A Fairytale Bride Read Online Free PDF

but gentle hands, with their long, patrician fingers.
    Once Jeff satisfied the cats, he turned and strolled past her toward the back room and the coffeemaker. “Can I interest you in a cup of hazelnut coffee light on the cream, heavy on the sugar?”
    He pulled a package of coffee and a coffee grinder from the sack he was carrying. “I stopped at the store on the way in.”
    Wow. He’d been listening when she’d said that hazelnut coffee was her favorite. Boy, he was kind of terrific, wasn’t he?
    He disappeared into the back room and emerged several minutes later with a mug of coffee, made exactly the way she liked it. She was ready to melt right in front of him. Where had this guy come from and why was he here?
    “So what’s it going to be today?” he asked.
    The coffee warmed her hand. The spark in his brown eyes warmed up every other part of her. “I don’t know, Jeff,” she said. “I told you I didn’t need help. Why don’t you tell me what I need?”
    He grinned. “How about I fix the ladder?” He gestured to the floor-to-ceiling shelves along the northwest wall. “Then you could use the upper bookshelves again.”
    “I can’t even remember the last time we had access to those shelves. I’m pretty sure the ladder is long gone.”
    “Actually, I found it in the back room when I was tidying up.”
    She was tempted to tell him to forget the ladder. She could use someone to tidy up the small apartment above the bookstore where she was living. But she held her tongue. She didn’t want him to know what a slob she was. Her inability to keep things neat and tidy had been a serious bone of contention between her and Chris. “It’s missing some pieces, I think,” she said instead.
    “Is it?  Let’s figure out what it needs and get it working again.” He strolled past her, leaving his yummy scent—soap, coffee, and cedar—behind.
    She settled into a comfy chair behind the checkout and watched him work. Today he was channeling his inner lumbersexual. His beard was impeccably groomed, and he wore a plaid flannel shirt and a chest-hugging black T-shirt. He’d left his skinny black jeans behind this morning and instead he wore a pair of faded blue ones that were almost threadbare in the seat and the knees.
    Yummy.
    He’d been impressive with his colored dots, but when he pulled out the old toolbox from the back room, along with the pieces of the broken library ladder, the show definitely took an erotic turn. What was it about a man in a flannel shirt and faded jeans using a screwdriver?
    It took him two trips to the hardware store for parts, but by noon he had the ladder rolling along the rails the way it had when Melissa was eight years old and had first come to live with Grammy.
    He was using the ladder to reorganize the books in the children’s area, near the back of the store, when the front door opened, jingling the bell. Pamela Lyndon—who Grammy always referred to as the Duchess of Charlotte’s Grove—came gliding into the store wearing a designer dress in her signature shade of pale blue.
    The duchess got about two steps into the bookshop before Dickens arched his back, fluffed out his fur, and yowled at her in a way that could only be called bloodcurdling.
    Several things happened in quick succession after this.
    First the duchess said, “Goodness!” and retreated a step, clutching her purse in front of her like a shield. “Shoo, kitty,” she said in a totally ineffective voice.
    Second Jeff, who was up on the ladder shelving fiction on the highest shelf, turned toward the cat and said several X-rated words. He must have thrown his weight to one side, because the ladder’s rail (which he apparently hadn’t checked earlier in the day) detached from the bookshelf. The ladder unexpectedly pivoted and slammed Jeff into the back wall of the store.
    And that’s when the unthinkable happened.
    A long time ago, when the store had been more successful, Grammy had put up a bunch of coat hooks