Call Her Mine (Harmony Pointe #1)- Melissa Foster Page 0,25

the back. In the week he’d been working there, she hadn’t seen him crack a single smile.

He nodded as he approached, his face as stoic as granite. “Do you have a second to go over the schedules?”

“Sure.” She followed him to the back, where the floor plans were laid out on a table by the door.

Kase leaned over the blueprints, pointing to each area as he spoke. “The counter and these shelving units should be done by the end of the week. The moldings in the classics and romance areas should be done today.”

“And the flooring in the classics section?” She’d asked them to scuff up the hardwood in that area, which Kase had balked at, but she had a vision and she wanted to carry it out.

In addition to renovating, she had plans to make each section feel special. Her friend Everly Love was a talented artist and a green-living specialist who happened to be between jobs. She was helping Aurelia with the shop while she looked for a job in her field, and she was going to paint a mural in the kids’ section. The reference and nonfiction area would be set up in classic library style with substantial wooden furniture and leather reading chairs and desks. The romance section would be decorated with elements made out of leather and lace, and the classics area was being outfitted with ornate moldings, worn shelves, and, eventually, antique furniture. When Aurelia worked at Pages, she had done biweekly readings from the classics. She’d had quite a loyal following, and she hoped to inspire the same love for them in Harmony Pointe.

“It’ll be done just as you’ve specified,” Kase said. “Can I ask you something?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I know you said you grew up in a bookstore, but according to my sisters, nobody buys paperbacks anymore. You’re spending a lot of money on renovations. Aren’t you worried about going belly-up?”

Nearly everyone she knew had worried about her buying a floundering bookstore when she could have spent much less money reopening her grandparents’ store and combining it with Willow’s bakery. She still had a pretty rabid readership in Sweetwater. Residents knew she opened her grandmother’s old shop every few weeks, and they waited with bated breath for those openings. Ben was the only person other than Willow and Flossie who had thought her ideas were solid, and because of his business expertise, his blessing had given her the extra confidence she needed to take the plunge and invest her money in the changes she thought would make big differences.

“I’m doing things a little differently than most bookstores. I’m going to have a book borrow section, where for two dollars a customer can borrow a book for two weeks, since the small town library is often understocked. I anticipate most readers will come back and read a book a week, but only time will tell. I’ll have specials, when they can borrow for a buck, and when the books get too used, I’ll offer scratch-and-dent sales. I’m also going to do monthly readings, where I dress up as characters from books. I used to do it in the city, and I had a huge following there. We always sold a lot of books after my readings, and I’m hoping to eventually find my niche here doing the same type of thing. And from time to time I’ll hold book swaps for readers, and I’m hoping to start a monthly book club, so I have ideas . . .”

His brows shot up. “You’re going to do all that?”

“That’s the plan, once I hire a few employees and we get past the grand opening. Are we still on target for the eatery area?”

“Yes. The painting throughout the store should be done by next week. Then we’ll move on to installing the tile in the eatery area. Once you clear out the stockroom, we’ll finish up in there, too.”

She and Everly had boxed up the shop’s inventory for the remodeling. As time allowed, they were working through her current stock, figuring out what needed to be returned to the distributor and what they would keep. Shipments of new books would begin arriving the following Monday, and it would take them some time to go through those. But once they were able to restock the shelves, it would smell like a bookstore again.

“It may take some time before we have that area cleared out. Would it be a problem for you to come