17. Emma
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EMMA
I face down aisle five, so many things sticking out to me. I’m going to have to edit my thoughts if I’m to win this dare at all. My heart does this funny little flip-flopping thing, especially when Aaron texts, You’re cheating, aren’t you?
No , I send back.
I’m sending Fonda to make sure you haven’t started yet.
Sure enough, only ten seconds later, one of Aaron’s managers, a petite woman with icy blonde hair—Fonda—appears at the other end of aisle five. I raise both hands, one of which still holds my phone. “I’m assessing.”
She lifts her phone and says something into it. A look of distaste crosses her features, and she rolls her eyes as she says, “Aaron says that he’s starting in five seconds, and you can stand there and assess all you want, but the clock is ticking.”
“Fine,” I call to her.
She relays the message to Aaron, turns, and leaves. I’m still staring down the wrenches, screwdrivers, socket sets, and other tools I don’t even know the name of. “I can’t believe he’s charged me with arranging tools .”
But being bitter about it isn’t going to help me win. I start down the aisle, taking in the options for “blooms” and “stems” and “accents.”
After one pass, I then go down the aisle and make the selections for my metal bouquet. The way they clank makes me cringe, and once I have everything, I take it all into Aaron’s office. I thought he’d dare me to go through his desk and file everything.
As I take in the mess in his office, I realize that he’s actually been kind to task me with this tool bouquet. “Still,” I say as I peer down into the black shopping basket filled with silver metal. “I’m a florist, not MacGyver.”
The familiar scent of fresh cotton, sawdust, and Aaron’s cologne crowds into my nose, and it’s the best smell in the whole world.
I reach for his water jug, which he’s left behind, and it’s semi-heavy, so he didn’t drink all of his fluids today. “Naughty, naughty,” I say before I hurry out to the drinking fountain to empty it.
Back in the office, I position the jug to be the vase for my tool bouquet. I pick up the longest socket I could find, and that goes right in the middle. Of course, it doesn’t stand up, but by the time I’m finished arranging the other tools around it, that’ll be my center focus piece. And the cool thing about sockets is they have heads that poke out like a daffodil’s corona.
Every bouquet needs a tall, central focus, and that socket is mine. I spy a roll of duct tape sitting on Aaron’s desk, and I grab it. I hadn’t seen any tape in aisle five, despite what Aaron said, and I wonder if he’ll consider this cheating.
“Probably.” I smile just thinking about him, because I don’t really care if I win this dare. I just want him to come back and take me to dinner.
I rip off pieces of tape and fold them to make the petals of the daffodil. They’re not yellow, but with the dark gray and the shiny silver, I actually think it’s a new breed of daffodil.
My florist brain starts to kick in, and I imagine the wrenches as stems, the screwdrivers as filler accessories, especially the ones with thick handles, as they help keep all the other tools in place. I put duct tape “leaves” on the straight screwdriver tips, and before I know it, my bouquet is done.
Grinning, I snap a picture of it and send it to Aaron with the word, Done!
He calls, and I swipe it on. “I’m pretty sure I just won,” I say .
He laughs, the sound rich and warm, and I can’t help the way my smile widens. Being around Aaron is like standing in the sun—impossible not to feel a little brighter.
“I’m pretty sure Sir Chills-a-Lot has gone on strike,” he says through his chuckles. “At this point, if you don’t break-up with me for what’s happened over here in the last half-hour, I’m going to call it good.”
“Aaron,” I say, my smile suddenly gone. “You’re joking, right?”
“Let’s go to dinner,” he says. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“I need pictures of Sir Chills,” I say very seriously. “If something’s happened to him…”
“You need to chill, Em. He’s fine.”
At least he’s not calling my walk-in fridge an “it” anymore.
“I’ll send you some pics. Usually I bring you the bouquet, but you’ll have to present me with yours.” He ends the call, and a few seconds later, I get a picture of Sir Chills’s shelves. He doesn’t look much better than how I left him, so Aaron didn’t do much. “He didn’t make it worse, at least,” I say.
Then I get another picture. Then another. The last one I get is a picture of the thermostat, and Aaron’s said, See? He’s fine. I’ll be there in two.
And sure enough, two minutes later, he knocks on his own office door and waits for me to open it. I can’t juggle the half-gallon water jug with all the tools in it and open the door, so I leave the arrangement and let my boyfriend into his own office.
He looks at me and then it, his whole face blooming to life. “You definitely win. This thing is incredible .” He blinks at it a couple of times, then switches his gaze to me. “ You’re incredible.”
A blush fills my whole body, and I’m not that great at taking compliments. “It’s unique,” I say.
Aaron slides his hand along my hip, pulling me against him. “I mean, it’s not going to win any beauty contests, but it’s creative. And it’s very…you.”
