Wish I Might

  Reed followed. “Thanks, Cecily. Really. This is all way outside my scope of expertise.”

  “I’ll get to work on it this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t you work from here? It’d be a change of pace from the office, and you’d get a feel for the shop and how it fits into the community. Norah’s kept you so busy, you haven’t really had an opportunity to spend much time here.”

  Yeah, let’s pretend that’s the reason.

  Still, observing the shop in action over a period of days would give her the opportunity to see what was working for them and what wasn’t. She’d know better how to target things with that information.

  “Sure.”

  Reed took her out front and introduced her to Brenda. “Cecily’s going to overhaul our website and stuff.”

  “If that’s what you want to call dragging your business kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.”

  “Hey, I’m not screaming.”

  Cecily couldn’t resist a pointed grin. “Yet. Where should I set up?”

  He paused, glancing at an incoming text and laughing under his breath before shifting his attention back to her. “Wherever floats your boat. There’s better plug access up in the front room, near the graphic novels.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She thought maybe he’d hover or come up with some other reason to keep checking on her, but instead he went on about running his business. Cecily felt caught somewhere between relieved and deflated.

  Don’t be stupid. You made it clear you didn’t want to date him. He’s respecting that. Just do your job.

  An hour into customizing an out-of-the-box Wordpress theme, the bell chimed and a gangly kid in jeans that had probably acquired the rip in the knee from actual wear came barreling into the store. Excitement was pumping off him so hard, Cecily could feel it from ten feet away. As he rounded the corner, into the room where she was working, she figured there was some awesome new release in comics, and he’d just gotten his allowance. But instead, he made a beeline for the counter.

  Behind it, Reed grinned. “Hey kiddo. What’s up?”

  “I finished the first issue of my comic!”

  “Yeah?” Reed shoved a pen behind his ear and set aside whatever he was doing to give the boy his full attention. “Will you show me?”

  Intrigued, Cecily shamelessly eavesdropped. The pair of them dropped companionably onto the floor, cross-legged. The boy pulled a sketchpad out of his backpack and handed it over. Reed paged through, reading with the kind of focus he might devote to a best-seller.

  “The artwork is fantastic, Austin.”

  The kid perked up before giving a wary frown. “But?”

  “Well, you’ve created a guy who’s a hero straight out of the gate. That doesn’t make for a real interesting story. Why are we supposed to root for him?”

  Austin jerked a shoulder. “I don’t know. ’Cause he’s awesome. That’s why he’s called Captain Awesome.”

  “But surely Captain Awesome wasn’t totally awesome from the get go. Something made him awesome.”

  “Like radioactive sludge?”

  “A classic for a reason,” Reed agreed, “but I’m talking about character arc.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, instead of starting your character out here, think about building him. No hero starts off as a hero. You gotta give your readers somebody they can relate to in the beginning, more their level, who grows into being a hero. Think about Peter Parker. He started out a little geeky dude. Smart but picked on by others. And then he gets bitten by that spider, gets super powers, and suddenly has the skills to start helping people. But even then he’s not automatically a hero. He has the skills, but he helps himself first.”

  Cecily watched him, head together in deep discussion with the boy, and her heart sighed.

  Brenda came to perch on the arm of the sofa, her embittered face softened with a smile. “He’s always doing stuff like this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s a big softie. Always going out of his way for other people. Can’t think of a single other reason he’d have hired me after my divorce. I’m sure there were other more qualified people, but he saw me in a jam and gave me a way out.”

  Reed Campbell knew the value of investing in people. Except, instead of investing money, he invested his time—possibly a rarer, more valuable commodity. Her family would like him. She liked him. It was just too damned bad that he’d never be able to get past the family ties she couldn’t escape.

  ~*~

  “—I built the site with Wordpress, which is really user-friendly, so I can show you both how to update things once you decide who’s going to be responsible for what.”

  When Cecily glanced up at him, Reed fought the urge to point at someone else in a Not me gesture.

  “I swear, it’s not that bad once you know what’s what.”

  “What kind of stuff would we update it with?” Brenda didn’t look anywhere near as alarmed as he’d expected. Maybe a challenge would be good for her. And generating website content would keep her focused on work instead of him. She’d stopped outright hitting on him, but there was still a low-level flirtation that made him uncomfortable.

  “That’s up to you. There’s an integrated calendar, which will enable people to add an event to their calendar at the click of a button. You could use the blog to share book reviews. In fact, that might be a great way to really make your customers feel like they’re a part of things here. Give them a chance to write a guest book review for the store blog. Free content by local people. They’d be proud of what they did and tell all their friends, which gives you word-of-mouth traffic to your target audience.”

  Reed nodded, seeing the brilliance in that. “I know at least a dozen people who would be all over that. What else?”

  The phone in his pocket buzzed. As Cecily named a half-dozen other things that had his head spinning, he slipped it out and read the text from Selina.

