Eventually, I slide off his lap and we emerge in a different world from the one we last stood in, both a little disoriented. When he’s back in the driver’s seat, he sits up straighter than usual. His gaze flicks to the upper-right corner of the windshield, to something in the sky that’s caught his attention, but I can’t remove mine from his face. He looks utterly wrecked in the most wonderful way.

I am under Wesley Koehler’s skin. I don’t know how deep, but I’m there, and I am not imagining it.

Chapter 16

MY FLIMSY, DESPERATE PLAN to hide out from Wesley until my feelings for him have ceased to exist has a toolbox full of wrenches in it. For one, it’s hard to do what’s best for you when what you want isn’t what’s best for you. And what I want is to make out with Wesley again. If we’re going to coexist as platonic pals for the foreseeable ever, putting our tongues in each other’s mouths is not the way to achieve that. I need distance. I need space. I need to eat oversized bowls of tasteless, hearty moral fiber for breakfast.

Once we’re inside the house, I croak that I need a shower, to which he responds that he does as well, leading my mind down a sordid path. A path with cozy alcoves where lovers can rip each other’s clothes off. Falling Stars has such alcoves in abundance. I start dreaming of Wesley under a waterfall resembling the one in our mural; I don’t know what he looks like in the nude, so I conjure up Michelangelo’s David for a baseline, southern region hidden by a grape cluster of bath bubbles popping one by one. I smack face-first into a closed door before the last bubble pops, smarting my nose.

It’s all on him now. I’m counting on Wesley to shut down and be all brooding and tight-lipped again. It wouldn’t hurt for him to be a little bit awful, too. Maybe he’ll insult something I dearly love, like the plastic flowers I’ve stuck into every crack and crevice, and I’ll stop spending my unconscious hours from midnight through eight a.m. in the red-light district of my brain, lying on a chaise longue as he paints me like one of his French girls. We’ve got to vaporize our attraction. It’s the only way to save this relationship.

Wesley has no regard for crafting a professional relationship or successfully living together in harmony. He’s ruthless sabotage, strolling into the living room just as I’m stretching out with hot chocolate and the remote, The Great British Bake Off queued up to be my date for the evening. He’s designed to test my restraint in a cream cable-knit cardigan and charcoal wool trousers that I doubt he’s worn more than once. Freshly shaven. Faint traces of cologne, which he never wears, waft toward me. He’s taken special care to smooth his hair, too. I’m dressed in a hot-pink romper and a sparkly wrap like the fun nanny who’s going to entertain his two children while he goes on a sophisticated date with the governor of Vermont.

“Hi. Hello,” he says to me without any guile whatsoever, raking a hand through his smooth hair to undo all that hard work. Goddamn it, it’s even sexier disheveled.

This isn’t fair.

Wesley saunters closer, clueless to the danger we’re both in. I gaze back at him from the red velvet couch with narrowed eyes. “Hello.”

“How’s it going? Are you, uh . . .” He pivots to glance at the TV, picking at a stack of Violet’s books on the shelf. “Watching Netflix?” He straightens the books’ spines. Let Love Find You. How to Forget a Duke. The Incurable Matchmaker.

“Yes,” I reply guardedly.

He nods, distracted, and toys with a fake sunflower I’ve jammed into a crack in the wall. Fake flowers are a personal affront to him. “I’ll grow you some real ones, if you like.”

This is where I must ruin myself. Whatever it was that Wesley saw in me this afternoon that provoked him to put the car in park and ravish my mouth cannot be permitted to stay here between us. Goodbye, deepest connection I’ve ever had. Goodbye, adorable bear who cleans off my glasses with his shirt and ties my shoelaces. I’ll never forget you. “I like plastic flowers better than real ones.”

He should hiss and make the sign of the cross, but he doesn’t. “Monster,” Wesley replies affectionately, twirling the stiff petals. Then he puts it back. “There are a few silk flowers upstairs. I’ll bring them down for you.”

Oh, for the love. I can’t even scare a man off correctly! Maybe it’s the romper. It shows too much cleavage.

He’s close enough that I’m now breathing through my mouth so that I can’t be broken down further by his delicious fragrance, but it’s no use. The buttons on his cardigan are miniature wooden elephants. We are approaching fatal levels of dreamy. Mayday! Mayday! In a small corner of my mind, I jump out of a moving vehicle.

“That’s . . .” My mouth is dry. I don’t trust myself beyond an “Mm.”

“You want some company? We’ve still got that last wish left to honor, if you’re game.”

Damn, he’s right. We’re three down on Violet’s dying wishes, with one more to go. Wish 4. Movie night with a friend is sacred law, don’t forget. Wesley, I’d love for you to make my favorite cinnamon-sugar donuts for the occasion.

“You want to watch a movie and make donuts? With me?” Please say yes, I mentally beg. But also you have to say no.

He shrugs. “Pretty much have to, don’t we? The thousand-year curse and all that.”

An interesting development from the man who, only last month, told me that Great-Aunt Violet’s wishes weren’t serious and behaved as though he was intent on ignoring them all.

I’m contemplating how to phrase that I need a rain check on this activity when Wesley sighs. “It was the kiss, wasn’t it,” he says defeatedly.

“What?” I know exactly what, but I’m stalling for time.

“The kiss. You didn’t like it. Or you don’t like it anymore. You’ve given it some thought and wish you hadn’t.”