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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

OLIVIA

“Come on,” I muttered under my breath as I crouched down on the grassy lawn at Prue’s vineyard, holding a tent peg steady with one hand while the other hand lifted the hammer. I needed the arch to be nice and secure. The last thing I needed was for a gust of wind to knock it over, taking out the high-profile bride and groom in the process. I could just see the news headlines now: Breaking news: Floral arch kills happy couple moments before exchanging vows. I gritted my teeth. The hammer made contact with the peg, but instead of driving into the ground, the peg fell down for the fifth time in a row. Goddamnit .

I glanced around. Lines of empty white chairs covered the lawn, ready for the wedding later this afternoon. A few feet behind the arch, rows of grapevines stretched out, their bright-green leaves unfurling after a winter of dormancy. At least no one’s around to witness my ineptitude.

Usually, I enjoyed wedding setup, but today, everything seemed to be going wrong. I’d forgotten the chicken wire and had to rush back to the shop to get it. An hour ago, I realized I’d underestimated how many lilacs would fit in the large vases inside the venue and had called Dana in a panic asking if she had any more I could use. As a result, I was running short on time.

I wiped the back of my hand against my forehead. Even after not having seen or heard from her for five days, Roz was still throwing me off my game. All week, I’d been having flashbacks to our weekend together, triggered by the smallest of things. Sitting on the couch, an image of me writhing on it under Roz’s naked body would strike me out of the blue, sending tingles shooting to my core. Opening the front door to Sapphire Blooms, the sensation of being held against it by Roz’s firm hands would hit me. A woman’s voice faintly resembling Roz’s would bring back memories of Roz murmuring “good girl” in my ear. And then I’d remember Roz’s abrupt disappearance. If I hadn’t been struck by a particularly vivid, high-resolution image of Roz reclining on the chaise lounge while I was packing, I was sure I wouldn’t have forgotten the chicken wire.

I took a deep breath, lifted the hammer and swung it down again.

“Fuck!” Pain shot through my finger as the hammer smashed into it, sending tears welling in my eyes.

Blinking furiously, I examined my finger. A shadow fell over me.

“Are you okay?”

My heart leaped so ferociously I wobbled and nearly fell.

I knew that voice.

Brown work boots appeared, a foot away from where I crouched.

I knew those boots.

I looked up to see Roz peering down at me, her brow furrowed. Forget butterflies, my stomach felt as though it was bursting with winged unicorns, flapping wildly and poking me with their horns. I’d been thinking about this moment since Sunday, but I still wasn’t prepared for it.

I swallowed. “I think so.” I bent my finger. “It still seems to be working. What are you doing here?”

“Good. You need working fingers… to do your flower arrangements.” Roz crouched down next to me.

I resisted the urge to inch closer to her, to breathe in her scent I’d dreamed about every night, to run my thumb down her jawline, put my hand on the nape of her neck and pull her lips to mine. I sunk my teeth into my lower lip instead, avoiding direct contact with Roz’s eyes.

“I’ve got the lilacs in the van,” Roz said. “And Dana said you were sounding a little stressed, so I’m also here to help—if you need me.”

“Oh. Thank you.” I could certainly use another set of hands, especially for the fiddly arch, but were Roz’s elegant ones a good idea? I needed to stay focused.

A gust of wind hit and the arch gave an ominous wobble. Shit . I shot out my hand to steady it. This was definitely a two-person job.

I swallowed my pride and nodded. “Okay.” I handed Roz the hammer. My hand grazed hers, leaving warm tingles on my skin. “If I hold the peg here, would you mind trying to hammer it in?” I grasped the peg with both hands.

Roz stared at the ground, brushing the dirt next to the peg with her long fingers. A small shiver shot down my spine. Those fingers were trailing all over my body last weekend.

“I think there’s a rock just here, which may be why you’re not having any luck,” Roz said. “Can we shift it a few inches?”

Heat rushed up my face. Of course the rock-hard patch of dirt I was trying to drive the tent pegs into was actually a rock. “That’s fine. Thanks.”

Together we shifted the arch back, and then tried again. This time the tent pegs slid smoothly into the soil.

“Thank you,” I said, standing and wiping my hands on my orange overalls.

“No problem.” Roz cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly on Sunday.” Roz’s gaze slid to the arch. “What do we need to do now?”

