She Hates Me Not: A Richer in Love Romance (18 page)

Stratford-upon-Avon
– For Kip Richmond, what began as a pleasurable day out ended in a harrowing showdown on a narrowboat along the River Avon.  Known as Britain’s most uncatchable bachelor, Richmond had arranged to meet girlfriend Lou Aucoin at a canalside pub in Worcestershire.

For years, false rumors of a lost family fortune have swirled around Aucoin, 24.  Those unproven rumors prompted an American male, Amos Thibodeaux, to threaten Richmond and Aucoin at knifepoint.  Only an intervention from the Richmond’s longtime bodyguard prevented a deadly end to the standoff.

When Richmond spoke yesterday with the
Mail
from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, he shared the details of this near-deadly encounter and emphasized there is no undisclosed money to be found.  Security around the couple will increase until it becomes certain that no further threat remains. 

Richmond added: “Whilst I’m immeasurably grateful that we escaped with our lives, my days as an ‘uncatchable bachelor’ have come to an abrupt and permanent end.  I am most assuredly caught by Miss Aucoin.”

Read the exclusive full story tomorrow in the Sunday
Mail.

A Cajun Glossary*

allons
– let’s go

amoureaux
– boyfriend, sweetheart

bâteau
– a flat bottomed boat used in marshes

beau soleil
– beautiful sun

bele
– girlfriend, sweetheart; beautiful, pretty

boudé
– pouting like a baby

bracque
– crazy

canaille
– mischievous; up to no good

ça c’est bon
– that’s good, it’s all good

c’est la vie
– that’s life

cher
– a term of endearment; sweet or dear

coullion
– a fool; crazy or silly

fais do do
– a dance attended by families; traditionally at a dance hall with a back room where children would “make dodo” or go to sleep (pronounced: ‘fay dough dough’)

fifolet
– a swamp spirit (often seen as a blue light) which causes travelers to lose their way; according to some legends, it leads fortune hunters to the lost treasure of Jean Lafitte

fille
– girl

fremeers
– to feel disgusted by something (like a certain food); also the heebie-jeebies or the creeps

frisson
– a shiver or chill; also goosebumps

gris gris
– bad luck; a voodoo curse; also an object used to ward off bad luck

homme
– a man

honteaux
– embarrassing or scandalous

je fais serment
– I promise or I pledge

joie de vivre
– joy of life; a happy attitude

lagniappe
– a little something extra; an unexpected bonus

ma chère, mon cher
– my dear

mais
– literally translates as “but”; used for emphasis at the beginning of a sentence

mais oui
– but yes; used for emphasis like “oh yeah”

merci bon Dieu
– thank the good Lord

misère
– misery; bad luck

mon bon Dieu
– my good Lord

nonc
– uncle (commonly pronounced as “nonk”)

pirogue – canoe

qui c’est ca
– who is that?

quoi?
– what?; sometimes used like “huh?”

r
ougarou
(also
loup garou
) – werewolf

roux
– mixture of oil and flour heated over medium heat until a deep shade of brown; a blonde
roux
is a mixture of butter and flour

Saloperie!
– expression of frustration like “son of a gun” or “shucks”

SoLa – South Louisiana

togué
– crazy, wacky; drunk

voyou
– thug, criminal

*compiled from sources including various websites, the Cajun French Virtual Table Francaise Facebook group, and
Speaking Louisana: A Cajun Dictionary
(1993)

F. E. Greene has been telling stories with words for more than twenty years. She is the author of
The Never List
and
The Best-Left Questions
(Love Across Londons series)
and
By Eyes Unseen
, a fantasy-adventure series. A novelist, songwriter, poet, and photographer, she has taught young journalists and coached creative writers in both scholastic and volunteer settings.

To learn more about the author and her books, visit
www.fegreene.com
.  Find questions for book clubs, author updates, giveaway information, and much more.

If you enjoyed
She Hates Me Not
, please consider telling your friends and posting a short review on
Amazon
and/or Goodreads. Word-of-mouth referrals are an author’s best friend and much appreciated.

