When Frau Lamm looked up and saw her, the journal slipped from her grasp. She caught it before it landed on the floor. Instantly, her cheeks flushed. “Uh, I was just, um…”

“Doing quality control on the way our notebooks smell,” Susanne supplied with a straight face. Okay, an almost straight face.

“Uh, right. You never know what detail will entice a customer to buy a notebook.” Under the obvious pretense of placing the journal on the shelf, she turned away. When she faced Susanne again, her blush had receded. She pointed at the store. “Is there a problem out there?”

Only then did Susanne remember the dripping pen in her hand and the customer waiting next to the display case. “Yes, actually. I wanted to sell a pen, but it exploded all over my fingers.” She held up her ink-stained hand.

Frau Lamm frowned like a dog owner who’d been told that her golden retriever had bitten someone. “This one is usually very reliable. I have one at home, and it’s never leaked in all the years I’ve had it. What did you do to it?”

“Nothing. I just tried to unscrew it because the customer wanted to see what kind of ink cartridges it takes. That’s all.”

Frau Lamm groaned. “It doesn’t take cartridges. It’s a piston filler.”

Susanne tugged on her earlobe as if trying to remove water from her ear. “Translation?”

“It means the body of the pen itself is the ink tank. There’s a piston inside the barrel that you move up to fill it with ink. You didn’t, by any chance, twist the knob at the end of the pen, did you?”

“Um, yes. I thought that’s how you opened it to put in the ink cartridges.”

“Nope. When you twist the knob in this direction,” Frau Lamm mimicked it with a turn of her wrist, “you push the piston forward, expelling the ink.”

Susanne stared down at the ink-smeared writing instrument. “The longer I work here, the more I appreciate a simple ballpoint pen.”

Huffing, Frau Lamm took the pen from her and wiped it down with a tissue. “Is the customer still here, or did your little ink explosion chase him or her off?”

Normally, Susanne wouldn’t stand for any teasing from an employee, but she knew she deserved it, and Frau Lamm’s tone was so good-natured that she couldn’t get angry. “Of course she’s still here. I even talked her into buying one of those BMW journals.”

“BMW journals?”

“Yeah, you know. The expensive leather ones on the island display.” Secretly, Susanne referred to all the products that seemed overpriced to her as BMW stationery.

“Ooh. How did you manage that?”

Susanne stared at the pattern of ink on her hand. “I just repeated what you told me about it.” Minus all the sexy touching.