Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
He said yes.
Dalene had expected him to think about it longer. To run some kind of internal cost-benefit analysis, maybe ask for a spreadsheet, possibly consult the weather data. Instead they started negotiating. First came the pet names.
"No pet names," he said.
"I was thinking weather boy."
Eliot looked at her the way she imagined he looked at forecast models that had come back completely wrong. "No."
"It's affectionate."
"It's demeaning."
"Ah, you need something more logical. What about cumulus?"
"No…" He cocked his head to the side. "Why a cumulus cloud?"
"You're tall," she said. "Big and solid. Hard to miss. Cumulus clouds show up and suddenly that's all you can see."
Dalene shut up. She'd said too much. Eliot's confusion turned into a smug grin. So, she added, with complete innocence, "And they're the ones that look cuddly."
The grin dropped. "No."
"What about Stratus? Alto? Nimbus has a nice ring to—"
"We are not doing cloud-themed pet names."
"You could call me Sunshine."
A pause. Something moved across his face that was not quite a smile and not quite not a smile.
"I like your name," he said.
She felt her face flush. "Thank you."
"What if I called you by your actual name and you called me by mine and we simply looked at each other like we like each other?"
"I do you like you. You're a good guy for doing this." Dalene stuck her thumb in her mouth, capturing the sweetness from the glaze on the bun. But also to stop herself from saying anything more.
"I like you, too. Despite your bad taste in herbs."
That got a snort out of her. Her grin spread wide, open, like a cumulonimbus cloud.
"The expiration date would be the end of the festival," Eliot continued.
That statement splashed cold rainwater across Dalene's face. "Right. Of course."
"Hopefully by then, I'll have my job back and you'll get the town off your back."
"Hopefully," she said with false cheer.
"And we tell no one."
"My best friend is probably going to guess," she said.
"She can suspect. She can't know. If one person knows it's fake, the whole thing is fake."
Dalene thought about Lila. About the look Lila would give her when she found out — not if, when, because Lila had a radar that no embargo could block.
Still, she nodded to Eliot. She'd deal with Lila when she got to Lila.
The kitchen timer went off for a second time since Eliot had been in her place. That meant he'd been here for over an hour. Dalene went to pull the second tray of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. The smell wafted out before the tray. Brown butter. Cinnamon. Vanilla underneath it all.
"Want one?" She nodded at the tray.
"It's after midnight."
"Your point?" She handed him a plated roll. "There's no lavender in it."
"Too bad. I'm beginning to like it."
He didn't look at her when he said it. He very pointedly didn't look at her. Which made her wonder.
Eliot reached for the plated roll. Then hissed immediately when it burned his fingers. He pursed his lips and blew.
Dalene couldn't take her gaze off his lips. How they looked soft even though they were pursed. How they formed a perfect heart shape. How jealous she was of the flour that had been in her hands less than an hour ago and had gotten so close to his pursed lips.
She held her breath as he took his first bite. She pressed her hand to her stomach as he began to chew. Had she put enough sugar in it? Had she been heavy-handed with the vanilla?
This was how it had started with Tristan.
She hadn't remembered that until just now. She'd invited him in over baked goods too. He'd stood in this kitchen, in that spot, eating something she'd made, and she'd watched his face and felt that same low warm pull and thought: oh, this could be something.
It had been something. It had been a year and a half of something followed by four days that had taken weeks to stop replaying.
Her heart wasn't broken. She needed to be clear about that, even just to herself, in her own kitchen at midnight.
It wasn't broken. She'd gathered the pieces, she'd put them back, she'd done the work.
There were still cracks, but they were closing.
Every day they looked less like fractures and more like fissures, hairline and manageable, the kind that showed up in old pottery and made it more interesting rather than less functional.
It was just that the pity looks splintered her. Every time someone tilted their head and looked at her with their feelings on their face she felt one of those hairline cracks widen a little.
And then there were Tristan and Brooke. When she saw them, she felt — not pain. Something worse than pain. Numbness. The absence where something used to be.
Eliot made a sound. A hum of satisfaction that started somewhere in his chest and landed somewhere in hers. It spread outward like heat from an oven, into the cracks, filling them in.
"That's delicious," he said around a mouthful of ooey-gooey-goodness.
"Thank you."
He swallowed, his gaze staying on hers. "I'm sorry. About the scones."
"You were honest. You haven't once tried to spare my feelings. I appreciate that."
"I could've been more tactful. I'm learning to use my words better."
The kitchen had gone very still. No buzzers or timers interfering or interrupting. The oven was off but somehow, Dalene felt the temperature rising.
The heat of it. Low and steady, building the way pressure built before a weather system moved through — slow at first, then all at once.
She watched him swallow.
He watched her breathe.
His tongue moved across his bottom lip. Slow. Unconscious. His eyes stayed on hers.
She bit her lower lip.
His gaze dropped. Just briefly. Came back up.
The gap between them was the width of a kitchen counter and also no distance at all.
He blinked first. "I should let you rest."
"I have insomnia."
"Hunh. So do I."
"You could stay a bit longer. If you wanted."
Eliot inhaled the slow breath of a man making a decision. "Best not. I don't want the town thinking I'm a loose man."
The snort startled out of her. Loud and unguarded in the quiet kitchen. She hadn't snorted so much in her life. He was likely to think she was part pig. Dalene pressed her hand over her mouth but it was already out there, already filling the room.
Eliot grinned. It transformed his face, making him appear warmer and younger and considerably more dangerous to the fissures in her heart.
"Goodnight, Dalene."
"Goodnight, weather boy."
He pointed at her, a tepid warning.
She grinned back, unrepentant.
He went out the door. She heard his footsteps cross the path. His door opened. Then closed. Then quiet.
Dalene felt — giddy was the word. Quietly, privately, ridiculously giddy, which was not a feeling she'd had in recent memory and which she was going to attribute entirely to the late hour and the cinnamon in the air and the fact that she was running on insufficient sleep and definitely not to a man with a full smile who'd aimed it at her.
She was, she thought, possibly in a great deal of trouble.