I blinked. Oh. She’s asking what the next step for the floral arch is, not our relationship. I pressed my lips together. As apologies went, that was a disappointing one. Where was the explanation, the details as to why she ran out the door? Was she going to say anything more?

I yanked the chicken wire out of the box. “Now it’s secure, we need to wrap the wire around the arch so we can attach the flowers.”

We began twisting the wire around the metal arch in silence, punctuated only by the faint sounds of the caterers setting up inside the venue and birds flitting between the vines. Roz started at one end of the arch and I took the other. I focused on the task in front of me, trying not to look at how gracefully Roz’s fingers were working. As we made our way up each pillar of the arch, we drew closer together. In my periphery, Roz opened and then closed her mouth a few times. I swallowed. Was she working up to say something else?

We were so close now, our bodies almost touching, as we reached up above our heads to wrap the wire around the top of the arch.

“I like you. A lot.” Roz’s voice was low and soft.

My heart jumped, my eyes darting to her face. Was she?—

“But I need to be upfront with you. I’m not looking for a serious relationship.”

Heaviness washed over my body, a lump forming in my throat. I swallowed. “That’s fine. You made that clear when we first met.”

I twisted the last piece of wire on the arch and stepped back. “Now, we need to feed the greenery through the chicken wire, like this.” I picked up a leafy frond from the box next to me and weaved it through the wire.

Roz watched closely, and then copied my actions. She bit her lip, her brow slightly furrowed, her blond hair flopping on her forehead. A pang hit my chest. Stop ogling her. She doesn’t like you like that.

“That’s great.” I dragged my eyes away from her face and pulled out another frond to thread through. Thank god I had something to keep me busy. This conversation would have been excruciating if we’d just been sitting out on Roz’s back deck together with nothing to do but sit in the long silence. Should I say something else? My mind was blank.

When the box was almost empty, Roz cleared her throat again. “I was wondering if you would be interested in something less serious?”

I froze, my eyes jerking up to her face. Her cheeks were tinged with pink. “Less serious?”

“Yes. More of a… casual arrangement.”

I chewed on my lip, my heart sinking. “I don’t think so. I really want to find someone to settle down with, have kids together. I can’t afford to be distracted by a relationship that’s not going anywhere.”

Roz’s face fell. “I understand.”

Everything I’d said was true, and yet my chest ached at the thought of never kissing Roz again, never running my hands over her breasts and watching her as I made her come. The lump in my throat expanded.

I bent down, picking up the two last fronds and pushing them into the wire.

“The flowers are next. But I can finish that part myself.” While Roz had done a surprisingly good job, I just wanted to be alone.

Roz shook her head. “I’m happy to stay.”

I glanced at my watch. The timing was still tight. Suck up your pride and accept her help. “Okay. We have to insert the roses carefully into the chicken wire, like this, making sure they’re secure.” I pulled a white rose out of the bucket next to me and pushed it into the top of the arch. “We’ll do the bigger roses first and then add the smaller spray roses.”

Roz bent down and inspected the roses suspiciously.

“Don’t worry, I de-thorned them already.”

“Thank god.” Roz let out a sound somewhere between a huff and a chuckle and then bent down, picked a large pink rose out of the bucket and tenderly threaded it into the wire. She tugged at it gently. “It seems stable enough. Is that okay?”

“Perfect.” The lump was still there, bobbing as I spoke.

I selected another dusty-pink rose and inserted it into the arch. The silence felt heavy. Perhaps talking about something that wasn’t related to our non-existent relationship would help.

I asked the first thing that jumped into my mind, something I’d been wondering for weeks. “Why do you hate flowers so much?”

Roz went very still. Had I hit a nerve? After a moment, she peered around the arch to look at me, her lips pressed together, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to let me in on her flower-hating secret. “Have you ever gotten sick after eating something and never wanted to eat that thing again?”

I tilted my head and stared at her. “Is this about quark again? If you really don’t want to try it, I won’t force you to.”

Roz let out a small chuckle. “No, it’s not about the quark. But something similar happened to me with flowers.”

I frowned. “You ate flowers and got sick? Um, you do know most flowers aren’t edible.” I thought Roz was smarter than that. “I mean, you can eat pansies, violas, lavender and even roses, but I personally think flowers are better admired for their looks rather than consumed.”

