by Staci Hart
I hummed behind smiling lips, making my way through the shop. Ivy smiled up at me from an arrangement she was working on—succulents, ivy, flowers in water tubes, all planted in a glass apothecary jar. One of our living arrangements I’d come up with last year, which had become an instant success. Dean stood next to her as he sometimes did—especially when he delivered supplies a couple times a week—a human brick wall with a smile as shiny as Las Vegas, his big hand resting in the small of her back.
“Well, aren’t you chipper this morning?” Dean said.
“I know!” I answered.
Ivy shook her head, but she smiled broadly. “Gee, I figured all that manual labor would have you moving a little slower than this.” She gestured to all of me.
“I can’t help it. It’s window day!” I cheered. “Can you even imagine what it’s going to look like when I’m done with it?”
“I honestly can’t,” she admitted, “but knowing you, it’s going to be brilliant.”
“Come here and hop into my pocket so you can remind me of that all day.”
Ivy laid a hand on her belly. “I’m not fitting in anybody’s pocket anytime soon.”
With a cluck of his tongue, Dean pulled her into his side. “Just a couple more months, and I’ll have two pocket-sized girls.”
“Couple more months,” she grumbled. “She’d better be really cute.”
“She will be, ‘cause she’s gonna look like you.”
She nudged him but gave him the sweetest glance, just a flick of her eyes that conveyed her utter adoration. “Flatterer.”
I chuckled, resisting the urge to grab her around what was left of her waist and waltz her around the room. Things were looking up and looking bright. Everything I needed for the window installation had been delivered, and today, I’d finally see what Luke had been working on in whatever spare time he’d mustered.
I glanced behind Ivy, looking for him.
“He’s in storage,” she said with a smirk.
“Thanks, Ivy.” I beamed, pressing a quick kiss to her cheek as I bounced away again. “Bye, Dean!” I called over my shoulder as I pushed through the doors to the greenhouse.
The sound of an electric saw buzzed through the greenhouse, and as I descended the ramp to the basement, I saw Luke, his back to me and eyes down. That back, that shirtless back in all its muscular glory, was on display, already glistening with sweat at eight in the morning. I wondered how long he’d been here. But then, he’d been here every morning before me.
It was a new side of him—the responsibility, not his massive back—one that I was impressed by. One that inspired him to rise early and stay late, fueled by nothing more than his excitement and vision. His duty and dependability.
Extraordinary how it changed him.
Somehow, he’d gotten more handsome in the last seventy-two hours. Someway, when he spoke, I didn’t have to fight the urge to stuff moss in his mouth or shove his face in a pile of topsoil. It was probably because I’d decided to be his friend instead of assuming he was trying to sleep with me.
There was an enormous amount of relief in that. Not because I didn’t want to sleep with him. With him running around shirtless and using power tools, any hetero woman in her right mind would want to sleep with him.
No, it was because I didn’t know if I’d stop him if he did happen to make a move.
That was what I’d really been afraid of, I realized—my lack of will, given the assumption he wanted to make out with me.
You are such an egomaniac, I told myself with an eye roll.
By assuming he didn’t want to theoretically make out with me, I absolved myself from theoretically having to make out with him. And so, by taking the threat off the table, I’d cut my anxiety down by eighty-nine percent, thus easing my white-knuckle grip and generally making things more pleasant between us.
I thought that maybe, in time, Luke could make a great friend. And working with him was far easier than I’d imagined. I’d thought he’d fight me the whole way, be contrary as a rule, make it his personal mission to irritate me. But over the last few days, we’d found a rhythm. He came up with the ideas, and I figured out how we’d get it done. He took my direction without complaint and executed it with precision.
It was more creative fun than I’d had in years. And I was high on the feeling.
I stopped behind him, admiring the expanse of his back and shoulders with a giddy smile on my face. I tapped him on the shoulder, trying for cute.
He jumped six inches, the saw coming to a stop just as he wheeled around, the motion fast enough to nearly knock me over.
