“Loosen it up,” she corrected.
He tried.
She sighed and motioned him to lean down. Putting her hands in his hair, she attempted not to notice how nice he smelled. Or how closely they were standing to each other. Or how he was looking at her with complete trust. She finger-combed his hair forward from its product-assisted perfection. It stood up in strange and improbable directions.
“Nope,” Ivy said.
Bentley looked worried.
“Never fear,” she said, reaching under the counter to her purse. She pulled out her favorite cotton-knit beanie that Grammy had made her and tossed it to him. “Put that on. Oh, and these,” she said, reaching into the lost and found bin, which was also on a shelf under the counter. She pulled out a pair of plastic-rimmed glasses and rubbed them on her apron. “I checked the day they showed up—no prescription.” She grinned. “They were made for looking cool.” Handing them over, she stood and waited.
He settled the glasses on his face and turned to her.
“Well?” he asked, a small, insecure smile on his face.
“Wow.” Had she said that aloud? She cleared her throat, but it didn’t fix the feeling that she was breathing through a damp towel. “You look completely different.”
He hesitated. “Different than you expected?”
She shook her head. “Different than before. Better.” She noticed him wince at her words and realized what it sounded like. She scrambled to take them back. “I mean, better suited to sell coffee. More approachable. More like a normal person. Less like a boss. Ten minutes ago, you could have been Titus Cameron himself. Now you look like a real guy.”
He laughed. “I could have been Titus Cameron? Is that true?”
With a shrug, Ivy turned her back to him but kept talking as she reached to replace a towel that didn’t need replacing. “How much of anything that happens here is true?” she asked. “Every carefully placed decoration, every one-of-a-kind item that’s really an exact copy, every independent and original interaction is scripted to fool customers into believing that they’re having a hip, unique experience.”
She could see his posture change. His arms straightened against the counter, increasing the space between them. “Wow. You really hate this?”
She turned back and leaned across the counter again. “No. I like working here. I told you. Coffee’s good. Pastries are nearly perfect. Great music on the loop. It pays the rent. I get to meet all kinds of interesting people. I’m just not a big fan of the hypocrisy.”
He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t get it.”
Shaking her head, Ivy said, “Forget it. Sorry. There are moments when the whole idea of Velvet and Mr. Titus Cameron, wonder-boy creator of the perfect franchise, just makes me tired.”
He stood at the counter blinking.
“Hey,” Ivy said. “Sorry to get all existential-crisis on you. This is a great job, really, and if you never wander into another Velvet Undergrounds shop, you’ll even be able to believe in all this.” She motioned to the air around their heads. “Meanwhile, as long as you’re working, coffee will be free.”
She smiled but felt the tension in the air, and she wondered again why she always felt the need to say what she was thinking. Making this encounter awkward was not in her plan, but she could tell she’d said too much. Her commentary on the shop had made him uncomfortable.
She’d make it up to him. She’d offer to create the schedule for the next couple of weeks so he could avoid working with Old Betty.
He could do all his shifts with Ivy. It was the least she could do. She smiled to herself.
Hearing the bell, she turned to welcome the next customer. Smiling at Bentley, she said, “Ready? Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER TWO
Walking to the car, Bentley played those last few hours with Ivy over and over in his head. How she’d reached for his arm to roll up his sleeves. He wondered if she’d felt the spark of electricity he’d noticed when they touched. The way she’d smiled. How she’d flipped her chin-length black hair behind her ear, giving him a peek of the underlying deep purple dye. How easy it was to laugh with her. The way she’d talked to him like any other coworker.
It had been a long time since anyone had treated him like any other coworker. In fact, his first jobs had been for his father’s hotels, and even though he’d started in housekeeping, grounds crew, and mailroom jobs, everyone knew he was a Hollis. He’d always been looked at differently. He’d always been treated like he was untouchable.
Until today.