Roz snorted. “No, I didn’t eat flowers.”

I stared, waiting. “Okay…”

Roz turned her attention back to the red rose she was holding, pushing it slowly into the greenery. “I dated women when I was at college, but after that, work really became my life. When you’re working fifteen-hour days, it’s hard enough to fit in exercise and sleep, let alone see people.”

My stomach sank. The whole point of this conversation was to steer clear of discussing our relationship. Why was Roz talking about dating?

“I can imagine,” I said, plucking a gorgeous deep-purple rose from the bucket. “I found dating tricky enough in between hanging out with friends, doing all the things I love—like kayaking, hiking and reading—and work, and I don’t even work long hours.” Although, I had managed to fit fake dating Roz into my life quite easily… so perhaps the issue wasn’t that I hadn’t had time before, but that I just wasn’t that interested in it.

Roz paused, staring into the distance. “When I was twenty-seven, I met a woman, Sadie, at my parents’ holiday party. She was a couple of years older than me and worked at my dad’s law firm. Things got intense, quickly… She wanted to see me all the time, showered me with compliments, bought me expensive watches and told me she loved me after only a few weeks. We moved into her apartment after six weeks.”

My heart clenched. I really didn’t want to hear about Roz’s amazing love story right now. Could I change the subject, or would that be rude? It felt rude. And I was still curious about the genesis story for Roz’s disdain of flowers, even if she seemed to have gone off on a tangent.

I held back a sigh. “Oh wow. That does sound intense.”

“Yeah. I think deep down I knew something was off?—”

Off? Okay. Maybe this wasn’t the amazing love story I’d first assumed.

“But Sadie was so into me and she seemed like the perfect partner on paper—attractive, successful, smart, outgoing and wanted a family like me.”

I nearly dropped the rose I was holding. Roz wanted a family?

“And”—Roz cleared her throat—“I think I was flattered by her attention. She proposed to me after three months, and I said yes.”

My eyebrows shot up. Roz getting engaged after three months did not compute. She was so measured and sensible.

Roz sighed. “After that, things went rapidly downhill. Instead of giving me over-the-top compliments all the time, she started constantly criticizing my appearance, making comments about how socially awkward I was, that sort of thing. I rarely socialized, but the few times I did go out, she’d get furious if I didn’t respond to her messages or calls immediately. She even accused me of cheating on her with a straight friend once. I was devastated. I couldn’t work out what I’d done.”

Heat shot through my veins. What an awful way to treat someone. “It doesn’t sound like you’d done anything wrong at all. So, what did you do?”

“I felt trapped. We’d announced the engagement. I’d given up my apartment lease. My parents were thrilled their daughter was dating an eligible woman who was on the partnership track. We’d moved so quickly; we had our future all planned out—buying a house, having kids, getting a dog. Leaving her seemed like such a huge step. And my job was so busy—you have to work to the bone in management consulting firms, especially if you’re trying to make partner—so I barely had time to myself to figure out what to do. Every time I started seriously considering leaving her, she’d get better again, for a period, and I’d think maybe things weren’t so bad after all.”

I grimaced. “It sounds like she was a master manipulator.”

“Yeah. That’s what Matt said when he finally pulled me aside at a family lunch, told me I looked like shit and asked what was going on. I’d never heard the term ‘love-bombing’ before, but when Matt sent me an article about it afterward, it all started to fit into place. Matt also raised the possibility that she might be pursuing me partly to advance her own career, given she worked at the same law firm as my dad and he was a senior partner with a lot of influence. He was convinced—and still is—that she was a psychopath.” Roz pressed another flower into the arch.

“Jeez!” I’d stopped trying to work now and was just standing still, listening intently.

“After that conversation with Matt, it was like a switch had been flipped. I suddenly saw how toxic our relationship was and that I needed to get out. Two days later, I moved in with Matt and Mel while I looked for a new place to live.”

“That sounds really awful,” I said. “I’m glad you left.”

“Me too.” Roz pressed her lips together.

As interesting as her story had been, I was still none the wiser on the reason for Roz’s flower phobia. “So, um, how did your dislike of flowers come about?”

