Chapter Text
[Wednesday]
Ok, it’s 8:21, it should take…five more minutes to get there? That’ll give me a good thirty minutes to at least attempt to clean them up and set them out before opening…
Penelope’s mind races a thousand miles a minute as her feet move just as fast, pounding the pavement of Wall Street, an area she’s never been particularly comfortable in. Stuffy suits, vacant stares, and nearly every other person speaking (or shouting) into their phone, spewing random numbers and legal jargon she will probably never understand – nor does she want to. She doesn’t exactly ‘fit in’ here, with her hand-me-down purse, tattered espadrilles, and loose red tendrils flying every which way as another gust of wind tunnels its way between the imposing buildings.
She refocuses on the path ahead, boldly walking straight forward against the tide of humanoids. She’s the one carrying a giant, heavy box that’s nearly half her size – they can move out of her way.
All is good and well until she spots a new little coffee shop off to her right. It looks warm and inviting – like a place she’d absolutely pop into if she wasn’t in such a damn hurry.
Her attention turns forward again and her purse slips off her shoulder. Instead of letting it hook into the crook of her elbow until she can find a decent place to pause and adjust it, she stupidly tries to catch it. Her hand slips from beneath the one ton box and the force of nature called gravity takes over, spilling several books onto the gum laden concrete, right under the feet of one of the surrounding stuffy suits.
The suit trips – a perfectly polished loafer nicking a copy of Pride and Prejudice, a leather satchel clutched in a death grip, a coffee grasped firmly in the other hand so as not to lose the $6.15 investment.
The suit manages to stay upright, but yelps, “Holy hell!”
“Shit! Fuck…I’m so sorry!” Penelope apologizes, her face instantly lighting on fire as waves of people pass around her, uncaring, not a single one stopping to help as she crouches and rushes to throw the scattered books back into the box.
No one stops, except the person she nearly took out.
“Let me help you.” A man’s voice.
He’s gathering the books closest to him, including the one that likely caused his life to flash before his eyes. Penelope is too distracted and too embarrassed to even look at him.
“God, I’m a fucking idiot,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
She hears him chuckle – it’s soft and actually quite charming.
“Not at all, accidents happen,” he says calmly as she accepts one of the books he’s so politely handing over to her. She catches a glimpse of a soft hand (no ring) and a dark titanium wristwatch – likely very expensive, but not flashy.
Penelope simply hums – grumbles more like – and keeps her head down, unwilling to believe this man won’t ask her to pay for his next shoe shine on account of his newly acquired scuff that’s all her fault.
“Quite a variety here,” he remarks.
“Mmhm.” A copy of Angels & Demons goes into the box.
“Can I ask why you’re walking down Wall Street with this bevy of books?”
“They’re um…they’re for my shop,” she explains.
“A bookshop, I presume?”
“Yeah, around the corner and over a few blocks.”
“All that way? You should have hailed a cab.”
“Well, I—” Penelope finally looks up and loses all train of thought and ability to speak.
Of all the men in all the world, she had to nearly kill the most devastatingly handsome one. The one with the perfect amount of neatly trimmed facial hair. The one with dark chestnut locks, long enough to run her fingers through. The one with eyes the most remarkable shade of blue, dark and alluring – like being pulled into the deepest depths of the ocean where she could easily get crushed and be happy about it.
“You what?” he urges, given that she still hasn’t found her words.
Ugh. The dimples, the full lips, the sparkling pearly white teeth smiling so sweetly back at her – she has perished from this earth, surely. No one this perfect could exist in the mortal world.
She clears her throat and the tiniest scrap of courage breaks free.
“I uh…I had an Uber, but they–he didn’t feel–didn’t want to deal with all the one-ways,” she bumbles through it, feeling her face turn red all over again. And he just smiles that gorgeous, panty melting smile. Fuck.
“New York is nothing but one-ways,” he balks. “Sounds like a jerk.”
