by Bella Andre
“No one has ever bought me flowers before.” Her words yanked him from his fantasy, and he realized she was smiling shyly at him. “Thank you, they’re beautiful.”
Not nearly as beautiful as you are.
Selfishly, he was glad that he was the first man ever to give her flowers. After he and Ruby headed back to California, maybe Cassie would think of him whenever she saw daisies.
Because he already knew he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking of her.
She filled a tall glass container with water for the flowers. “How did you know Gerbera daisies are my favorite?”
He very nearly punched his fist in the air at having gotten it right. “Everything you make is so bright and colorful—I wanted to find flowers that matched what you do with candy.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t quite read. “Once I’ve put these in water, I have to show you something.” She was both efficient and delicate as she arranged the flowers in the makeshift vase. Then she wiped her hands and reached for one of the binders on the corner of the counter. She flipped through a few pages, before turning the open page so that he could see it.
He looked at the photo, then up at her in surprise. “You made a confection that looks just like the bouquet.”
She nodded. “It’s almost as though you had seen it and asked the florist to put together the same custom bouquet.”
Flynn had never put much stock in the idea of being so in tune with another person that you could read their mind. And yet, now that Cassie had shown him this picture…
“What did you make this for?”
“Last year, we had a pretty rough winter. I couldn’t afford to buy flowers every week, so I decided I’d make a more permanent display.” She laughed as she added, “More like semi-permanent, since I kept popping the petals into my mouth. One day I realized I’d deadheaded all of my candy flowers.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you, Cassie.” When her laughter fell away, he realized how serious his statement sounded. “I mean that in a good way.”
“I’ve never met anyone like you either.” Though she wasn’t smiling as she said it, she added, “I mean that in a good way too.”
“You shouldn’t.” His words were low. Rough.
“Something you’re going to learn about me, if you haven’t figured it out already, is that I don’t appreciate being told what to do.” For someone so cheerful, she had a spine of steel. “I like you, Flynn. So you’re just going to have to get used to it.” With that, she gathered up the candy pieces that had scattered on the counter and went back to work. “Now, should we get started with your character interview stuff so that you can nail your new screenplay?”
He was still a good half-dozen steps behind her. Still trying to process how she could possibly think so highly of him. Before now, he’d only ever gotten points for his screenwriting skill—and if he was going to take it into the gutter, for his skills in the bedroom. But not only had Cassie never seen one of his movies, he’d come nowhere near making her cry out with pleasure.
And yet…she liked him anyway.
Tonight, he’d surely be up pondering this. But for now, she was right—he needed to get to work if he was going to have a prayer of making his deadline. It was time to start his character research.
The prettiest, sweetest, sexiest research he’d ever had the good fortune to do.
“Sure, let’s get started.” He sat on a stool and pulled out his notebook. “When I’m trying to figure out a character, I ask the same three questions about them: What has happened to turn their world upside down? What are they afraid of? And why don’t they think they can conquer that fear to set their world back to rights?”
He let himself enjoy watching her work. She had a dusting of cocoa powder across her cheek, her hair was falling out of its ponytail, and her lips looked like she’d been chewing on them.
In other words, she was perfect.
“What has happened to turn your world upside down, Cassie?”
“Nothing.” She laughed at her lightning-quick response. “I warned you—no skeletons. No secrets. Apart from dating a few losers, like most women my age, thankfully there’s been nothing truly bad in my life.”
Though he wasn’t surprised by her answer—he was more glad than anything, because he couldn’t stand the thought of her being hurt—he said, “How about we try this from another angle? When was the last time you cried?” And if it turned out that some jerk had hurt her, he’d personally go hunt the guy down and tear him limb from limb.
She bit her lip, thinking. “If you really want to know, I watched Trolls again, and it made me cry.”
“You did?” He thought back to the plot. “Why?”
“Because when the grumpy troll finally opens up his heart to save the happy troll—when he risks facing his own demons for her—it is just so beautiful.”
His brain spun in circles as he tried to follow. “I want to make sure I have this straight: The last time you were sad, it was because you were happy?”
She gave him an I-told-you-so look. “Using me as a character reference is already driving you bonkers, isn’t it?”
Maybe he really was going a little crazy. Because instead of being irritated that he couldn’t quite understand her responses to his questions, he was more intrigued than ever.
By her unshakable cheeriness.
By her brilliant talent with candy as she created a masterpiece before his eyes.
Not to mention the breathtakingly hot sight of her gorgeous curves the previous morning. He wouldn’t forget the sight of those anytime soon.
In his previous life—which was what he’d started calling Los Angeles in his head—he would have scoffed at the entire idea of happy tears.
Tears of rage. Tears of sorrow. Tears of pain. Those were all things he could wrap his head around, emotions he regularly wrote about in his screenplays.
But tears of joy? Tears of laughter? Tears born of so much happiness that they couldn’t be contained?
