Humiliation filled her, but instead of getting out a garbage bag and cleaning up, she filled the coffee pot with water. “What else aren’t you good at?” she asked.
Spur settled at her bar, gently nudging an unopened box that likely contained vials out of the way. “Oh, let’s see.” He exhaled for a few seconds. “My mother would say I’m terrible at reading a room. I’ve had to work really hard to win over customers and clients over the years.” He smiled at her, and if he knew how devastatingly handsome it made him, he didn’t show it. “My brothers would say I’m bad at keeping my opinions to myself, and-or admitting I’m wrong.”
Olli returned the smile. “I’m not great at admitting it when I’m wrong either.” She measured out the coffee and set it to brew. “There’s the housekeeping.” She picked up the bottle of water she’d gotten out last night after Spur had dropped her off. “I guess I just don’t have the patience for it.”
“What else?” he asked. “I gave you three.”
“Dressing myself,” Olli said, turning to get mugs out of the cupboard.
“Excuse me?” Spur asked, a laugh in the two words. It came out of his mouth a moment later. “Did you say dressing yourself? Who dresses you?”
Olli turned back to him and put the mugs on the counter. “Not like that,” she said, giggling a little with him. “I just meant, when I’m getting ready for something important, I never know what to wear. What I think is cute and fashionable, usually isn’t.”
Spur nodded and said, “Keep going.”
“Like, last night for example. I wanted to look amazing, and I picked out these ankle boots. Ginny told me I couldn’t even be buried in them.”
His eyes blazed at her, and Olli really wanted to get burned. “Ginny helps you.”
“Yes,” Olli said. “She’s great with fashion and knowing how to tuck, and what accessories to use. Which colors go with which. She put me in a pair of pale pink shorts once, and then made me wear this pumpkin-orange blouse with it. I didn’t think it looked good at all, but I got a ton of compliments at the Harvest Fest, and I sold out of all of my seasonal candles by lunch.” Olli shook her head just thinking about it. “I never go anywhere or do anything important without Ginny’s fashion help.”
Spur nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “You said she dressed you last night?”
“Yes.”
They looked at one another, and Olli realized what she’d just said and how much she’d just given away. “I mean—”
The coffee pot started to percolate, and she spun toward it. She didn’t have anything to attend to, though. She simply stared as the first drops of coffee dripped into the pot. She might as well have told him she’d been thinking about him since the moment she’d awakened that morning, and that she’d started fantasizing about him as her real boyfriend and not fake filler for an investor.
She reached into the cupboard beside the stove for sugar and ignored the scraping of the barstool as Spur stood. He’d probably leave now, because he wasn’t interested in her. He’d been willing to do her a favor, but now that he knew she had real feelings for him—real feelings she hadn’t even known about—he’d tell her to find someone else to be her arm candy.
She set the sugar bowl on the counter beside the coffee maker and opened the fridge to get the cream.
“Olli,” Spur said, and it was downright criminal how soft he’d said her name. If he did it again, she might just swoon into the counter behind her.
She looked up, the pint of cream in her hand.
“Last night was important to me too,” he said. She’d never heard him speak with such tenderness. Not to her, not to anyone.
Their eyes met as he lifted his gaze to hers, and Olli wasn’t sure if she swooned or an earthquake hit Kentucky. She did stumble into the counter behind her, glad it was there to keep her from falling.
Spur held up his phone. “My brother just texted about a horse I have to attend to, so I’ll take a rain check on the coffee.”
“Okay,” she said, still not sure what he meant by last night was important to me too.
“I’d love to come by the perfumery tonight. What time?”
Olli shrugged and said, “Whenever. Just come over here, and I’ll take you.”
“Say seven-thirty?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Okay,” he said, stepping toward her. Actually toward her. He leaned down and brushed his lips along her hairline. “See you then.”
He walked toward the front door, but Olli didn’t dare turn and watch him, just in case this was a dream and she woke up when she moved.
When the door clicked closed, time flowed again. Olli looked around and felt the cold pint of cream in her hand and smelled the hot coffee as it continued to drip.
“That wasn’t a dream,” she whispered to herself, one hand reaching up to touch the tingling, heated spot on her forehead where Spur had kissed her.