Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
WELLS
“Read ’em and weep,” Wells said, laying down a hand of useless cards.
The groans of the men around the table were music to his ears. Poker night had landed at Jack and Violet’s house this month, and they’d set up in the kitchen.
Wells sipped his bourbon, happy he’d walked that night and could indulge a little without worrying about driving.
“Bluffed the whole bloody thing,” Jack said with a shake of his head. “If I had your acting abilities, I’d have gone far beyond romantic TV dramas.”
Wells laughed. He liked Vi’s husband, especially when he got to sweep his chips away.
“He only got away with it because the Shark isn’t here,” Nash said as he pushed back onto the kitchen chair. “She’d have seen right through you.”
“Ruthless. Even to her brother,” Reed muttered, scowling at his dwindling pile of chips.
“Where is Rosie?” Pop asked, shuffling the cards with an unlit cigar between his teeth. “I miss having a poker buddy who knows what the hell they’re doin’.”
“Hey.” Gray raised an eyebrow at Pop. “Some of us aren’t so easily fooled. We just like giving the father-to-be a head start.”
Wells laughed into his glass. Sure. Gray was as crafty as his poker shark wife, but Wells had still beat him, fair and square.
“Throw some of that goodwill my way. Some of us have dance lessons and honeymoons to pay for,” Luca said with a slow, tired wipe of his face.
Wells patted his future brother-in-law on the back. “Then I suggest you practice more, buddy.” Luca shoved him off with a laugh.
“You guys ready? Here we go,” Pop said, dealing the next hand.
Wells picked up his cards. Finally. A hand worth playing. A royal fuckin’ flush.
Gray picked up his cards. “I saw you had construction going on at the cottage, Wells. What are you doing to it?”
Wells studied his cards as if he hadn’t already won the next hand. “Just fixing it up while Allison stays at my place. For when she moves back in.”
In two years. Maybe three, depending on how long it took them to make a sibling. He left that part out though. The corners of his mouth wanted to tug into a shit-eating grin so he sipped his drink instead.
“So you’re not staying together?” Gray asked nonchalantly.
Wells shook his head dismissively.
“Ah, right.” Reed nodded, sipping his beer. “Pearl said you’re not together together.”
Wells shrugged uncomfortably as six sets of eyes measured him. “Yeah, you know the deal. This is an arrangement that benefits both of us.”
“Good,” Gray said, reaching for his chips. “Cause I gave my greenhouse manager, Marco, her number. He said they had a good chat.”
“What,” Wells thundered.
The bottle of beer in Jack’s hand slipped out in shock, but Nash caught it before it shattered.
Gray studied his cards, unbothered. “He’s single, said she was hot, you’re not together together, so I introduced them.” He shrugged, finally meeting Wells’s eyes.
Wells’s entire world tilted on its axis as scenarios instantly spiraled out in front of him. Allison on dates. Allison kissing another man.
Gray’s stony lips twitched with a smile as he sipped his soda. “Or did I?”
The table erupted in laughter.
Fucking hell.
Gray raised a knowing called your bluff eyebrow across the poker table.
“Don’t worry,” Gray said easily as he slid chips in and bet ten. “These idiots also had their heads up their asses about a woman in the last year or three. Including that one.” He pointed to Pop who nodded with chagrin. “You fit right in.”
Wells’s heart had launched into the stratosphere at the idea that his perfect future could be…
He gulped.
Pillaged.
The horror of seeing her with someone else. Beaming her sparkling smile he loved, teasing someone else.
Moaning for someone else.
His breath sounded like a steam engine in his ears. “So you didn’t?” Wells said, staring daggers at Gray.
Gray added a shrug to his smirking fucking face. “Does it matter?”
“They’d make a nice couple, like the same books,” Reed said to Gray.
“Vi has loved working with him, said he always smelled like lavender,” Jack said, looking at Wells.
Marco was a nice guy. Handsome. Tall.
Wells gulped. Very tall.
Wells threw his perfect hand on the table and folded. “You’re all assholes.” He shrugged on his coat as they burst into laughter.
He needed to see her. Now.
Needed to get this settled. Protect what was his. Finally man up.
He hadn’t even asked her on a date. What fool didn’t even try to ask the woman they had feelings for on a date?
And of course it was raining now.
Wells tugged on his coat collar in irritation. “I hate you all,” he muttered.
“See you next week?” Nash said with a delighted smile.
