We lived around the corner from the flower shop, which sat proudly on Bleeker Street among the shops and cafés of the Village. The July heat hit me like a wall, that heavy humidity that clung to you like an aquatic second skin, the kind of heat that made you forget winter ever existed or what it was like to be comfortable.
The bad news was that it was only eight in the morning.
But there was little that could dampen my cheer. I felt the winds of change—even if I couldn’t feel the actual wind on that still summer day—sensed the beginning of something big, something magnificent. And it was just around the corner.
Presumably behind the old green door of Longbourne.
I pushed open the door to the familiar ting-a-ling of the bell and stopped just inside.
Music floated around the room from a speaker on the register counter. The room, which was usually full of old display tables and buckets of flowers, had been cleaned out but for the massive, square farm table in the center of the room. The black-and-white floor tiles had been covered in plastic sheeting, and two ladders, a pile of supplies, and a bucket with a push broom sat proudly next to one of the long walls.
And beside them was Luke.
He was already glistening with sweat and had shed his shirt, leaving him in nothing but basketball shorts and sneakers. The golden hue of his skin spoke of countless hours of leisure, and the rolling topography of his musculature spoke of countless hours in the gym. I’d always hated basketball shorts, but on Luke Bennet’s ass, they looked like they were meant to be there. I found I didn’t have a single complaint.
Especially not when he turned around and I caught sight of the anaconda he was packing.
God bless the man who invented those shorts.
“Morning, Tess,” he said with that patent smirk of his, hands still on the broom he’d been using to wash the brick.
To my surprise, the surface was filthy—the brick he’d already cleaned was cheery and red and what he hadn’t was a grimy shade of brown.
I blinked at it. “That’s what the brick looks like?”
He leaned on the top of the broom handle, flicking a glance at the wall. The effect broadened his shoulders and narrowed his waist, fanning his forearms out. Sweat trickled down my neck, and I couldn’t be sure it was strictly from the heat. It really was indecent, him running around topless like that.
“I know. I’m thinking we leave the brick in the back of the store, just clean it up, paint the rest white.”
“I love that,” I said, scanning the space and imagining what it would look like.
“Good.” He smiled, not only like he was genuinely pleased, but like he could eat me for breakfast.
Not that I was special. He looked at every female and food product exactly like that.
I moved for the extra push broom, effectively putting my back to him and breaking the moment.
“So,” I started, taking a second to inspect the wall, “let’s start with you and me cleaning this wall together, then one of us can clean the next wall while the other caulks this one.”
I could actually hear him smirking. “Think you can handle the caulk?”
I shot him a look over my shoulder. Stupid, handsome bastard. “Oh, I can handle the caulk.”
“You sure? It’s got to be squeezed just right—not too hard, not too fast, just the perfect amount of pressure so you can fill all those holes.”
“Lucas Bennet, you are disgusting.”
He wet his brush in a paint tray full of water. “Contracting is a dirty job, Tess.” With a salacious flick of his brows, he turned his attention to the wall. “So much hammering and nailing and wood. Screwing. Laying studs. We’ve covered the caulk.”
I snorted rather than respond, unable to think of anything to say with the dirty-mouthed, half-naked figure scrubbing the wall in front of me.
I didn’t look at the muscles of his back bunch and stretch as he scrubbed. I didn’t watch the heavy bead of sweat run down the valley of his spine. And I most certainly didn’t watch his ass bounce when he jumped a little to reach the very top of the wall.
Not intentionally at least.
With an inward slap, I dipped my brush in the water and moved past him. “I’ll go low, you go high,” I suggested by way of command.
“Yes, ma’am,” he snarked.
I scrubbed for a minute, satisfied on some deep elemental level as the brick came clean and fresh. “Did you get the right kind of caulk?” I asked with no small amount of skepticism. “It’s got to be the quick dry, the kind that—”
“Cures under primer. I know. That’s what I got,” he answered lightly. “It’s like you didn’t believe I could do this right, Tess.”
“Well, you have to admit—you’re not the most reliable Bennet.”
“No, that title belongs to Marcus.”
I chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed, that’s all. I didn’t realize you knew so much about this kind of thing.”
“Well, I’ve worked somewhere in the neighborhood of a kabillion jobs. I had a buddy in LA who’d call me in when he needed help renovating houses he flipped. I’d met him bartending in Hollywood.”
“Ooh, sounds swanky,” I teased.
“It was a pain in the ass but good money. I think I met a million people working there—that at least was a good time. Though the best time was when I worked at Cirque du Soleil for a summer.”
A laugh shot out of me as I rewet my brush. “Tell me you wore spandex. Or feathers. And that they pushed you off of something.”
“Nah, I worked the ropes. It’s more fun backstage. Less pressure.”
“Is there anything you haven’t done?”
“Rocket science,” he answered without hesitating. “Ride a unicycle, though not for lack of trying. Underwater welding—Mom wouldn’t let me. Too dangerous, she said. I even worked on a rig in the Pacific for a few months. That was some Groundhog Day action—every day the same thing, same view, same tiny room and clanging machines. I’d never been so happy to get my feet on dry land.”
“And nothing led to a career?” I asked, unsuccessfully attempting to school the judgment from my voice.
He shrugged his wide shoulders and kept on scrubbing. “I get bored and move on. Part of it, I think, is that I love to learn. I want to know a little bit about everything.”
“Without actually becoming an expert at anything,” I added with no small amount of criticism.
But Luke, as always, was unfazed. “If I’d found something I wanted to become an expert on, I wouldn’t have moved on.”
A brief thought of what kind of thing might convince him to stick around was overridden by, “How do you know if you’ve never had a long-term job? I mean, have you ever had a job for longer than six months?”
He frowned at me, affronted. “Of course I…” His brows ticked a little closer. “No. I guess I haven’t.”
I laughed, waving around my rightness. “Exactly.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve never worked anywhere but here,” he said with unmistakable disdain.
“And what’s so wrong with here?” I snapped.
“Nothing. It’s just not where I want to work. Not forever at least.”