Chapter 4
four
. . .
Holly
I’d loaded my SUV that morning with everything I would need to set up for the Candlelight Walk—everything except the actual flowers, which I wouldn’t deliver until the day before the event.
Garland bases, wire, foam bricks, ribbon in shades of cream and forest green, and about a hundred brass candle holders I’d been collecting from estate sales, antique shops, and thrift stores for years.
My plan was to be in and out in thirty minutes, tops.
Professional. Efficient. Definitely not swoony.
I pulled up to Luke’s house just after two, my tires crunching over the oyster shell driveway. The house looked beautiful in the weak December sunlight, the white clapboard almost glowing against the gray sky. Smoke curled from one of the chimneys.
He was home.
My stomach did a stupid little flip that I immediately ignored.
We’d had two conversations. But it was the one back at my workshop—where I’d basically told him I’d be into it if he flirted with me—that haunted me now.
God, what had I been thinking? I’d replayed that moment about five hundred times since then, alternating between mortification and a giddy feeling I hadn’t experienced since high school.
Get it together, Bascombe. This is work.
I killed the engine and hopped out, pulling my coat tighter against the cold. The air had that bone-deep chill that came with late December in coastal New England, the kind that made your fingers ache even inside gloves.
I was halfway through unloading the first bin when the front door opened and Luke appeared, wearing a dark maroon sweater and jeans.
My traitorous brain immediately catalogued how good he looked—how the color brought out the caramel flecks in his eyes, how the sweater fit snugly across his shoulders.
Luke Byron was not my type. Not even close.
At five-ten, I’d always gravitated toward tall, strapping men—guys who could make me feel small and delicate. Luke was maybe five-foot-seven in shoes, with a compact, athletic build that reminded me more of Tom Holland than, say, Chris Hemsworth.
Today, he wore wire-rimmed glasses instead of the tortoiseshell ones he’d had on during my initial walk-through of his house, and his mussed, dark blond hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it all morning.
On paper? Not my type at all.
So why did my pulse kick every time I looked at him?
He’d been nothing but awkward around me, stammering, fleeing rooms, barely able to hold eye contact.
But I’d read the articles about him, the ones that focused on his reputation as someone who was hyperfocused, who would dive so deep into projects that he’d forget to eat or sleep.
The ones that recalled how his intensity in boardrooms had made venture capitalists uncomfortable.
I hadn’t met that Luke Bryon yet, but I was beginning to think I really, really wanted to.
The thought alone made something low in my belly tighten.
It was the way he moved, maybe—efficient and precise, like every single gesture was intentional.
Or the way his forearms looked when he pushed up his sleeves, revealing surprisingly defined muscles.
Or how his sweater pulled across his chest and shoulders in a way that made it clear he was stronger than he looked.
God help me, I wanted to get my hands on him—to find out if that compact frame felt as solid as it looked, to know what would happen if all that intensity he supposedly possessed ever got focused on me.
I blinked hard, twice, and gave myself a mental shake, trying to reset my brain. This was ridiculous. I was a thirty-two-year-old woman, not a teenager with a crush. I could control my thoughts.
Except apparently I couldn’t, because I was still staring at the way his sweater stretched across his shoulders.
“Knock it off,” I muttered under my breath, forcing my eyes away.
“Hey,” he said, jogging toward me. “Let me help.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He reached for the bin in my hands. “But I want to.”
Our fingers brushed as he took it from me, and I definitely did not notice the warmth of his hands or the way his eyes met mine for just a second longer than necessary.
Nope. Not noticing any of that.
“Thanks,” I managed, my voice coming out slightly high and squeaky-sounding.
“Where do you want everything?” he asked, glancing back at me over his shoulder.
“The front parlor, if that’s not going to be in the way? That’s where most of the main arrangements will go on the day.”
He nodded and headed inside. I grabbed another bin and followed him, acutely aware that I was about to spend the next half hour alone with Luke Byron in his beautiful house.
Inside, the house was warm and toasty, and smelled like woodsmoke and cinnamon.
“Smells amazing in here,” I said, sniffing the air.
Luke set down his bin in the front parlor and turned to face me, a hint of pink creeping into his cheeks. “I made cookies. Well, I attempted to make cookies. The jury’s still out on whether they’re edible.”