She snorts. She fucking snorts. Her face is literally on fire and now it’s spreading down her neck and to her chest. This guy is a gentleman though, he keeps his eyes north as his smile turns crooked.
“Well, I – I told him it was okay, that I could handle it. Clearly not,” she mutters.
The last of the books is cleared from the sidewalk and the man helps her lift it back into her arms. With one hand still on the box, he says, “I would absolutely help you carry this the rest of the way, but I—” he pauses to check his watch and grumbles, “yeah, I’m already going to be late for a meeting that I can’t miss.”
“It’s okay, I’m not sure anything else could happen that’s more humiliating than this.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it, okay?”
She nods and sheepishly smiles, unable to hold his gaze for too long for fear of losing her voice again.
“Here.” He strides to the edge of the sidewalk and sticks his arm out. Almost immediately, a yellow taxi smoothly pulls to a stop at the curb. Penelope’s eyes widen at just how easy it is for him. Maybe a tall stud muffin like him – dressed in a fine navy suit and paisley tie – commands more attention than a short and bubbly redhead in colorful dresses desperately waving at random street corners does on any given day. She’s almost certain she’s invisible to taxi drivers. Maybe she just needs to enlist him any time she needs a quick lift around the city.
He opens the back door and takes the box of books from Penelope as she continues to gawp at him.
“My treat,” he says, cocking his head toward the car.
“Well, it’s the least you could do, seeing as you tripped over my books and made yourself late for your meeting,” she replies, summoning a bit of her true self in the face of such overwhelming beauty and kindness.
He laughs wholeheartedly and Penelope’s insides turn to mush. Hoping to leave on a high note, before her knees can buckle, she steps toward the cab. Tucking her skirt beneath her, Penelope slides into the back seat, moving all the way to the other side as the man easily places the heavy box on the seat next to her.
“Hopefully everyone is safe from wayward books now,” he says with a wink, before closing the door. Through the open passenger window at the front, he hands the driver a $20 bill – more than enough to get her around the three remaining blocks to her shop.
The second the money is in his hand, the cabbie pulls away from the curb as Penelope frantically rolls down her window to at least shout a quick ‘thank you’ to the handsome stranger. He waves back with an adorable smile and Penelope finally releases a long, dreamy sigh, knowing that she’ll be fantasizing over those tuggable curls and broad shoulders for a very long time.
👔📖🚕🏙️🚕📖👔
A sharp jab causes his elbow to slip off the armrest of his conference chair, thoroughly yanking him from his little daydream.
“And he’s back,” Anthony announces, taking a commanding stance at the head of the heavily polished mahogany table. Several pairs of curious eyes fall to Colin as his eyebrows raise in silent question.
“The numbers for our retail sector.” Seated to his left, Eloise provides additional guidance after being the one who knocked him to attention.
“Oh…right,” Colin puffs, his cheeks warming as a few of his colleagues chuckle while he fumbles around with the folders in front of him.
He finds the requested spreadsheet and hands it off to Anthony, explaining their quarterly gains – rattling off dollars, percentages and dividends like it’s second nature when in reality, after a year of this, he’s just become very good at memorizing numbers rather than understanding what they actually mean.
Green, positive, good.
Red, negative, bad.
Black, stagnant, not great, but acceptable in the short term.
That’s about all he really needs to know.
Anthony nods in satisfaction and moves on to Will, the guy in charge of the gas and oil entities and also Colin’s closest confidant at work. The actual family members he works with should be his go-to people, but they know far too much, often blurring the lines between work and personal business.
Colin learned his lesson four months into his employment at Danbury Trading when Eloise blabbed that Colin had taken a few days off to lick his wounds after discovering his fiance became pregnant with another man’s child, instead of letting him break the news subtly when someone eventually brought up the wedding plans. A simple “we broke up” would have sufficed then, allowing gossip to run rampant through the office in accordance with corporate culture norms.
While he supposes that Eloise letting the proverbial cat out of the bag probably resulted in a better outcome overall, it still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth when he thinks about sharing much of anything with his co-worker siblings. Not like that’s going to stop his ever-nosey sister, however.