The author would like to thank her amazing Alpha Editor (and Cajun Consultant) Tiffany and her brilliant Beta Readers Dani & Kristi
.

The Never List

Love Across Londons series

A London bookseller and a time-traveling journalist fall in love as they search for a hidden treasure which, if found, may separate them forever…

Victoria Smith’s life seems dreary until someone knocks on a sealed door inside her London bookshop.  When Tori discovers it’s not a ghost but a journalist from 1854, she accidentally strands him in 2014.  Intrigued by the dapper and crusading Charles Stratford, Tori offers to help him locate a pendant that will reopen the door to his century.  Even when their treasure hunt across London turns dangerous, Tori finds herself wishing that Charles could stay.  But after losing her family a decade before, can Tori risk loving someone again, especially a man from 1854?

From modern-day Soho to nineteenth-century Mayfair,
The Never List
takes readers on a whirlwind tour of Londons new and old as its time-crossed heroes search for a way to love each other within two centuries.  It is the first in the Love Across Londons series.

Available now in
Paperback
and
eBook
at Amazon.com.

Please keep reading to enjoy a sneak preview of
The Never List
.

Chapter One

N
ever lease a haunted bookshop in the heart of London.

Propped against her pillow, Tori stared at the newest addition to her Never List.  Only regrets and hard-learned lessons made it onto the single sheet of yellow paper torn from an American legal pad.  She’d begun the list in college, and it stayed with her even when she traveled.

Usually she agreed with whatever she wrote, but Tori’s latest never-pledge made her question the meaning of her last nine years in London.

Had she made a mistake by uprooting her life so soon after losing her parents?  She’d been twenty-one and barely done with college.  Hassled by an uncle she couldn’t bring herself to trust.  Left with all the money she could ever need and without the family she loved.

While not much made sense at three in the morning, Tori wasn’t caught in a groggy fog of self-doubt.  Something else gnawed at her conscience.  If she wasn’t content, then what had she missed?

Not that she regretted her decision.  Moving to London after her parents’ death was a daring choice that also fulfilled a childhood dream.

And the first five years were bliss.  She resurrected a failing business.  She made a handful of true friends – her tribe, she called them.  She got to know London like no tourists ever did, with its secret gardens and tucked-away pubs, its cutting-edge nightclubs with pulsating beats, and the sacred silence of wide marble halls where Londoners studied or prayed or drank their afternoon tea.

In those public spaces, where locals were likely to strike up a chat, they always asked Victoria where she was from.  Each time Tori answered, South Carolina felt farther away.  The Hidden Treasure bookshop had become her new home.

Over time, inevitably, her London tribe dispersed.  They married.  They had children.  They did what normal people do, and Tori watched from the barstool or pew, truly delighted as her friends found their someones and their lives evolved.

Soon she was the last singleton among them.  They still visited the bookshop with toddlers or spouses in tow.  Occasionally they met for a pint in what they now referred to as “the old haunts.”

But those places weren’t really haunted.  The Hidden Treasure was another story.

When Victoria leased the bookshop nine years before, that too had been a choice with momentum, even adventure and a healthy dose of fear.  The shop came with great risk, and it demanded her all.  It had broadened her world and suspended her grief.

Now she was one stray cat away from becoming a spinster.  Tori didn’t want to go backward in time.  That wasn’t possible, much less appealing.  She was proud of what she had achieved with her own two hands and a college degree.

But she also didn’t want to be stuck.  Her days inside the Hidden Treasure had begun to feel dreary, and when she started counting down the hours until closing time – even shutting up early once or twice – Tori realized something needed to change.

A haunting was not what she had in mind.

For weeks she’d heard weird noises in the storeroom.  Sometimes they happened during business hours and sometimes, more disturbingly, in the middle of the night.  The storeroom was on the second floor – what Brits referred to as the first – and completely inaccessible from the street.  As a precaution Tori kept its pair of windows bolted unless London suffered through a rare summer heat wave.  The storeroom’s single entryway had no actual door, just a curtain to deter customers who inadvertently climbed the stairs.

