sticking to his plan of mostly hiding out at Dad’s cabin or here at the bookstore, where no one ever shopped.
“Change is good for the soul,” he said, knowing full well that Secondhand Prose didn’t really need a change in its pricing system. It basically needed a total makeover and an influx of lots of cash. Not to mention advertising and new merchandise. But she would probably get all freaked out if he said any of that. And besides, saying stuff like that might be offensive. After all, the bookshop had been owned and managed by Melissa’s grandmother, and Melissa hadn’t said one thing to suggest that she wanted to change things around here.
In fact, Melissa was resistant to change. Which was to be expected. So small steps were called for.
“I’ve got colored adhesive tags. I figure we could group books and price them accordingly. Like all hardbound books at one price and all mass-market paperbacks at another.”
“Uh, well, we sort of do that already.”
“Yeah, but you have to handwrite a price sticker for every book in the store. Wouldn’t it be easier to post signs with the color codes and then just put colored dots on each book?”
She nodded. “I guess, but it’s a lot of work to do that for books that already have prices on them.”
He shrugged. “I know, but I don’t have anything better to do.”
So he got to work, and before noon came around, Melissa was helping him while they had a lively discussion of The Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, and Ayn Rand’s political philosophy.
When Friday came to a close, he didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t dare ask her out for a drink. So he reluctantly headed back up the ridge, but before he was out of cell phone range, his phone vibrated. It was his father, calling all the way from Japan.
He pulled the Land Rover over to the side of the road and punched the talk button on his phone. “Hello, Dad,” he said.
“Where the hell are you?”
Jeff said nothing.
“Don’t pull the silent treatment on me. Your mother is about to call the police and proclaim that you’ve been kidnapped.”
He sighed. “I told her I was going away for a while. She knows I haven’t been kidnapped.”
“That’s debatable. She’s hysterical.”
“You know, she wouldn’t be hysterical if you hadn’t allowed the White House to issue that statement in which you said I had no business being a journalist. I think that ticked her off. It sure ticked me off.”
“Well, that’s too bad. Because it’s the truth. Go home, Jeff. Go manage your mother’s money. She has so much of it, I doubt that you could screw things up the way you’ve screwed up the Durand nomination. But whatever you do, stay out of journalism and stay out of politics. Because you sure didn’t inherit any of the Lyndon smarts when it comes to those things.”
That was it. He’d had enough. “Ambassador Lyndon,” he said in a tight voice, “I’m happy to comply with your request that I take myself out of the family. Tomorrow I’ll be calling my lawyers and starting the formal process of removing your last name from mine.” He pressed the disconnect button and sat there for several minutes breathing hard while his fury subsided. He hated his father. The feeling was clearly mutual.
He probably ought to move out of Dad’s cabin. But what the heck. The guy was in Japan, and Jeff had the key. Besides, leaving Shenandoah Falls was the last thing he wanted to do right now.
* * *
On Saturday Melissa found herself anticipating Jeff’s arrival, and the moment the front door opened with a jingle, she and Dickens had almost the same reaction. The cat sat up and meowed plaintively until Jeff stopped and gave him a good scratch behind the ears and told him what a beautiful feline he was. Melissa got hot and bothered just watching him stroke the cat.
Hugo wasn’t about to let Dickens get all the attention. He waddled out from his lair in the back and demanded equal time. Jeff lavished praise on him, too, allowing Melissa to appreciate Jeff’s manly 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