It was entirely new ground for Flynn. Ground he wasn’t quite sure how to navigate, but knew he needed to anyway. Otherwise, his stories would forever remain one-dimensional. Obvious. Built to a cookie-cutter pattern.
No wonder he’d had to throw out his draft. At long last, it was time to work outside of the box, time to push himself into new territory.
“What else makes you happy-cry?” he asked.
“A perfect sunset. My mom’s slow-cooked corned beef and cabbage. When my entire family is in town and we’re all laughing together. Every time I hear about one of my cousins getting engaged, or having a baby. I could keep listing things forever.” She smiled. “Your turn.”
He shook his head. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Come on.” She looked up from her candy Town Hall as she urged him to think harder about his answer. “Something must move you enough to bring tears to your eyes.”
She was right. His knee-jerk response hadn’t been honest. It was more that he’d been telling lies like that for so long, he’d come to believe them himself.
If he wanted to write a better screenplay, it might not be enough to dig deep into Cassie’s mind, heart, and past.
He might have to dig into his own too.
And then it hit him. “The first time Ruby put her arms around me. Knowing she’d given me her trust.” He felt his eyes getting damp just thinking about it. “I knew I loved her. With everything I am, forever and ever.”
“She knows a good man when she sees him.” Cassie’s eyes looked a little glassy now too. “She loves you so much, Flynn. Just as much as you love her.”
He was glad when one of the gumdrops rolled across the stainless-steel worktop toward him, because it gave him a few moments to reach for it, pop it into his mouth, and pull himself together.
He picked up his pen and wrote happy tears in his notebook. Research had always been one of the easier parts of his job—talking with a cop, interviewing a chef, poring over documents
in a library. It had certainly never involved his emotions. And no subject had ever turned his questions back on him.
It was why he was stalling, rather than moving directly to his second question about what she was afraid of. He wasn’t a good enough liar to believe that Cassie wasn’t going to ask him what he was afraid of.
Unsurprisingly, she must have sensed him warring with himself, because without any prompting, she answered his follow-up question. “I’m afraid of something bad happening to my parents, to my siblings, to my cousins and their kids, to my friends.” She shook her head. “And since I haven’t had much practice dealing with difficult things, I’m afraid that if someone I love did end up hurt in a terrible way, I’d crumble.”
“You wouldn’t.” He knew it with every fiber of his being. “I sure as hell hope everyone important to you stays healthy and happy, but if something bad did happen, you’d be their pillar of strength. Always there with a smile, with laughter that they desperately need, and with the fortitude to keep moving forward even when it might feel easier just to stop.”
She had stopped working and was staring at him now. “How can you know that?”
“Same way you always know exactly how I feel about Ruby. In some ways, you’re a complete mystery to me, with your happy-crying and your endless love for little animated trolls.” Just saying it made his mouth quirk up at the corner. “And still, I get you, Cassie.”
“I get you too, don’t I, Flynn?”
“You might be just about the only person who does.”
CHAPTER TEN
Cassie was stunned. Not only by the direction in which their conversation had gone, but also by how Flynn seemed to feel their connection as deeply as she did.
Her attraction to him might be one-sided, but at least their budding friendship wasn’t.
“Are you going to ask me your third question?” she said.
“No.” He closed his notebook.
“Why not?”
“Because I already know that there’s no fear you wouldn’t be able to conquer.”
He was wrong, though.
She was afraid right now.
Afraid he would see that she had already gone beyond simply wanting to be his friend.
Afraid of what would happen if he ever realized just how badly she longed for him to pull her into his arms and kiss her.
“Besides,” he continued, “I’d much rather you showed me how to do that.”
Her brain had short-circuited somewhere between the moment he’d said she was the only one who understood him and when she started having wild fantasies about kissing him. “How to do what?”
“Build a masterpiece out of candy.”
She looked down and realized that even though her head was muddled and befuddled, her hands were still working on the outer walls of the Town Hall building.
“You want to help me build this?”
“I would. But only if I won’t get in your way.”
She smiled at him. “I’d love the help, Flynn.”
Before she could say anything else, her phone buzzed. When she pulled it out of her back pocket, she saw a text from her brother Rory.
I need your help with something. Can you come by the studio as soon as you get a chance?
Cassie had been worrying about her brother for a while now. Whatever he needed, she would always be there for him. So though it was terrible timing when Flynn seemed to be opening up to her a little bit, she texted back to let Rory know she’d be there in fifteen minutes.
“Can we take a rain check on the candy-building tutorial until tomorrow? Rory needs me to help him with something.”
“Of course.” Flynn got off the stool and slung his computer bag over his shoulder. “I’ve taken up enough of your time today as it is.”
“No.” She reached for his hand and wrapped her fingers around his. But though a charge shot through her from that one simple touch, she didn’t let go. Not when she wanted so badly for him to know one thing. “I loved spending time with you today.”
The next thing she knew, he was tugging her closer, then kissing her on the cheek. “I loved it too.”