Until Ivy. He smiled at the memory of her hands on his arms, how their fingers had grazed over cups of coffee.
Not to mention the part where she reached up and touched his hair. He put his hand to his head and realized that he was still wearing her beanie. Thinking about seeing her again to give it back made him smile.
But in remembering the pleasant pieces of the afternoon, he also remembered the sting of hearing her spit out the words “Mr. Titus Cameron,” like it was the name of an infectious disease. It was hard to maintain upright posture after a hit like that. He didn’t need to ask. Ivy the coffee girl despised Titus Cameron, the inventor of the Velvet Undergrounds franchise.
It felt personal.
Because it was personal.
Not that she’d ever know that. Bentley, along with everyone else who knew that Bentley had created both the Velvet Undergrounds franchise and Titus Cameron, was under strict legal contract to say nothing about it.
He clicked the unlock button on his Tesla and slid in behind the wheel. He didn’t even have time to start the car before Lexus called.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hey.” He switched on the car and cranked the air conditioning.
His sister’s voice came through his phone. “So? How did it go?”
He laughed into the phone, even though he wasn’t all that amused. “You were sitting right there, so you tell me. How did it look?”
“I’d say you’ve got a ninety percent chance of success with the coffee girl.” Her voice sounded bored, possibly contemptuous. As usual.
“You’re not still inside, are you?” Bentley wouldn’t put it past his sister to talk about Ivy while she sat on a couch fifteen feet from Ivy. That was so Lex.
She sighed. “No worries. I walked out a minute after you did. Good frozen hot chocolate, by the way. Just like Mom used to make.”
He grunted. “Which one did you get?”
“Sonic Youth. Very clever name.” Her bored voice took on a small sliver of humor.
“You would say that. You named it.”
Now her silvery laugh rang through his phone. “I did a very fine job with this one.”
Bentley grunted again.
“What?” Lex asked.
With an almost-dramatic sigh, Bentley said, “She hates me.”
“Untrue.”
“Unfortunately, totally true.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“She touched your shirt. She touched your hair. Not at all sanitary, by the way. She leaned in.” Lexus sounded like she planned to keep listing ways that Ivy appeared attracted. Not the point.
He rested his head on the steering wheel. “She kind of liked Bentley, I think. She liked the idea of me, anyway. Kind of a fixer-upper.”
It wasn’t until he said the words that he wondered if she was the kind of woman who was on the lookout for someone to change. He’d lived through that a couple of times, and he wasn’t sure he’d like it more at Ivy’s hand than he’d liked it before. But somehow, her changes had felt constructive. Helpful.
Lex made a dismissive sound. “She definitely wanted to change you. You looked like a tool in that hat, by the way.”
He reached up and touched the hat again. It was soft as anything he’d ever felt. “I looked like a barista,” he corrected. “But you should have heard her say Titus. Pure venom.”
She let out an exasperated breath through the phone. “You brought up Titus? You’re supposed to keep
that on the down-low.”
He hated the way his voice rose when he was feeling defensive. “I didn’t bring him up. She did. She has all kinds of opinions about the ethics of irony.”
“That is not a thing.” Lex’s bored voice was back.
He leaned his head against the back of his seat. “She said Titus and it sounded like poison. She hates him. Me. Whatever.”
“Maybe she wasn’t saying Titus at all. Sounds like typhus, which, when you think about it is kind of the same thing as poison.”
He laughed in spite of himself.
“I’m here. Open up.” She tapped her fingernails against the car window.
Bentley hit the unlock and his sister slid into the passenger seat. She adjusted the air vents to blow through her perfectly-styled blond hair. He slid his phone into his shirt pocket.
She took one look at him and shook her head. “Don’t fall to pieces. This is the part you breathe through. You’ve made your first contact. You walked inside one of your stores for the first time as your own employee. Day one of sixty. You can do this.”
Lex, for all her visible perfections and manufactured coolness, was very good at helping him find his confidence. She always had been.
