Chapter 14

Eloise

It was remarkable how much sauce she’d managed to get on herself. Even with the help of the wipes, she was going to have to change.

She hadn’t threatened to mention my birthday again or sung or done anything else to embarrass me. In fact, she hadn’t talked about it at all. She’d told me about a book she was reading which had led to a podcast which had led to a bunch of articles. In between getting covered in sauce and eating, she kept speaking and I just let her, enjoying her enthusiasm and the tone of her voice.

I liked hearing her. I liked hearing what she had to say. I really did.

The slices of cake arrived with two forks and zero candles.

“You should at least make a wish, even if you’re not going to blow out a candle,” she said. “Make a wish with your first bite.”

What a ridiculous thing to do. I wasn’t going to do that.

But then I met her eyes and looked at her freckles and I couldn’t say no.

I cut a bite with my fork and raised it to my mouth, tasting it as I made a wish and then swallowed.

“There. Happy?” I asked.

“I know you said I could only say it the once but,” she said in a low voice and leaned in, “happy birthday.” Her voice was barely above a whisper and there was no one nearby to hear her. Even still, I looked around to make sure.

“Does Dom know?” Cadence said, and there was an edge in her voice that I didn’t understand.

“She probably doesn’t remember. Only a handful of people even know and I’ve sworn them to secrecy.” Finding my date of birth online shouldn’t have been difficult, but I’d managed to have it mostly scrubbed.

“Are you? Going to swear me to secrecy? This wasn’t covered in the NDA.” She ate her cake slowly, as if savoring every bite.

“Yes, I’m going to swear you to secrecy. I paid a lot of money for that information not to get out. It’s a privacy concern.” Her eyes went wide as that realization hit her. We didn’t have the same security issues.

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. You have my word.”

Feeling giddy, maybe from the cake, I stuck out my pinky and her eyes lit up as she beamed, and we did that silly little swear with our fingers.

When the bill came, Cadence snatched it away and insisted on paying.

“I didn’t get you anything, so this is your gift. I might still get you a gift. I don’t think I can let your big day pass without doing something. It just wouldn’t be right.”

I scowled at her, but she was undeterred. We’d taken quite a long lunch and for the first time in ages, I wasn’t eager to get back to my office and my inbox.

Dom waved goodbye to me as we headed out and into the sunshine.

“I’ve got it,” Cadence said, looking up and down the street and nodding. “This way.”

She started walking in the opposite direction of the parking garage.

“Cadence,” I called to her, and she spun around.

“This way, come on.” I hurried to keep up.

“Where are you going? The garage is over there.”

She just kept walking. “I know. We’re stopping somewhere else first.”

This was an unexpected turn of events and I didn’t like it. But I didn’t grab her arm and make her stop and turn around.

No, I walked next to her until she opened a door for me.

“Here we are,” she said as I looked up at the sign and the windows. Candles and bath products.

A lovely smell emerged from the interior that wasn’t too overpowering. I did love using candles sometimes when I took a bath.

Cadence motioned me to go in, so I did, and she closed the door behind me.

We were greeted and asked if we needed any help.

“No, thank you. We’ll let you know,” Cadence said. She steered me toward jars and jars of bath salts and soaks and products and then grabbed a basket.

“You can make your own spa set. You get to choose one of each.” She pointed to the sign that advertised the deal. One container of bath salts, one candle, one scrub, and one little stone from a bowl. The stones had words carved into them.

“No, Cadence,” I said, pushing against the basket.

“Yes, Eloise,” she said, taking a jar of bath salts off the shelf and sniffing at it. “What do you think?”

This was ridiculous, but I could see the determination in her eyes. I’d spent enough time with her to know what happened when she set her mind to something. And really, was this the worst thing that had ever happened to me? No.

Cadence helped as I selected some bath salts and a candle and a scrub and closed my eyes while I reached into the bowl of stones.

“What did you get?” Cadence asked, leaning close to see.

I opened my hand and showed her.

“’Peace’ is fine. But it’s not great. Pick another one,” Cadence said, taking the stone from me and putting it back in the bowl.

“You’re supposed to go with the first choice,” I said as she mixed the stones around.

“Try again.”

Cadence made me choose again and again until I got a stone she approved of. This one said “Bliss” on it.

“There. You can’t get much better than that.”

She marched to the counter and paid for everything and told them it was a gift so they needed to wrap it up.

Once again, she stopped me from arguing.

“Can we go now?” I asked after she handed me the bag with my gift in it.

“Sure. Unless you want to take the rest of the day off and wander around pretending to be tourists. You could even go into the bookshop and see if anyone recognizes you.” Her eyes were lit up and there was mischief in them.

Instead of annoying me, I felt swept away with her. Wanting to do something silly. Something foolish.

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” I said.

Cadence grinned. “Just terrible enough to be fun, though, right?”

I let out a long sigh.

“Fine,” I said, pretending I wasn’t hiding a smile deep down inside. “If anyone gets too close, you’ll need to be my bodyguard.”

Cadence raised one arm and flexed her bicep while I watched. Her shirt had short sleeves today and her arms were on display. How had I not noticed her arms before? A muscle popped, drawing my attention.

“Not bad. I think I can handle it.” She beamed at me and kept walking while I struggled to regain my footing again and stumbled a little behind her.

* * *

I putmy sunglasses down outside the bookshop.

“I wish we would have thought about this ahead of time and you could have worn a wig and a better disguise. I’d dress you up as a tourist. Can you do any accents?” Cadence asked, fully into this little scheme.

I opened my bag and pulled out a scarf that I used to cover my hair and tuck it away. That and the sunglasses were as good as it was going to get.

