Cashmere and Camo

by Erin Nicholas

  They weren’t going for a long-term thing, but she wasn’t leaving Bliss a virgin, and she wasn’t going to sleep with anyone but Noah. And that was that.

  The bell over the front door jingled and Brynn looked up, half expecting to see another twenty-something guy walking in. But it was Kayla. Relieved, Brynn waved at her from across the room. Kayla met her eye and lifted a hand as well. Brynn pointed to the only other seat in the place—the stool next to MJ.

  Kayla weaved her way between the tables to the counter. “Good grief,” she said.

  Brynn nodded. “I know.”

  Kayla glanced around. “I guess maybe I’ll take my coffee to go today. I can go sit in the park.”

  Brynn shook her head. If nothing else, she could use a little more estrogen in the room. Cori had thought it was great that Brynn was the center of attention like this and had disappeared into the kitchen with Ava and Parker. “No, stay. Please. There’s a stool right here.”

  Kayla glanced at MJ who was focused on her book. “Are you sure?”

  Brynn nodded. If Kayla just sat with her notebook and MJ with her book, it would be as if they were at their own tables like usual. “Of course.”

  Kayla climbed up onto the tall stool. MJ barely spared her a glance.

  “I’m going to grab Cori to make your latte,” Brynn told Kayla. “Be right back.”

  A moment later, she stepped into the kitchen and breathed a huge sigh.

  “You okay?” Cori asked, with a grin.

  Brynn nodded. She looked around the kitchen. Ava had knocked down the wall between their side and Parker’s side in the kitchen too. Which meant it was bigger and louder than it had been before. It wasn’t as good a place to escape anymore. She eyed the storage closet near the back door.

  Parker and Ava were over on his side at the moment. Ava waitressed and even helped with dishes so that Parker could concentrate on the cooking and actually get things done so that he had some free time outside of the diner. With Ava.

  Cori was messing around in their kitchen with something chocolaty-looking. She wasn’t allowed, per the will, to actually bake anything to be sold in the pie shop, but that didn’t keep her from doing one of her favorite things—making amazing sweets that would make Evan fall even more in love with her. As if that was possible.

  “It’s just really busy,” Brynn said.

  “I noticed. So weird that we get overrun with handsome guys as soon as word gets out that you’re able to start dating.”

  Brynn wanted to deny that it was anything but a coincidence, but she couldn’t. “I guess Noah’s been spreading it around.”

  And that was when she let it fully sink in that Noah was being very open about the fact that she was available to other guys now. Ugh. He didn’t want her kissing other guys. He’d made that pretty clear. But he didn’t mind that she was going to be spending time with them. And wasn’t that a bigger deal? Getting to know someone and maybe like them? What if she started wanting to kiss one of them? Had he thought of that?

  But she almost immediately sighed. That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to be spending enough time with anyone to get to really know them and like them enough to want to kiss them. These were going to be single dates. Dates that didn’t include a lot of one-on-one time if she had her way. She was here to practice dating for when she went back to New York.

  “I need a latte,” she told Cori.

  Cori turned fully and really looked at her. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’ve got it. Why don’t you take a break?”

  “Oh my God, really?” Okay, that had been more enthusiastic than she’d intended.

  “Really,” Cori said, setting her whisk down and wiping her hands on her apron. “I’ve got things for a while.”

  Technically, in the will, waitressing and customer service was Brynn’s responsibility. But they all knew that the idea behind the stipulation was to get Brynn out and interacting with people. She did that. A lot. She’d been doing it all day. Surely an hour off here and there was acceptable.

  “Thank you.”

  “You got it.” Cori passed her, the air around her smelling like sugar. “Oh, and you might want to go out the back door,” Cori added. “If you want to avoid your fan club and all those symphony tickets.”

  “Those are for me then?” Brynn asked, untying her own apron and looping it over one of the hooks by the back door.

  “Oh, definitely.” Cori laughed. “And apparently everyone thinks that if you have money, you like stuff like that.”

  “Well, thank goodness there’s no opera here.”

  “There is in Kansas City.”

  “That would be almost a four-hour car ride!” Brynn protested immediately. “I’m not doing that with someone.” Even if it wasn’t for the opera.

  “Then you better avoid Dean Stevens.” Cori gave her a wink and disappeared through the doorway and into the pie shop.

  Brynn blew out a breath. She had been kind of hoping to keep the entire date to four hours. Or less. She stepped out of the backdoor, appreciating the quiet and lack of people for a moment. Then she automatically turned east, toward Noah’s garage.

  She walked along the alley behind the building that housed both the pie shop and the diner then rounded the corner to get to Main. Just as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, someone turned the corner and nearly plowed her over. She gasped and two big hands came out to grasp her upper arms, keeping them both upright and her toes out from underneath his.

  His. She knew it was a man in the split second before she looked up. “Mitch!”

  He grinned down at her. “Hey, Brynn.” He held her just a few seconds longer, before letting go of her arms and stepping a half step back.