“Obviously.” He stalked out the door.
The raucous kissing noises and catcalling at his back barely registered as he ran through pouring rain back to his house.
ALLISON
The sounds of cackling and crafting surrounded Allison, and her heart felt so full.
All three Parker sisters, plus Olivia, Pearl, and Martha sat working on projects in her cottage living room, and most importantly—bitching. Even Molly had joined. Martha patiently explained the process of crocheting to her.
The new chairs Wells had found made it so that everyone had somewhere to sit, and thanks to the industrial cleaning, Rose hadn’t sneezed once.
She could imagine this group in five, ten, fifteen years, all cozied up in the cottage with a fire crackling in the hearth as they caught up.
Making space and time just for them. Allison beamed at the hard-won feeling of finding her people after so many years of feeling like a fish in the wrong pond.
“Allison, dear, do you have a pair of scissors?” Martha asked with concern. “I fear Molly was too exuberant.”
Molly held up hands that were somehow knotted together with yarn.
Allison popped up, happy to help. “Yes, I have some upstairs.”
“You should stay down here,” Rose called over her shoulder from her “crafting” activity, color-coding a spreadsheet.
Pearl snorted as she made flowers out of frosting.
Allison paused at the bottom of the stairs, gripping both handrails. “Why?”
Rose muttered to Pearl. “In three, two, one...”
With a flash of lightning, the front door to the cottage flew open, and Wells appeared in the doorway, dripping wet.
“NeedtotalktoAllisonoutside,” he said in a rush, sputtering through the water rolling off of his face.
What?
The…
Hell?
Seven heads swiveled to Allison for her response.
Had he lost his mind?
She quickly waddle-walked to the porch, cheeks burning, and closed the front door behind her. Rain fell in buckets around them in a deafening roar.
Wells stood dripping on her porch, out of breath. “You want to go to dinner with me? Italian food.” He wiped rivulets of water out of his eyes as he huffed.
“Why…” She stared at the shirt plastered to him. “…are you wet?”
“Yes or no,” he said urgently, his eyes searching hers. “Or are you dating someone else?”
Where was this coming from?
He saw her practically every minute of every day she wasn’t at Bloom. And he’d visit her at Bloom the rest of the time.
She slowly shook her head no.
Wells’s jaw ticked, and he wiped water from his mustache. “No? To dinner?”
The haze of baby brain fog was clearing as she finally understood.
Wait a minute.
Is he…?
He couldn’t be. We specifically agreed not to do this.
She cocked her head in confusion. “Wells, are you asking me on a date?”
He gasped, closing his eyes for strength. “Yes.”
Her mouth fell open in shock.
He glanced through the front door’s window, then moved them out of view, slid his hand into her hair, and kissed her.
His wet lips slid against hers in a vicious, claiming kiss. Beads of water dripped onto her from his thick hair and she didn’t even care. She licked the water along his lips with a moan.
This kiss wasn’t about easy, physical release.
Not about the baby, not about a safe pregnancy.
He wanted to date her.
He’d just admitted he had feelings for her.
Me.
He wants me.
She raked her teeth along his lip, wanting more. The hot delight of his tongue in her mouth felt more intimate than anything else they’d done.
It said I want you.
I like you.
He wrenched away, hovering over her lips. “Go to dinner with me tomorrow night. Please.”
He’d fired every syllable at her like a tennis ball in one of those ball-shooter things.
A swooping sensation landed in her stomach. Was she misinterpreting things? “I don’t want this to get confusing. We said no rom—”
Her words were cut off with another kiss. This time, he pushed her against the porch wall, sliding a proprietary knee between her legs.
She whimpered as he kissed her, holding her head exactly in place as his tongue danced with hers. Beads of water were cool on her tongue as she kissed him back, fisting her hands in the wet fabric of his shirt.
He pulled back, his dark eyes on fire. “I just jogged in the pouring rain for six blocks, imagining you on a date with a tall, handsome Italian man who smells like flowers. I am the furthest thing from confused.”
She frowned. “That’s…weird. Did you hit your head?” She looked him over for injuries.
“Say yes.” He caught her eyes, not letting her escape.
She’d literally been pinned down by him.
And she loved it.
She gulped. “I might…develop feelings.” An understatement.
He sighed, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “That’s sort of the goal.”
She nodded slowly as her mind chugged back to life.
“Good enough,” he whispered, stepping back and walking to the stairs.
