A Monster for HALLOWEEN

CH 5 - Grace

GRACE POV

Dad had gone to have lunch with Mum, leaving me to hold the fort. By “fort,” I mean our tiny bookshop-s***h-souvenir-barn that smelled like wet paperbacks and old glue. By “hold,” I mean stand behind the counter and nod pleasantly at any tourist who dared to cross the threshold with muddy trainers and an attitude of self-entitlement.

I swear if one more tourist wandered in and asked about “Nessie” instead of the new reprint of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ with the art pics—yes, the one with the gilt edges—I was going to cause an international incident.

For an hour, things were blissfully calm. The kind of calm that makes you suspicious, like the calm before someone drops a glass or a busker gives an impromptu bagpipe concert. Then, as if cued by some cruel director, the bell over the door gave its pathetic little jingle.

I looked up to see a mountain of a man half-lurking by the window, angling himself to gaze at the fluorescent keychain abomination by the door. He was huge—broad shoulders that could probably bench-press a small island, chest like a carved oak, and he stood tall enough to make the doorframe feel inadequate. He didn’t move much; he just regarded the shop like a man assessing property values before a takeover.

And then he opened the door and took my breath away.

I would have swooned, honestly, if not for two things. One: the man was a redhead. Two: he was staring at the keychains. Specifically, he was staring at our neon, googly-eyed crimes against nature, the ones that made my father proud and my eyeballs bleed. The ones with wings.

He froze, one hand on the door, and his eyes went straight to me.

For a second there was an internal ping of: *hello, potential obnoxious tourist; engage polite retail mode.* Then my brain misfired in an entirely different direction.

I took my time looking him up and down, because that’s what you do when a giant enters your shop. You check for warning signs. You check for hats. You check for tattoos that might mean “I have a small boat and a small mind” or, conversely, “Danger: may have a respectable career and a dangerous past.” You also check for whiplash risk if you decide to run.

Broad shoulders. Check. Tall like a tree—check. Tattoos peeked from his rolled sleeves, curling like black ivy up his forearms and disappearing under the collar. I watched little swirls and knots crawl up his neck and wondered, briefly and shamefully, whether his arms were a tapestry of ink. Would his hands be leathered and warm? Would his hands be gentle? Would his knuckles be… interesting? Bad Grace. Bad, bad girl.

There was a beard—well trimmed, not the lumberjack catastrophe of last season, but a deliberate, cared-for stubble that made his jawlook like it had been filed to a pleasing angle. His hair was curly, stubborn, the kind of red that looks like it burns in certain light. I could’ve run my fingers through it. I knew I could have. That thought made me clutch the edge of the counter like a woman in a Victorian novel clutching her parasol against temptation.

No. Not happening. Not in the bookshop. Not with neon Nessie keychains looking like failed science experiments.

His eyes—God help him—were ice-blue. I’ll give him that. There’s a particular wrongness to blue eyes in a redhead that’s as arresting as it is annoying. Deep, cold, bright as the centre of a glacier. I felt a ridiculous, traitorous lurch in my chest just at the sight of them. For a millisecond I pictured falling, like a slow, inevitable thing. Then he spoke.

His voice dropped like velvet, the kind of deep, confident voice that makes men on audiobooks sound underdressed. “Good morning, my lady.”

My eyebrow practically detached itself and left the rest of my face. *My lady?* Was he serious? I considered correcting him with a sarcastic curtsey and a ceremonial squint.

But I didn’t have enough time, ‘cause he was speaking again.

“I—” He blinked, and behind his eyebrow I saw something like bemused disbelief. He smiled, just the edge of a smile, like someone who knows his effect and was smug about it. too smug. “I would love to take you out for a cup of tea,” he continued, “and to buy all the Nessie keychains you have in the store.”

The audacity. The blasé, affable atrocity of it. He wanted Tea and the fluorescent apocalypse. How do you combine chivalry and cultural vandalism in one sentence? Only a redhead could manage such elegant ruin.

My anger started to bubble up in the back of my throat. My cheeks flushed—not with embarrassment but with a very pure, very specific rage: the kind that wants to smack someone and then slap them again with a dictionary that justly describes them as an i***t.

“How could he be so handsome and so monumentally stupid at the same time?” I muttered under my breath, slamming my hands on the desk and ready to start a charade to let him know what he could do with the little nessies with wings.

Shove them up on his ass seemed a great starting point indeed.

“You want to buy them?all?” I asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“Yes,” he said. “All of them. I want to buy every single Nessie and rescue them from this life of myth. And then—” he hesitated, too smoothly for my comfort, “—I’d like to take you for tea.”