  Brynn smoothed the front of her shirt and gave him a smile. She was dressed in a simple blue T-shirt and denim capris. She was usually covered in an apron so she didn’t give much thought to what she put on in the morning. It was a lot like how she approached most of her work days in New York, where she was covered with a lab coat the majority of the time. But suddenly she was aware of the fact that her pink flip-flops didn’t really match her outfit and that her hair was up in a…she had to think for a second, then she lifted her hand. A ponytail. Right. She hadn’t remembered if she’d put it in a bun or a twist or what. She just didn’t think about this stuff much.

  Yet she suddenly felt like she wished she’d even glanced at a mirror sometime in the past four hours.

  And why with Mitch? The pie shop was full of guys who were, evidently, thinking about asking her out, and yet she hadn’t given a single thought to how she looked to them.

  “How are you?” Mitch asked.

  Frazzled. A little claustrophobic evidently. Pretty bad at flirting. Completely uninterested in the opera in Kansas City. “Fine. How about you?”

  “Suddenly hungry for apple pie.”

  She felt her eyebrows rise. “What?”

  His grin grew. “You smell like apple pie. Suddenly I have a craving.”

  Okay, so she wasn’t very good at flirting, but she could recognize that that was what Mitch was doing with her right now. “Well, there’s some pretty good apple pie right around that corner,” she said, waving in the general direction of the pie shop. Which he hadn’t come into once since they’d met. He was flirting with her right now, but he hadn’t sought her out to repeat the invitation to his back deck. In spite of the fact that seemingly every single guy over the age of twenty-five and under forty had been told about her dating status.

  “But you’re not in there,” Mitch pointed out. “No sense in going in now.”

  Uh, huh. She’d been in there almost all day every day since they’d met. Whatever. This was part of this whole dating/socialization/people thing that she dreaded. Figuring other people out. She didn’t like small talk, she didn’t like having to read between the lines, and she didn’t like guessing.

  “Well, I’ll be back later on. Or tomorrow. Or…whenever,” she said. “Maybe I’ll se
e you.” She started to turn away, feeling more and more desperate to get to Noah’s.

  “Brynn.”

  She turned back.

  “Fiction or nonfiction?”

  “What?”

  “When you read, do you prefer fiction or nonfiction?”

  She tipped her head. What was this about? “Fiction mostly.”

  He nodded. “Me too. I’ve read some great stuff recently. Maybe we can compare notes some time.”

  She narrowed her eyes. Was he asking her out? “That would be great. I’m always up for talking books.” That was, in fact, one topic she had no trouble talking about.

  “Have you read Paula Hawkins?”

  “Don’t tell me you only read the bestsellers?” she asked, almost disappointed.

  He laughed. “Nope. But her recent one was great. And I do mix in some nonfiction. You might like some of it. We should definitely compare notes.”

  She nodded slowly. “I’d like that.”

  “Wonderful. Well, have a great rest of your day.”

  “You too.”

  He gave her a little smile and then stepped around her and continued up the side of the building. As he turned the corner into the alley in the opposite direction from the pie shop and diner, she realized that the hardware store at the end of the block was called Anderson Hardware. She assumed the owner was a family member.

  And she also realized that he hadn’t, actually, asked her out. Again. First the mention of his back deck, with no follow-up. No stopping in to the pie shop. And now a possible-maybe-future-book conversation? Would that be on his back deck too? Or would they meet somewhere else? Or would it just happen in front of the post office one day randomly? And if it was that, would it actually be a date?

  Brynn rubbed the pads of her fingers over the middle of her forehead. Then stopped and dropped her hand. That was something both of her sisters did when they were frustrated.

  She sighed.

  She hated dating so far.

  And she hadn’t even really started.

  * * *

  On Saturday, Noah and Brynn drove to Great Bend without saying much.

  Which was pretty much their MO. They had the radio on, they’d done the basic “how was your day” stuff. He’d told her that she looked nice without saying you fucking look amazing and I don’t want to share you for even four minutes with someone else. He was proud of that.

  Especially since he’d found out that the pie shop had been running over with guys the day before. Reportedly she hadn’t talked to anyone specifically about anything more than pie and coffee. Until Mitch Anderson had caught her on the sidewalk outside and they’d chatted for a few minutes.

  But Mitch hadn’t asked her out. Because he was waiting to be guy number six.

  Mitch was quickly becoming Noah’s least favorite person.

  It was a blessing and a curse that his two best friends were dating Brynn’s sisters. He got to hear all the details, whether he wanted to or not.

  He hadn’t been at the diner when all of this had been going down. Which was likely why all the guys had suddenly had a craving for pie. Noah gripped the steering wheel tighter and frowned at the road.

  He was never at the diner at that time of day because that was when Maggie usually left her house for a couple of hours, and he could get over there and take care of things like clogged pipes and loose shutters and oil changes for her car since the pie shop was within walking distance for her.

  Not that she ever told him about those things. Even the oil changes. She called other people. Like Stan Gallow, the local plumber. But then Stan told Noah about it and Noah took care of it. Along with giving Stan a discount on his next tire rotation or transmission flush.

  And Maggie knew that those guys called Noah and that he took care of her issues. But she kept calling them anyway to make the point that she didn’t want Noah to be the one doing things for her.

