God help me, I continued, “Hibiscus are surprisingly hardy.” Finally, I got ahold of myself and added gruffly, “Just aim away from it next time.”
A shaky smile touched her full lips, relief softening the anxiety in her eyes. “Deal. No more rogue water features, I promise.”
My eyes darted to the basket on the table. “Thanks for the gesture.”
What on earth made me say that?
I was saved from further distress when she moved toward the back door. She paused, her hand on the knob. “The cookies are chocolate chip. My mom always said they could solve most of life’s minor catastrophes. Enjoy.” Her smile was fleeting, a little sad around the edges. Then shewas gone, the door closing behind her with a soft click, leaving an Iris-shaped hole in the silence of my kitchen.
I stared at the closed door. The silence she left behind was somehow different than the silence before. More thoughtful. Agitated. I ran a hand through my hair, feeling strangely drained and wired at the same time. She was a complication I didn’t need.
And yet…
My gaze fell on the basket of cookies on my table, the colorful napkin slightly askew. A Trojan horse, filled with sugar and good intentions. I eyed it suspiciously. Then, with a sigh that sounded like surrender, I lifted the napkin.
They were golden-brown, generously studded with chocolate chips. I inhaled deeply, unable to help it.
“I bet they taste like sawdust and desperation,” I muttered, just to maintain my internal equilibrium.
I picked one up. A perfect ratio of cookie to chocolate chip. I examined it critically, as if searching for hidden flaws, for evidence of shoddy workmanship. Then, I took a bite.
And another.
Shit.
They were good. Really good. The edges were perfectly crisp, the center delightfully chewy, the chocolate rich and plentiful. Not too sweet.
A minute later, I was pouring a tall glass of cold milk from the fridge, an accompaniment I hadn’t indulged in for years. I ate another cookie. And another. Before I knew it, I was sitting at the table, and half a dozen were gone.
“Okay,” I conceded to the empty milk glass. “There’s at least one thing the woman can do right. She can bake a decent goddamn cookie.”
I wiped the lingering crumbs from my mouth with the back of my hand, staring out the window toward HeronHouse. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the trees, casting long shadows across her overgrown yard. I could just make out her silhouette moving inside, a blur of motion behind the dirty windows.
A fleeting, unwelcome, and entirely inappropriate image flashed through my mind: that same messy blonde hair, not tangled with leaves but wild and windblown from the salty spray of the ocean. Her face flushed with excitement, maybe even a bright, unrestrained smile directed at me, out on the deck ofLine Dancer, the vast blue of the Gulf stretching behind her.
I pushed the thought away, hard, annoyed at its sudden intrusion.
Nope. Not going there.
She was trouble. End of story.
But the cookies had been infuriatingly good. I put the milk glass in the sink with more force than necessary, the clatter loud in the suddenly too-quiet kitchen. I was unsettled. Deeply. The order of my world had been disturbed, and not just by a broken sprinkler.
Iris Holloway, with her disastrous DIY skills, her wide, anxious blue eyes, and her dangerously good cookies, was proving to be a complication I hadn’t anticipated.
And as much as it pissed me off, one I couldn’t entirely dismiss.
Chapter Six
IRIS
The basket saton my kitchen counter, a wicker trophy from my recent and non-catastrophic encounter with Austin Coleridge. It was empty. Gloriously, wholly, not-a-single-crumb-left empty. A smug smile played on my lips every time I’d looked at it over the past couple of days.
He’d eaten them.
All twelve of my apology chocolate chip cookies.
He’d returned the basket yesterday, a brief, almost gruff transaction on my porch that had nonetheless been a monumental victory. He thrust it at me, his gaze fixed somewhere over my left shoulder, and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “You’re a better baker than you are a landscaper.”