“Jesus, Tess. Didn’t anyone ever tell you never to sneak up on a man using power tools? I could have lost a finger.”
I flushed, laughing. “I’m sorry.”
He gave me a sideways smile. “No harm done. Just remember—I can’t make you things if I have no hands.”
I peered around him, looking for the crates. “Speaking of…”
Luke chuckled softly. “They’re over here. Come on, let me show you.”
He walked me over to the big worktable, and on top was one of the crates and my entire order of flowers, plus some things I hadn’t ordered but would match perfectly.
But my eyes were locked on the crate, and as I approached, he smiled, folding his tremendous arms across his chest. I didn’t even care how smug he looked.
He’d painted them a buttery, sunshiny yellow, lined them with moss, filled them with soil, topped them with chicken wire to hold the dirt in place. On the tops, he’d installed metal drawer pulls, two on each, to hang them by, I figured.
“The color is perfect, Luke.”
“It’ll match the other window. I found a whole box of drawer pulls and thought that’d be better than just using screw hooks. And I had another idea,” he said tentatively. I’d have called him nervous if I thought Luke was capable of the emotion. “Wait. Let me back up.”
He moved down the table, his hands disappearing behind the metal buckets full of waiting florals. And when he stepped back around it, my smile was wide enough to open up in a grin.
In each meaty fist was a rope, and at their ends was a board of wood as old as this establishment. It was worn and grooved, dry and etched with age. He’d made a swing.
“So when you said you’d make a flower cloud, I thought … what if we made a scene? The succulents, those can be sunshine. And this one can be rain. The cloud, the swing. In each, we could hang filler flowers in an arch like rays or rain—feverfew daisies for the succulents and purple sweet peas for the swing. Oh, and look.” He set the swing down to reach under the table, returning to view with an armful of rain boots.
The sizes varied, from men’s to women’s, big to small. Some had to be from the thirties or forties, the style both foreign and familiar, the shape of the toe, the craftsmanship of the buckles. All of them were worn, loved.
“We could set them up in the windowsill and fill them with flowers. Maybe ranunculus … have you walked through the greenhouse rows lately? It’s legitimately exploding.”
I reached for a boot, the feel of cool rubber under my hand as I inspected it with awe and appreciation. This boot had lived a lifetime, as had the components of the swing, of the crates he’d turned into planters for me.
For the shop, I corrected.
Emotion washed over me, my surprise and sentimentality over all he’d done overwhelming. “It … it’s perfect. Just perfect.”
He smiled, setting the boots on the table. “Man, I’m relieved. I figured you were going to hate it.”
I made a face. “Hate it? How could I possibly hate this?”
Luke scratched at his neck. “I dunno, Tess. I figured I’d screw it up somehow, especially since you didn’t weigh in on a lot of this. I changed your plan.”
“You adjusted my plan. Lucky for you, they’re good ideas,” I teased.
“I mean, don’t overdo it on the flattery or anything.”
“Thank you, Luke
,” I said quietly, my smile small and awed. “I could never hate this or anything you create. You, my friend, are truly talented and in ways I could never be. And I’m sorry I ever made you feel like I wouldn’t approve. I haven’t been myself lately. You … you tend to do that to me.” I snapped straighter, smiled wider. I’d said too much. “So please, go nuts anytime you want with zero concern for what I think.”
He watched me with his thoughts clicking behind his eyes, though they were otherwise hidden from me. “That’d be impossible. But thanks all the same.” I opened my mouth to respond, but he spoke first, changing the subject. “Now, what do you say we get started? I want to show Mom tomorrow. If we don’t, I’m pretty sure she’ll bust in here like the Kool-Aid man whether we like it or not. It’d blow our whole surprise.”
Our surprise, he’d said. My smile widened.
“All right. Let’s hang sheets in the window, just in case she decides she needs to take a walk.”
