Snowflakes in Seattle

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

OLIVE

I snuck out just after dawn.

Wyatt looked so peaceful curled on his side in his gaming chair, curls all askew and snoring softly, covered in his soft throw blanket with his hands under his chin. Nothing like an old man. Everything like the boy I had known, all grown.

And grizzled. I swear, his beard doubled in thickness each night as he slept. Mornings, pre-shower, were my favorite time of day at Casa de Crush. Wild hair. Thicker beard. Pajama pants that hid nothing at all.

Long after the preteen years, he still made me all fluttery.

I already had his keys in hand and a plan in mind. I had two days left here and I was going to make them count. Not for myself, but for him. World’s hottest host. It was the least I could do after he had salvaged what could have been a wholly botched vacation.

Wyatt was an easygoing guy, happiness his default mode, but darkness had surfaced yesterday on the lake. The glimpse of his conflicted heart tugged at my own. I couldn’t help with his work future, or even with how women saw him. I could, however, do something about his house.

His truck smelled like him.

The hardware store smelled like wood.

The guy who cut and carried all my supplies to the truck smelled like cigarettes.

I left everything but the painter’s tape behind when I snuck back into Wyatt’s house, full of butterflies from what I had planned. He loved to build and get dirty? Me, too. I’d been raised on job sites. I’d been my father’s shadow at home, too. Learning to use power tools had been some of my earliest adventures.

But instead of being able to surprise him with a taped off bedroom, I found him leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, sipping his coffee while he stared at me over the rim. He’d already showered and trimmed the beard.

“You stole my truck,” he remarked calmly.

I’d also broken into his garage to check out his tool situation. “For a good cause,” I replied, brandishing the tape. Interest lit in his eyes. Emboldened, I sashayed forward. “I’m in charge today, old man. I’m making your wishes come true.”

I hip-checked him as I squeezed by. Or, as I tried to squeeze by. Instead, his arm shot out, blocking me, his hand gripping the trim on the other side of the doorway.

My stomach collided with his arm.

“And what wishes are those?” His warm hazel eyes made my brain go fuzzy. So did the closeness of his mouth and the warmth of his body seeping into mine.

“Your bedroom,” I answered.

His smirk nearly sent my panties flying off. “Oh, that wish.”

I don’t think I fully computed the words. I was too dazzled by the proximity of that smirk.

“Pape.” I shook my head. “ Tape . Paint. Project.”

What was this nonsense? I was Olive effing Blake. I dominated in the bedroom, literally. Wyatt had not scrambled all my senses with one touch.

His arm was still slung across my front, keeping me flush against his side and unable to move. I gripped his wrist with my free hand, ready to toss his arm aside and get on with my project.

Instead, I registered the unexpected softness of his skin. I let my fingers creep up his forearm just to be sure. Yep, softer than a man that hairy had any right to be.

I dared a look at him. He’d touched my leg the other night, after all. This little move wasn’t nearly as suggestive.

Somehow, I’d missed when his breathing changed. When his eyes had gone from warm to filled with flames. When he’d dropped his head even closer.

Wyatt wasn’t smirking anymore.

I wondered if fantasy would be better than reality when it came to Wyatt Parker. I wondered what tricks I could show him and what he would want to do with me. I wondered which path we’d pick if we were to make that leap: sweet or sinful or somewhere in between.

Or if we’d just stick to staring contests.

“Are you going to keep me here in this doorway or are you going to help me?” I squeezed his arm to see if he’d let me pass.

“Help you in my bedroom?” he clarified, that wicked smirk teasing his lips again.

“You said you wanted it to be sexier.”

“Oh, it’s plenty sexy when you’re in there, dream girl.”

I rolled my eyes, but really, I liked his cheese. I liked how he was keeping me close. My inner eighth grader was jumping up and down in her Doc Martens. Grownup Olive wasn’t much more composed.

He took a casual sip of coffee. “Fine. Put me to work in my bedroom, boss.”

My lady bits roared to attention at that visual. All I could do was blink. His gaze lingered on mine. For a moment, neither of us moved.

“You've still got my arm,” he murmured.

“You’re still blocking me.”

“You let go first,” he prompted, voice low. “Damn sure won’t be me.”

Dear diary, save me.

I dropped my hand. Clearing his throat, he did the same. We still didn’t move apart.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

With this tension so taut we might shatter? Nothing. I only had two days left, and two days would not be enough to satisfy a twenty-year crush.

But with the bedroom?

“We’re going to board and batten the hell out of it. Then we’re going to paint.”

I moved furniture and taped while I set Wyatt to work staining trim and finishing pieces in the garage. A couple of YouTube videos and a few hundred dollars in paint and lumber, and his bedroom would be sexy as hell.

Most of the room would be white. Half-walls of vertical board and batten would elevate his style. An accent wall for the bed with deep gray paint and chevron finishing detail would really seal the deal. I watched the DIY video half a dozen times and thought I could pull off the project in two days’ time. All my hard work would be for other women to enjoy, but I tried not to think about that.