“What’s got you acting like a space cadet today?” Eloise asks, standing from her chair when the meeting concludes.
“Nothing,” he responds plainly.
“Bull. Usually after one slap you’re spewing numbers like a human calculator. It took two slaps, a hard nudge and a karate chop to the bicep to snap you out of it today.”
Colin hums and ignores her, turning toward the breakroom. He had chugged the Americano from the new shop down the street as soon as he sat down for the Wednesday morning debrief, and he’s already hankering for a second cup. It’s going to be a long day of meetings, likely made even longer by the fact that he cannot stop thinking about the striking redhead who nearly swept him off his feet this morning.
“I am persistent, brother,” Eloise chimes, stirring three sugar packets and some vanilla creamer into her own cup.
“I’m aware,” he mumbles.
“Fine, be that way. But if you keep walking around like a zombie the rest of the week or drifting off during client meetings like you just did in there, don’t expect me to save your ass.”
“Love you too, sis.” He smiles smugly and takes a sip from his steaming mug, gathers up his folders and leaves his sister to go back to her duties in international affairs.
Colin flings the folders onto his desk and wanders next door, closing Will’s office door and flopping down into one of the guest chairs.
“What happened?” Will inquires immediately, knowing him just as well as his siblings do.
Colin sinks down, places the warm mug on his belly, and stares at the ceiling with a great sigh.
“I think I’m in love – and I’m also the biggest fucking idiot on the planet.”
“Afraid I can’t dispute the latter, mate.” Colin only has enough energy to flip the bird across the desk as Will chuckles. “And what the hell do you mean you’re ‘in love’? Didn’t you swear off love and women when Marina stomped on your heart and chucked it into the Hudson?”
“This is different,” Colin says, fully resting his head against the hard, wood back of his chair. “Love at first sight is such bullshit—”
“Mmhm,” Will quickly agrees.
“But…maybe there’s something to it,” Colin muses.
“Jesus…has your cheese officially slid off its cracker?”
“I think so?” Colin ponders. He sits bolt upright and describes the angel that fell from the heavens above Wall Street. “She has hair like an Atlantic sunrise and smells like fresh laundry. Eyes bluer than the clearest sky. Lips the color of strawberries – I bet they taste like ‘em, too,” he says wistfully.
Will listens intently as his friend waxes poetic about the woman he’s supposedly in love with. “And does she have a name?”
Colin sinks back into the chair. “That’s where the idiot part comes in…I didn’t get her name, much less her number.”
“Oof,” Will grimaces. “Boy…I hate to say it, but with one point six million people in Manhattan alone, I think you’re fucked.”
“Shit,” Colin whines, lurching forward over Will’s desk, thunking his head upon it. “Wait!” he gasps, popping up again and ripping off a piece of paper stuck to his forehead in one fell swoop.
“She owns a bookstore! A few blocks away!”
Will, per usual, springs into textbook wingman action, hopping onto Google to search bookstores in the area as Colin scurries around the desk, hovering behind him.
“Welp, you’re gonna have to narrow it down a bit. There are twelve that are within a few blocks of here.”
Colin pouts, resting a cheek against his friend's shoulder.
“Get off!” Will jerks away. “This is a new Paul Fredrick shirt! Also, Alice will kill me if she catches a whiff of your Drakkar Noir.”
“It’s nostalgic and practical,” Colin mutters, moping as he shuffles back to his office.
👔📖🚕🏙️🚕📖👔
[Friday]
“Earth to Penelope!”
Eloise raps on the counter causing Penelope to nearly fall off her step stool.
Clutching her chest, Penelope catches her breath, “Fuck…sorry Eloise.”
“I was afraid you were purposely ignoring me or something.”
Penelope giggles as she plants her feet back on the ground. “Not at all. Just daydreaming.”
“What else is new?”
Penelope rolls her eyes, but can’t argue against her tendency to drift into fanciful reveries. Eloise has had to pull her out of them on more than one occasion, even in the few short months they’ve known each other.