“Smart thinking. She’s up there, scheming—I swear I can practically hear her—but Jett’s got strict instructions to keep her still. If he has to watch another historical film, I think he’s going to go ballistic and start wearing a top hat and cravat and calling everyone madame.”
A laugh burst out of me. “How do you know what a cravat is?”
He shrugged. “He’s not the only one who’s had to keep Mom busy so someone else can make trouble. BBC makes for a great diversion,” he said, moving for a flat cart.
“What’s your favorite?” I asked, helping to load our haul onto the cart.
“I dunno.” He stacked one crate on another, then a third, and picked them all up like they were nothing. “I’ll tell you what I didn’t like—Poldark.”
“Really? I figured you’d relate to old Ross Poldark.”
He snorted, setting the crates down with a thunk. “Please. That guy’s a douchebag. The second he cheated on Demelza with Elizabeth, I was out. I played Candy Crush and half-listened to Mom fume through the rest of the seasons.”
One of my brows rose as I picked up one measly crate, which might as well have been a sack of bricks. “Look at that—Luke Bennet, the monogamist.”
“Elizabeth married some other dude instead of waiting for him to come back from the war!” he shot.
“She thought he was dead,” I argued.
He was mad, actually mad about it. “Fuck her. If she’d really loved him, she would have waited. And instead of writing her off for being the cold bitch she was, he pined after her like a teenager, even after he was married.” He made a noise. “Stupid asshole. Demelza gave him everything, that ungrateful shit.”
My amusement bubbled out of me by the way of my laughter, which surged when he aimed a solid pout at me.
“I’m not wrong,” he said petulantly.
“No,” I said around a laugh. “You’re not wrong.”
“Then what’s so funny?”
My mouth opened, looking for words as I moved another crate. “I’m just surprised is all.”
His arms folded, this time making him look like Paul Bunyan, with tree-trunk arms and brawny shoulders as he looked down at me. “That I watch historicals?”
“No, that you disapprove of him cheating on her.”
Oh, how his frown deepened, forming an expression of betrayal. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” I hedged, suddenly unsure of myself, “only that … well, I just didn’t think you were one to attach emotions to sex.”
“That is mighty presumptuous of you, Tess.”
“It’s just that you seem to really enjoy women,” I clarified, avoiding his eyes by keeping myself in motion.
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect them.” He picked up another stack of crates and loaded them a little harder than necessary. “If I’d nearly died in war and come home to find the girl I loved married to someone else—my dickface cousin named Francis, no less—I’d have been broken. But I would have gone on. Because if she’d loved me, she would have waited. And if I’d found someone who loved me like Demelza, I wouldn’t have looked back.”
I watched him stack the last crates with that pout still on his face, unable to reconcile the man who watched BBC with his mom and ranted about the love story and the guy I’d thought had zero regard for anyone’s feelings other than his own. Not that he did it on purpose. His head really was that far up his own ass.
Or so I’d thought.
“Well,” I started, grabbing a couple of buckets of flowers, “I’m with you. And when she punched him in his stupid slack jaw, I jumped off the couch and did a Herkie.”
“A what?” he asked on a laugh.
“A Herkie. You know, the cheerleading jump where your legs go like … like one of them sticks out and the other bends?”
He frowned. “I don’t get it.”
I sighed, setting the flowers down and taking a few steps back to get into a clear space. “Like this.”
I wound up and jumped, kicking my right leg out in front of me, toe pointed, and bending my left leg, putting my foot right by my ass. My hands punched out to the sides like Bruce Lee knocking out two drug lords at once.
He clapped when I hit the ground, and I curtsied, lifting invisible skirts.
“Thank you, thank you,” I said.
“Where’d you learn to do that? I don’t remember you being a cheerleader.”
“I wasn’t. Ivy taught me,” I said, picking up my buckets again as he grabbed the cart handle. “I used to help her, spot her and that sort of thing, and she showed me some stuff. That one was my favorite.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you shoulda made the squad.” Hewinked as he passed, and I followed him.
