimes she read cookbooks. She immediately revised her expectations of the meal. She pulled off a chunk of bread from the loaf Antonio had left on the table and took a bite. Still warm from the oven, the outside crisp, the inside soft. Yummy. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Breakfast had been a cup of coffee in the hotel room and she’d missed lunch entirely. She snagged another piece of bread.

  “You’ll ruin your appetite,” Jordan said. He might look like a pirate, but a pirate wouldn’t be worried about her appetite. Next time she had an adventure she was going to do it with someone who wanted to be with her and didn’t mind if she ate all the bread. She gave him a brilliant smile that said she’d heard him and took another bite.

  It felt very juvenile but also very satisfying. Her enjoyment of the experience only dimmed slightly when she realized he wasn’t paying attention, exactly. He was acting and speaking from rote, not from any real sense of interaction.

  Well, that was fine. What kind of interaction would the two of them have anyway?

  Then her compassion kicked her. He was probably preoccupied with concern for his mother. What kind of jerk was she for getting steamed over his distraction? It was perfectly natural that he would be.

  Antonio came around again, this time bearing a cheese dish that looked like a fondue, made, he pointed out, with white truffles. Sadie looked doubtfully at the dish. She’d never had truffles before. Weren’t truffles a kind of fungus? (That was the drawback to having a mind filled with inconsequential details; you remembered them at inconvenient times.) She wasn’t sure she could stomach that. But Jordan raised a brow at her so she supposed she owed the meal at least a small sample.

  She shrugged and put a little on her plate. She just wouldn’t think about its origin. It couldn’t be any worse than mushrooms, could it? She took a tentative bite. Yummy, in fact. Another bite. Definitely better than mushrooms. So far the food was delicious. Apparently Jordan was more interested in good food than in ambience. Not what she would have guessed. He seemed like the kind of man who appreciated a meal only to the extent to which he could close a deal over it.

  She took a sip of her wine, a pleasant counterpoint to the cheese dish. She wasn’t by any means a wine connoisseur but she could tell this one was good. She looked around the room. The other diners seemed to be mostly couples, and they tended to stare into one another’s eyes and not notice their food, even though it was amazingly good. Maybe there was an ambience here and she was just missing it.

  “You bring all your dates here?” she asked, then wondered why (a) she was trying to have a conversation with him and (b) why she was asking that particular question. She wasn’t his date. She was his employee.

  “No.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t the most brilliant conversational gambit ever, but you’d think she was trying to torture top-secret information out of him. “They know your name,” she pointed out. “You must come here a lot.”

  “I do,” he admitted.

  She waited for more, like the food is good or my office is around the corner but it wasn’t forthcoming. Was she going to have to sit through the meal in complete silence? Because if he couldn’t be bothered to have a conversation with her, then next time she was eating with Peter.

  “And you eat here all the time because?” she prompted.

  He hesitated and for a minute, she thought he was going to ignore her question, and if he did she was going to go wait in the car. Sharing a meal with her couldn’t be that hard, could it? Plenty of people, including other me
n in full possession of their faculties, had managed to suffer through it somehow. Finally he said, “I’m an investor.”

  Sadie glanced up from her plate. If she brought the thumbscrews with her next time, he might even be persuaded to tell her where he lived. “I thought you owned a biomedical company.”

  “I do.” Now he smiled with genuine warmth. It figured, she thought. Money and business made him smile. She’d dated a man like that once, only she hadn’t realized it at first. Thank goodness she’d discovered it about Jordan before she could start feeling attached. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he pointed out.

  She took another sip of wine to fortify herself. Of course, the one subject he was willing to talk about was the one subject that made her want to stick this fork in her heart to get it over with. Still, he’d made an effort, so she supposed she had to as well. “What made you invest in this place?”

  “Giuseppe was having financial difficulties and the restaurant would have closed.”

  “So you rode to the rescue?” She couldn’t help the incredulous tone; Jordan did not seem anything like a knight errant. Pirates didn’t rescue people in trouble. So she doubted he’d done it from the kindness of his heart. Businesspeople didn’t make investments that way.

  “I like the food,” he said.

  Just then, Antonio appeared with their entrees. “Pumpkin ravioli,” he announced, beaming. She’d never had that before but after the cheese dish, she was game to try anything. She picked up her fork. A tiny taste told her that a larger bite would not be amiss.

  She waited until the waiter had withdrawn, then said to Jordan, “That’s it? You liked the food?”

  “It’s good food,” he said. Then he shrugged and added, “And I was pretty sure the restaurant could be profitable with some small changes in operations.”

  Of course. A businessman couldn’t invest in anything without meddling. Sadie shuddered and applied herself to her meal. The conversation was not one that was going to improve her appetite any.

  The ravioli was flavorful and filling, the kind of thing she’d never make in her own kitchen, but if she lived here, she’d make Petrucci’s a regular stop. Although of course, it was probably more expensive than she was accustomed to spending for dinner in Cedar Valley. As long as she was pretending, she could pretend that she’d have plenty of money for dinners out if she lived in New York.

  “What?” Jordan demanded.

  She met his fierce gaze and tried to figure out what he was mad about. Then she realized he’d noticed her reaction to his comment about small changes in operations. He couldn’t be bothered to ask what she wanted for dinner, he hadn’t even looked at the ring she’d picked out, and he’d never asked — or even noticed — the first thing about her, but he could overreact to her unstated response. How could that response be the only thing the man had noticed about her so far? It was beyond aggravating. Still, she wasn’t going to let the aggravation show.

  She shrugged, emulating him, smiled sweetly and said, “People are always trying to tell me how to make the bookstore more profitable. And it could be more profitable if I wanted it to resemble a soulless corporation. Which I don’t.” She ate more bread to keep her mouth occupied so she would stop talking. She had a lot more she could say on the subject, most of which she felt sure Jordan wasn’t interested in hearing.

