Iris in Bloom: Take a Chance, Book 2 (14 page)

“No. I was a bus boy in the last place we lived in.”

“You want a job?”

His vacant brown eyes lit for a moment. “You serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious. You helped without being asked and you have good instincts. I think you’d be an asset to Sunflower.”

“I go to school.”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “I know. The job would be after school and weekends.” Knowing that she did not want a lecture from his English teacher she hastily said, “And not every day, obviously. We’d work something out.”

“Okay.”

“Great. We’ll get forms signed and so on, but for now, let’s sit down.” They settled at the table he’d already occupied. “Did you bring me any creative writing?”

He looked deeply uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

But still he made no move to get out his notebook or laptop or whatever he wrote on. Finally, he said, “I feel weird. I’ve never shown anyone my work before.”

“But writing is meant to be shared,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I learned in college from taking creative writing classes and then critiquing each other’s work in class. Even simply hearing your work read aloud tells you something about whether the story’s working or if the words flow.”

“Do you even know how lucky you are, man?” a voice said from a few tables away.

Eric. He’d finished his Panini. Now, instead of working on the next great horror movie, he was eavesdropping.

He shook his head miserably. “You’ve got a published author sitting there wanting to read your work. That’s like a gift. Take it.”

Not only was Eric about as subtle as a solar eclipse, but his clear jealousy of Milo’s chance worked on the budding writer. “I guess,” Milo muttered and he reached into his pack and pulled out a dog eared notebook. Black, of course. Somehow she’d known he’d write in long hand. He pushed it toward her. Where other people might blush in embarrassment, he only grew paler, as though even his blood wanted to run and hide.

“Won’t you read it to me?”

“Not where everyone can hear,” he muttered.

She patted the notebook, completely understanding his position. Sure, they could meet somewhere else but she only had so much time and the coffee shop was where she usually was.

She leaned closer to Milo. “I’m going to try an experiment. If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. Trust me.”

He looked slightly puzzled but shrugged which she assumed was permission to try her experiment.

“Eric,” she said, “Would you like to read a scene from your screenplay?”

“Seriously?” If Milo went paler when he was embarrassed, Eric blushed enough for both of them. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

He picked up his computer and his bag and lumbered over to their table, pulling up a third chair.

She wasn’t sure her experiment was the greatest idea, but she liked his enthusiasm.

“Okay, so this is a horror movie. It’s about zombie bats.”

“Zombie bats. Okay.”

“Yeah. The infection is coming from bats but no one knows that. They lock out the human zombies but you know, at night the bats come out.”

“Oh, this is creepy,” she said. “There’s a reason I never watch horror movies.”

“You’ll never watch this one if I don’t sell it,” the screenwriter said.

“Read it,” Milo said and she could see he was interested.

Eric started with his first scene and as he began to read aloud he stopped himself a few times. “No. That’s the wrong word.” Then, “Oh, man, no actor could spit all that out. I’ll have to rewrite that line.”

“See the value of reading your own work aloud? Or even better, having someone else read it.”

“Would you?” Eric asked.

“What? Read your screenplay aloud?”

“Yeah. The two of you.” He dug into his bag. “I’ve got extra scripts.” He pushed two across the table. Assigned parts.

In moments she was saying words she’d never imagined would come out of her mouth.

“Chuck? Bolt the door. The zombies are coming. I can hear them. The army of death is on the march.”

Chapter Fourteen

When Geoff walked into Sunflower at the end of the day he told himself he was only grabbing a latte and maybe one of those wicked brownies. He wasn’t heading to Sunflower because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of Iris all day.

Caffeine and chocolate, that’s what drew him.

Hot sex and a gorgeous woman? Nah.

He was rehearsing something cool and witty to say, not that anything was leaping to mind, as he walked in. Iris didn’t even hear the bells. She and Milo and the red headed guy who seemed to live at one particular table in Sunflower were crowded around a table. Red had a laptop in front of him and Iris and Milo had screenplays. He knew they were screenplays from the way they were bound.

“Henry, what did ya do with the remote?” Iris read in a nasal, nagging tone. “Henry? Can’t you say something when I’m talking to you? Henry?” Then she opened her mouth wide enough to scream and instinctively he ducked his head. But luckily she stuck to a silent scream.

“And scene.” Eric said nodding. “Better that time, yeah. You guys were right.” And he banged something into his laptop.

He didn’t think he’d ever been overcome with lust before from watching a woman do a fake movie scream. This had to be a first.

“Okay,” she said. “Milo, are you ready to read something now?”

“I think you should go first,” Milo said.

She hadn’t spotted him so he could watch her. Well, only the side of her face as she was facing Eric. But he felt the sudden tension in her body. Silence descended for a long moment. Then she said, “Okay. Okay, I will. Let me go get my laptop. I’ve got everything on there.”

When she rose she saw him. And because he was looking he had the opportunity to watch her face when she first caught sight of him. He watched emotion jump into her eyes, surprise, lust, and like, and the awkwardness of
here’s this guy I had sex with last night, how do I act?
She blushed a little, which only made him want to drag her into the back and do all the things to her he’d been fantasizing about since he’d kissed her goodbye this morning.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, to pull her into his arms so badly that he stuck his hands in his pockets to keep them out of trouble.

“Hi,” she finally said.

“Hi.”

It was one of those moments when neither moved or said anything and it seemed to stretch to forever. He felt himself reliving a storm of impressions from last night. Heat, and the sounds she made, and the look in her eyes when she climaxed and the way her chest blushed.

