37. Brooke
37
brOOKE
“You have received a weird-smelling package,” Tara informs me. I am bending over a table, painting a canvas backdrop for the tea party scene.
I glance up at her. “Say what now? I wonder why someone would send a package to me at the theater.”
She hands me a brown-paper-wrapped package, and I examine it, puzzled. There’s a faint whiff of something burnt rising up from it.
There’s a printed address label with my name and title, and the theater’s address on it, but there’s no return address.
I open it with an Exacto knife and find a package of burned cookies inside. At least, I think they were once cookies. They’ve now been baked to inedible little bricks. There’s only one person who could have sent me this.
“What is that?” Tara asks, puzzled.
“Secret admirer,” I say, and toss it into the trash.
The next day, I get a delivery from my favorite deli. It’s mac and cheese. The label on the container says Susie McGillicuddy .
The day after that, I get a stapler. I smile in reminiscence. He remembered. That happened on the second day I worked for him.
The day after that, I’m wearing paint-splattered jeans and a T-shirt, dabbing away at a canvas, when Tara walks up holding a manila envelope.
“It is the no-return-address stalker again. This is getting creepy,” she informs me. “Although the mac and cheese was pretty tasty.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You should know; you stole half of it before you gave it to me.”
She shrugs and gives me an innocent smile. “I thought it might be poisoned, and I was willing to take the risk of being your royal taster.”
I give her a skeptical look. “Oh, the sacrifices you make for your friends.”
“Well, open it up, let’s see what today has brought us,” she says, shaking the envelope. I dip my brush in my jar of brush cleaner, shake it off, set it down, and take the envelope from her. I open it up and pull out a single sheet of paper. It’s been designed to look like the front page of the Green Acres Gazette .
There’s a picture of Lucas on it under a headline reading, Jasper Whitfield Admits All . The caption underneath the photo says, “I’m a first-class idiot,” confesses the famous property developer.
Tara leans in, reading over my shoulder. “Who’s Jasper Whitfield, and why is his name under your former boss’s picture? Also, where is Green Acres?”
I smile. “Private joke.”
Tara glances at me. “Hey, that’s the first time I’ve seen you look genuinely happy in... well, a very long time. So it must be a pretty good joke.”
The sound of throat-clearing makes me look up.
Lucas is walking towards us, improbably handsome as ever, holding a gym bag and a wary, hopeful smile. The theater’s closed to the public because we don’t have a matinee on weekdays, but Lucas can talk his way into anywhere.
“Hello, Susie,” he says when he reaches us.
“Susie Who? What am I missing here?” Tara says in confusion.
“First-class idiot?” I arch an eyebrow. “I think you’re giving yourself too much credit.”
“I agree. And I have come to grovel. I hope you’ve got some free time, because this is going to take a while.”
“Ooh,” Tara squeals. “We get to watch him grovel! This is going to be better than the Dr. Phil show.”
I give her a reproving look. “I’m afraid this is for private audiences only.”
“Aw, come on,” she groans.
“I will recount it to you later in excruciating detail.”
“Must you?” Lucas wonders.
“Yes, sorry, it’s the law of the besties. I tell her details that would make you blush.”
“Fine, I’ll leave, but only because you called me your bestie,” she pouts, and stomps off.
I wait until she leaves the room and shuts the door before I turn back to Lucas. I let my eyes rove over his face greedily, drinking him in. The curve of his lips, the angle of his cheekbones, the tiny mole right by his hairline... I missed them all.
He sets the gym bag down on the table, takes a deep breath, and looks me in the eye. “I made a stupid mistake out of cowardice.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I am not my father, and I was pulling excuses out of my ass because I’ve never been in love before, and it terrifies me.”
“Well, I can be pretty scary.” I lean on the table.
Lucas eyebrows lift. “You’re being surprisingly calm about this.”
“I knew you’d come to your senses eventually. ”
“You did?” He stares at me in shock.
I smile smugly. “Of course I did. You may be the god of all business, but I am the genius when it comes to matters of the heart. Okay, not genius, but smarter than you in this particular area.” I shrug. “I was a little surprised it took you so long, but you’ve always been slow to see reason.”
“Okay, okay...” He nods to himself. “Well, we’ve skipped over what I thought would be a very lengthy back and forth. So now you’re going to torture me emotionally before you finally say yes, you forgive me?”
I tap my lower lip with my index finger, pretending to consider it. “Well, let’s see. Have you suffered over the last couple of months since you dumped me?”