He’d heard her tell him he could do this for years; more specifically for the past two and a half years. There were days he believed her.
He’d believed her on the day he presented his grad school capstone project: a chain store that snubbed the idea of chain stores. A hipster’s delight.
He’d believed her when she said he could do it on the day he created a board of directors to be the face of the company. A board borrowed liberally from his father’s existing corporations; one made up of men and women who had been successful longer than Bentley had been alive.
He believed on the day he announced that all credit for creation of the Velvet Undergrounds would go to a fictional guy called Titus Cameron, would-be punk band star, now creator of the best coffee shops in the city.
He believed Lexus when she told him he could do it on the day their father made his deal: That Bentley would go work at his own coffee house as a normal employee. If he could handle two months of part-time barista work, he would obtain majority control of the corporation. Walter Hollis assured him that he believed in Bentley’s business abilities; now he needed to see that Bentley understood the company from the ground up. Or the grounds up, as it were.
Walter Hollis thought he was so funny.
But Bentley understood his father’s reasoning. His dad had told him all his life that working from the bottom up had made Walter the man he was today. Walter hadn’t inherited his money; he’d created it through hard work and a sharp mind. His first hotel was a tiny bed and breakfast. From his humble beginnings, Walter’s business had soared upward—literally. He’d built his high-rise hotel franchise from practically nothing, and he’d become one of the most wealthy, successful, and well-respected businessmen in the United States. Bentley knew he was also one of the most functional human beings: happily married, successfully retired, and gladly watching over his various business ventures from boardrooms and golf courses.
Bentley stretched his arms over the steering wheel and then readjusted the air vent so it pointed directly into his face. Then he turned to Lex. “Thanks for being in there with me,” he said. “It helped knowing you were there.”
“It’s completely adorable how nervous you are,” she said, petting his shoulder. “But this is just silly.” She pulled the beanie off his head and tossed it in the back seat.
He glanced in the mirror to see where it landed. “Don’t lose that. I need to recreate this look tomorrow.”
Lex squeezed the back of his neck. “Or you could let barista girl do it for you. She looked willing.”
“She has a name. Ivy. And Ivy was being nice,” Bentley said. But as he thought about it, nice wasn’t really the word. What, he wondered, was the word?
She was cool and complicated, funny, a little edgy, and a tiny bit scary. She looked nice, though, he thought, remembering her striking green eyes and that funky dyed hair. And her mouth that moved in subtle and quirky ways. He definitely thought her mouth looked nice.
He liked the way she looked completely different from any of the women in his life: from his sisters with their careless elegance that somehow belonged to them and to all their friends, an appearance that might seem subtle, but always carried the understanding of wealth; from his college girlfriends who each fit into the same physical mold; from his mom with her constant attempts to reverse time and gravity. Ivy didn’t have any of that. Her chin-length black-and-purple hair, her retro boots, her piercings, her punk-rock eye makeup all sent a message that her smile contradicted. Everything in her image that said she didn’t care was something she manufactured, something she added. The smile that danced in her eyes? That was obviously original Ivy material.
Bentley suddenly came to attention and realized that he was smiling. Lex watched him with a half-grin on her face. He cleared his throat and put the car in gear.
Lexus clicked her seatbelt. “Benny, are you by any chance falling for the coffee shop girl? Because that would make this whole experience about a thousand times more sellable.” In all of Lex’s conversations, she never forgot her job as Titus Cameron’s public relations director. She took her job curating the company’s image very seriously. She slid her Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses onto her face and pointed down the street. “Time to meet Daddy and the board,” she said, as if he’d forgotten.
He’d absolutely not forgotten.