I studied his face the way one studies a foreign map and wonders where the traps are. Was he perhaps part of some global ginger cabal with nefarious merchandising alliances?

“Right.” I squared my shoulders and put the part of my brain usually reserved for polite conversation into gear. “So. Tea and Nessies. In that order?”

He blinked like a man surprised his sentence had landed. “I—well—yes?” The shyness in his answer was impossible to reconcile with the rest of him. He was a walking paradox: mountain, mouth, and charm all carved from granite and lipstick.

He smiled—one of those slow, devastating smiles men must practice in the mirror, thinking it makes them look endearing instead of dangerous. It worked, for a second. Against my will, I felt something warm unfurl under my ribs. He looked genuinely pleased, like I’d just complimented his dog or accepted his proposal of eternal devotion.

And because I am, on occasion, a complete i***t, I smiled back.

That was his undoing. His shoulders eased. His mouth softened. For one fatal, beautiful instant, he actually thought we were having a moment.

Oh, sweetheart.

Then I went for his throat.

“Listen, Sir Loch Disaster,” I said sweetly. “You can turn right around and walk back out that door. No tea. No Nessie keychains. Definitely no tragic attempt at courtship disguised as a shopping spree.”

His smile faltered like a dropped glass. “I—what?”

“You heard me.” I leaned on the counter, every inch the polite shopkeeper on the edge of homicidal. “We sell books here. Literature. Real words on real paper. Not glow-in-the-dark mythological monstrosities or misplaced flattery.”

He blinked. Twice. Like a man buffering.

“I’m not a novelty souvenir,” I continued, my tone still sugar-sweet but sharp enough to shave steel. “I’m a bookseller. We sell *books*, mostly. Some rubbish—fine—but mostly books.”

That got him. His expression did a small, confused shuffle between charm and wounded pride. “I know that. I—look, I appreciate books. I appreciate—” He gestured toward me, like a man trying to pet a bear. “—people who love them.”

He ran a hand through his curls, a tiny nervous habit that made him look more human, less god-like.

“Congratulations,” I said brightly. “You’ve just described ninety percent of tourists between here and Edinburgh. Unfortunately, you’re still holding a plastic Nessie, so your credibility’s about as sturdy as a wet bookmark.”

He opened his mouth, probably to deliver another velvet-voiced apology, but I wasn’t done. “You can keep your tea invitations and your keychain obsession to yourself, my good sir. The door’s that way. Yes, that one—the large rectangular opening that leads outside. Try walking through it. people do it all the time.”

That earned me a full second of stunned silence. Then, to my absolute horror, he smiled again. Not the practiced one this time—the real thing. Slow, disbelieving, amused.

“You’re serious,” he murmured, half to himself.

“Oh, entirely. I’ve been serious since birth. Ask anyone. My mother says I came out frowning.”

His laugh—low and maddeningly smooth—filled the tiny shop like a velvet wave. “You’re—” He shook his head, clearly floundering for words. “—funny.”

“Annoyed,” I corrected. “The word you’re looking for is annoyed.”

But of course, he just stood there, grinning like I’d performed a miracle. He was absurdly good-looking when he did that, which made it all the more infuriating. His eyes sparkled with amusement; his hair caught the light like it was trying to apologize for existing.

I could feel my blood pressure rise.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I warned. “I’m not an exhibit.”

He tilted his head, utterly unbothered. “Can’t help it,” he said softly. “You’re… fascinating.”

Oh, for the love of—

“Out,” I said, pointing dramatically at the door. “Before I call the major and report a suspiciously charming intruder harassing local shopkeepers.”

He chuckled under his breath but, to his credit, obeyed. He turned toward the exit, still wearing that infuriating half-smile, and stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

“For the record,” he said, glancing back at me, “I wasn’t joking about the tea.”

“And for the record,” I replied, “I wasn’t joking about the door.”

That earned me another laugh, low and dangerous, before he finally stepped out into the chilly air. The bell over the door jingled like a sigh of relief.

The shop was suddenly quiet again, filled only with the smell of paper and lemon oil and my own rapidly unspooling nerves. I stared at the door he’d just left through, part of me half-expecting him to come back.

When he didn’t, I exhaled slowly and muttered, “Good riddance, Mr. Loch Disaster.”

Then, because life has a sense of humour, my reflection in the glass looked far too pleased for someone who’d just verbally body-slammed a stranger. My cheeks were still flushed. My heart was still performing a jig under my ribs.

I pressed a hand to my chest and groaned. “Bad Grace. Bad, bad girl.”