Brooke smirked at him. “Thank you for that.”
“No problem. Just telling it like it is.”
As they ate, Isaac and Brooke dropped into normal adult conversation, but he appreciated that she kept it light after the depressing morning he’d had. Whether they continued with the silly wordplay or branched out to mundane topics like the extra-hot, dry summer they’d been having, Isaac wished he could hide out in Brooke’s flower shop with her, away from all responsibility and disappointment, for the rest of his life.
Chapter Fifteen
After the surprise lunch she’d shared with Isaac, Brooke didn’t want to let him leave, especially since she’d spent the last five days wondering why he hadn’t made any move for them to get together after their near-perfect picnic date on Saturday. It still made her the slightest bit angry that someone else’s ex could have an impact on her relationship. But today it was as if no time had passed and no complications had arisen between them. But they both had work to do.
“What are you doing Saturday?” Isaac asked, his hand on the doorknob of her shop. “If you don’t mind getting dirty, I could use some help at my house. And you know, since I helped you with your garden, you kind of owe me.”
“I don’t remember making any kind of deal about the gardening.” All this wagering was getting confusing, but since it was all in fun, it didn’t matter if they kept track.
Isaac threw both hands into the air. “I don’t remember who owes who anymore, to be honest. I think we should start over with the gin rummy challenge and keep better track.”
“Oh, no, you can’t selectively forget when you are the one behind. I won at archery double or nothing, fair and square.” Oh, how she loved being with this man. “What kind of dirty work are we talking here? Because I can clean out gutters with the best of them, but if it involves dishes? Ain’t no way you’ll convince me.”
“Well, since you’re okay with ladders, I think you ought to come by.” He made a show of looking her up and down, and Brooke felt self-conscious in her form-fitting blouse and jeans. “And wear something you don’t mind getting dusty.”
“Like horseback-riding dusty?” She was determined to get the details of this task before agreeing, though she would show up for anything at this point. Even dishes.
“-Ish. Maybe more like four-wheeler dusty, but indoors. Nothing a good shower and a good washing machine won’t take care of. My place, nine o’clock.”
* * *
Five minutes to nine Saturday morning, Brooke rang Isaac’s doorbell, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, wondering what in the world it was she had signed up for. She trusted that Isaac wouldn’t invite her over for a horrible task; surely it would hold some element of fun if he cared about her at all. And she was pretty certain he did. For someone who didn’t think he was a romantic, bringing a surprise lunch and coming to her for a pick-me-up was pretty dang romantic. Oh, and those eyes. And that voice. She was dangerously close to falling in love with her first-ever boyfriend some ten-plus years later. It would be surreal and a dream she never wanted to wake up from if it weren’t so pathetic.
“I see you’re ready to work.” Isaac appraised her baggy denim overalls with humor. Though she’d paired them with a fitted white T, the overalls were more of a joke than a fashion statement. He handed Brooke a red bandana. “For your hair.”
Brooke quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.” He jammed a baseball cap backwards on his own head and stepped back to admit her into his foyer.
As she walked past, and he was distracted with closing the door, she swiped the cap off his head and threaded her ponytail through the back, settling it over her brow. “I prefer this look.”
His look went from surprised when she took the hat to appreciative. “I do too.” He took the bandana back from her, but stuck it in his back pocket. If it wasn’t good enough for his head, why did he think she’d want to wear it? “I’ll just grab another hat. Make yourself at home.”
Brooke walked into the living room of his older home—probably built twenty or thirty years before the two of them were born. The structure had nice bones, but could use some updating, and with two ladders in the middle of the room, as well as the putty knives and dust masks, she was pretty sure she and Isaac were going to work on that. Satisfied he wasn’t going to ask her to do something completely horrid, Brooke walked across that room toward an open set of French doors. Ahead of her sat an entertainment blast from her past.
Hearing Isaac coming up behind her, Brooke turned, thrilled to share her excitement for what she’d found. “I can’t believe you still have it!”