  His fierce gaze turned into a glare. “Does this place look like a soulless corporation?” he demanded.

  “No.”

  “Then give me some credit for knowing what I’m doing.”

  She gave him a startled look. Obviously, she had just trodden on a tender spot. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “I was just talking about my personal experience with a soulless bean-counter. Or two.”

  The fierce glare eased somewhat, though he stabbed at his ravioli with more force than was absolutely warranted. “I thought you worked at the bookstore as a sales clerk.”

  “Nope.” See? He hadn’t even noticed that. He was impossible. Something she should remember. “Sadie Rose Perkins, sole proprietor.” She extended her hand across the table, giving him a cheeky grin that disappeared from her face the moment his hand touched hers. There was that damned tingle again. Firm, warm hand and a tingle. If he was a soulless bean-counter, and she was very afraid he was, he shouldn’t be so warm and vibrant.

  Hastily, she withdrew her hand and turned her attention back to her plate. They finished the meal in silence, which she had the very good sense not to try to break again. Finally, she pushed her plate away with a sigh of happy repletion. He wiped his lips with the cloth napkin, then put it aside, asking, “Would you like some coffee? Espresso?”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. You said you wanted to see your mother again this evening. We should probably do that before it gets too late.”

  He nodded and signaled the waiter, then paid the check with cash.

  “They don’t comp your meals?” she asked with a smile. “What a way to treat their angel.”

  “We can’t very well stay profitable by giving away the food.”

  Of course. And the payment in cash was so the restaurant wouldn’t have to pay the merchant fee for charging the meal to his platinum card. She knew all about those fees because she had to pay them at the store. Such as the one she’d had to pay for the credit card transaction he’d made there. But “Good point” was all she said.

  He got to his feet and took her hand again but this time she was ready for it and the warmth of his skin against hers didn’t startle her. Still, she had to steady herself against the spark that raced through her, and reminded herself that she wasn’t really his fiancée or his girlfriend. She wasn’t even his date. But wow, being his employee required the kind of vigilance she wasn’t accustomed to keeping.

  Chapter Seven

  At the hospital, Jordan knocked quietly on the door to his mother’s room and then stuck his head in when she gave a low-voiced response.

  “Up for a visit?” Sadie heard him ask. He must have gotten an affirmative answer because then he pushed the door open and tugged Sadie into the room after him.

  Mrs. Matthews looked pale and drawn, pain evident on her face. She had tubes and wires running from her arm and her chest and machines hummed and blinked lights and numbers into the dimness of the room. She rolled her head on the pillow to look at them, no longer elegant and put together but old and tired. She summoned a smile. Sadie’s heart nearly broke at the effort she made.

  “We won’t stay long,” Sadie said. Jordan seemed struck silent by the sight of his mother and all of the medical equipment surrounding her. This time Sadie tugged his hand to pull him nearer the bed. It wasn’t like what Mrs. Matthews had was contagious, but people were weird when they got into hospital rooms, reluctant to get too close out of some superstitious fear of causing harm or being harmed.

  “You look pretty miserable,” she said to Mrs. Matthews without thinking.

  Mrs. Matthews gave a weak chuckle, her blue eyes dull from the pain and the medications. Sadie’s heart squeezed. Just yesterday she’d seemed so upbeat and optimistic.

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Mrs. Matthews managed. She coughed, clearing her throat, and Sadie reached for the cup of ice water on her tray, then held it for her to sip from.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Matthews’ voice had fallen to a whisper and she took a shallow breath that told Sadie how much pain she was in.

  “The anesthesia has worn off, I bet,” Sadie said. “It always hurts more after that.” She didn’t have much personal experience, but Gran had always said so, and sometimes a little querulously.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Jordan finally spoke, for which Sadie was grateful. These conversations were always difficult and almost beside the point, but you had to have them. Otherwise, you’d just be staring at each other.

  Mrs. Matthews shook her head, keeping her face tilted toward Jordan, her eyes on him.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can d
o to help?” he insisted. “I can get you some magazines. Or some music.”

  “No, thank you, darling. Not just yet.”

  Jordan nodded, touching her hand, the one unencumbered by tubes and needles. “Just let me know.” Then, “Should I get a nurse to bring pain meds?”

  Sadie smiled. Gramps had been a fixer, too. Mrs. Matthews gestured toward the IV in her arm. “I’m on a drip, darling.”

  Jordan raked a hand through his hair, obviously feeling thwarted at his inability to make everything better, needing to do something.

  “What about a blanket?” Sadie suggested, giving Mrs. Matthews a conspiratorial look.

  Mrs. Matthews responded with a smile for her son. “Yes. I am a little cold.”

  Jordan nodded and left the room in search of another blanket. With luck it would require just enough effort to satisfy his need to do something but not so much as to prove annoying.

  “If you’d like to sleep, we can leave right after Jordan gets back. And I certainly don’t need to stay if you’d rather just have him.”

  Mrs. Matthews hesitated, then said, “A little company is fine.”

  Sadie remembered that from when Gran was sick. She glanced around the room, then pulled up the plastic visitor’s chair and sat.

  Now what?

  Mrs. Matthews settled back against the pillows. “I’m tired, so you’ll have to talk.”

  “Um,” Sadie said. Talk? About what? She hoped not about Jordan and how they met and fell in love. “Okay.” She pushed down the feeling of panic that made her stomach churn. Panicking wouldn’t help. What would help? “Okay,” she said again, then stopped, not sure where to begin.

  “Tell me … about yourself.”

  Sadie cleared her throat. That was easy enough, though there wasn’t much to tell. She hoped Jordan got back soon. “I own a bookstore in a small town.”