His face twists up in a grimace. “Oh, my God, yes. I have missed you constantly. I’ve barely slept. I’ve been miserable. I’ve made everyone at work miserable.”
“I believe it. Have you berated yourself for being a fool?”
“All the time. Every minute of every hour.”
I nod. “I think that’s sufficient suffering on your part. I do sort of love you back, a whole lot. I don’t actually want to see you miserable.”
His eyes mist over. “You are way, way too good for me.”
“I know, right?” I grab him by the hand.
He squeezes my hand and then reaches up and strokes my face. “God, I missed seeing you. Waking up next to you. Feeling you,” he says, his voice husky with emotion.
“Eating my toast?”
“Not that. Unless eating your toast is in fact a pervy metaphor, in which case, yes, I missed that very much.” He trails his finger down my cheek, leaving a trail of hot arousal burning along my flesh.
I smile up at him. “I will allow you to make up for lost time. Just tell me one thing. We really were in Green Acres, weren’t we? ”
Lucas smiles wryly. “Yes, we were. With Serena Lovelace, and Brenda, and Miguel Hernandez, and Brenda’s brother Christopher, and Ruby, and Homicidal Henry, and all of those people. And we ate at Velma’s and fell in a lake. Also, there was a highly improbable earthquake that nobody but us felt.”
“Thank you,” I say fervently. “I just keep thinking that maybe I lost my mind and imagined everything, because that’s easier to believe than what actually happened. Do you think about them a lot? Do you miss them?”
“Oddly, yes, I kind of do. I’d rather be here than there, because this is my home and this is where I belong, but Green Acres started to grow on me after a while.”
“Me too,” I sigh. “But at least we left everyone in a good place. By the way, what’s in the bag?”
He lets go of my hand and unzips the bag with a flourish. “It is my ‘win Brooke back’ kit, designed by Serena Lovelace. I consulted her on how to win you back. Also, she said to apologize for not answering you right away, and she wants to see you soon. She gave me her number to pass along to you. She said she was just so freaked out that she was in denial when she first got back and didn’t want to be reminded about the whole thing.”
“Understandable. It was a pretty freaky experience.” I reach into the bag and pull out a notebook. It has a giant hand-drawn heart on the cover, with my name and his name inside it and an arrow stabbed through it.
I arch an eyebrow at him. “What’s this?”
“She said I had to create this book, put our names on it, and write fifty heartfelt love poems to you.” He grimaces. “She said that it’s a romance novel trope.”
Lucas Sheffield, writing poetry. “Are they any good?”
“No, they’re all terrible.”
“Yes, that tracks. What else?”
He pulls out a notepad. “I had to draw fifty pictures of you and I together. I’m going to need to get them framed and rent a gallery and put them all on the wall.” He starts flipping through the notebook. “They’re not very good either. I’m afraid the exhibition will be a flop.”
"Oh, Serena.” I shake my head. “You evil mastermind, you.”
Lucas looks at me in confusion. “What do you mean?”
I dig through the bag. “What else is in here? Kneepads?”
He nods. “I need to get down on my knees and do an hour-long soliloquy about how I wronged you.”
“Please tell me you didn’t write one yet.”
He winces in apology. “It’s been crazy busy at work, and then there were all the poems and pictures. I’m working on it.” And then he flashes me an evil grin. “I also can think of other reasons I’d be on my knees in front of you for an hour.”
A hot flush of arousal burns through me.
“I’m not going to ask what the sign billboard is for. Lucas, you don’t need any of this. I know you love me. Yes, it hurt when you walked away, and I was really angry at you for a hot minute, but I knew you’d see reason once you finished panicking.”
“But Serena... But she said...” He looks at me in confusion. Then his face twists into a grimace of exasperation. “You mean she was just messing with me?”
I burst into laughter. “I’m afraid so.”
He groans aloud. “You mean I should cancel the billboard and also the blimp advertising?”
I clap my hand to my forehead. “Oh, my God, no. I mean yes. Cancel it. Lucas! How could you believe all that?”
His eyes blaze with anger. “Because I never suspected that she had anything resembling a sense of humor. That evil wench. I swear to God I’ll find a way to get back at her.”
“Why bother? We’re together. You have me. That should be enough.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “I have you. ”
“You have me,” I nod.
He reaches out for me. “I want you for the rest of my life.”
“Is that so? Sure that’s long enough?”
“Yep. That is more than enough, believe me.”
“Good, because I feel the same way.” I wink before stepping back.“Just a minute,” I say. I hurry over to the door and quickly lock it.
Then I return with a wicked grin. “I think we should take those kneepads for a test drive.”