A Pocketful of Dreams

Chapter One

Annie Hoffman signed the cheque with a joyous flourish, tucked it into a brown envelope and smiled as she threw it into the post basket under the shop counter.

She'd finally woken from the nightmare, escaping the grim fingers of uncertainty and emerging into the sunlight. The journey had taken its sweet time, not to mention a great deal of her dignity, but her virtual blacklisting at the hands of the only man she had ever loved ­­– or thought she'd loved ­­– was now over.

Annie sighed happily, just as two smartly dressed men passed the window and caught her eye. She drew in a sharp breath. One of them was Bruno, the manager of Olde Oxford Shopping Arcade, and the other was that gorgeous man she'd seen around the place a few times recently (although she knew it was actually eleven). They'd never spoken and she had no idea who he was, but she'd smiled at him on a few occasions and he'd returned the gesture each and every time.

Bruno and Mystery Man stopped in the courtyard, looked at a clipboard of documents and pointed at the retail unit across the way. In a previous life it had been Bumblebee Books, a small independent bookshop opposite Annie's own store – the Pocketful of Dreams. Unfortunately, its days were numbered from the moment a chain-store bookshop had opened just a minute's walk along the street from the arcade, and Bumblebee Books had closed down a little over three months earlier.

Annie wandered over to the window display and rearranged a basket of handmade soaps. She was curious as to whether this activity meant that a new business was about to move in, and if so, she hoped it would be a café. The nearest one was right back at the entrance. Her customers always groaned when they asked her where they could get a cup of tea and she told them the nearest refreshments were right back at the proverbial starting gate.

Annie moved along the display and fiddled with some silk flowers that were strewn across the shelf. When she glanced up again, Bruno and Mystery Man were gone.

She leaned closer to the windowpane to see if they'd moved further down the courtyard, but misjudged her balance. As her upper body hit the display shelf, her feet left the floor and knocked over a pair of tall wrought-iron candlesticks. She threw both hands out to brace herself. One demolished a teddy bears' picnic that had taken her the best part of two hours to perfect, while the other smashed into a cutesy wooden tub filled with bath bombs. She turned her head to avoid smashing her nose against the glass only in the nick of time, leaving her cheek pressed up against the window.

At that point, Annie heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps entering the shop. Horrified by the thought of what she must look like, she frantically tried to regain her footing.

'Er, miss? Do you need some help?' a deep voice enquired.

'You didn't come in to buy one of the hand-painted teapots, did you?' Annie asked loudly.

It would be typical for her to do the world's best impression of a bull in a china shop ­­– in her own store, no less – just as someone came in to ask for assistance with the breakables.

A laugh that was as warm as creamy coffee rumbled gently behind her. 'No, I'd like to think I'm not old enough to use a teapot... yet. Here, let me help you.'

A large, warm hand gripped her arm and another moved tentatively to her opposite shoulder. Her pulse bungeed skyward and she looked up to see a group of giggling schoolgirls in the courtyard, pointing gleefully at the scene.

'I'm really okay,' Annie announced, her voice shrill with adrenaline, as her rescuer began to ease her out of the display. Her hand emerged from the bath bombs, coated in glitter of several colours, and she pressed it against the window for leverage.