It had only slipped his mind for a minute. To make room for images, thoughts, memories of Ivy Morehouse.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning, Ivy jumped off the bus at the stop closest to her other job. She walked the block and a half to the front door, and she was sweating. She reached the door and checked her reflection, tugging at the V-neck of her pink scrubs and adjusting the bag over her shoulder. She caught herself smiling, and she wondered what Bentley from the shop would have thought of this other look. She’d been surprised and pleased how he seemed to like Undergrounds Ivy; maybe he’d like this Ivy, too. She stepped inside the door of the Centennial Glen Care Center and forced away the reverie grin, her game face ready for the welcome-desk secretary.
“Morning, Roxie,” Ivy said, surely looking professional and not at all swoony.
“Hi.” Roxie didn’t look up from the monitor in front of her, and her fingers clicked on her keyboard. From this side of the desk, it made her look efficient and busy. But after a couple of years of experience, Ivy knew better. Roxie was a champion online-game player.
Roxie had been the front desk secretary here for as long as Ivy had been coming, more than four years now. At first it was to visit Grammy, then to visit Grammy and her friend Lucille, and then, after the awful second December, to visit only Lucille.
When Ivy’s mom had to make the decision to arrange a new living situation for Grammy, Ivy had been in school in Tempe. Grammy wanted to stay in the city instead of moving up to Flagstaff where Ivy’s family lived. It was a perfect solution: Grammy stayed close to the neighborhood she’d lived in all her life, and Ivy visited a few times a week.
When school became too expensive and Ivy took a semester off, one of the girls who worked at Centennial Glen suggested that Ivy should do the Certified Nurse Assistant course. She practically promised her a job. Ivy did a little research and found that the certification was far less expensive than a semester of school, and she could train at Centennial Glen as an intern. A nearly perfect situation; she saw Grammy almost every day, and she eventually finished the CNA course and got hired, making money doing something she loved.
She found she genuinely enjoyed the residents’ company. On days she wasn’t working, she’d stop by and have lunch with Grammy, or join in on an afternoon craft, or listen to Grammy’s friend Lucille play the piano and sing.
Ivy worked for a year before that terrible day that Grammy die
d.
Ivy had sailed in the front door two minutes late for her shift that day. The look Roxie had given her then was different than any she’d given before. This was not an annoyed glance at her tardiness. This was heartbreak. When Roxie whispered, “I’m sorry,” and tears had filled her eyes, Ivy hadn’t even needed to ask. She knew. And her own heart shattered.
The three days between Grammy’s death and the funeral were as dark as any days Ivy could remember. Bereft, that was the word. She felt bereft of meaning and purpose in her world. Centennial Glen was Grammy’s home. Without Grammy, it was only a job.
She was sure she didn’t want it anymore.
Her parents stayed with her for several days so she wouldn’t be alone. Normally Ivy would have grown tired of their company much more quickly, but this time, she needed them. With two weeks’ leave from Centennial Glen, she needed something to do. Her parents went on hikes with her, explored old town Scottsdale, attended a culture festival, and ate a great deal of food.
She told her parents she was quitting the Centennial Glen job. Her mom clamped her mouth closed to keep from saying what each of them was thinking—Ivy quit too many things.
Keep going there, her father told her. You’ll find it does you good, he said. Ivy wondered if this bossy business would ever wear off, but she was grateful to them both for not mentioning her tendency to run away from things she didn’t like. She decided she might as well go back to the care center as not.
Ivy was surprised along the way to discover that she fell into some kind of love. Not only with Lucille’s companionship, but with the whole Centennial Glen community. It didn’t hurt that she was, in the words of her parents, seriously in need of some life direction. Centennial Glen gave her that direction.
Today, Ivy looked around the “lobby,” an overstatement for the narrow hallway leading from the front door to the welcome desk. A few plastic plants needed dusting, and there was a fluorescent lightbulb out. She could hear the sounds of television from the sitting room to the right. She stepped behind the front desk and swiped her ID into the reader. It beeped to let her know she was clocked in. She looked over Roxie’s shoulder. “How’s the game?” It was the same question she always asked.
Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4) Page 19