Eloise drops in at least once – usually twice – per week, sometimes picking the same book off the shelf to read in sections during her lunch breaks, sometimes to buy one to read on the plane during her next business trip, and sometimes to simply have a little girl chat and boost her estrogen after drowning in testosterone at her job.
“Pluto must be in retrograde or some shit,” Eloise says, grabbing a wrapped soft caramel from the glass dish next to the cash register.
Penelope giggles, “What makes you say that?”
“You’re not the first person I’ve had to snap back to reality this week.”
Gathering a few more books, Penelope simply hums and heads for the dark romance section – the section that has made her secondhand bookstore so well loved by the single business professionals of Manhattan. She has many other genres, but none more popular than the smutty novels that depict vampires, mobsters and morally grey characters finding love despite the odds stacked against them.
“What has your brain floating off to la-la-land this time?” Eloise asks.
Penelope smiles as she shifts a few books around to fit the new ones in. “I met someone.”
“You did?! When?”
“A couple days ago.”
“Where?”
“Right on the sidewalk.”
“Out there?” Eloise asks, wagging a thumb over her shoulder, pointing out the front window decorated with daisies and phlox for a seasonal display of summer vacation reads.
“No,” Penelope giggles. “A couple blocks from here. I nearly killed him, but he was actually nice about it.”
“Nice!? A Manhattan man? Marry him now, Penelope.”
Penelope laughs out loud, but her smile eventually falls into a frown. Quietly she admits, “I should probably know his name first.”
Eloise blinks, then furrows her brow. “You’re in love with him and you don’t even know his name?”
“I’m not in love with him, Eloise…at least I don’t think so…there was something familiar about him, though…” she says, staring blankly at the far corner of the shop – the mystery section. She shakes herself out of it and decides, “I can’t be in love with someone and not know their name, or literally anything about them – that’s preposterous.”
“You’re right. I’m glad you’re being so level-headed about this.”
“Well, I also wouldn’t go that far…I forgot to eat lunch the day we met. I burnt my eggs this morning and missed my stop, twice, when I went to dinner with friends last night. I’m far from level-headed.”
“Okay, so what is it about this guy that has you all hot and bothered?” Eloise questions, plopping herself down onto the yellow velvet couch in the sunlit seating area next to the window.
Penelope drops to her knees on the rug and dramatically sprawls herself across the coffee table in front of her friend and cries, “He’s sooo beautiful, Eloise.”
“Oh dear, you’re really down bad aren’t you?” she says, running a hand through Penelope’s loose red waves.
“Uh-huh,” she pouts. “Honestly though, if I had to piece together the man of my dreams – the dark hair, the dreamy eyes, the charm, the body – my god, the body!” Penelope moans clenching her skirt in her fist as she shivers. “Legs for days and a sexy neck restrained by a slutty tie…UGH. I’ve never seen a more gorgeous man in all my life.”
“Wow.” Eloise whistles, low and slow. “I wish I could help you find this beautiful, sexy, gorgeous, charming man, but I have yet to run across anyone fitting that description – except maybe the dark hair and tie bit…but that’s ninety percent of the men I work with, and believe me…” she shudders, “none of them are worthy of you.”
“I would be forever grateful if you were to find him, though.”
“I think – I think it might be rather helpful to have a name first?”
“Yeah…I think I’m screwed there. What if I never see him again?” Penelope’s bottom lip juts out in a pathetic pout.
“Whaveter will be, will be, Pen. If you two are really soulmates, you’ll find each other again somehow.”
“Look at you…reading too much romance as of late?”
“Ha!” Eloise scoffs, waving her off, but then she considers the possibility. “Maybe…but I’m off to Singapore on Monday, let’s change it up. Got any true crime? Maybe an unsolved murder of some sleazy politician or a Wall Street ass-hat who had it coming?”
“There’s the no-nonsense, jet-setting, hardened business professional I know and love.”