But there was a door in the storeroom, one that led to nowhere.  In the mid-1800s, when the shops on Caecilius Court had been renovated by a wealthy investor, doors connected all five establishments to a narrow hallway concealed deep within the main structure.  All of the shops had been bookstores then, too, and Caecilius Court was still renowned among antiquarian dealers.  It was also a prime target for
Antiques Road Show
fans hunting for their next big payday.  Tori capitalized on both.

By the time she leased the Hidden Treasure, the pointless door had been painted over and barricaded with surplus stock.  Tori rarely noticed it, much less gave it a thought.

Until the afternoon someone had knocked.

With her courage bolstered by the intern working downstairs, Tori refused to feel afraid as she climbed the creaky steps to check the storeroom.  The noise could have been water in the building’s archaic pipes.  Or one of her neighbors hanging artwork.

But the persistent knocking sounded like neither, and Tori felt something else in the air whenever she made herself pull back the curtain.  Her skin prickled with more than apprehension.  Her face felt flushed, and her hands were damp against the handle of the cricket bat that she kept on the stairs – her personal home security system.

Tori asked around the court and learned nothing useful.  All the second-floor doors were sealed, the hallway unused for decades.  It was an unwritten rule among Caecilius Court merchants that no one meddled with the pointless doors.

Two days later the scraping began.  Jenny, her intern from the States, heard it, too.  Thankful to know she wasn’t going insane, Tori slept with the cricket bat next to her bed.  She bought two more from a sporting goods vendor on Bond Street and placed them strategically in the storeroom and the shop.  Now all three levels of her rented home had security measures in place, and she’d taken enough self-defense classes in college to put them to good use.

Soon after, Jenny finished her semester abroad and seemed relieved to be heading back across the Pond.  A small part of Tori wished she could go also, and the impulse startled her.  Running a bookshop was her dream job.  London was her ideal city.  In all kinds of ways Tori adored it, even though she, unlike the rest of the tribe, couldn’t seem to find a husband, much less a steady boyfriend.

It might be her standards, her friends mentioned gently over cooling cups of tea.  It could prove difficult to find a romanticized blend of James Bond, Prince Charming, Robin Hood, and Sherlock Holmes who could handle dating a successful and confident Yank.  Men want to be needed, they would hint between biscuits, and Tori had cornered the market on self-sufficiency.

She had also apparently poured a third of her life into reviving a haunted bookshop.

Victoria’s bed began to shake.  The floor beneath it shivered like it felt the same gust of clammy air that made Tori reach for her sleeveless fleece jacket.  Slipping it over her sheer t-shirt, she grasped the cricket bat and a flashlight.  As usual she made it to the edge of the stairs, but she didn’t try to climb down.  Every time before, the sounds eventually stopped.

Now they grew louder.  From the landing Tori heard boxes shift against the floor.  As blood thudded in her veins, she crawled down the stairs at a creeping pace.  If she moved slowly, the noises might go away.  If not, she had plenty of bats.

A muted light blossomed within the storeroom.  Like a specter it drifted behind the thin curtain.  Floorboards creaked in an offbeat rhythm.

Tori ordered herself to keep breathing.  Ghost stories were nothing but sales campaigns invented to drum up business, and gullible tourists loved a good haunting.  No one needed Marketing 101 to figure that out.

Then what was in her storeroom?

Pocketing the flashlight, she gripped the cricket bat with both hands.  Surprise would be her best weapon.  Without it, the bat might be useless.  Next to the doorframe she waited for the footsteps to pause.  When they did, she heard the scratch of cardboard.  The ruffle of book pages followed.

Someone was reading the merchandise.

Which meant the intruder was human.  That realization wasn’t a comfort, but if Tori didn’t act soon, she might chicken out and lose the element of surprise.  Inhaling, she burst through the curtain.

“Freeze!” she hollered.

The intruder didn’t comply.  Startled, he dropped the book and took several steps back until he was pressed to the wall.  He was tall and fit but appeared unarmed.  Near his elbow a candlestick glowed.