I did get recognized every now and then in the city, and going to a bookshop was the place most likely for it to happen.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“Mysterious,” Cadence said, adjusting the scarf a little, her fingers brushing along my forehead to secure any stray hairs. Her fingers were gentle and warm, and I found myself leaning closer to her without even knowing why.

She was shorter than me by about five inches. If I leaned forward, my lips would meet her freckled forehead.

Stepping back, I put space between us again.

“Let’s go. If this goes south, I’m blaming you,” I said.

“Fair enough.” She nodded and held the door open for me.

I entered reluctantly, expecting someone to immediately call me out. This was a risk in the era of everyone having a camera in their phone, but my heart was pounding in a way it hadn’t in a while.

“Excuse me,” Cadence said in an overly loud voice as I slunk further into the little bookshop, “do you have any of those Elizabeth Roth books?”

I refused to look at her.

“Did you mean Eloise Roth?” the bookseller asked. “We have many of her books, including some that are signed.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Eloise. That’s who I meant. Are her books any good?” Her voice was still too loud, and I was regretting going along with this. Why had I agreed to go along with this? She was going to get us banned.

“They’re some of our most popular titles,” the bookseller said. Very diplomatic.

I pretended to browse the shelves while my ears were glued on the interaction between Cadence and the bookseller.

Cadence wouldn’t stop being completely over the top and I could tell she was enjoying herself. She could have had a career on the stage with the way she was carrying on.

“What do you think?” she said, and I realized she was talking to me. “Have you read any of these books?”

Her eyes were bright, and it hit me how stunning she was like I’d been struck by lightning. I never had, obviously, but I imagined it was like this. Hot and intense and tingly and hazardous to my health.

“No, I can’t say that I have,” I said, pitching my voice lower, as if anyone would recognize my voice.

The bookseller looked back and forth between us, but I didn’t see a flicker of recognition.

“If I were to start, which one should I start with?” I asked the bookseller, stepping closer. This was a little reckless, but it felt good.

The bookseller put on a bright smile and held up the first book in my latest series. “This is a good one to start with.”

“Hmm,” I said, taking the book and pretending to read the blurb on the back even though I already knew what it said.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, putting the book back. The longer I fooled around in here, the more likely it was that I’d be recognized. And I also needed to get some work done today. This little detour had already taken too long.

“Thank you for your time,” I told the bookseller as I edged toward the door. Cadence had been pretending to look at more of the books, but she followed me.

“Have a nice day,” the bookseller called just as we walked through the door. I didn’t take a deep breath until we had made it down the street and I collapsed on a bench, unable to stop laughing.

“That was ridiculous,” I said through laughs that I couldn’t control. Cadence sat next to me, also laughing. I pulled the scarf off and looked at her giggling face and that only made me laugh harder. It hadn’t been that funny, but it didn’t matter.

Cadence reached out and held onto me as we gasped for air, tears on our faces.

“We’re going to have to work on a script and better costumes for next time,” Cadence said, wiping her eyes.

“Oh, next time? You think there’s going to be a next time?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Cadence said, getting to her feet. “That was fun. Didn’t you have fun?”

I did. It was fun.

Instead, I shook my head and got up. “We need to get back to work.”

Cadence huffed out a sigh. “Come on, admit it. You’ve had fun today.”

She skipped next to me as we walked to the parking garage.

“You had funnnnn,” she kept saying.

“Fine,” I said. “I had fun.”

“Ha! I knew it. Eloise Roth does like fun.”

We reached the garage and started walking around to get to my car. “I like fun. What are you talking about?”

Cadence didn’t speak for a few steps. “I know you’re fun, El. I just meant that I don’t think you leave enough space in your life for it. Especially for the spontaneous kind. Like today.”

El. She’d called me El. I glanced over at her face and she didn’t even seem to realize that she’d done it.

We reached my car and I unlocked it. “I’m not sure how offended I should be right now.”

Cadence rolled her eyes and got into the passenger seat. I set my present in the back and slid into the driver’s side.

“It was good to see you laugh like that today,” she finally said.

I turned the car on, and we were mostly quiet for the drive back to my house.

* * *

The restof the day was normal, at least for Cadence. She went back to working on her laptop (after she’d changed out of her stained clothes) and put her headphones on as if it was business as usual.

I, on the other hand, was having a crisis.

Today had been completely out of my routine and I wasn’t coping very well.

Things that I had put aside and buried and ignored were bubbling to the surface and I didn’t know if I could push them back again. Those moments and feelings from the past that I’d tried to hide, even from myself.

I wasn’t…

Attempting to work right now was a losing task, but I went through the motions and did my best until it was finally the end of the day.

“Hey,” Cadence said when she was packing up her bag. I gratefully shut down my laptop. I was tired, but I’d promised to go over to Camille’s tonight for dinner. She’d pretend it wasn’t my birthday and then surprise me with a little gift and the kids would sing and give me homemade cards and I’d act like I hated it. We did it every year.

“I hope it was a good birthday. And that you reevaluate your stance on celebrating birthdays.” Her voice was soft as she slung her bag over her shoulder and came around the side of my desk.

“I don’t think I will, but thank you for today anyway,” I said, tilting my face up to look at her.

She smiled at me and nodded. “You’re welcome.”

I expected her to turn and leave, but she paused and before I knew what was happening, she had leaned down and kissed my cheek.

“See you tomorrow.” Cadence was walking out of my office before it hit me what she’d done.

She…she kissed me. On the cheek, but still. What was that?

I sat in my chair for ages, trying to figure out if I’d imagined the whole thing and touching my cheek where her lips had been.