Page 6 of A Witch in Notting Hill

“I’m sorry,” she said, a little too loud for the quiet of the shop. “I have no idea what happened.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked, following the sound of her voice with my eyes until I spotted her clutching her basket with one hand and clutching imaginary pearls with the other.

“No, no, just surprised.” She dropped her hand and exhaled, but she kept her eyes cast toward the floor. “Let me clean this up. Do you have a broom around here somewhere?”

So she was American, which I suppose I could have guessed from the baseball cap before I heard the accent. We got a lot of Americans in the shop, but that didn’t account for the familiarity of her voice.

She cleared her throat, alerting me to the fact I had yet to respond.

“No, please, it’s fine,” I said, waving her away. “I’ll take care of it.” I was already shaking out the antique rug to gather the glass in the center of the room, keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t get any closer. One sideways piece of glass could go right through her little white trainers, and the last thing this shop needed was an injury on the premises. And the last thingIneeded was any more interaction with this woman. I couldn’t place her and I didn’t want to.

“Really, I’d like to help.”

“No need. Not like it was your fault the lightbulb exploded, there, was it?”

She laughed, but nothing was funny. It had a kind of self-deprecating tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “With the way my life has been going lately, I’m sure it was,” she said, and sighed.

I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know. Or rather, I didn’twantto want to know. And yet, I heard my voice before the thoughts passed through my brain. “Streak of bad luck, then?”

“You could call it that.”

“What wouldyoucall it?”

Another long exhale. “Bad genetics, maybe. I’m not sick or anything. That sounded foreboding. Sorry. I just... You know when you’re supposed to be one thing, like it’s in your blood and your family is good at it, but then you’re terrible? It’s one of those. Not that that’s a common experience for everyone, I guess. It actually might be oddly specific? Not that you care either way. Now I’m just—”

“I know exactly what you mean.” What the hell was I doing? I hadn’t wanted to know anything about this woman, and now I was on the verge of confessing my life story to her? I didn’t believe in witchcraft, but I would have been lying if I said I didn’t feel like I was under some kind of spell.

“You do?”

I looked up from the rug just in time to see her eyes widen, two huge marbles in her perfectly round face. She chewed on her thumbnail, her hand obscuring the lower half of her face, but I didn’t need to see any more than her eyes to know she was beautiful. The live wire swinging from the ceiling sparked once more, but even that made it hard to look away.

“Why do you look so surprised?” I asked, trying to ignore the inherent danger sparking above our heads. And maybe also in the space between us.

“I... have no idea.” She laughed, for real this time. I was nearly tempted to do the same. “I don’t know you at all, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“But I’m surprised at the thought of you being bad at something. You don’t have that kind of vibe.”

“And what vibe is that?”

“The sloppy kind that makes people bad at things.”

“Ah, like whispering to your picnic basket while you shop?”

She gasped, but I could hear her smile, even if I didn’t dare risk another look. I could also hear a rustling in the basket, at which I dared look even less.

“Aren’t British people supposed to be polite?”

“Only the posh ones.”

“You run a bookshop in Notting Hill,” she said. “Feels pretty posh to me. Maybe you are capable of being bad at things.”

“It’s a good job there aren’t rumors about Americans being polite,” I said, finally letting my lips contort into something that resembled a smile. I might not have been friendly, but I wasn’t a monster.

“Add the American rumor mill to this list of things I’m bad at,” she said, returning my smile, though hers didn’t light up the rest of her face like I’d expected it to.

“Hiding out in London, then?”