There you are! #2
Luna roughly swallowed back the lump in her throat.
She’d kept all such thoughts and feelings firmly restrained over the last four weeks; she wasn’t about to let them overwhelm her now.
Instead, she stretched out her hand and stroked one of the violet’s velvety leaves with the tip of her finger.
“I think I’ve convinced her to give it another go.
I don’t want her to miss out on all the fun with her friends, after all.
And I’ve promised to come back and fetch her home this evening.
Surely the Lamberts won’t begrudge one violet from all these displays. ”
Mr. Grimm lifted the little plant to eye-level, gazing earnestly into its purple faces. “Does that sound good to you?”
The violet nodded its blossoms.
Her employer looked at her. While Luna could do nothing about the sudden flood of heat rushing up her cheeks, she prided herself on the way she managed to hold his gaze steadily. Nothing to give away how those wretched butterflies insisted on performing twirls and tumbles in her middle.
“And where does this little one belong?” he asked.
Using the table’s edge for support, Luna pulled herself up and pointed to the middle of the table where a large display dominated.
The empty space where the violet was meant to be was obvious enough, and the other flowers all waved their leaves and fluttered their petals, beckoning to their lost sister.
Mr. Grimm rose gracefully from his crouch and carried the rogue violet back to the arrangement. It nestled snugly into place, framed by lisianthus and peonies. With a final little sigh and flutter, all the blossoms went still, becoming exactly like any ordinary floral decor.
Mr. Grimm took a step back, his brow stern as he inspected the arrangement. Then he turned his gaze to Luna again. “Is that the last of it?”
“All except your bunch there,” she answered, indicating the display he’d just hauled up from the garage.
“Ah, yes. One moment.”
Returning to reclaim the pot, Mr. Grimm heaved it up with a slight strain of those delightful forearm muscles, and .
. . Luna swallowed back the knot in her throat and ducked her head.
But she watched him nonetheless from under her eyelashes as he carried the display to the bride-and-groom table at the head of the hall and set it down on the floor in front of the table, right in the middle.
The effect worked wonderfully, creating a point of focus.
Mr. Grimm adjusted the arrangement of a few blossoms then moved to stand beside Luna.
He swiped that recalcitrant lock of hair back from his forehead with one hand, then folded his arms over his chest. Luna, shoving her own hands deep into the pockets of her bib apron, surveying the room with him.
And they were just two colleagues. Together at the end of a difficult assignment, inspecting the fruits of their labors. Nothing more.
“Do you know, Miss Talbot,” he said, interrupting the silence at length, “I do believe we’ve gone and done it.”
Luna felt the tight line of her mouth soften into a smile.
Mr. Grimm had been resistant to taking on such a large, last-minute commission.
It had been quite the undertaking, as Miss Lambert’s wedding, though committed in haste, must nonetheless be a spectacle of elegance, affluence, and affectation on a scale to satisfy the dictates of Society.
Not an easy feat to accomplish. Garden had been hard at work each day, producing bounteous blooms, which Mr. Grimm had harvested in wheelbarrow-sized loads.
Luna had striven to craft these into beautiful arrangements, working overtime, pushing right up to the very edge of her curfew each evening. Even then, it was nip and tuck.
In the end, they’d managed it, however. Luna suspected that Mr. Grimm had stayed up through the night before to finish things in time for this morning’s delivery.
He did look a bit hollow-eyed just now. She wished she could have stayed to help him, but .
. . no. She’d taken care to make her curfew every night.
No getting caught out after-hours. No temptation to stay on at the shop.
To revisit that moment behind the counter on a pile of quilts.
No remembering the warm pressure of her employer’s chest pressed against hers. The beat of his heart. The sensation of his fingers tangled in her hair. Or the strange timbre of his voice when he murmured, “What kind of villain would I have to be to—”
“Yes, Mr. Grimm,” Luna said with a sharp lift of her chin, her voice a bit too bright. “I do believe we have. Even Mrs. Lambert must be satisfied with our efforts!”
Mr. Grimm shot her a sideways glance. “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that score.”
Luna snorted softly. Eugenia’s mother had been an interesting client, to be sure. “Well, one may always hope for miracles, mayn’t one?”