Isaac paled for a moment and twitched as if he were going to turn away, but stopped himself. His eyes fell on the game table in the middle of the room. “Oh yeah, I wouldn’t let my mom get rid of my Star Wars foosball table. It’s a limited edition now—they only sold it the year we were thirteen.”
“Oh, man, I remember the birthday party when you got this as a gift.” Brooke peeled back a blue tarp lying on top and then flipped one of the handles. “We have to play. Whatever chore you have lined up will just have to wait, because you are going down.”
Isaac chuckled. “Is everything a competition with you?”
Brooke stepped back a moment, considering. “Not usually. I guess you bring out the fighter in me.”
“Let’s hope not.” Isaac seemed offended, but stepped up. “Do you want stormtroopers or super battle droids?”
A few spins of the players and Brooke knew she was completely outmatched. She hadn’t played foosball since that birthday party, come to think of it. It didn’t take five minutes before she’d been toasted. “Rematch,” she insisted. She was going to get at least one goal if it killed her. “But I get the lucky side.”
Isaac laughed. “Luck had nothing to do with it, but I’ll give up this side if you think you can do better.”
As they passed, Brooke reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him into her bubble. With their eyes locked on each other and close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath, for a second, Brooke made it appear she was going to kiss him. He looked like he would probably accept it, too, but just as she started leaning toward him, she stepped back and around him. “Stole your chi,” she whispered.
Her heart beat faster as she turned to face him at the opposite end of the table. If nothing else, the experience told her that the next time, she just might want to be bold enough to go for it.
It turned out that attempting to steal his luck had more of a detrimental effect now that her mind and heart where everywhere but on the game. The second unanswered goal went through her players.
“I’m not sure you did steal my chi, M. Though it was a pretty good try,” Isaac teased from the other side.
When she looked away from the game to catch his expression as he spoke—a super-bad idea that resulted in the ball dropping into her goal yet again—Brooke’s eye caught on a long rectangular sheet of contact paper mounted on the wall behind Isaac.
“Is that what I think it is?” Brooke forgot all about the game and went to inspect the paper that had been behind her for an entire game. She recognized her own handwriting. Happy B-day painted vertically in colorful tempera paint letters down the paper, the signatures and well-wishes of many of their eighth-grade classmates scrawled in ink in the void surrounding the message. Brooke touched the paper, impressed and amazed that he’d kept it. And not only had he kept it, but he displayed it.
The bright inks used by many of the girls had faded over the years, but the memory hadn’t faded in the least. To surprise Isaac for his birthday, she had taken the paper with her to every class, cut to fit the front of his locker perfectly, rolled up and shoved in her backpack whenever he was near. She’d collected nearly every student in their grade’s signature before she posted it on his locker right before lunch that day.
His birthday that year had fallen more than a full month after she’d brok
en up with him—the worst mistake of her young life—and by that point she was fiercely regretting it. The birthday wishes, and involving all their peers, had been her way of trying to make it up to him, though she’d sworn every person into secrecy. Embarrassed that she still liked him, she hadn’t wanted him to know she was the mastermind behind the sign.
“Did you ever—” Standing in front of the poster, Brooke’s eyes shot to her own signature, where she’d deliberately signed her name and nothing else, only to find a lopsided heart drawn around her name. In its messy, ballpoint-pen-stutter crookedness, it had to be the hand of a teenage boy. Mostly likely the one who had received it. “I remember this. What year was it?” Brooke knew she should fess up to knowing all about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
“Eighth grade,” Isaac admitted. He pointed to a name near the top of the rectangle. “Do you remember Tim Greene? He moved away that summer.” He indicated two more names, one over the other and joined with a plus sign. “Can you believe Lance and Kris are still together?”
Brooke was thrilled that he still enjoyed the gift, but felt a slight disappointment that she wasn’t the reason it was hanging in his rec room. “So, what’s the big, hairy, dirty project slated for today? No plumbing, right? Because I have to say that other than playing the game of Clue, I have no experience with wrenches.”
