A Villain for Christmas (The Holyoake Christmas Series, Book 2)

Billie Doesn't Get a Meet Cute

Billie rushed into the bookshop, pulling her scarf from around her neck. She jerked off her hat and was struggling with her jacket, muttering her greetings, when a loud crash came from the depth of the shop.

"Oh dear," Ikmeet breathed out.

Billie stopped writhing and looked up at her colleague.

"Have you fed Persimmon?" Billie asked the girl.

"No," Ikmeet answered in a small voice. "I forgot again."

"I just hope those weren't the books on the main display," Billie said with a sigh. "I'll handle it."

"I'm sorry," the other shop clerk whined behind Billie, who was already marching to the back.

She hung her jacket in the staff room, quickly changed her shoes, and returned to the floor.

"Persimmon! Persimmon! Where are you, my lady?" she called in a saccharine voice. "Come, Persimmon! I've brought some of your favourite chicken paté!"

Another thud told Billie that the cat was in the used book section, and she headed to the other side of the shop.

"Persimmon!"

She saw a pile of harlequin romance novels, previously neatly arranged on a small round table, that the animal had toppled onto the floor. One thing could be said about the cat: it had an excellent taste in literature. The animal looked like a predator sitting on a corpse of a gazelle that it had just felled.

"Yeah, I agree with you," Billie said and picked up one of the soft-covers.

In the image decorating the book, a dim looking damsel with a heaving bosom and a bare-chested knight with a 1990s haircut half-lay on what looked like a velvet curtain, thrown onto the ground, on a green hillock in front of a castle. Billie always wondered why they never drew chest hair on the male protagonists of these books. It's not like men, at the time, could go for a wax treatment to a nearby spa. Billie shuddered at the thought of how furry a real life, dark-haired male of this size would be - while Sir Smoulder-a-lot's pectoral muscles were as smooth as a baby's bottom. Perhaps, it had something to do with the fact that most women who read these books didn't particularly fancy encountering realistic male traits in the characters. Billie wouldn't either, if she read this sort of rubbish. She had little first-hand experience with men, having grown up in a strictly female household, in a tiny village where everyone knew everyone. Being the middle, ugliest sister out of three, Billie was quite alright with her status of a 'spinster librarian.' She shared the sentiment of one of her favourite film characters and was of the most firm conviction that 'all the good men were fictional.'

Billie shoved the book on the nearest shelf.

"Come, Persimmon, let's have some food."

The cat gracefully jumped off the wreckage and headed towards the back room, its thick poofy tail lifted straight up like a majestic banner.

***

Billie was chewing her salad in the staff room during her break, when the door opened, and her boss, Yolanda Roel burst in. Yolanda tended to move fast and to create some sort of a supercharged field around herself. Billie loved the woman's feminist views, and her fair, inclusive management approach; but the energy and the pzazz of Yolanda Roel, a self-made woman, the owner of three successful businesses, including a large online book selling platform with its headquarters in London, was a tad too much for Billie's introverted, yokel self.

The woman started talking and waving her hands in the air, and Billie pulled her headphones off.

"Pardon?" she asked.