Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PRESTON
As he watched the water of the town’s titular brook stream past, Preston counted that he was currently jealous of three things.
One: the guy behind the counter at this Italian ice cream shop he and Harmony had come to try out for the festival. He’d called her bella five times despite Preston knowing he’d been born right here in Brookville, had bulging arms from scooping ice cream all day, and had insisted on giving Harmony a free waffle cone after they were done sampling half a dozen flavors of fancy slushies Harmony said would be perfect for the festival. (They’d settled on mint and limoncello.) So now they were sitting out on the shop’s back patio, overlooking the brook and the little bridge traveling over it to a jogging path running along the train tracks on the far side.
It was ridiculous to be jealous of him, because Preston had absolutely no claim to Harmony, only an overdeveloped sense of romance and a tendency to build things up too quickly in his mind. Nothing halfway. And if Harmony had smiled at all the bellas and laughed when the guy had slammed a surprise third scoop atop the first two right before handing the cone over, well, she was like that with everyone. It didn’t mean anything, necessarily. Which actually didn’t make him feel better. She was like that with Preston, and he wanted her smiles and laughs with him to mean something.
So, two: people who hadn’t read so many love stories and didn’t romanticize every little detail about the time they spent with someone just because that someone was alarmingly beautiful and annoyingly funny and absolutely unlike anyone they’d ever met. He and Harmony had been to several restaurants and bakeries and food trucks, arguing along the way about books and music and red versus black licorice, and part of him thought that was like dating. But another part of him was currently clobbering that first part, reminding him that this wasn’t like that at all. They were in business together. Sort of. Or friends, maybe? They were business-friends. Preston shifted his glasses and wiped a hand over his face. That wasn’t even a thing. They weren’t a thing. He shoved his glasses back into place.
Just in time to see Harmony wander in front of him, eating. She wasn’t one to sit still, instead strolling back and forth before the water, and Preston hadn’t bothered trying to fold himself into the bright-green-painted picnic table, just sat on its tabletop, feet planted on the bench, looking at the view and not at Harmony licking her way through chocolate and anise and stracciatella.
Which brought him, humiliatingly, to three: that ice cream cone.
Preston told both parts of himself to stop fighting each other and join forces to defeat the totally inappropriate thoughts any business-friend of Harmony’s should not be having around her.
“Oh, hey,” she said, turning on him. “Want to be first to hear who the headliner is?”
He gripped the edge of the table, steeling himself against the sight of Harmony applying her tongue to frozen cream and sugar. His voice was only halfway to wet cement when he managed, “Sure.” She’d gotten whatever clearances she’d needed from town hall, and things seemed full steam ahead for the festival.
Harmony took another lick and smiled. Preston tucked that smile away with the hundred others he’d collected so far, his insides melting a little like that ice cream. She’d be gone after getting this festival up and running, that had been made clear, and they could never be more than this, but a smile that gorgeous should be committed to memory.
“Legend Watts.” Another lick, and a satisfied grin.
“You’re kidding.”
“I know, it’s such a coup, right?”
It was such a coincidence , he was going to tell her, but she was already launching into a story about seeing Legend Watts at the Grammys one year and the afterparty where she was chasing some big deal and somehow ended up falling into a pool in a full ballgown and jewels.
“Wow, Harmony Hale failed at something?”
She snapped her jaw down and gave him a sharp look. “Oh, I finished the job—I mean …” She wiped her tongue around where her chocolate ice cream was melting, and she had to be fucking with him, right? Because she took a beat too long twisting the cone around before saying, “We signed the artist we were there to meet. And I suppose I always say I love working without a safety net. But Christian Siriano is never going to dress me again.” She heaved a tragic sigh and paced again along the edge of the patio deck.
Today she was wearing this cute little blue dress that crossed over her breasts and sort of swooped out after skimming down the ample curve of her hips, and was it actually possible to be jealous of fabric because maybe he needed to add another item to his count.
Harmony scrunched her nose. “I hope it’s not a bad sign this place is a ghost town. Those drinks were good, right?”
