As a younger grownup, Adair’s private romance novel started within the theater division of Cornish Faculty of the Arts in downtown Seattle within the 2000s. It was there she met a pupil named Zach, whom she began referring to as “cute film-history boy.”
Cute film-history boy had a girlfriend on the time, nonetheless. Adair, ’21, whose final identify then was Marshall, was respectful of his standing however remained smitten. They discovered themselves engaged on the identical manufacturing when he talked about that he might use a trip house to Shoreline after rehearsal. Adair shortly volunteered, mentioning that Zach’s northerly abode was on her manner house.
She didn’t inform him that she lived in Queen Anne.

Ashley Adair and her husband, Zach Adair, match in pink aprons outdoors Beguiled Books.
In 2007, they started relationship, and in 2011, Zach and Ashley Adair grew to become husband and spouse. Appearing was their ardour, with every partner touchdown elements at established native playhouses and dealing day jobs to finance their shared dream.
One Saturday night time, the Adairs have been strolling to a efficiency at Wallingford’s Stone Soup Theater when each have been struck by a automobile in a crosswalk. Every suffered mind trauma that made remembering strains troublesome, so the couple deserted performing and pursued much less romantic profession paths – Zach as an IT specialist, Ashley in human assets.
Ashley ultimately launched her personal H.R. consultancy and earned an MBA from the College of Washington’s Foster Faculty of Enterprise in 2021. Seattle was nonetheless within the throes of the COVID pandemic, so Adair’s commencement ceremony befell in, as she put it, “a pleasant car parking zone.”
In 2022, her dad, having survived a bout with most cancers and an arm amputation in earlier phases of his life, died instantly from a coronary heart assault. His dying had a cataclysmic impact on Adair, whose human assets profession had grown much less satisfying. Life was too brief to be lived with out ardour. She determined to return to grandma’s stacks.
On Halloween weekend of 2023, Adair bought a small cargo trailer with the intent of turning it into Seattle’s first cell romance bookstore. She dubbed it Beguiled Books and opened on the day after Valentine’s Day 2025 on the Columbia Metropolis Evening Market.
Giant crowds, largely girls, flocked to the tiny trailer for “blind-date books,” which includes clients being bought books of Adair’s selecting based mostly on sure traits they specify. Adair had successful on her arms – or, extra precisely, hitched to the again of her white Chevy truck.