LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d ever met. Over six feet tall, he was soft with big beefy arms and a waistband to match. His cheeks tinged red as he nodded and gave a small smile in the direction of Princess and the floor.

      I turned back to Jamal and Aunt Violet.

      “So, tell me again, what brought you to Hazel Rock?”

      “Sounds to me like you don’t want us to visit you,” Aunt Violet pouted.

      “Don’t be ridiculous! I love that you’re here. It’s been too long.”

      Violet looked at my dad. “Twelve years is too long.”

      It was my turn to blush. Each holiday season my aunt had begged me to let her take me home. Each year, I’d stubbornly held on to my teenage anger. It’d been so petty, but only being home made me realize how juvenile I’d been.

      “That’s behind us now,” my dad said. “We promised to talk if we ever have an issue with each other again.”

      “Then I think it’s time to have a party.”

      Jamal groaned. His idea of a party was to strategize an attack on a video game with his online friends. Then I remembered what was coming up the next week. They were here for my birthday…and my aunt was famous for throwing big parties. The last way I wanted to celebrate entering into a completely different age category was with a big party. I was no longer going to be in my late twenties. I’d be thirty—with no prospects of a husband or children. If that wasn’t depressing enough, my aunt wanted to shout the milestone from the rafters? Ugh.

      Jamal recognized my discomfort and immediately rescued me. “Actually, I have a business venture I’d like to discuss with my favorite cousin.”

      “I’m your only cousin, Jamal.”

      He grinned and gave me a fake punch to the jaw. “And yet you’re still my favorite.”

      I laughed. “Okay, what’s this big venture you have?”

      Jamal beamed from ear to ear. “I developed an app.” From the amount of pride gleaming in his eyes, he may as well have said, I’m a father, while he handed out cigars.

      “You’ve developed several apps—”

      “But this one is different. This one will help your store.”

      “The Book Barn Princess?” I looked over at my daddy, who shrugged as if to say, why not; couldn’t hurt.

      “What kind of app?” I asked.

      “I call it the Book Seekers.”

      “The Book Seekers?”

      “That’s right. It will bring customers to your store and increase your business.”

      “And how exactly will an app bring people into the store?”

      “First, you should tell her about the author who’s agreed to do a signing at her store next Friday.” My aunt was bursting at the seams wanting to give away the secret before Jamal could explain.

      “Wait. You’ve asked an author to do a signing at the Barn?” I tugged at my lip with my teeth. I wasn’t sure how Daddy would react to my cousin putting his foot in our business.

      Jamal bobbed his head up and down, that pride coming out in his expression once again. I tried to hold back my apprehension. Book signings were a huge undertaking. You had to advertise them in advance, but somehow my cousin thought we could just throw it together in a week and a half. How would we get the author’s books in inventory that quickly? It’d cost me extra in shipping. Chances were, I’d lose money the Barn didn’t have.

      “Jamal, we can’t—”

      “Lucy has already made arrangements to get the books shipped to the Barn.” My aunt’s voice was unrepentant.

      I slid a glance in my daddy’s direction. “Lucy? Who’s Lucy?”

      “Lucy Barton!” The words exploded from my aunt’s mouth.

      “What?” I asked, looking between my aunt and cousin in disbelief. Surely, I’d heard her wrong. “Did you say Lucy Barton?”

      Jamal’s head did that slow, proud nod again.

      “The Lucy Barton? The best-selling author of the Midnight Poet Society Mysteries, Lucy Barton?”

      “That’s the one.” Aunt Violet came over and hugged her son around the waist.

      “But how?”

      “Juicy Killer is her daughter,” Jamal said with a self-satisfied smile.

      “What? What are you talking about?”

      My aunt rolled her eyes and slapped Jamal’s stomach with a backhand. “Don’t you mess with my baby girl.”

      Jamal laughed. He was thin and nonathletic, but his momma didn’t raise a wimp. “Juicy Killer is her online name. She’s one of my partners for the Book Seekers. She suggested it to her mom, and her mom agreed. I wasn’t sure we’d get it up and running in time, but we’ve been working night and day trying to get it ready for launch. We completed it five days ago.”

      Five days would have been nice to have in order to plan such a huge event. It would have been enough time to make sure I had enough books. “Wait a minute, you said Lucy Barton was having books sent by her publisher?”

      “That’s right. She knew a bookseller wouldn’t have enough time so she ordered the books herself. It was her donation to support her daughter. She said the Barn could keep the profits as a thank you for helping her daughter.”

      It was my turn to grin. “I thought it was a mistake, but now—the books arrived this morning.”

      “Get out!”

      “Come here, I’ll show you.”

      Jamal grabbed a donut in each hand as we went back out to the main sales floor.

      “I can’t believe Lucy Barton is going to be in the Barn. All we have planned was a midnight poetry reading on Friday. Now it can serve as a prequel to the main event!” I hugged my cousin around the waist as we walked and he ate his donut over my head.

      “I could get her in to meet you before the actual signing begins,” he said through a mouthful of donut.

      “Jamal, your momma didn’t teach you to talk with your mouth full,” Aunt Violet reprimanded.

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Lucy Barton will bring in huge crowds,” Aunt Violet told my dad.

      “But we won’t have much time for advertising.” My dad still sounded skeptical, and I had to agree with his assessment. Hazel Rock grew to a community of 2,095 thanks to the twins born to Mary Lou and Brad Bickford last month, but that wasn’t nearly enough to sell two hundred and fifty books I was estimating I’d have on hand, along with the twenty books I’d ordered.

      “That’s where the Book Seekers app comes in. I’ve scheduled a press conference with the assistance of Lucy’s publicist for Thursday morning, right here at the Barn.”

      I looked around at sales floor, half-decorated for the holidays, and heard my dad snort.

      “You just gave Princess an excuse to work all day long for the next two days.” My daddy wasn’t talking about our armadillo. He’d called me Princess since before I was born and the pink little creature watching the whole scene from the doorway received her name because of his love of me, and my adoration of anything pink.

      My mind raced through the list of things we’d have to do. “We’ve got to have a bigger display for the Midnight Poet Society Mysteries and what about her older books in the series? We should order some of those and get them in stock. And the holiday decorations. I want to have the store looking its best. Holy schnikes! I have to send an email to all our book groups and customers—the

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