“Ah, no plumbing—which is a good thing, since overalls are definitely the wrong attire for plumbing.”
Brooke felt herself flush at Isaac’s reference to what plumbers were famous for, but pleased all the same that icky pipes weren’t in her near future. “Okay, no plumbing . . .”
“And no electrical.” Isaac pulled the tarp back over the foosball table and walked Brooke out of the rec room toward the living room. After they stepped through the French doors, he pulled them snug behind them. “Nothing we’d need licenses or permits for, not yet. I thought I’d start with something easy—popcorn removal.”
Isaac demonstrated how to scrape the popcorn texture off the ceiling, leaving the ceiling mostly smooth—except for the occasional gouging of the drywall underneath. It wasn’t difficult, but it was as messy as promised.
“By the way, I guess you won,” Brooke admitted during a lull in the conversation.
“I won what? Foosball? Clearly.”
They were on different six-foot ladders in the same room, trying hard not to make clearing the ceiling another one of their competitions, though the size of their cleared sections or the number of nicks and holes left in the drywall easily could have become one.
“Not foosball, you goof,” Brooke said. “The bet about Cody and Danielle. I said that if Cody would do romantic things, he would be able to get Danielle to continue dating him, but he tells me Danielle’s blown him off all week—even after he sent her flowers and washed her car. All of her signals point to relationship fizzle.” She tried to tamp down the slight anger bubbling under the surface. The least Danielle could have done was discuss it with Cody. She hadn’t even tried. “So . . . you won.”
Isaac stopped mid-scrape and climbed down from the ladder. “You have to know I didn’t actually want to win. Especially at the expense of hurt feelings.” He sat down on the old carpet—the carpet he hadn’t bothered to cover since he planned to replace it.
Brooke followed his lead and sat down beside him, happy to give her aching neck and arm a break. “Well, what do you think?” If anyone had the inside scoop on Danielle’s feelings for Cody, it would be Isaac. “Is it all over between them?” Brooke certainly hoped not. She’d never seen her brother so mopey.
“I don’t know.” For a moment, the force of Isaac’s words left Brooke feeling like she couldn’t breathe. Poor Cody. Isaac’s eyebrows pinched together and his tone softened. “More than anything, Danielle is afraid. Afraid that Cody will reject her when he sees what a mess her ex is and how it will always affect her, like it or not. On the other hand, she’s also afraid that if she and Cody get together long-term, that their relationship would somehow end up falling apart just as it did between her and Evan. Does that make sense?”
Brooke waved her head back and forth in part nod, part shake, part shrug. “I get what she’s worried about. The feelings are valid, of course, but I wish she would talk to Cody, let him decide if he’s willing to put up with crazy Evan.” She tugged her mask down so she could breathe and speak more freely. “As for the other worry, everyone who starts a relationship worries about rejection.” Brooke’s personal hang-up at the moment. “With Danielle’s previous experience, of course she’s more cautious. But Cody understands that and is willing to, you know, take his time, earn her trust.” Brooke sighed and drew patterns in the white dust over the dark blue carpet. “I don’t know what he’d say if given the chance to talk with her, but I do know he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.”
For the first time today, Brooke was starting to feel as dejected as Isaac had looked when he pushed his way into her shop Thursday afternoon. If Danielle had given up, maybe love wasn’t worth the effort and heartache.
Isaac pushed both hands down onto the floor with resolve. “Then I think we need a new goal. No more betting against each other. How about we do whatever it takes to keep Danielle and Cody together?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Brooke held her fist out for a bump. “I’m not sure how to make that happen, but I’m all for the solidarity.” She looked at him sideways. “Might be hard not to compete with you anymore, though.”
“Whatever.” They sat in beautiful silence for a moment. “One question: why is love so complicated?” He leaned toward her, bumping his shoulder with hers. “This is exactly why I’m glad you and I are such good friends. Romance complicates everything.”
