Chapter 12 WREN
WREN
I didn’t ask him to come. He came anyway.
I told him about the Tribeca job and expected an argument. He gave me one look—already decided—and said, “What time?”
That was it. No negotiation, no lecture about routes or risk or the fourteen reasons I shouldn’t be anywhere alone right now.
Which is how I end up standing in front of my mirror at six-ten, almost not coming downstairs.
It’s my install dress—fitted enough to move in, nice enough to stand next to a client in. Dark green, skirt that moves when I walk but doesn’t get in the way.
I put it on because I always wear it for weddings. Because it has pockets. Because I don’t have time to stand here acting weird about a man waiting downstairs.
I check the mirror one more time anyway.
I come down in the dress.
He’s leaning against my van, arms crossed, watching the street. He hears the door and turns.
His eyes move. Down the length of me, slow enough that I feel it, and back up to my face before I can even register my own breath catching.
It happens in maybe a second. Less. But I felt it, and he knows I felt it, and something hardens in his expression as he puts whatever just crossed his face carefully away.
His gaze drops to the crate of arrangements in my arms.
Before I can say anything, he takes it from me, loads it into the back of the van, and closes the doors without a word.
I tell him I’m driving, because it’s my van and my job and I need something about this morning to still feel like mine.
He doesn’t argue. He just walks around to the passenger side and gets in, and I try not to notice how strange it is to have him sitting beside me instead of watching from somewhere across the room.
“The bride is twenty-six,” I say. “It’s a rooftop ceremony, outdoor reception, late afternoon. I have about four hours to install before the wedding party arrives.”
“What do you need from me?”
The question catches me off guard. Not offering to take over. Not telling me how to run it. Just—what do you need.
“Carrying, mostly. The centerpieces are heavy.”
“Okay.”
I look at him. His jaw is sharp in profile, that strong clean line I’ve been trying not to notice for weeks. The green of his eyes is almost startling in the morning light, even from the side—too much for a man who works this hard at being unreadable.
I make myself look back at the bridge.
“People are going to ask who you are,” I say.
“Let them.”
“They’ll think you’re security.”
“I am security.”
“My security.” I say it flat, testing how it sounds. It sounds more complicated than I want it to.
“Tell them whatever you want.”
I look at him again. He’s watching the road, one arm resting on the door, and there’s nothing on his face that tells me what he thinks about any of this—about being here, about letting me drive him across a bridge at six-thirty in the morning, about all of it.
“Doesn’t this get boring?” I ask. “Sitting in a flower van before sunrise.”
A pause.
“No.”
Just that. No explanation. No hesitation either.
The bridge opens up ahead of us, morning light spilling across the river, and I have to look back at the road before I start reading into that answer more than I should.
* * *
The venue is a converted warehouse with a rooftop that makes every bride cry when she sees it for the first time. I’ve installed here twice before. I know the freight elevator, the temperamental door latch on the roof access, the corner where the wind picks up in the afternoon.
Jace figures all of it out in about four minutes.
He doesn’t ask where things go—he watches me once and then starts carrying, placing, adjusting when I gesture.
He moves through the space efficiently, no wasted motion, which shouldn’t be attractive and yet.
The centerpieces are tall arrangements of garden roses and trailing amaranthus in deep burgundy and blush.
He carries two at a time like they’re nothing, the muscles in his forearms shifting under the ink, and I stop watching that after the second trip because it is genuinely not useful information.
By nine we’re three-quarters done.
I’m on a small stepladder adjusting a copper hoop—eucalyptus and white garden roses trailing down—and I can’t get the angle right. It’s off, and it’s going to bother me in every photograph, and I’ve been fighting it for ten minutes.
I shouldn’t even be up here. This is exactly why I hired the contractors. But the angle is wrong and I know what I want and it’s faster to fix it myself than explain it twice.
“Tell me what you need,” he says from below.
“I’ve got it.”
“You’ve been on that ladder for ten minutes.”
“I know how long I’ve been on the ladder, Jace.”
“The rigging attachment is wrong. If you loosen the left clip first it’ll move.”
I look down at him. “I’ve done this installation a hundred times.”
“On a ladder. In a dress.”
“In this dress.”
He doesn’t answer. He turns his head, just slightly, and I realize he’s angling his face so he isn’t looking up my dress. Which I hadn’t even thought about until right now.
I reach up to adjust the clip again, faster now, wanting the moment over—and that’s when my foot slips off the rung.
His hands are on me before I register I’m falling.
Both hands. Firm. Pinning my waist from behind, holding me steady while I scramble to find the rung again, his grip unmistakable through the thin fabric of my dress.
I feel every one of his fingers pressing into the curve of my hips.
The heat of his palms bleeds through the green cotton.
He’s right at my back—all of him—and something deep and traitorous in my body goes liquid.
His breath ghosts the fabric at my hip.
“Easy.” Low. Rough. A voice I haven’t heard him use before.
I can’t breathe.
His hands don’t let go. Even when I’m steady. One second, two, he stays right where he is.
I look down.
He’s looking up.
Those green eyes are scorching. Unguarded. Locked on mine.
I forget the installation. I forget the ladder. I forget why I’m supposed to be breathing.
Then something snaps. Both of us, at the same time.
Slowly, he lets go.
One hand. Then the other.
“You okay?” The voice is different now. Controlled. Reined in. But it took him a second to get there and I heard it.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice.
He steps back.
He clears his throat. “The left clip.”
I loosen the left clip.
The hoop swings into place.
I climb down from the ladder and our eyes catch again—brief and charged—and he steps back to let me pass. I have to turn sideways to get by him, and suddenly he’s closer than he should be. I catch his cologne.
God, he smells good.
Then I’m past him and moving toward the next table, absolutely not thinking about it.
* * *
I’ve got a dozen things to finalize with the planner, and by the time I’m done the place is humming with pre-ceremony setup.
When I turn around, he’s walking toward me with two cups and a small bag of something warm—and I catch myself watching him before he notices me.
The way he walks—all quiet confidence and control.
The way his black shirt fits across his shoulders.
The way nothing about him looks hurried, even now.
He hands me a cup.
“Thanks.”
He nods. His fingers brush mine on the cup—brief, there and gone—and he turns toward the roof’s edge.
I follow him over. Manhattan spread below, all glass and distance. He’s different up here than he is in the shop. Less contained.
Across the water, Brooklyn is hazy and familiar. From up here I can see the bridge, the river, the faint outline of the neighborhood where my shop is.
“Do you ever stop?” I ask.
He glances at me. “Stop what?”
“Watching. Calculating. Whatever it is you’re always doing.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Not really.”
“Does it get exhausting?”
Another pause. Longer this time. “Sometimes.”
I look at him. “What do you do when it does?”
He turns his head. His eyes find mine and hold, closer than I remembered agreeing to. “Keep going,” he says. “Same as everyone.”
“That’s not the same as everyone.”
There’s the faintest softening at the edge of his mouth. “No,” he says quietly. “I guess it’s not.” He holds my gaze. “Neither are you.”
And then he’s looking at me and I feel seen. He’s been watching me for weeks and this is the first moment he’s let me know it.
I look away first.
“We should finish up,” I say.
“Yeah.”
I pick up my coffee and go back to work.
He follows.
That’s the thing I’m starting to understand about Jace Carrington. Wherever I am is where he’s decided to be.
And I’m starting to like having him there.