He acknowledged this with a grunt before adding, “Your arranging skills would certainly impress most women of discernment.”
“And yours as well, Mr. Grimm. You did make all those boutonnieres for the groomsmen, after all. Quite exemplary samples of their kind, I must say!”
His cheeks pinked faintly at her words. “Why, thank you, Miss Talbot.”
Luna studied her employer covertly from under her lashes. Was he really so pleased by such a little nothing of a compliment? He, who, not that long ago, was a great and powerful Dark Sorcerer, a figure of tremendous dread across the nations? The idea was ludicrous.
It was also, well . . . kind of adorable, actually.
Turning abruptly on heel, Luna fetched her coat and hat from where she’d draped them over the back of a chair.
“We’d best be off,” she said. “The wait staff keeps shooting us evil looks, like they think we mean to make off with their cutlery or something.” She wrinkled her nose at a particularly severe-looking waiter, lurking in one of the side doorways.
He bristled, chest swelling beneath the gold buttons of his militant-looking white uniform.
Mr. Grimm snatched up his own jacket, and the two of them exited the banquet hall and made their way to the back stairs.
While her boss had made use of the service elevator to haul the larger displays up to the banquet hall, Luna had carried her own smaller bundles up the long way.
She simply couldn’t bear the confines of an elevator cage, even the large service elevator, which had ample room for hauling big pieces of furniture or equipment up and down the many levels of The King’s Crown Hotel.
Mr. Grimm, understanding her distaste for closed-in spaces, did not question her choice, even if the result was aching calves and a sweaty brow.
He joined her in the stairwell now, walking on the outside so that she might avail herself of the rail.
And so they performed a silent spiral down, down, down to the garage.
And there was no denying the friction in the air between them.
The only friction here is on your part, Luna reminded herself firmly, watching her feet as she moved down the steps. He’s perfectly at ease! You’re the one with a problem.
There was a time, perhaps, when she’d believed that maybe Mr. Grimm felt a little something toward her.
But that was before. Before she’d walked in on the shocking sight of her employer with his hand clasping her roommate’s thigh and his mouth pressed against her roommate’s neck.
Whatever illusions she’d begun to cherish were well and truly shattered in that moment.
A too-familiar sourness burned in Luna’s gut.
Her grip on the rail tightened. Ever since that wretched evening, Mr. Grimm had taken such pains to put distance between them.
He spent most of his time out in Garden, leaving her to manage the shop on her own save in those busiest hours, when an influx of customers prevented the two of them from interacting in any case.
The 2 o’clock tea break had fallen by the wayside.
Luna no longer bothered even to close the shop when the hour rolled around; she’d found that solitary tea breaks were no longer to her taste.
And so time slipped away, and her departure from Ballycastle drew near.
Just three more days, she reminded herself in the privacy of her mind. Three more days. You can do it.
She’d already packed her bags and written a note of apology to Bryony.
She couldn’t tell her roommate in advance.
No one could know. No one could even suspect.
But she hated to leave Bryony in a lurch and had budgeted enough to leave half-a-month’s rent from her meager savings to help cover until a new garret resident could be found.
Otherwise, she’d scraped together everything she had and purchased a nonrefundable, one-way ticket to Bromley Bay.
She would board the 4 o’clock mail train on Wednesday morning, and that would be that.
Where she would stay or how she would live once she reached Bromley Bay, well . . . she couldn’t think so far ahead. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d remained far too long in Ballycastle, let herself become too comfortable, too complacent. She must get away from here. Before it was too late.
The stairwell came to an abrupt end at a heavy industrial door.
Mr. Grimm pushed it open with his shoulder and held it for Luna.
She stepped through into the parking garage, surprised by the unexpected warmth in the air.
A non-descript van sat in the designated vendor parking space.
Mr. Grimm had rented it specifically to haul their creations from The Arcane Bouquet to the hotel.
Perhaps, if he started taking more sizable commissions like this one, he would purchase a van of his own.
Luna smiled a little at the thought. She liked to picture Mr. Grimm, motoring up and down the city streets, the yellow Arcane Bouquet logo emblazoned on the doors, proclaiming the freshest flowers in Eastside Ballycastle.