“Oh, I didn’t really have time. My mom … well, I’d just started taking care of my dad full-time. There wasn’t time for much else.”
He slowed, looking down at me as I caught up. “I imagine you didn’t have much pep either,” he said gently, quietly.
“No, not a lot of pep or cheer. Not to expend on a basketball game anyway. I spent that energy on flowers instead.”
He didn’t say anything for a second as we walked through the double doors and into our workspace, and neither did I. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, nor was it something I wanted to dwell on.
“Well, you did good on that, Tess. And look at you now—head of design and production at Longbourne Flower Shop.”
I chuckled, thankful he didn’t press. “What a fancy title. I’ll have to put that on my business cards.”
“You have business cards? Do they have your number on them?” he joked, waggling his brows at me.
I rolled my eyes. “No business cards.”
“If you did, would you give me one?”
“Probably not.”
“So there’s hope?”
I laughed, bumping him with my arm. But I didn’t answer.
I was a terrible liar.
The day went by in a blur, that kind of creative time warp that left you shocked when you looked up and it was dark out, the sort that had your stomach grinding on itself because you’d missed a meal. We ordered sandwiches, ate them sitting on tables across from each other in the storefront, feet dangling as we talked.
Luke and I worked around each other in a symphony with no sound. I planted the succulents and leafy plants, and he hung the frames and swing. I built the flower cloud with a wad of chicken wire, using wispy gray pampas grass like feathers, lavender heather, white wheat stalks, baby’s breath. It looked like a thundercloud hanging over that swing. Then we strung the filler flowers, hanging them upside down from frames Luke had whipped up like it was nothing. When I backed up, the flower heads made a pattern that looked like it was raining or sunshiny, depending on which installment we were looking at.
It was late as I put the finishing touches on it all. Luke had disappeared an hour before, but I’d barely noticed, my mind focused wholly on what I was doing. I stepped back to admire our work when I heard him approach.
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“What do you think?” I asked without looking, still smiling at the installments, hands on my hips.
“Damn,” he breathed. “It really is impressive when you step back and look at it all together. I can’t wait to see it from the outside. Especially when we hang these.”
My brows quirked as I turned. He’d put his shirt back on when the sun went down and the shop cooled off, much to my disappointment. But he was dusted with sawdust, and little flecks of wood stood out like snowflakes against the dense black of his hair.
In his hands were two signs, and he held them up one at a time, as they were too long to display at once. In a gorgeous handwritten script were the words rain and shine, carved out of the wood, which he’d left raw.
My jaw hit the ground. “Luke, did you … you didn’t make these, did you?”
“Yeah,” he answered, inspecting rain. “Do you like them?”
“Like them?” I took rain from him, my eyes combing over it. “They’re … they’re gorgeous. How the hell?” I asked myself, turning it over like I’d find proof of magic.
He shrugged like it was no big deal, casual and confident, like this was just an everyday, regular thing. “I drew it out, used the scroll saw. Didn’t take long, thirty minutes for each, since they were just fonts, no borders or anything.”
I turned to meet his eyes, blinking at him stupidly. “You drew this?”
“I mean, I used a font as a template, but yeah.”
“And then you just … cut it out?”
“That’s how it usually works,” he said on a laugh. “I would have painted them, but I didn’t know what color you wanted to do.”
“Turquoise,” I said without hesitation. “To match the door.”
“Got it. Be right back.” And with a smirk and a wink, he was walking away again, leaving me in the quiet shop.
Luke Bennet, my hero.
It wasn’t even right.
I swallowed the bitter pill that I’d been wrong about him as I walked to the swing and sat, gripping the rope. But the aftertaste of that wasn’t something I could rid myself of so easily.
I liked him. And I liked him enough to do something about it.
This was a dangerous realization, my teenage self screaming Don’t do it! like I was willingly stepping in front of a goddamn freight train. Because I’d been down this road once before, and though we had just been teenagers at the time, in moments like this, the wound stung like it was fresh.