All Chapters of Destined to Love the Twin Brothers: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

The delivery van’s air conditioning had given up somewhere around the third traffic light, and Wren Casey was sweating through her one good blouse by the time she pulled into the gravel lot behind Ashworth & Sons.She sat for a second with her hands on the wheel, looking at the building through the windshield. Old brick, tall windows, a sign in hand-carved letters that probably cost more than her rent. She’d restored the piece in the back of the van herself — a water-damaged oak sideboard some interior designer had begged her to save for a client who apparently trusted no one else with it — and she’d spent six weeks on it in her mother’s garage, sanding until her shoulders ached, matching stain by lamplight because the color chart lied about everything.It was, she was fairly sure, the best work she’d ever done.She was also fairly sure she was about to hand it over to people who wouldn’t know the difference.That thought lasted exactly as long as it took her to walk through the works

The email from her boss arrived at nine fifteen Monday morning, subject line all caps in the way that meant either disaster or good news, and with Deborah there was rarely a middle option.ASHWORTH FURNITURE PARTNERSHIP APPROVED. Wren, this is yours to run. Don’t make me regret it.Wren read it three times at her desk before the words fully landed. A full partnership meant more than a single dining set commission. It meant regular collaboration, joint client meetings, her name attached to something bigger than a favor for a retired judge. It meant, though she tried not to dwell on this part, considerably more time spent in a workshop that smelled like sawdust and orange oil.“You’re doing the face again,” Marisol said, passing by with the mail cart.“What face.”“The one where you’re pretending to read an email and actually thinking about something else entirely.”Wren closed the email. “I have work to do.”“Sure you do.”The site visit to the judge’s house happened on a gray Tuesday

Wren went back to the workshop on Monday with a set of finalized sketches for the judge’s dining room, and no real reason to expect Rory would be the only one there, except that some quiet part of her had checked the shared calendar twice that morning to confirm exactly that.Declan was at a supplier meeting across town. Rory was at the back bench, alone, the radio on low behind him, some old blues station that felt like it belonged to the building more than to him specifically.“Delivery,” she said, holding up the folder of sketches.He looked up, and something in his face did the thing it always did when he saw her, a flicker of attention that felt different from Declan’s easy warmth, quieter and somehow more total. “You could’ve emailed those.”“I could have. I wanted to see how the base was coming.”That was true, mostly. It was also not the whole truth, and she suspected he knew it, based on the way his mouth did something almost amused before he turned back to the wood in front

The text came in Friday morning, while Wren was still half asleep with her coffee going cold on the nightstand.Declan: Dinner Saturday. Real dinner, not a farmers market, not a work meeting. Just you and me, if you’re interested.She read it twice before she was fully awake enough to understand what it was actually asking.Wren: Define real dinner.Declan: The kind with a tablecloth. I clean up alright, I promise.She sat with her phone for a long moment, thumb hovering, thinking about Rory’s voice in the workshop two days earlier, quiet and plain. It already bothers me. But that’s not really your problem to fix.It wasn’t fair to either of them to keep circling this without ever actually finding out what either relationship could become. She knew that. She also knew that saying yes to Declan felt like a decision, even though it wasn’t supposed to be one yet, even though nothing had been decided about anything.Wren: Okay. Saturday.Declan: I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something y