And then he was gone, leaving her staring after him with her hand on her cheek.
Rory’s follow-up text of the thumbs-up icon buzzed her back into motion. She took off her apron, washed the sugar from her hands, loaded several small boxes of candy and baked goods into an oversized bag, and headed out.
Her brother’s studio was a couple of blocks farther from the water in a converted warehouse. Eight artists and makers shared the space, which was filled with their individual studios and one large combined working area. Cassie loved to drop by periodically to see what they were working on.
She particularly loved Zara’s work designing frames for eyeglasses. Zara was the newest artist in the building, and Cassie had immediately struck up a friendship with her. Before heading to Rory’s furniture workshop, which took up the rear of the building, Cassie popped by Zara’s studio.
“Hi, Zara. I hope I’m not disturbing you,” she said when her friend looked up. Zara had on a pair of thick-framed green and blue glasses, and from what Cassie could see, she was working on yet another brilliant colorway for a new style of frame. “I thought I’d bring over a refill of your favorites before you ran out.” Cassie reached into her bag and pulled out a box filled with multicolored fruit marmalade sweets.
“You must be a mind reader.” Zara got up to give Cassie a hug, then happily accepted the candy box. “I was about to eat my last ones today. It was literally giving me heart palpitations.”
Cassie laughed. “I know how busy you are.” With every pair of custom glasses Zara sold, she gave away a pair. As she was still growing her business and doing all her own manufacturing and shipping, at present there were easily two dozen boxes on the table in the corner that looked ready to go out. “Anytime you need more sugar from me, you should take a page from Rory’s book—he just texted and said he needed my help with something, which I’m almost positive is actually a request for candy and cupcakes.”
Zara’s smile fell away. “Your brother should get his own damned candy if he needs it so badly.”
Hmmm. From what Cassie could tell, there had been sparks between Zara and Rory from the beginning. Sparks that neither of them had any intention of acknowledging. On the surface, it seemed they didn’t much like each other, but Cassie had never seen her brother react to a woman in quite the way he did with Zara, even with the serious girlfriend he used to have. Almost as though Zara had gotten under his skin…and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“What did he do now?” Cassie asked.
“He’s been stomping around this morning like a bear with a thorn up his—”
“Cassie?” Rory suddenly appeared in the doorway, interrupting their conversation. “Why didn’t you come straight back to my workshop?”
Before Cassie could respond, Zara said, “Because your sister is a nice person who stops to say hello to a friend, instead of dashing to your side every time you request her presence from your throne.”
He scowled at Zara. “Still pissed I drank the rest of the coffee, huh?”
She scowled back. “The coffee? You think that’s the only reason I’d be pissed at you? How about when you—” She broke off in mid-sentence. “Sorry, Cassie. You don’t need to be in the middle of this. I can tear your brother apart later.”
“Is that a promise?” he drawled.
Zara gave him the one-fingered salute, then turned back to Cassie. “Thanks again for the candy. You’re the best.”
Rory’s muscles and good looks tended to turn most women’s knees to mush. Only Zara was a holdout when it came to Cassie’s brother.
Then again, could the sparring simply be her way of keeping her real feelings for him at bay? Because if the two of them started dating, it would be absolutely glorious to have a woman like Zara, who didn’t take nonsense from anyone, to keep Rory in line.
As Cassie and Ro
ry walked together to his studio, she debated whether to say anything about her brother’s rather sparky repartee with Zara. But given that she hadn’t appreciated his weighing in on her situation with Flynn, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself. For now anyway. For all his bravado, she wasn’t sure Rory was totally happy.
Could Zara help with that? And was he even ready for a new relationship?
Still mulling those questions over, Cassie asked, “What are you working on today?”
“My client asked for a contemporary inlay pattern, which I’ve sketched out.” He’d done a great job of creating a twelve-by-twelve mosaic that could have come straight out of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sketchbook. “But when I started cutting and laying out the various shades and shapes of wood, it didn’t look right.”
She studied the pattern for a while. “What if you swapped these golden strips for the dark red squares?”
He shifted the pieces around, then nodded. “That’s it.” He grinned at her. “I’ve been staring at this for days, when I should have just called you.”
“Happy to help.”
“About that. I asked Rafe to do a little digging into your new friend.”
“You called Rafe?” She was the one scowling now. “That’s low, even for you. How dare you ask our cousin to dig through Flynn’s business?”
“It’s not all bad,” Rory replied, as though that got him off the hook for being a prying, nosy, pain-in-the-butt big brother. “Turns out Flynn has given a boatload of money to children’s charities over the years.”
“And you’re surprised?” She was furious now. “Flynn is a good man. Which you would have realized if you’d bothered to speak civilly to him at dinner last night.”
“Look, I’m sorry if you think this is none of my business—”
“It is none of your business!” Rory had gone too far this time. Way too far. “I would never dream of hiring a private investigator to investigate the women you go out with.”
Rory’s eyebrows went up. “So you admit you are going out with him.”