“They make a stunning pair. It can only be good for business.”

“As opposed to the times when customers only had my old mug to look at when they walked in.”

Jane chuckled. “It’s a simple fact that Mia is about thirty years younger than you, babe, but to me, you’re just as gorgeous.”

“She’s not thirty years younger. Twenty-eight will do just fine.” Annie harpooned a piece of salmon onto her fork and waved it around as though her point could not be made otherwise.

“Fine. Twenty-eight.” Jane pulled her lips into a sideways grin. “So you’d best not be getting any ideas into your head, cougar. Spending all that time together in the shop, often just the two of you for hours.”

Annie didn’t take the bait. “Gorgeous and lovely and generally being the catch that I am, I would never come between Mia and Lou. Lou is Rita’s daughter. Imagine the scandal.”

“That’s very kind of you, to think of it that way.” Jane’s voice dripped with irony. “You can stick to just sucking up to Kristin then. I read an article today about Amazon opening up shop in Australia very soon. As in not just having a website you can order stuff from, but them having actual warehouses and slashing the price of books. You may have to increase Kristin’s rent if we have to drop the price of our wares.”

Annie was still stuck on the first part of what Jane had said to give much notice to the message about Amazon’s impending arrival. Had she been sucking up to Kristin? Had Jane noticed anything about her behavior, whatever that might be? “I guess we’ll need to start selling Jane Quinn collector’s items then.”

“I have a couple of bras lying around that I’ve only worn for a couple of hours each. We could sell those. Or we’ll need to start selling our own coffee.”

“We’ve only just thwarted the predatory grips of one big franchise, only to have another come at us.” Annie mused. “Let’s just wait and see before we start selling your lingerie.”

“If you look at it another way, if it weren’t for Amazon and the booming e-book market, the shop might have gone under years ago,” Jane said.

“So we shan’t fear them and we’ll roll with the punches the way we always do,” Annie declared.

“There’s not much else we can do.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes—Annie still a little hung up on what Jane had said about Kristin. Could they talk about things like that? They should be able to. They had enough years between them—and it’s not as if they hadn’t had to get through similarly difficult conversations in the past. Their relationship was solid. Yet, Annie couldn’t bring the words to cross her lips.