Page 5 of Frozen Heart

The place was fascinating to me. There was something about the complex flow of it that suited my brain: seeing how all the staff, product lines and store layout worked together wasn’t too different from figuring out board games, or meal planning. I soaked up all the knowledge I could and after a few months I started making timid little suggestions, likemaybe we could widen the baby food aisle, because then it would be easier for parents pushing prams.And when profits went up, my boss noticed. Over the next seven years, I rose slowly up the ranks. But when my dream job, a store manager post, opened up, my boss took me aside and gently explained that I wasn’t in the running. “You’re great,” he said with feeling. “You could run a store. But there’s no point even putting you forward. These days, they want a college degree.”

That night, I was one of the last ones in the store, checking around before we locked up. I shut off the lights…and then I just sank down in the darkened vegetable aisle. It hit me thatthis was it.I was going to be stuck at this level for the rest of my life unless I did something.

What if I opened my own damn store?

And as I sat there on the cold tiles, I suddenly knew exactly what I’d sell: books. Books had helped me through the death of my parents, my teens, they’d been an escape from the daily grind of work...I wanted to share that and help people to find books they’d love.

So I enrolled in a business course at the local community college. It was exhausting: I was working shifts at the store by day, then classes in the evening and then reading books on bookkeeping and finance until I fell asleep. But slowly, very slowly, I started to shape my crazy idea into a workable business plan. I saved as much of my paycheck as I could for the startup costs and Baba insisted on throwing in a chunk of her retirement savings to help.

And then Nathan walked into my class. Plaid shirt rolled up to show chiseled forearms dusted with golden hair. Ocean-blue eyes that twinkled when he smiled, and he smiled a lot. He flopped down in the seat next to me without asking if it was taken, then leaned over. “You look smart. Can I copy off you?”

I flushed and nodded. I’d been single for over a year: I hadn’t had time to meet anyone, and guys weren’t interested in the pale, curvy girl who lived with her grandmother. But at the end of the class, Nathan asked me out for coffee.

A few hours later I knew all about his plans. A wife, two children (a boy and a girl), a Jack Russell (his family had always owned Jack Russells) and, when his planned chain of organic smoothie stores was successful, a fancy apartment in a nice part of Chicago and holidays in Europe. I’d never met anyone so sure of what they wanted, before. Two more dates and we were having breathless, up-against-the-wall sex at his place. A month later, I met his parents. And eight months after that, as we walked through showers of pink cherry blossom in Jackson Park, he went down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

I stared down at him, open-mouthed. Ever since I was a kid, I’d had daydreams about someone riding in to rescue me. Some handsome prince who’d carry me off and marry me, complete with a big, fairytale wedding.This is it!I felt my throat closing up.“Yes!”

We booked a trip to New York for the following weekend to celebrate and I ran home to tell Baba. She’d always been a little hesitant about Nathan, but she hugged me tight and told me how happy she was for me.

I’d been getting twinges of pain in my joints, and I didn’t want it to spoil our trip to New York, especially because we’d be spending a lot of time walking. So I talked to my physician and he sent me for x-rays and tests. The day before we left for New York, Nathan and I sat down with a specialist.

I had early-onset rheumatoid arthritis. My body was attacking the lining of my joints, making them swollen and painful. It could be managed, but it couldn’t be stopped. And it was going to get a lot worse.

I grabbed for Nathan’s hand and he squeezed mine reassuringly. But when he turned to look at me, it was like he was seeing me for the first time. And when we stumbled, dazed, out of the specialist’s office, we looked around at the other patients in the waiting room, most of them with some form of arthritis. Some were as old as Baba, some as young as me. Some had to use sticks to walk, some couldn’t walk at all. I was staring at my future.

The next day, I was lying on the grass in Central Park, my head cradled in Nathan’s lap as he sat against a tree. The sun was shining, a string quartet was playing, and the diagnosis seemed like a bad dream.Everything’s going to be fine,I told myself. “When we get back,” I said gently, “should we start looking at apartments?”

“Mumm.” He was right there, stroking my hair. So why did his voice sound so far away? “Let’s do that.”

A week after we got back, he said we should maybe slow things down a little.

A week afterthat, he split up with me. That picture he had in his head of his perfect life. I no longer fit. He didn’t want a wife who was flawed.

In the kitchen of our little apartment, Baba hugged me tight while I cried my heart out. I’d had break-ups before, but I’d never been left feeling so utterly worthless. Sonot enough.

“I don’t know what—what I’m going to do,” I sobbed. My bookstore plan had been risky. Now it felt impossible.

Baba squeezed me harder. “I do,” she said. “Our ancestors were Welsh. Celt warrior women who lived in the forest and when the Romans invaded and tried to take their home, they fought. That’s what you’re going to do, Bronnie. You’re going to fight.”

And so, three months later, I openedAll You Need Is Books(my grammar-nerd friend Luna had argued that technically it should beAre Books,but it was my store, dammit). Baba was right, I had to fight. Fuck Nathan and fuck arthritis.

The first few months went well: every store gets a boost when it’s new and people are curious. But now, six months on, the store was losing money each month. Baba’s care facility bills meant I could barely afford food. I’d almost burned through my startup money. If I didn’t figure something out soon, I’d have to shut down...and Baba would have lost the money she gave me.

I rolled onto my back, wincing as my aching joints flexed, and stared up at the cracked plaster of the apartment’s ceiling. I hadno idea what I was going to do. And there was no one I could go to for help: my parents were gone, Baba was sick,the man I’d thought I was going to marry dumped me... I was twenty-seven and, suddenly, I was all alone. I had some great friends, but they had problems of their own and they weren’t the same as family. I felt like I was adrift on an endless black ocean with no one else in sight.

I could feel my mind tumbling downward, faster and faster, and I knew I had to think of something else,now,or I wasn’t going to stop until I hit bottom?—

Radimir Aristov.

My mind stopped with a jolt, like a falling rock climber grabbing a handhold.Radimir Aristov.He was definitely unique enough to distract me. I wrapped the memories around me to shut out the cold dark. That accent, shaping each syllable until it was deliciously rough ice. That name,Aristov,like the whisper of a silver dagger being drawn. The swell of his pecs under his soft white shirt, just a hint of dark tattoo peeking through. The way he jerked his waistcoat to straighten it. The warmth of his hands when they’d touched mine...

And something happened. I’d only meant to distract myself but once I started thinking about him, I couldn’t stop.

It was that power that throbbed from him, like a drumbeat too low to hear, a vibration that shook my whole body. It resonated right to my core and bloomed into heat. I’ve always been built out of steel, like Baba, but the heat just melted me into taffy. He felt so utterly different to every man I’d ever met. Like he’d stepped into my bookstore from a shadow world that was colder, harder,realerthan the one I knew.

After he’d stalked out of my store, I’d run over to the door: I couldn’t help it. I saw him climbing into a big, black Mercedes that whisked him away. What would have happened if he’d taken me with him?

I closed my eyes and imagined. I could feel the shocking cold of the night air as he pulled me across the street, my sneakers skidding in the snow. I felt somethingdropinside me, dark and deliciously hot. Like the feeling you get on a rollercoaster when you tip over the first hill and plunge.