“It is kind of chilly today.” The afternoon sun filtered through a mess of wispy clouds and scattered over the slate water. They’d have to leave soon to get back in time for the end of Lacey’s music therapy.
“Yeah, but it’s deserted out here.”
He quirked a brow at her waffle cone. “No, it’s desserted .”
“Wow, did they hand you a book of dad jokes along with the adoption papers?” But she was laughing a little, and it felt like a prize. She took another bite of her free ice cream. “The chocolate is decent. But I fucking love this anise.”
“Because you’re a maniac who eats black licorice by the handful.” She’d dug pieces out of a bag she kept in her purse when they’d waited forever at the gyro place with dry spanakopita that for some reason she still said she’d sign for the festival.
She just shook her head. “You gotta try this.” She advanced on him, and he was opening his mouth to say something like No thanks if I put my mouth where your mouth has just been that might be a little too much like kissing you and then my brain might finally fall right out of my head , but she was too quick and before he knew it he was tasting chocolate and spice like Christmas cookies he hadn’t had for five years.
She watched his face. “Good, right?”
It was fucking incredible, Harmony standing right there beside the table and insistently sharing any kind of pleasure with him.
Except she’d angled the cone forward and now as it came away a drip of ice cream fell past the reach of his tongue and rolled down Preston’s chin.
“Shit.” He tipped his head back, trying to slow the disaster playing out on his fucking face. “ Shit .” If he’d come out here to eat an ice cream cone, he’d have grabbed a giant stack of napkins like he always did, but this was obviously an evil ice cream cone Bicep Guy had deployed on a secret mission to make Preston have a true meltdown in front of Harmony. The drip was rounding his chin, about to trail down his neck and fall on his shirt and his face was sticky —
“Oh, sorry!” Harmony’s eyes were wide with concern. “Um, here, hold on.”
No time. His hands waved as if they could air-dry the mess before it finished destroying his life. Go on without me. Save yourself.
And then—
Harmony licked him.
She grabbed him by the shoulder, leaned in, and swiped her tongue up his chin, halting the rogue ice cream drip and every single function of Preston’s brain.
When she drew back, he didn’t move. He was watching the final flick of her tongue retreating into her mouth, trying to process the tiny, throaty sound she made as if savoring the flavor. She let out that gentle huff of a laugh. “Oh no, I broke you.” And then, anxious and quick: “Sorry, was that not cool—?” She took another step back.
He stood, cupped her worried, beautiful face with its freckles like cinnamon sugar, and kissed her.
She dropped the ice cream cone with a wet thud and kissed him back and holy fuck the rightness of Harmony’s lips against his, singing through his head like the sweetest note. Her lips parted under his and he was jealous of nothing, there was no one he’d rather be than himself, the man currently kissing Harmony Hale. She tasted better than cinnamon, tasted of star anise and sugar and something else that beckoned him to press nearer, wrap an arm around her back, and tug her closer.
She had one hand at the nape of his neck, and her other clenched a fistful of his lapel, holding him to her. His own hand threaded into her hair, fingers playing through its softness. The kiss was only overtaken by the piercing whistle of a passing train, like the white-hot cry already inside Preston’s head of how this, this , was what he’d been waiting for.
But Harmony, hair and skirt fluttering in the train’s breeze, must have felt him tense and broke off the kiss. “Oh—” A double crease appeared between her brows. Like a pause button.
“No—” he said, his tongue trying to remember that words were a thing and not just kissing, trying to explain it was only the noise.
“No?” She shifted back on her heels.
“ Yes .” He reached for her. Only now they’d stopped, he was realizing all the reasons it should be no. What was he doing? They had a business deal together. She was only here a few months. Fear rumbled through him like that train, fear of how much more he wanted. How right kissing Harmony felt, how ruinous it would be when she left.
He let his hands drop to his sides. “It’s time to go get Lacey.” That was a bullshit excuse, and Harmony’s face pinched as if to say she knew it, but she nodded and walked back through the shop. Preston felt like garbage for using his responsibility to his sister that way.
He simply didn’t know what else he could do to avoid Harmony leaving his heart, inevitably, like that abandoned lump of ice cream on the ground.