“I was going for my computer. Can I get you something?”

He knew a latte would take time and he didn’t want to pull her away from her lit circle so he said, “Can you bag me a brownie?”

“Sure.” She glanced around but the two male writers were deeply into it. He heard the words
zombie brains
and figured he could kiss her right in the middle of the coffee shop and the writers wouldn’t notice. She must have caught the direction of his thoughts. She said, “Could you come in the back? I want you to look at, um, that thing I was telling you about.”

“Absolutely.”

He knew it was an honor to be invited to her inner sanctum. He glimpsed two ovens and racks of trays, stainless sinks and shelves of neatly labeled supplies.

He backed her up against one of the counters and kissed her breathless. “Was that the thing you wanted to talk to me about?”

She licked her wet lips. Nodded. Pulled him back for another long, deep kiss.

“Can you come over tonight?” he asked.

“I’ve thought about nothing else all day.” He liked that she was honest about her desires. Flattered they were as strong as his.

“Me neither,” he said.

He managed one more kiss before she collected her laptop and said, “I’ve got to get back out there.”

As he left she put the CLOSED sign on the door behind him. Her sign said she closed at five o’clock but usually she wasn’t as prompt.

He watched for a moment through the window, munching his brownie, as she sat and opened her computer. He watched her tap some keys and then take a deep breath and start reading.

She was discovering one of the truest rules of teaching, he thought. When you teach someone else, you always learn.

When Iris arrived home, she fully expected the house to be empty so she was shocked to hear the unmistakable sounds of construction upstairs. Banging and crashing keeping time with Led Zeppelin, which told her that Jack Chance was hard at work.

“Hi, Dad,” she yelled up the stairs. “I’m home.”

He turned off the music. “Honey, come on up here. I’ve been waiting. I want to talk to you.”

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no! This only worked if she left him notes and he followed her instructions. She did not want to find tactful ways to tell him that his ideas were nutty. Her father was the Gaudi of home handymen.

This is my house
, she reminded herself as she climbed to the upper level.

In spite of herself she cried out in pleasure. “Look how much you’ve done. Oh, that wide plank flooring looks so good in here.”

“It does. I like the maple. It suits the house.”

She glanced quickly around but nothing hideous hit her. Of course, he might be about to suggest they pull the roof off and replace it with glass to make that greenhouse he was so set on.

But what he said was, “I was looking at your plans. You’ve got this wall here so you’ll have your office and then another room.”

“I was thinking maybe a guest bedroom or a store room.”

“I remember when you kids were small, we always liked to have a space where you could play that was near where we were working. Maybe you don’t want a wall there. Maybe this could be a play area for the baby once it gets old enough, so you could keep an eye on it when you’re working.”

He sounded a little bashful and she knew that – even though his ideas were mostly terrible – it still hurt him to have them rejected. Also, she suspected that Mom had read him the Riot Act. He was to follow her instructions to the letter and not deviate.

She felt such a rush of relief and love when she realized that for once in his life, Jack Chance had come up with a brilliant idea. She nodded slowly, “Dad, that’s so smart of you. Of course. There’d be room for a playpen and I can put a gate up by the stairs. This would be a fantastic play area.”

He beamed with pride. “I can build you some shelves and cubbies to keep toys and games in.”

“I like it. Let’s do it.”

After he left, she wandered the space. Her hand settled on her belly as she imagined herself doing paperwork up here while her child played nearby. Maybe this wasn’t the way she’d planned her life, but she’d make it work. She knew she would.

Iris and Geoff fell into a routine. Her alarm went off much earlier than his, but he got up anyway and liked to share that first cup of coffee with her while she got herself ready. He laughed when he found out that she ate at home before heading to the café, but she always started her morning with oatmeal or a fruit smoothie at home. Otherwise she got so busy at work that she’d forget to eat.

Some mornings they woke at her place, some mornings at his.

She’d go off to the bakery, he’d head off to school. Some nights they’d head out of town for dinner, or he’d have marking to do and she’d cook dinner. Or she’d be working on her novel and Geoff would cook. Now that she and Eric and Milo had this unofficial critique group going, she was writing again. She hadn’t known how much she missed it. Geoff wasn’t the gourmet cook Iris was but he could manage to broil a steak or cook up a pot of pasta. And having a man cook for her was a big turn on she found.

She kept up with her friends and her usual activities, but nearly every night they ended up in bed together.

Meanwhile, she was sneaking her pregnancy vitamins and hiding in the bathroom to take her temperature, which she then had to mark on a sheet. She wouldn’t be ready this month, but she was practicing hopefully the next cycle. Then, when her temp spiked it meant she was ovulating and she’d have to run down to be inseminated.

She was explaining all of this to her mother when Daphne said, “What does Geoff McLeod think of all this?”

Iris had one of those moments. It wasn’t that she didn’t know her mother was perfectly aware that her thirty-three year old daughter had a sex life, it was simply that she preferred not to discuss it.

“He doesn’t think anything about it because he doesn’t know.”

“I’m sure it’s occurred to you—“

“That Geoff McLeod could be my baby daddy?” She sighed. “Of course it has. And no. He’s still married. The last thing he needs is a kid. He’s trying to get his life back on track. We have fun together. That’s it.”

“Okay.” Her mother said in a tone that pretty much meant: This is so far from okay you’d have to take a NASA shuttle to get there.

“Are you sick?” Geoff asked in alarm. He’d been on his way out the door and forgotten his phone, plugged into a wall socket in Iris’s bedroom.