Page 13 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

“No. I’m good at it.” She says this without pride, just a fact. “I know what things should smell like. I know what people want when they come in, even when they don’t know themselves. Someone comes in and says they want something fresh. I know fresh to them means they want to feel clean, which means they want to feel like they’ve started over, which means they want eucalyptus and something citrus with a cool base. Someone says they want something cozy, they mean they want to feel safe, which means vanilla and sandalwood and something just slightly smoky.” She stops. “Sorry. I do that.”

“Do what?”

“Talk about candles like they’re psychology.”

“They sound like they are.”

She looks at me for a moment like she’s deciding something. “Hugo used to change the subject when I talked about the shop.”

I have nothing to say to this that would be appropriate to say, so I say nothing, and she seems to understand that too, because she moves on again.

“I have two employees. Cherry, who has worked for her since the beginning, and who appears to function as both a confidante and a one-woman quality control operation. And then there’s Mike. He’s enthusiastic in the way of large friendly dogs and reorganizes the window display when he gets bored, which is often.”

“Sounds like you hired a pair of friends instead of candlemakers.”

She shrugs. “You can train anyone to make candles. But you have to hire for personality. Candles sometimes sell themselves, and sometimes they don’t. It’s the people who sell them. And the neighborhood…” She tells me about the neighborhood, the regulars, a woman who comes in every Thursday and always buys the same vanilla rose and has never once varied. “…that’s Rebecca for you, though. She’s steady and calming, the perfect woman to be a kindergarten teacher.”

“That’s a tough job. She’s stronger than most.”

“Oh—she’s not a kindergarten teacher. I just think she’d be good at it. She’s a firefighter.”

I like that I can’t predict her, so I ask questions. More than I need to, and I’m aware that I’m asking more than I need to, and I do it anyway, because she answers in a way that’s interesting.

Also, I like hearing her voice.

By the time we finish, the morning has slipped away and gone gray outside the windows, the lake visible in the distance as a flat silver line. Luna stands, retrieves the bra from the end table with remarkable composure, and disappears for a few minutes. When she comes back, she’s dressed, has done something with her hair that makes the white streak deliberate again, has the clutch from last night tucked under her arm, and looks, somehow, entirely put together. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company—I do—but I have to open the shop.”

“The car is available.”

“I can take the L?—”

“I’ll call my driver. Just a moment.”

She looks at me for a moment with the expression of a woman deciding whether this is worth arguing about. “Okay.”

Darya appears from somewhere to hand Luna a container of something that smells like food and did not exist five minutes ago, which is either sorcery or preparation, and with Darya the line between those two things has always been thin. Luna accepts it with genuine warmth, says goodbye to her in a way that makes Darya smile, much to my shock, then follows me to the door.

In the private foyer, waiting for the elevator, she turns to me. “Last night was not what I thought it was going to be. For the record.”

“No,” I agree.

“Better, though.”

“Significantly.”

The elevator arrives. I put my hand on her jaw, tip her face up, and kiss her goodbye. She makes a small sound against my mouth that I file away for no reason in particular.

“Thank you. For last night.”

She looks up at me, and there’s something in her expression that’s open and unguarded and not quite what I expected. But before I can pick it apart, she steps into the elevator, the doors close, and she’s gone.

I stand in the foyer for a moment. Then I go back inside, where Darya is clearing the breakfast things with the energy of a woman who’s already composed several opinions she intends to keep to herself.

“Not a word,” I tell her.

She says nothing, smiling at the kitchen counter, which is somehow worse.

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