“You bake?” I set my bin down next to his and straightened, brushing dust off my hands.
“I follow recipes and hope for the best.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you want one? Or coffee? Or—”
“After we unload,” I said, smiling at the offer. “Work first, questionable cookies second.”
“Fair.”
We fell into an easy rhythm, making trips back and forth from my SUV to the parlor.
Luke didn’t try to fill the silence with small talk, which I appreciated.
When I started arranging the supplies in a specific order—ribbon here, wire there, foam bricks stacked by size—he watched for a moment, then simply followed my lead.
No suggestions about a more efficient way to organize my supplies.
No mansplaining my own process back to me. He just helped.
It was shockingly refreshing.
By the time we’d unloaded everything, I’d stopped overthinking every interaction and just relaxed.
Luke was easy to work with. He listened when I explained what I needed, helped without getting in the way, and didn’t pepper me with questions about whether I was sure I wanted things arranged “that way.”
No. I was not thinking about Eric right now.
“Okay,” I said, brushing off my hands. “That’s everything.”
Luke surveyed the organized chaos in his parlor. “Now that that’s taken care of, can I interest you in some potentially edible cookies?”
I checked my phone. I didn’t have another client until four, and honestly, the idea of sitting in Luke’s warm kitchen eating cookies sounded infinitely better than going back to my drafty workshop.
“You know what? Let’s risk it.”
He straightened slightly, and his whole face transformed—the tentative, careful expression he’d worn since I arrived giving way to a smile that was bright and unguarded and maybe a little bit devastating.
“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
Uh oh. I was in so much trouble.
“Yeah.”
“Come on. Let’s see if I managed not to poison us.”
As we stepped into the kitchen, Luke gestured for me to sit at the small table by the window while he grabbed a plate of cookies from the counter. Snickerdoodles,” he said, setting the plate down. “Or, that’s what they were supposed to be at least.”
I took one and bit into it. The texture was a little dense, and they could have baked for another minute, but it was buttery and sweet, with just the right amount of cinnamon.
“These are good,” I said honestly.
“You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”
“I’m not. The flavor’s good. A little dense, maybe. Did you cream the butter and sugar long enough?”
He blinked at me. “I … don’t know? I mixed them until they looked combined.”
“Well, there you go. You have to beat them for like three minutes, until the batter looks fluffy. That incorporates air, which makes the cookies lighter.”
“Huh.” He looked at the cookies with renewed interest. “I didn’t know that. The recipe didn’t say.”
“Baking is chemistry. You can’t just follow the steps—you have to understand why you’re doing each step and how that will impact the end result.”
“Spoken like someone who actually knows how to bake.”
I laughed. “My mom taught me. We used to make like a thousand Christmas cookies every year. Snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, gingerbread, these Polish things called chrusciki that are basically fried dough covered in powdered sugar …” I trailed off, remembering those afternoons in my parents’ kitchen, flour everywhere, Christmas music playing, my mom patiently showing me how to roll out dough.
“You okay?” Luke asked quietly, breaking into memories of happier times.
I blinked and realized I’d zoned out, the half-eaten cookie still in my hand. “Yeah. Sorry. Just remembering.”
He didn’t push for more information, just nodded and took a cookie for himself.
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, and I found myself watching him methodically turn the cookie to examine it from different angles before taking another bite, a slight furrow between his brows, like he was conducting a scientific analysis of flour-to-sugar ratios.
It was endearing in a way I hadn’t expected. This careful, analytical approach to something as simple as a cookie.
It should have felt awkward, sitting at his kitchen table, neither of us quite sure what to say. But it didn’t.
When was the last time something had felt this easy?
“Thanks for helping me get all this stuff inside,” I said finally. “You didn’t have to. Most people wouldn’t have.”
He glanced up at me, then away. “It was the least I could do after you agreed to take on this whole project.”
“It’s my job, Luke.”
“Still.” He hesitated, then added, his voice lowered. “I’m glad I got paired with you.”
The sincerity in his voice made my chest feel warm in a way that had nothing to do with the kitchen’s temperature.
“Me too,” I admitted.