her creative juices would flow again. But thanks to her near jump in the lake with Marc, her artist’s spirit remained as stale as ever.
He’d flown home the next day, and they hadn’t talked about the incident since. Instead, they’d simply reverted back to being friends and coworkers who chatted once a week about the business and the ultra-marathon training. Perhaps she’d misunderstood his intentions anyway.
And she was fine with that. Really.
But this bouquet disaster felt like she was being pushed to the brink of what she could handle. Eva had stared at these flowers for two hours, and despite Joanne’s instructions to throw together something simple yet elegant, she couldn’t find inspiration to save her life.
She should have just told Joanne the truth—admitted to herself the truth—that she couldn’t do this anymore.
No. She couldn’t fail this unknown bride. Eva’s wedding had been perfect, down to the last detail, and every bride deserved that.
“Okay, Eva. You’ve got this.” Maybe if she put the . . . No, that looked horrible. Or what about the . . . Ugh, rookie move!
Her phone interrupted her self-deprecating thoughts. Her caller ID said it was Marc. When they needed to talk, he’d taken to calling her around five or six o’clock in the morning when he first got up. She accepted the video chat. “Hi.”
His face filled up her screen. “Hey there.” He was surrounded by burgundy pillows, and a modern black headboard peeked from the edge of the picture. Was he calling her from bed instead of his normal spot on the balcony outside his apartment? Did he even have a shirt on?
Whew. Suddenly it felt far muggier in the plant-filled room.
“What are you up to?” His husky, early-morning baritone filled the previously quiet space.
How did someone manage to sound so kissable at five in the morning?
Get a grip, Eva. She wiped the thought from her mind, propping the phone on a chair so she could fiddle with the flowers and chat with him at the same time. “Filling in for Joanne. She had a family emergency and needed me to create a few bouquets for her.”
“Yeah? How’s it going?”
Eva held up her two empty hands. “Fantastic. Can’t you tell?”
“I sense sarcasm.”
“Unfortunately, yes. I shouldn’t have agreed, but I wanted to help.”
“Why shouldn’t you have agreed?” Marc put his arm behind his head, accentuating his bicep. The edge of a white T-shirt made an appearance. So he was fully clothed after all.
Goodness. Her Catholic mother would cross herself three times if she were privy to Eva’s thoughts. Of course, even when she’d been married to Brent, Mom acted like Eva’s thoughts should be entirely too much like the Virgin Mary.
She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her lips at the memory.
Marc’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s that smile all about?”
“Ah, nothing.” Hopefully color wasn’t as visible on the phone, because her cheeks felt like they were flaming. She cleared her throat. “And, um, to answer your question, I shouldn’t have agreed, because I’m out of practice. I haven’t done this since . . . well, for a long time.”
“Why is that?” The quiet usually meant Marc was mulling. “I just assumed it was because you got busy with working at the heart center. But it’s more, isn’t it?”
Eva snatched a few Alaskan roses out of the nearest bucket. She had to throw something together, even if it wasn’t very grand. “At first, maybe it was. But when Brent died, I lost the heart I had for my work.” She’d expected awkwardness after their near-jump, but Marc still treated her the same, and she found herself responding to his care with openness of her own.
“Maybe this will be the push you need to start again.”
“I’m doing a terrible job so far.” She began stripping the flowers of foliage and carefully removed one thorn at a time.
“It looks nice to me.”
She rolled her eyes and snorted. “And you know lots about floral arrangements how?”
“I never claimed to. Just said it looks nice to me.”
“Well, thanks.”
A few moments of silence passed while she worked. Then, “Eva, are we ever going to talk about what happened?”
The hesitation in his voice caused her to fumble the shears and look up at him. She swallowed, hard. A thousand different emotions played across his features, but there was love shining in his eyes.
Love?
No. That wasn’t possible.
She’d always been a master at reading her own feelings, but at the moment, gaining a pulse on them seemed impossible—probably because they were jumbled