“Me?” I frown, because being me has never won me anything. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs, his smile softening. “You’re creative and resourceful. You can take something ordinary and turn it into something special. That’s what you did with this.” He looks at me. “And gorgeous. I should’ve said gorgeous in there. Creative, resourceful, and gorgeous.”
For a moment, I just stare at him, my heart doing that annoying flip-flop thing again. How does he always know exactly what to say to make me feel like I’m on top of the world? Then I smile just as he touches his lips to mine, and oh, I could lose a lot of time kissing this man.
“Where do you want to go to dinner?” he murmurs as he slides his mouth down to my jaw.
“You’re not getting out of showing me what happened inside Sir Chills.”
“Oh, he’s fine.” Aaron straightens and looks at me, pure male desire swimming in those dark eyes. “Let’s go to dinner and go over our designs. I need to know what you expect of me, Em. I’m busy this month with builds and stuff.”
And he is. I know he is, and I also know the twenty-five thousand dollars will benefit me way more than him. A twist of guilt pirouettes through me. “We make a good team, though,” I say. “I’ll be able to help a lot, okay? Two weddings are done, and I’ve got ten weeks until the next one.” I run both of my hands up his chest. “You’re not mad about the partnership, are you?”
“No,” he says. “We make a great team.”
“Team EmRon.” I grin at him, but he just blinks at me.
Then he shakes his head. “You’d tell me never to speak without checking with you if I said that.”
I burst out laughing, because he’s so right. “It feels like a Dad-joke,” I say.
“Cringey.” He leads me out of the office, his hand so warm, and big, and secure in mine.
“But we’re not cringey,” I say.
“Depends on who you ask.” He nods to Fonda, who watches us with ice-blue eyes. I almost shy away from her, because she probably thinks we’re totally cringey.
“Fonda,” I say, pulling on Aaron’s hand to get him to stop. He does, and he looks at me with wide, fear-filled eyes. I really have no idea what I’ m doing, but I say, “We’re going to dinner. Do you want us to bring you something back?”
She blinks, clearly not expecting that. She casts a look toward Aaron, but he’s turned into a fish—staring at me without blinking, his mouth slightly open.
“Where are we going, Aaron?” I ask—totally keeping it cringe-free by using his name and not baby .
“You were going to pick,” he says.
“What are you feeling, Fonda?” I ask. “We’ll go there, and I’ll bring you back your favorite thing.”
“I’m fine,” she says at the same time Aaron says, “Archibald’s artichoke pasta.”
“Aaron,” Fonda says, and if she said my name in that warning-filled voice, I’d curl up and cry.
“It’s her favorite.” He simply smiles at her, and I look back at her too.
“Okay, well, wherever we can get Archibald’s artichoke pasta is where we’ll go. You’re working through close?”
“Yes.” She swallows, a hint of nerves in her expression now.
I loop my arm through Aaron’s, and we start toward the back exit again. “Where do we get that pasta, baby?”
“House of Flour,” he says, and I light up.
“Perfect,” I say. “I love their honey whole wheat bread, and everyone at the Big House will love me if I bring some home. ”
“You’re a good person too,” he says once we leave the hardware store.
“Fonda did seem surprised I spoke to her,” I say, my voice pitching up slightly.
He scoffs. “I’m surprised she didn’t rip your head off with her bare hands.” He grins then and laughs. “And you think I’m a Doberman. She’s like a pitbull on a forced diet.”
I let him open the door for me, but I don’t get in. “And you just stood there and let me do it.”
“I wanted to see what would happen.”
“What if she’d gone into pitbull mode?”
He wraps me up in his arms, and wow, I would love to stay right there, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat and breathing in the cottony-woodsy-metally scent of his skin and cologne.
And I realize I’m falling really fast for Aaron Stansfield.
I tell myself it’s because I didn’t have to start at zero with him. We’ve been friends and have known each other for a while now. I have to tell myself that, or I’ll start freaking out.
And I really don’t want to do that when House of Flour is in play, because not only do they have the best bread in the whole of Charleston and all her suburbs, but they have the most delectable peach pie that Grams and I both adore .
So no freaking out , I tell myself as I step back and get in Aaron’s truck.
He gets in the other side and says, “I put your clipboard with your plans and sketches right there on the dash, honeybee.” He nods to it, and I reach out and pick it up.
I stare at the sketch I did a couple of hours ago at the park. I’d tossed this clipboard somewhere, and I can’t even remember where right now.
But Aaron knew, and he got it for me.
Yep, he’s definitely scoring a lot of points tonight even if he didn’t win the dare and I’m a little afraid of what I might find when I walk into Sir Chills tomorrow.