She followed him, raising her hand to say goodbye, but he whirled on the step, turned around quickly, and kissed her again firmly.
“See you at home,” he said in a ragged voice, and dashed into the rain.
Allison’s hand went to her lips as she stared after him, trying to make sense of what just happened.
In a daze, she walked back into the cottage.
“What was that about?” Olivia asked.
Allison stared at the floor, trying to understand the words she was about to say.
“He asked me on…a date.”
Pearl and Rose slyly fist-bumped on the couch, wearing decidedly blank expressions.
Allison narrowed her eyes. “What was that?”
“We called it Operation Shit or Get Off the P—ow,” Pearl said as Olivia kicked her.
Allison looked at Martha who held her hands up innocently. “I seem to have been replaced as Fairwick Falls’s number one meddler. It wasn’t me. For once,” she added to Molly as an aside.
“We’re protective about people we love; that’s all.” Rose packed her things up efficiently.
Rose loves me? They all do?
Violet smiled warmly. “We realized you’re kind of the reason everything is so great now.”
Allison pointed at herself in confusion. “Me?”
“If you hadn’t asked Gray out, he wouldn’t have realized he was in love with me. Thank you again, for that,” Rose said with a delighted smile. They’d laughed over it ages ago.
“And when you offered to buy Bloom when we had the tax debt, it was what made Rose want to stay. The contrarian,” Violet said, squeezing Rose’s hand. “Which then led to me meeting Jack—”
“And that baby bump,” Lily said, pointing to Violet’s stomach. “And mine. I had so much fun working with you and Bloom-ifying your store, I didn’t want to go back to New York. It gave us the idea of how to franchise, and now Bloom is huge and I get to see my sisters every day.”
“Bloom was the only place that would hire me,” Pearl said with a soft smile at the Parker sisters. “Luca, AB, and I would have moved somewhere else.”
“And without them living in Fairwick Falls, I certainly wouldn’t have met Luca and Annabelle,” Olivia said, misty-eyed and smiling. “It would have all just…not happened if it weren’t for you. We’d all be so sad. We love you so much, and, well—”
“There’s really no Fairwick Falls without you, Allison. Plus, we’ve known Wells since forever, and frankly, he’s an idiot sometimes.” Rose crossed her legs, looking pleased with how it had all turned out. “No offense, Martha.”
Martha cackled. “I am so very aware, Rosie dear. So.” She turned to Allison. “Did you say yes?”
Allison’s hormones and emotions and gratitude all swirled in the overwhelmed fishbowl of her brain.
She had friends who loved her, who appreciated how she impacted the world.
The man she loved just asked her on an actual date.
As she burst into tears, she just nodded in response.
Violet and Olivia popped up and wrapped her in a hug.
Lily bounced up and down, clapping and smiling brightly. “But the real question is, what are you going to wear?”
* * *
An hour later, the rain let up, and Allison wandered back home after having both bitched and stitched.
She still felt incredibly discombobulated.
The man who said he didn’t do romance—who specifically made her sign a contract agreeing to those terms—asked her on a date.
A date.
It seemed ridiculous given everything they’d been through together in the past ten months. He supported her; she kissed him whenever she could; they had amazing sex. They were each other’s people.
But doing the one thing they’d agreed not to do? Breaking the rule she’d thought was set in stone?
It threw her off-balance.
“Wells?” she called when she entered the house. They had to talk about this.
Only a tiny meow greeted her, and she bent down with effort to pet Smokey/Harry.
The house was quiet, and she meandered through it until she saw his office door closed, with light peeking out from the bottom of the door. Wells was murmuring insistently to someone, probably on the phone.
She knocked on the door.
The door flew open, and Wells poked his head out. “Sorry, on the phone. You okay?”
He seemed…busy?
At 11:00 p.m. on a Saturday night? Weird.
They could talk in the morning. “Yeah, just going to bed,” she said with a worried smile.
“Hold on,” he said to the person on the phone. “C’mere,” he said, leaning in for a quick kiss, and then just as quickly, he turned back around and shut the door.
What reality had she stumbled into?
The most puzzling thing? The click of the lock as she turned to go to bed.
He was either having a breakdown or this was what the start of a new crazy plan looked like.
Either way, I’m booking him a doctor’s appointment first thing on Monday morning.
She bit her lip, smiling to herself, feeling stupidly giddy as she realized what was happening tomorrow.
After our date.