Chapter 5
Daisy
Bookworm’s Delight was the only bookstore in Maybelle, a cute red-brick cottage near the library that was crowded by kousa dogwoods. In winter, it looked a little faded without the pretty white flowers on the trees and the garden around it dormant. But inside it was warm from the fireplace and smelled like books and coffee. Beneath the decorative rugs, the floors were made of thick hand-made dark green tiles. The main floor was mostly bestsellers, greeting cards and journals, school supplies, and tables and chairs for reading and studying. The second level, a wide ring of creaky wood floorboards, housed the rest of the books, mainly the used books.
Daisy loved it in here.
Before she’d put aside her dreams of making a living as a potter, this was one of the places where she felt most at home. Of course, there were always students coming in to get their Penguin classics for English or more pencils. But its regulars were bookworms, teenagers hunched over journals, and art students sketching or leafing through the big art books. Unless she was in art classes, Daisy had spent all of her free time here when she was in high school, usually sharing a table with Tristan Houston while he drafted his dream house.
Now that she was the office admin at her father’s law firm, where two of her three older brothers worked too, she had much less time to come here.
That was why she never missed one of their wine and paint nights.
With a satisfied sigh, she settled at the table where Karen and Stephanie were already setting up their canvases on easels.
“Hey, girls,” she greeted them. “I brought a Malbec tonight.”
“Ooh, fancy,” Karen chirped. “Nice label!”
“You know that’s how I chose it,” Daisy replied with a giggle.
She went over to the supply table to pay her fee and pick up her canvas, easels, paints and paintbrushes. “Hi, Suzie,” she said, handing the instructor the twenty-dollar fee. “I’m excited about the Cezanne landscape tonight.”
“It’s one of my favorites,” Suzie agreed.
They chatted for a little bit, while Daisy perused the paint colors and contemplated if she wanted to try to paint the picture perfectly or use a different palette.
“… and then my older girl—that troublemaker—was…” Suzie let the word go and one of her brows shot up practically to her hairline. “Well,” she sighed in pure female appreciation, as Daisy felt heat lick over the edge of her right shoulder and hip. “Hello, Coach.”
“Evenin’, Suzie,” Dunk McCoy rumbled, the breath of his words sluicing across the back of Daisy’s bare neck. “Evenin’, Miss Daisy.”
“Why, Coach,” one of the other women simpered from nearby, “are you joining us? How fabulous.”
He cast that big, goofy grin out at all of them, warm and appreciative. “Someone told me it was going to be a great learning experience, but I didn’t know I was going to get to be surrounded by such beautiful women.”
All of the other women melted, in their own ways, Daisy saw.
But she was easing away from Dunk, that queasiness pooling low in her belly again because he’d lumped her in with all of these other women.
Because he didn’t remember being with her, when she…
She ducked around Suzie’s table with her supplies hugged to her breasts and belly protectively, and hurried back to her table.
“What’s he doing here?” Stephanie asked indignantly.
“What a… jerk,” Karen tried, but she wasn’t pulling off indignant.
Daisy snapped her easel open and set it up facing Dunk, so that once she’d put the canvas on it, she couldn’t see him at all.
Not that she couldn’t hear him.
No.
That voice… It was like this sub-vocal throb that was perfectly in sync with her nerve endings, making them shiver like plucked violin strings.
“Here, sweetie,” Stephanie said, holding out a very big glass of the wine. “You’re going to need it.” She poured two more for Karen and herself. “Us, too. Because if I can’t stare at that criminally fine ass, I’m going to need it!”
Karen giggled and then tried to hide it behind her paintbrush.
Daisy flicked clean water off her paintbrush at both of them.
Suzie began her introduction to this month’s painting, Cezanne’s Landscape of the Jas De Bouffan. Listening to her soothed Daisy, and that plus the strong wine helped her get her mind right, focused on mixing her paints and starting to paint.
She did well enough, for maybe four to seven minutes at a stretch.
Then Dunk’s laugh would boom out. Or one of the women would call across the space to ask him something, or tease him about whatever mess he was making on his canvas. Or he’d lavishly compliment one of the women’s work. Or the women would offer him some of their wine and he’d mmm.
How the hell am I supposed to survive him mmm-ing? she asked herself almost hysterically.
While Cezanne’s impressionist work gave the sense of leaves gently swaying in the wind, Daisy’s brushstrokes were aggressive, so that her trees looked like some pissed-off French scissor-blade-leaves.
“I’ll just have to come back to try again, Suzie,” Dunk’s mournful, flirtatious declaration interrupted Daisy’s fierce study of her canvas.
“Now, now, when was the last time you painted?” Suzie asked.
“Does priming Tristan’s studio walls count?” he asked, laughing again.
Daisy worried that she might’ve whimpered into her wine glass at that. She couldn’t help but imagine it. All she had to do was substitute the mud streaks from the pet adoption day with paint streaks. Or streaks of wet clay.
“Crap,” she mumbled.
“Whoa, Daisy,” Dunk exclaimed.
He was suddenly right next to her.
She bobbled her wine.
He caught it, one of his big rough hands cupping hers to steady it, and his surprised light brown eyes locked on hers, that outdoorsman’s face tightening.
Frozen in a tableau, Daisy’s morbid humor provided.
• • •
Dunk
“Um, thanks,” Daisy said, tugging her hand free.
Perfume like fruit salad, melon and honey.
She took a step back, holding the glass like a shield.
Pale gold skin flushed like a cantaloupe and glistening with sweat.
She raised the glass and hurriedly swallowed the last of the wine.
Taste like passion fruit and vodka.
“Whoa,” Dunk exhaled, the sensory memories almost overwhelming him, the scents and colors matching the woman in front of him. “Daisy.”