  What are you up to?

  Reed: Having my mind blown.

  Selina: Not sure how to take that…

  “— the sort of thing that would be easily cross-posted on all the integrated social media.”

  Reed’s head shot up. “We have social media now?”

  “Sure do. And you’ve already got followers on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.” She clicked over to show them.

  He stared at the numbers. “How?”

  “I piggybacked on the city’s social media to notify folks in Wishful that Inglenook has entered the world wide web. I’ve generated enough content to get you through the next two weeks. That’ll give you some ideas about the kind of things you can post, and see what sorts of things your clientele is into, and also where they’re hanging out. I’m anticipating you’ll see the most action on Facebook.”

  “Okay, Facebook I get.” Brenda looked almost excited. “I can deal with Facebook.”

  Cecily shot her a warm smile. “I’ve made a list of resources you can use for scheduling content across platforms. You don’t want to automate everything, but that way you can drip things into your various feeds at optimized times of day so that there’s something going on. And you’ll cruise through a couple times a day to actually interact with your followers so they know you’re a human, not a bot.”

  Reed: Have you ever met an author or artist who’s a master of their craft and had a conversation wherein they make it seem like what they did was easy?

  The phone buzzed again as Cecily began describing some of the other tools they could use to jazz things up.

  Selina: I got to meet Stephen King once. That was pretty cool. And intimidating.

  Reed thumbed a reply. Well, this is like that, but with marketing. This new plan is going to be great for the store!

  Selina: I’m so proud you’re taking this step!

  He shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Cecily, this is awesome.”

  She held up a finger. “Not done yet.”

 
“There’s more?” What else could there be?

  “I’ve set up a proper mailing list for you, so when you have that newsletter to send out, you can send the same information out to them via email. And there are already fifty-four people signed up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’ve even designed a template to match the design of the website, so everything is neat and branded.”

  Reed nodded. “Brenda, can I borrow your notebook and a pen?”

  With a look of faint surprise, she handed it over to him. He flipped to a clean page and did a quick sketch, being sure to cover his work so neither of them could see. Then he ripped the sheet out, grabbed a binder clip, and stepped over to Cecily. She didn’t step back—couldn’t because of the counter behind her—and he was aware he’d invaded her space again. She smelled like cinnamon and oatmeal cookies today, and he had to resist the urge to lean in for a taste.

  She tipped her head back, looking more quizzical than disturbed, as he reached out to fasten the paper to her collar. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Adding a piece to your uniform.” The backs of his knuckles just barely brushed the soft skin of her throat.

  Her short, sharp inhale was barely audible. Reed’s gaze flicked to hers, holding long enough to see her pupils dilate before he stepped back.

  Cecily recovered quickly, looking down at the Superman shield he’d drawn with a big C in the middle. Her laughter rang out, bright as a bell. “I dig it. I’d be quite happy to add this as a formalized part of the uniform.”

  “You earned it.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Still. I should have expected it. You are Norah’s protégée, and everybody knows she’s a marketing genius. Clearly the apple doesn’t fall far from the professional tree.”

  She shrugged it off, but her cheeks pinked at the praise. “That is why I came all the way from Chicago to work with her. I’ll miss her when I go.”

  Reed dimmed a little at the reminder. She had plans for her future and they didn’t include Wishful—wouldn’t, unless he could come up with a way to convince her to stay. “Any luck on the job search?”

  “Not yet—”

  He held in his fist pump.

  “—but I sent out another round of resumes this week. Something will turn up. Anyway, we still need to talk about the book signing. This was all setting up infrastructure to actually tell people about it.”

  The door opened and a babble of voices carried back to them.

  “That’ll be the book club ladies. I’ll go see to them.” Brenda headed up front to greet people.

  Reed took one of the stools behind the counter and patted the other. “Did you get the press kit I forwarded to you?”

  Cecily didn’t hesitate before joining him. “Yeah. It’s really bare-bones. Have you read Becker at all?”

  “I read his debut. He’s not bad. The shipment of his latest arrived a couple days ago, but I haven’t started it yet.”

  “We’ll come back to that. How about instead you tell me what your vision is for this place?”

  Now was his chance to make up for the poor impression he’d given at the lake. “It’s not just a store. Not just brick and mortar and books. I want it to be a focal point in the community. A gathering place. To an extent we already do some of that. Like the book club out there. My grandmother’s knitting circle meets here once a week. The high school writers’ guild meets here twice a month. But I want to go beyond that. I want to be the next Square Books.”

  At her blank expression, Reed remembered she wasn’t from the area. “Square Books is the independent bookstore up in Oxford. It’s a local institution up there, located right in the heart of town. I’m pretty sure I was in there at least every other week for a reading or signing from some author or other, when I was in college at Ole Miss. They do such a great job of community engagement, with carrying on the literary tradition. I want to do that. I want to bring that kind of culture here. Except with a slightly less literary bent because we aren’t a university town and that’s not our demographic.”