  Thankfully, Stan, Mike, the local electrician, and Elliot, the heating/cooling guy, all understood where Noah was coming from, respected what he was trying to do, and let him in on the things Maggie called about.

  Fortunately, he could see for himself how long her grass was getting or when her driveway needed cleared of snow or when her shrubs needed trimmed or when something was going on with the roof, and he could get there before she called someone or did it herself. When he’d first started asking the guys for these favors, he’d been afraid he was going to be taking care of all the cars in town for free.

  But now, nearly six years later, they had a system. It wasn’t a perfect system—a perfect system would be Maggie calling him directly for help—and every time someone told him that she needed something, he felt a jab in his gut. But she was being taken care of and that was the main goal. She didn’t have to be happy about it.

  “Are you okay?”

  He glanced over to find Brynn watching him with clear concern. He made himself relax his expression. “Sure.”

  “I know you don’t really want to do this tonight,” she said.

  “It’s not that.” He didn’t want to do this, but that wasn’t why he was tense and pissed off. “This is fine.”

  “Well, I was thinking,” she said, shifting in her seat to face him. “Maybe we can arrange it so that you’re my last guy.”

  Noah felt his heart jam in his throat and he had to clear it before replying, “What do you mean?”

  “The way I understand it, the women all sit at a table by themselves. Then the guys are the ones who rotate through the room. I think we can figure out the pattern and arrange it so you can be the last one to talk to me.”

  “You want me to be last?” Of course he couldn’t shake what Mitch had said about being last, the one who wouldn’t have to give her up and watch her move on.

  “Oh, definitely,” she said. “I’ll be able to look forward to it through all the other ones. And then, of course, we can leave together.”

  Heat and want flashed through him. Damn right they were leaving together. He didn’t care who else talked to her, he knew who was taking her home.

  And he wasn’t kissing just her cheek tonight.

  “Of course we’re leaving together,” he said. He wondered if she could hear the gruffness in his voice.

  “But they can’t know that we came together,” she said. “We’ll have to go in separately. And pretend we don’t know each other.”

  Noah scowled. “Why?”

  “Well, it’s a little awkward to speed date someone who came with someone else.”

  “People never bring friends along to these things?”

  Brynn shrugged. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess they probably do. But maybe not guy friends.” She grinned. “Unless you want to be my gay best friend along for moral support.”

  “I’m not going to be your gay best friend.”

  She laughed. “Good. There would have been a lot of very disappointed girls in that bar tonight.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t care about any of the other women that would be there tonight.

  The event was being held at one of the trendy new bars downtown and he turned onto the street a minute later, spotting the place almost immediately halfway down the block.

  “Go around the block,” Brynn said as they took in the small crowd gathered on the sidewalk.

  “Why?”

  “They can’t see us together. We have to pretend we don’t know each other or people won’t think we’re taking it seriously.”

  “Are we taking it seriously?” he asked, glancing over at her. “I thought this was just practice.”

  “Well, yeah, but I have to seriously practice.”

  Whatever that meant. “Fine,” he muttered. He pulled around the block, parking along a side street out of sight of the front of the bar.

  “So no scaring anyone off or just watching me the whole time,” she said. “You have to focus on your dates too. It’s not fair to them if you half ass it.”

  “I’m not
even sure how you would half ass a four-minute date.” He put the truck into park and shut the engine off.

  “You could be paying attention to me the whole time,” she said. “I know that you want to be in control of the guys I see because Rudy asked you to be sure I was okay, but this is speed dating. And you’ll be right there in the same room. So no scowling at the guys, no interrupting my conversations, and no ignoring the girls you’re supposed to be talking to, okay?”

  “Yes. Fine. Okay.”

  “I mean it, Noah.”

  He looked over again to find her frowning and looking far more anxious than she should have been, given the topic of conversation. “I said okay.” He frowned. “What’s going on?”

  “I just…” She swallowed. “You’re going in there because of me. But those girls are showing up hoping to have a nice night, if not to find Prince Charming. We’ll be in a room full of people and stuff, but for those four minutes, the other person is there for you. And vice versa. Just promise me that you’ll pay attention and ask them questions and make them feel good.”

  He understood what she was saying and, honestly, it was probably not a bad reminder. He could be kind of an asshole and frankly, his entire focus here was Brynn. So yeah, she wasn’t wrong to point out that he wasn’t just her bodyguard tonight. He was supposed to be a four-minute date to fourteen other women. He needed to give the other girls the attention they deserved.

  He ran a hand over his face as that thought sunk in. Fourteen other women. At least some of whom were coming here tonight with expectations for a love match. All of whom were coming with a minimum expectation of a nice time. God, he hated expectations. Maybe they didn’t believe they were going to meet The One, but they at least believed that he would give their four minutes a fair shot.

  Fine. He could do that. He knew the goal…and the time frame here. Be nice, even a little charming, for four minutes. As long as he knew exactly what he was supposed to do and there was an end point, he’d be fine.

  Just like with Brynn.

  He shook that off. “I promise,” he said. “But—” He glanced over. “You want to tell me what this is really about?”