“Y-yeah?” she stammered.
He was aware of her two friends eyeballing him, suspiciously.
He clasped a hand carefully around her elbow and drew her away from her friends, away from the easels and the tables, until they were hidden from view by the Young Adult Bestsellers bookcase.
Her eyes were on the floor.
“Daisy Rhys,” he repeated dumbly.
Because, seriously, how could he have forgotten her? She was beautiful, always had been. He hadn’t known her very well before Jamie and Leda’s engagement, but they’d been in the bridal party—well, her officially, him honorarily—together. She was sweet; she’d cried silently the whole ceremony at the courthouse that day, hours before they’d…
His sharp hips, caught by soft inner thighs, cradled and held tight. Her slim, strong arms wrapped around his neck, tangled up in his tie thrown over one shoulder. Her gigantic doe amber eyes glittering with passion as they’d made love.
“Dunk.”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“What?”
She gave a low, exasperated sigh. “Why did you bring me over here?”
“You’re my sex Cinderella,” he blurted out.
He cringed at himself, then facepalmed and dragged his hand slowly down his own stupid face.
“What?” she yelped indignantly, crossing her arms.
“Sorry!” he apologized. “Shit. Sorry. This isn’t… I mean, I was looking for you, but I didn’t remember that it was you, which… rude.”
That incoherent crap, miraculously, made her crack a tiny smile. But she was still flustered and confused, and embarrassed. He didn’t mind flustered or confused, but embarrassed, no, that wouldn’t do.
Focus, you moron.
“Okay, sorry.”
“Dunk, just take a timeout for a second,” she suggested, and there was helpless laughter in her voice as she took pity on him.
He blew out a big breath and then met her eyes squarely. “I woke up after Jamie and Leda’s wedding and I thought… that I had had a dream. A great dream. Well, the best dream, really. But then… hickies. I saw hickies.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered, even more embarrassed now.
“No! They were awesome,” he reassured her as quickly as possible. “But. Okay. This next part, it’s not pretty, and I’m really sorry about it. But I didn’t remember it was you, okay. So I started looking. Or, Aden sent me on a… treasure hunt? Well, he and Chase held the guest list hostage?”
She took a second to process that and then ventured, “Like Prince Charming trying to find Cinderella?”
“Exactly!” he exclaimed, relieved that she was getting it.
But then her face went a little pale and then a little pissed off. “So you’ve, what, been tracking down all the single women who were at the wedding and…” Her voice dropped to a furious whisper. “Having sex with them to see if they’re your Cinderella? Your sex Cinderella?”
His eyes widened so much he felt them go dry in terror.
“What the hell? No! What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“Um… the kind of guy who has sex with me at a wedding, forgets who he had sex with, and then gets sent on a treasure hunt by his so-called friends to find her…?”
“Fuck my life,” Dunk whispered, hanging his head.
Then he snapped his face up, fully expecting to get slapped.
But instead, Daisy burst into giggles so loud, he expected all the birds in the trees to burst into song right along with her, just like Cinderella.
“You owe me a steak dinner,” she declared once the giggles fizzled out.
“Pardon me?” he asked, at a total loss.
Her face settled into a stern expression—or, as stern an expression as someone as enchanting and beautiful as Daisy could make—and she raised one finger to poke him in the chest. “You owe me a steak dinner,” she said again. When he just shook his head, still completely confused, she explained, “Sex Cinderella, Duncan McCoy? You owe me an apology. And I’ll accept one in the form of a steak dinner, the most expensive kind of dinner.”
“You want to go to dinner with me.”
He couldn’t even imagine what the hell his face looked like right now.
“Yep,” she chirped.
“Well okay then,” he agreed. “Never let it be said I can’t apologize.” He pulled his cell out of his pocket, unlocked it, and passed it to her. “If you give me your number, I’ll call tomorrow to set something up. I, uh, I need to check the football schedule so I don’t plan a date when there’s a game.”
She finished inputting her information and handed back his cell. “Okay. But if you forget to call me, I’m going to be super duper pissed.”
He grinned, because it was hard to take anyone’s threat of anger seriously when they said ‘super duper’ out loud. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am,” she groaned, then dragged him back out to the easels, where all of the women were Definitely Not Staring at Them. “Go finish your painting,” she told him. “I’m going home. I need a bubble bath.”
“Can I—”
“Quit while you’re ahead, Dunk,” Daisy advised.
“Uh huh, sure thing,” he practically babbled. “Night, Daisy.”
He scooted back to his easel and ducked his head to hide his grin.
His miserable attempt at a tree and wall in a French field or whatever sat on the easel. It was a lost cause, but he couldn’t care less. He’d accomplished his goal for coming: he’d found his sex Cinderella.
Better still, he had a date with her.
“Where’d you disappear to, Coach?” one of the women near him drawled, not-so-subtly trying to uncover what he and Daisy had been discussing.
The other women equally not-so-subtly peered around their canvases.
“Just catching up about Jamie and Leda’s wedding,” he mostly-lied easily, smiling up at all of them briefly as he carefully put away the borrowed art supplies. Suzie helped him get the canvas into a big plastic baggie with handles, since it was basically dry now, while he fielded other curious, lightly probing follow-ups about him and Daisy.
Finally he extricated himself from the women, after hugging almost all of them, except Daisy and her friends, and waved as he left.
He drove home and took Tugger for a walk around the block, happy his parents had loved the idea of adopting a dog of his own. Once he was in bed with a book, Tugger chewing a rope toy next to his feet, he texted Aden and Chase that he’d found—and remembered—Daisy. He was feeling magnanimous enough that he even thanked them, although he sent a picture of himself flipping them off when all he got back was the tears-of-laughter smiley face.