Back at the shop, things had gotten much busier in the twenty-five minutes we’d been gone, and I could see the look of relief on Rocky’s face when we came in. She had a line at the café counter and was just ringing up a big sale at the book register. “I’ve got this,” I said as I slid in beside her.
“Thank you. The need for caffeine was getting palpable,” she whispered as she jogged out from behind the counter toward the café.
I laughed and continued ringing up the man in front of me. His selections were fascinating. Most men stick to the supposedly “male” genres like thrillers and spy fiction, military history, maybe a bit of literary fiction as long as the main characters are men. But this guy was buying a stack of cozy mysteries by some of my favorites: Mollie Cox Bryan, Maggie Sefton,