Chapter Sixteen
Wow.
Just wow.
How had she read the signs so wrong this whole time?
It was all Brooke could do to stay positive and upbeat while continuing on with the popcorn removal after that conversation with Isaac. As soon as she felt enough time had passed that he wouldn’t associate her departure with the “good friends” talk, Brooke made her excuses and left.
“Frankie’s coming to teach me how to tune my piano,” Brooke explained.
What she didn’t say was that they’d kept the time open with Brooke calling Frankie whenever she was done at Isaac’s. Well, she was done. She needed to get out of his house. The ancient birthday poster in Isaac’s game room should have reminded her to protect her heart. Now it felt like middle school all over again. She allowed herself to become all mixed up and vulnerable when she should have been scared. Clearly, she’d inflated innocuous flirting into something more than Isaac had intended.
“I appreciate all your help.” Isaac collected the putty knife from Brooke’s tired hand. Scraping the popcorn texture off the ceiling was harder work than she would have thought. “I’ll see you later, then?” he asked. “And text me if you have any ideas about Danielle and Cody.”
“Will do,” Brooke lied. She knew herself. Even though she wanted Cody and Danielle to get back together, she wouldn’t be emotionally fit for the task if she knew Isaac didn’t want to spend time with her the same way she wanted to be with him. While she couldn’t pinpoint when her feelings for Isaac had shifted from pure friendship into romantic fantasy, now that she was there, it was impossible to go back. Her feelings were like a wildfire out of control on the mountain. They needed to be extinguished or they would burn her up.
Brooke reached up to lift the cap off her head to return it, but Isaac stopped her.
“Keep it until next time,” he said. “This way, if you need to make any stops in town before you get to your shower, dust-free hair won’t look so out of place with the rest of you covered in white powder.”
“Because you think I’m going to stop by Graham’s Pharmacy looking like someone shook a chalkboard over me?” She tried to keep her tone light so the sarcasm wouldn’t cut.
“I think it looks more like a powdered
sugar factory exploded on you. Try Top’s Bakery instead of Graham’s.”
“Thanks for the suggestion.” She forced a smile, knowing that an hour ago she would have laughed heartily. Her chest hurt.
“I’ll see you later.” Isaac walked her to the door, but unlike when he opened it, he didn’t smile. His eyebrows were pinched together and furrows raked across his forehead. He knew something was up, and she wasn’t sure if she was upset or relieved that he didn’t ask.
Before she left Isaac’s curb, Brooke placed a call to Frankie. “I’m heading home now.” Brooke turned onto Main Street, the quickest way home despite the excessively low speed limit. “I’ll need a shower, but you can come whenever you want.”
A child with dark hair hanging halfway down her back was on the sidewalk to Brooke’s right, trailing a man who walked at almost a snail’s pace. The girl slogged forward as if fighting quicksand, yet something about her looked familiar. Was that Gemma?
Brooke slowed down so she could get a better look. Sure enough, Gemma, face contorted in terror, followed her father morosely toward the park. Hopefully Sheriff Lockheart or Deputy Sheriff Benny Gains didn’t come by and suspect Evan of kidnapping Gemma. Although it would serve the creep right.
She turned east into her neighborhood and around the corner to her home.
“Pops is manning the store today,” Frankie said, drawing Brooke from thinking about Gemma and back to her phone call. “I’ve got the whole afternoon free. Let me finish this project, and I’ll gather my piano tuning kit from the shop. I’m guessing I’ll be about an hour or so.”
“Perfect. See you later.” Brooke hit the steering wheel button to disconnect the call, and as the garage door closed behind her, she felt her heart close as well. Fine. She could see the writing on the wall. If Isaac was going to reject her romantically, she would distance herself. She could be strong. She could be friends. And she could smother the little spark of interest she’d harbored for him before it consumed her.
The Practically Romantic Groom (Cobble Creek Romance Book 2) Page 13