Brandishing the bat, Tori moved forward.  She could take him.

He thrust out both arms, lean fingers splayed in defense.  “Hold, woman!  I do not intend to trespass.”

“That hallway is supposed to be off limits!” she shouted.  While Tori hardly matched the man’s height or size, she could out-holler him along with most folks.  The louder her voice, the less scared she might seem – and the more likely to wake the neighbors.

“The gipsy did not inform me of that,” the man replied in a measured tone.  “She merely gave me the pendant and showed me how to find the door.”  Although he sounded composed, his voice quavered slightly.  Adrenaline made a guy dangerous no matter what got him riled up. 

Ready to swing, Tori glanced at the pointless door.  It was open, and stale air flowed through it.  Instantly the weeks of weird noises made sense.  Someone had been unsealing the door from its other side.  It wasn’t a haunting.  She would have to text Jenny.

The fleeting thought made her cringe.  Her cell phone was upstairs under her pillow.  She hadn’t remembered to bring it down and shook her head at her own stupidity.  Her best weapon wasn’t surprise.  It was 999.

“Don’t move an inch,” she ordered.  “I’m calling the police.”

The man lowered his arms.  Even in the dim light his confusion was obvious.  “To a brothel?”

Tori’s mouth fell open.  “Excuse me?”

“Well, you are scantly clad and have no man about to guard your person or goods – if these oddities are indeed yours.  Whilst you are young to be an abbess, I must presume that you ply the oldest profession.  Though, your attire and coiffure suggest you are not entertaining patrons at this time.”

“This is not a brothel,” she seethed.  “It’s a bookshop.  And you are trespassing whether you mean to or not.”

“And you are not English.  From the colonies, I daresay?”

“Seriously?”  Tori loosened her grip on the bat.  “I’m about to call the cops, and you play the Yank card?”

“Copse?”  His bewilderment returned.  “You intend to conjure a forest?  Are you in cahoots with the Romanichal woman who gave me this pendant?”

He lifted a round object hanging from a strap at his neck.  It was roughly the size of an Atlantic sand dollar, and it glinted in the candlelight.

Her eyes never leaving the man, Tori inched backward to brush the wall with her hand.  If this guy meant to rob or rape her, he was going about it in a very strange way.  Finding the light switch, she flipped it.

The man plunged to the floor as if he’d been struck.  “Zounds!  What is this trickery?”

Lowering the bat, Tori couldn’t suppress a nervous laugh.  The man looked as terrified as she’d felt for the last ten minutes.  With a hand raised above him like the ceiling might collapse, he scrambled to stand among the boxes of books.  When his limbs finally did cooperate, he rose and calmed himself, curiosity replacing his fright.  As he reached toward the light fixture, Tori wrinkled her nose at the sight of cobwebs dangling from its shade.

While the man examined the light bulb, Tori examined him.  Based on his reactions, and insulting presumptions, something was definitely off.  Her intruder was dressed like a supporting cast member from a Victorian West End musical – pinstripe trousers, leather boots, a stiff white shirt beneath a black vest, and a knot of dark fabric askew at his neck.

He was over six feet tall, lean but not scrawny, and his lips pursed with boyish intensity while his blue eyes peered at the lamp’s anchored base like he meant to see right through it.  His sandy brown hair was long enough to reveal the curl at its tips.  His Civil-War sideburns were almost charming.  Apart from those, his Grecian features were smooth, like he’d just left a barbershop.

Dapper was the word she’d use.  Dapper and probably the oddest burglar to be caught on Caecilius Court.  But the man didn’t act like a burglar.  Her intuition whispered that he was a gentleman – not just trained to behave like one.

Reassured by her own assessment, Tori wove her way toward the pointless door and with the cricket bat pushed it closed.

The light bulb flickered and briefly went dark.

With a shout of alarm the man barreled his way to the door, shoving aside boxes and tipping their contents.  Frantically he jiggled the faded brass handle before aiming his panicked gaze at Tori.  His lips were a thin, angry line.