  She beamed and thumped him on the shoulder. “Look at you using marketing lingo.”

  “Norah is almost a part of my family. I’ve picked up a little by sheer osmosis.”

  Her lips curved, her eyes warm as she looked over at him. “You love it. The store. The life you have here.”

  “I really do.”

  “It’s a good life.”

  Looking into her face, Reed could see that she really meant it and that she remembered what he’d said all those months ago.

  “I like to think so.”

  “You understand that a town without a bookstore isn’t really a town. That it’d just be fooling itself.”

  “Not a bad paraphrase from American Gods. I didn’t know you were a Neil Gaiman fan.”

  Cecily shrugged. “I read a lot of different things. And I can’t say as I disagree with him. Bookstores are important, and I think the fact that you’ve worked so hard to keep this one going, during a time when independent booksellers across the country are closing their doors, is a very admirable goal.”

  Reed preferred to believe he didn’t need validation of his life choices. He knew what he wanted and intended to go for it, regardless of what anyone thought. But the fact that Cecily understood it, that she admired that choice, soothed something in him. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a real investment in the community. And it’s my job to sort out the best means of maximizing that investment of time, effort, and capital. I’m just not quite there yet.”

  “I guess it’s a little hard to imagine if you haven’t actually seen it.” Inspiration struck. “Actually…you can see it. Greg Iles is doing a reading in Oxford on Thursday night. We should go. You’d get a first-hand view of exactly what I’m talking about, and afterward, we could go grab dinner on the Square. You haven’t lived until you’ve had the jalapeno cornbread at Ajax.”

  She arched a perfectly manicured brow. “Is it really that good?”

  Reed laid a hand over his heart and did his utmost to look serious. “Would I lie to you about cornbread?”

  She snorted. “I suppose that’s a jailable offense down here?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Fine. I guess it’s a date.”

  He answered her smile with his own. “Guess it is.”

  Chapter 5

  “Darling, I wish you’d just let me make some phone calls—”

  “Mom, no,” Cecily insisted. “I’m not capitalizing on family connections to get a job.”

  “It doesn’t diminish your achievements. It just opens the door. That’s how things work in the business world. You use the connections you have.”

  Cecily resisted the urge to bang her head against her desk. “That’s not how I want to work. I’m doing this on my own.”

  Her mother’s frustration was palpable in the silence on the other end of the phone. “So stubborn,” she said at last.

  “I come by it honestly from both sides.”

  “Via multiple generations,” her mother agreed. “Fine. But since you haven’t yet started a new position, you’re free to come home for the gala for the Alliance. We could use your professional expertise to get the word out to prospective donors, and it would be good for you to be seen.”

  “I’m happy to help with the marketing from here, but coming home for the event is out of the question. Being seen is the last thing I want or need.” The very idea of facing the cameras and the microphones had a cold sweat breaking out down her back. “And I don’t appreciate Grandpa including me in that article in M & S. What if somebody dragged up everything that happened all over again? How would that publicity look when I’m trying to interview for things?”

  “Cecily, we aren’t going to pretend like you don’t exist. You are a member of this family, and you’ve been hiding long enough.”

  The ring of truth to the statement had her bristling. “I’m not hiding. I’ve been finishing
my Masters degree.”

  “Which you’ve done with considerable accolades, and we’re proud of you. But you graduated in August at the top of your class. It’s halfway through October and you haven’t taken another job. You can’t tell me you haven’t had offers. Is there something else keeping you in Mississippi?”

  An image of Reed flashed through her mind. But that was absolutely ridiculous. They weren’t together, hadn’t been in any kind of relationship. Ever. She wasn’t staying for him.

  “I’m just…not finished here,” she said lamely. There was no way she could adequately explain that to anyone in her family.

  A flash of movement in the doorway drew her attention. Norah paused, curled fist hovering over the door jamb. She mimed that she could come back later, but Cecily shook her head and waved her in.

  “Listen, Mom, I have a meeting. I need to go. Send me the details on the gala, and I’ll work something up, okay? Love to Dad and everybody.”

  Cecily ended the call a few shades too fast to be considered polite. Then she just laid her head down on her desk.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “They don’t understand why I’m still here. And I can’t explain it to them.”

  Norah shut the door and dropped into the lone guest chair. “Is that because you don’t know the answer yourself or because you don’t think they’ll accept it?”

  “Some of both. I feel caught between who I am and who they expect me to be. I know you understand that. You’ve lived it.”

  “I have,” Norah agreed. “I absolutely know what it is to struggle under the burden of family expectation. And I know what it is to want to forge your own path, either in spite of those expectations or within the confines of them. Mine led me here. To Wishful. To Cam. My parents may not really understand why I do what I do, but I stopped living my life worrying about what they think.”

  Cecily blew out a breath. “I am so not there yet.”