The board and batten work was methodical, precise, and I lost half my day marking where the damn boards would go. I was still marking when Wyatt wandered in with a plate of fresh spring rolls from the day before. The man had had steaming hot pho waiting for us after our lake adventure. I’d inhaled so much soup that I hadn’t had room for the fresh rolls.

My stomach was rumbling, but I was a woman on a mission.

“Eat something,” Wyatt ordered. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

I shook my head. “I’m so close. Almost time for the nail gun.”

He chuckled. “While I can’t wait to see that, I also can’t watch you faint from lack of sustenance. Weren’t you accusing me of starvation just a couple of days ago?” Wyatt was in my bubble now, waving a spring roll around like a magic wand. “Open up, Olive.”

Did he really expect me to “open up” and gobble down the world's most phallic food from his hand?

I threw a suspect look at the spring roll, then at him. “I don’t think so.”

A snort left his nose. “My imagination doesn’t need any help, little Olive. Trust me.” He backed away and set the plate on his dresser, still smirking. “When you’re ready.”

He disappeared, I finished marking the last four boards, and then I devoured the food in record time.

Time for some nailing.

We worked together for hours, Wyatt holding the boards steady while I fastened them in place. My first few attempts were clumsy, and I even missed once or twice, but he never corrected my technique or took the tool away to show me how to do it better. He just let me learn.

His words from the day before played in my head while we worked, sometimes silently, sometimes chatting, always to my favorite K-Pop playlist.

They never stick around long.

I didn’t understand how any woman could meet him and not fall instantly for his charm. He was so genuine and easy to know, and that was rare. Wyatt just hadn’t met the right woman.

Or maybe he had, long ago, and she’d just been living elsewhere.

The thought ricocheted through my being, striking my gut so hard that the nail gun slipped out of my grip and clattered onto the floor.

Wyatt dropped the board he was holding, his hands landing on my arms and eyes sweeping over me. “Whoa. You okay?”

“Yeah. Just slipped,” I breathed.

My brain had slipped. I didn’t believe in fate like that. I believed in working for what you wanted, no fate involved. I’d set a goal for a director role at Blake by twenty-eight. I’d earned it by twenty-five. There was no possible way Wyatt’s unsatisfying love life had anything to do with me or this crazy Christmas detour I’d taken. He hadn’t been unknowingly waiting for me, our paths planned this way by fate. My brain could shove it.

Shaking my head, I picked up the slim board for the chevron pattern. “Back to work, old man.”

I tried to force myself to concentrate on the nail placements, on lining up the boards, but Wyatt’s adorable attempts to sing along with Korean lyrics kept distracting me. He was a head-bobber, I’d noticed. When he really liked a song, his shoulders got involved.

God, he was adorable, with his curls and cuteness. His joy was contagious.

Pausing to stretch my hand, I set down my tools and surveyed our handiwork. The accent wall for his bed looked amazing even without the bold color, which, judging from the amount of time it had been dark outside, we’d have to apply tomorrow.

Wyatt caught my eye and smiled.

“You like?” I asked him.

“I like.”

Light glowed in my veins. That crinkly-eyed smile settled my soul.

“Quit slacking, boss,” he chided, tipping his chin at the nail gun at my feet. “Only a few more pieces to go.”

But I couldn’t think about the finish line of our project because I heard my song .

“Oooohhh yeahhh,” I crowed. My body started to wiggle of its own volition.

Wyatt stared as Make It Right , the BTS and Lauv collab, took over my body. I wasn’t quiet, or all that graceful. Truly, it was my happy song; my “it’s Friday and sunny” song, my “life can’t get any better” song.

“Can’t sit still to Make It Right or Return of the Mack ,” I informed him, getting low. “You should know that about me.”

His head had started to nod to the beat. With a grin he tried to hide by biting his lip, he was in front of me, trying to match my moves.

Laughter burst out of me. I didn’t know what was worse: his falsetto gibberish or Tina from Bob’s Burgers- level twerking.

No, it was definitely the twerking.

Tears leaked out of my eyes. He’d gone full-on high school dance now, and clearly had way too much practice with the Roger Rabbit and Cabbage Patch back in the ’90s.

Sadly, besides his twerk, his moves were better than mine. The man had surprising rhythm.

“Don’t know what you’re laughing at, little Olive.”

He snatched my hand and swung me in a full twirl through our little construction zone. Then he tucked me against his body, my back to his front, and synced our rhythm. He was grooving and shimmying, being a total goofball, but still, still , his closeness sunk in with sharp teeth. Electricity skipped across my skin while we moved, while he completely failed to utter a single real word in Korean. Despite his thighs flush with mine, despite holding me tighter every time the lyrics said so, I couldn’t stop giggling.

Until the song slowed as it drew to a close. Until he dipped me backward like we were in a dance movie, and his body followed. Until the final words of my favorite song were whispered against my neck by the soft lips of my lifelong crush.

Then I was back to barely breathing.