Read Online Iris in Bloom: Take a Chance, Book 2 by Nancy Warren - Free Book Online

her favorite earrings.
    Friends, she thought as she picked up the box she’d prepared earlier with two lemon bars alongside two of her wicked brownies. Her take-out bakery boxes had the Sunflower logo stamped on the top.
    When she knocked on his door she really wondered what she was doing. He opened and she was momentarily surprised to see him out of his teacher uniform. He had on a gray athletic T with a hole in the shoulder and jeans that hung low on his hips. His feet were bare.
    “Hi,” he said.
    “Hi.” She offered the box and he took it, giving her a hopeful look. “Is this what I’m hoping it is?”
    “If you’re hoping Lady Gaga’s going to jump out and sing Bad Romance then no. If you’re hoping for wicked brownies and lemon bars, then yes.”
    “Lady Gaga is nothing compared to your lemon bars.”
    “You’re buttering me up in hopes I know how to use an Allen wrench,” she said as she walked inside. He’d made some progress, she noted since she was last here. Fewer boxes skulked in corners needing unpacking and the place looked more lived in.
    “Do you?”
    “I always get my dad to put together my stuff.”
    He shut the door behind her and she looked around. “You have a cat?”
    He glanced at the calico curled up in the corner of the couch. “I have a new buddy who knows how to climb in my window and doesn’t like to be alone.”
    “Oh, he’s so cute.” She walked over to where two wide green eyes assessed her. Probably with jealousy. “What’s his name? Her name?”
    “I have no idea. I call it Cat.” He turned to her. “You’re not allergic or anything, are you?”
    “No. I like cats.” She scratched this one on the head and was immediately rewarded by throaty purring. “Where is the construction project?”
    “Bedroom.”
    “Oh.” Okay, they were friends. This wasn’t weird. And they had a chaperone. She walked to the open bedroom door and peeked in, noticed that he’d got as far as opening a box and laying out an enormous number of pieces. A bag of screws and strange colorful plastic things and the dreaded Allen wrench lay beside the pieces. A second unopened box was propped against the white wall.
    “They’re going to be night tables. I didn’t know there’d be so many pieces.”
    “How hard can it be? We’re two intelligent, creative people.”
    “Positive thinking. I like that.”
    She went straight for the directions assuming he, being a man, wouldn’t bother with them.
    She flipped through once. Twice. Flopped to the hardwood floor with her back leaning against the bed. “Where are the words?”
    He shook his head. “No words. Pictures.”
    “I don’t even know what these diagrams mean.”
    “Very visual people, the Swedes.”
    “Are you visual?”
    “Words all the way.”
    She flipped through the diabolical picture reel one more time. “We are so screwed.”
    “Maybe wine will help,” he offered.
    “It can’t hurt.”
    He got out another bottle of the wine he’d bought in Napa, uncorked it and poured two glasses. “This should take care of the squiggles,” he said with great optimism.
    While they struggled through the wordless diagrams and screwed pieces to other pieces, she said, “How’s it going with the ex?”
    “You don’t want to hear this.”
    She nearly dropped the silver screw thing that she was pushing into a predrilled hole. She couldn’t remember the last time someone resisted the urge to share their problems with her when invited to do so. “Sure I do. It’s like a TV show where I was left on a cliffhanger.”
    “Well, the main character in your show fell off that cliff.”
    His voice sounded clipped, business like. That had to be bad. “I was afraid of that. What happened?”
    “I called my buddy the lawyer and asked him to represent me in the divorce. We’ve been friends for years, we used to run together. We’ve socialized, my wife and I and his girlfriend and him. We even went on a ski trip one