Damnit charged at him.
I didn’t have to be told twice. “You’re my hero!” I shouted, and hurried away from the shed.
The sounds of Wykofski taming the goose, like some Jurassic Park zookeeper with a velociraptor, faded into the din of the garden as I moved back toward the cottage.
It worried me that people had begun to notice my absence in the late afternoons, though by the time the door appeared in the Wildflower Garden, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
“You taste like lemonade,” Cyrus murmured against my mouth.
“Wykofski’s been making a pitcher every day for the last week. He doesn’t have a recipe, so it’s always a little different. I think he can tell we’re all a little stressed leading up to the bicentennial,” I replied. My back was pressed against the stone wall, his hand planted just beside my head, his other on my waist. While most of the garden was in sunlight, he cast a cool shadow on me. He kissed the side of my neck, his mouth warm and hungry against my skin. “We should get back to work,” I said half-heartedly, because I’d brought the swing for him to install on the willow, but we’d barely made it halfway across the garden.
“Weareworking,” he replied, and nibbled my ear.
I squirmed with a laugh. “Cyrus,” I tried to chastise him, but I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Sophie,” he replied with equal fake seriousness. Though with that lawyer-esque slant to his brows, it was a whole lot more convincing. And ridiculously hot. “Sometimes working is taking a break.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the workaholic?”
“Maybe I’ve just stopped to smell the roses finally,” hereplied. His fingers delicately traveled along my middle. I imagined what they would feel like without the barrier of my shirt, how gentle he would be—as gentle as he was at planting sprouts, I was sure. “And maybe I’ve come up with some ideas on how to busy ourselves, if you’re bored.”
My heart fluttered. “What sorts of things?”
He made a rumbling noise in his chest and kissed me again to tell me exactly what sorts of things without saying a single word. His body did all the talking it needed to do. With his tongue, he demonstrated what kinds of things he could do other places, and with his fingers through my hair, he showed how delicate he could be.
“Things you deserve,” he finally said against my lips. “Things to tell you just how much you’re appreciated, how much you’re seen. How much I appreciate you.” Then he took one of my hands.
And he kissed my fingers.
Oh.
“Stop,” I pleaded, and his eyebrows jerked up at the word. I pulled my hands out of his, my heart thundering so loudly in my chest I was sure he could hear it. “Stop saying all the right things.”
“Why? I’m just telling you what’s true.”
That was the most frightening part of it all. I dipped out from beside the wall, stepping into the sunlight. It warmed my pink shoulders. “Because I’m afraid I’m going to mess this all up. The garden’s almost finished in here but I’m no closer to finding it out there, Rus.”
“That’s okay,” he said, quietly coming up behind me, andwrapped his arms around my middle. He pressed his face into the corner of my neck. “I believe in you. Besides, you promised, and you said you never break your promises.”
“But what if I do?”
He kissed the skin of my shoulder. “I trust you,” he whispered, but that wasn’t an answer at all.
35
vacilando
That evening, I ran into Juliette on my way back to my cottage. Her arms were full of folders, and for the first time since I met her she looked frazzled. She barely paused to say good-bye to me as she made her way toward the parking lot, and then she tripped on the uneven gravel. The papers went flying, and so did a curse.
“Sophie, you don’t have to help, I’m fine,” she said as I picked up a few of the papers. They were guest lists and a run of show and checklists for the party next week, pages and pages long.
“Oh, this is . . . a lot.”
She righted herself and took the papers back. “Over five hundred guests with all of Oliver’s plus-ones.”
“Oh yikes.”
“I know.” Juliette looked one piece of lukewarm news away from a nervous breakdown, and for her? That was a lot. “But I want to make it perfect, and so it has to be perfect, but we don’t have enough flowers to source the bouquets and the catering service just told me that their freezer truck caught on fire so I’ll have to find someone else and—”