Roz chuckled softly as she pushed some more roses into the chicken wire. “Ah, yes. Sorry, I got so carried away I forgot why I was telling you in the first place. Sadie sent me flowers. Almost every single day we were together. I could tell how she was feeling about me based on the arrangement. If she was angry or annoyed with me, she’d get me a small bouquet of carnations or daisies—or not send me anything at all. If she was in her ‘showering me with affection’ mood, I’d get these over-the-top designer flower arrangements that were almost too big to lift. My office at work was filled with flowers; you could have mistaken it for a small flower shop. My colleagues thought it was hilarious. By the end of our relationship, I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of the things.”

My stomach sank. “Oh shit. And here you are, surrounded by them.”

Roz smiled across at me. “Perhaps they’re not so bad after all.”

My heart ballooned. I furrowed my brow. She’d just said she wasn’t interested in anything serious. But she also used to want kids, and she clearly changed her mind about that. Perhaps she might change her mind again? I clenched my jaw. Pursuing something casual with Roz on the faint hope that she might change her mind was a terrible idea.

Roz knelt down on the grass and carefully selected another rose, which she pressed into the bottom of the arch. I couldn’t help picturing Roz, kneeling before me, my back pressed to the front door of Sapphire Blooms as she pushed her fingers inside me. My eyes dropped to her mouth. Big mistake . The sensation of her soft lips making their way down my stomach last Friday night flooded my memory and sent my core thrumming. I swallowed. Don’t look at her mouth. My gaze lowered to her hands delicately maneuvering the rose into position. Or her hands! I jerked my head away, focusing on the arch. That was safer.

But even with my eyes averted, my body still pulsed with desire. My mind whirred as I stared blankly at a particularly spectacular red rose. I wasn’t planning to start dating again until after the paperwork for Fred’s investment was signed anyway. Would it be such a terrible idea to extend our fling another week or two, until it was all finalized? Surely in that time I wouldn’t get more attached than I already was… I swallowed. It quite possibly was a terrible idea, but never getting to kiss Roz again felt even worse. Fuck it.

I looked down at Roz through the foliage. “Okay.”

She looked up at me, tilting her head. “Sorry?”

I cleared my throat. “Let’s try casual. But only until Fred’s paperwork is signed.”

Roz’s eyes widened, her face breaking into a wild smile. “Really?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

Doubt washed over me. I could just imagine the look of horror on George’s face when I told her. And Blake would be even worse. Casually dating my enemy-turned-fake girlfriend when I wanted more than she could offer? Heat pricked my neck.

“Yes. But do you mind if we keep this between us? It’s just that I announced to the world last year I was turning my life around. Instead of jumping from one job and one relationship to another, I was going to make my thirties all about settling down.”

Roz chuckled. “Sure. We’d just mastered the art of fake dating; now we can hone our skills in the art of fake not casually dating. We don’t want to get too comfortable.”

Roz’s eyes twinkled and I laughed, feeling lighter. Maybe it all would be okay. If it was anything like our fake-dating experience, at least we’d have some fun along the way.

Roz stood on the other side of the arch to me, roses framing her head, her gaze soft. “Can I kiss you?”

My eyes darted around, checking no one was about. Making out under the floral arch hours before my clients would be married under it did not feel entirely professional. But the only sign of life was a bird flying overhead.

“Yes.” I laughed, leaning in to kiss Roz. Our lips met and I closed my eyes, letting out a low moan as Roz’s hot tongue slipped into my mouth. Tingles raced down my spine. Oh god. I fisted the collar of her flannel shirt. Roz’s hand slid to my ass, giving it a squeeze, and I grabbed onto the arch to stabilize myself. The arch wobbled, bringing me back to reality.

I was under a time crunch to finish setting up for the wedding. I couldn’t let myself get carried away or bring it all toppling over in a fit of passion. I disentangled myself from Roz.

“I would love to continue this later, but I really need to finish getting the rest of the flower arrangements done before Jenny and the wedding guests arrive.”

Roz stepped back, grinning. “Another raincheck? I’m okay with that, as long as it doesn’t take as long as last time to call it in.”

I laughed. “There is absolutely no risk of that.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

My grin widened. “You?”

Roz chuckled. “Sounds like a plan.”

I watched her go, the winged unicorns back again and flapping harder than ever in my stomach.