Enchanting Lily Read Free Page B

fine. Probably good—”
    “Can we go right now? Is the owner around?” What was she getting herself into? She was already imagining a bedspread to match the walls; a plant in the window. Lavender soap on the bathroom sink. Maybe the magic coffee bean was working after all.

Chapter Two
    Lily
    “I should warn you about the owner,” Paige said on the walk through town. Lily was happy to stretch her legs, to breathe in the clean, salty island air.
    “Oh?” she replied. “Is she eccentric?”
    “Not her, exactly, but her bookstore. You think the magic coffee bean thing is weird? Jasmine’s Bookstore is a bit unusual. Not like your typical bookstore.”
    “So the owner runs a bookstore. How funny.” Lily couldn’t imagine what a “typical” bookstore looked like. In her experience, each one had a different personality—quaintand packed with rare tomes, or spacious and corporate, or musty and dark.
    “Jasmine’s got this weird sixth sense about books,” Paige said, keeping to the redbrick sidewalk, nodding here and there to an occasional passerby, people she obviously knew. “She handed me a paperback about the history of the island once. Got me interested in restoration, so I joined the Renewal Society, and that’s how I found out my husband was cheating on me.”
    “Oh no! Because of the book?”
    “Without it, I never would’ve joined the Society, and I wouldn’t have found out.”
    A bit of a stretch, Lily thought, but possible. “Did you catch him in the act?”
    “Not exactly, but close enough. John told me he was singing on Tuesday nights. The Sailor Singers meet in the building right next to the museum, where the Renewal Society meets. He’d started going on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I thought, that’s a lot of singing. But when I stopped in, he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there in a while. I pestered one of the guys and he finally spilled the beans. Oops, there I go, mentioning beans again.”
    “I’m so sorry that happened to you. How long were you married?”
    “Seven years. The divorce wasn’t all his fault. I havesome…regrets. Oh, look, there it is.” She pointed at the burnt umber and white Victorian perched on a hillside overlooking the water.
    Lily felt like the house watched her, but not unkindly. Large bay windows reflected silvery light, and the words “Jasmine’s Bookstore” glittered on a garden sign in bright gold lettering. “It does look enchanted,” she said.
    “See what I mean?” Paige headed up the walkway to the door. “Mystical, huh?”
    “Like it stepped out of another era.”
    Paige opened the door and ushered Lily into the foyer. “This used to be the back servants’ entrance during the height of the timber industry. The front entrance faces the waterfront. At one time, all the important guests arrived by sea.”
    “Hard to imagine a world without cars.” Lily pictured wooden sailboats gliding into the harbor, horse-drawn carriages rattling down cobblestone streets.
    “Must’ve been a better time, if you ask me.”
    “Maybe.” Inside the bookstore, soft lights from Tiffany lamps spilled out across Persian carpets, and here and there, portraits of famous authors adorned the walls—Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, and others. Muffled voices drifted from nearby rooms, and the smells of old house—of dust and oak and paper—rose andmixed with a fresh citrus scent of potpourri. To the left stood a three-foot-tall brass statue of the Hindu elephant-headed god, Ganesh. Lily had seen various versions of him inside Indian restaurants and shops in San Francisco. His smiling face, rotund belly, and large feet were an anomaly in this old Victorian mansion—the flavor of India in the Pacific Northwest. But then, her shop would be an anomaly, too. Who would imagine theater costumes and the best of haute couture fashion for sale in a sleepy island town?
    “You have to touch his feet!” Paige whispered. “You have to honor the god of new