Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
SUNNY
Green hydrangeas symbolize rebirth and good fortune, and baby’s breath, loving dedication.
Thank the goddess I have a wedding deposit coming in a week, or I’d never keep the lights or the A/C on.
And thank the goddess I have a vibrator at home, because the gorgeous (not quite human?) man who told me his name was “Cornflower”—what was up with that?
—nearly kissed me there in the vestibule of that little wooden church yesterday, and I almost jumped him like I’d hadn’t been raised with the good sense not to fuck a stranger in a church. I cackle aloud to myself in my shop.
I shake my head to clear the “not quite human” thought away.
He’s probably just not from around here.
“Yeah, not from anywhere near around here,” I mumble to myself, but that’s ridiculous.
He’s probably just from some tiny European city I’ve never heard of.
But that doesn’t explain why he’s in my little town losing friends and loved ones left and right.
I finish making the list of my debts versus the sales I know to be incoming. It’s a huge fucking difference, and not in a good way.
I close my notebook and rub my eyes. Maybe Cor is an eccentric millionaire who will come buy thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers only to line his hotel room with them when he brings me there to both ravish and un-impoverish me. A girl can dream.
I’m engrossed with preparing a congratulatory bouquet when the smallest, gentlest tapping arrives, raven-like, at my door.
As if sprung from my fantasies, Cor stands outside in his ever-present black suit. My core aches at the sight of him, and I imagine he’s really Hades disguised as a human and I’m the spring goddess destined to be his queen.
He smiles, and I smile, and the fairy tale’s broken. He’s just an awkward hottie, probably a business bro who has to wear that fancy suit to work every day. I dry my hands on my apron and walk to unlock the door.
“Hi.” I open the door and hold it for him. “Welcome to my flower shop.”
He smiles and dips his head, then walks past me into the shop.
His hands in his pockets accentuate what is a very tight ass connected in a V to very broad shoulders.
The energy of the room shifts into a sexual tensity, but—shit.
What if he’s a hunting vampire, and I’ve just welcomed him inside to maul me?
Or maybe it’s time for a palate cleanser from all that paranormal romance I read.
He turns and smiles at me, and my whole body tunes to his energy. Honestly, he can maul me if he wants to, and I won’t say boo.
“You have so many flowers,” he says softly.
“Gotta have flowers to sell flowers,” I say stupidly to the smoking hot enigma of a man. “Um, you’re here to get some for your mom?”
His hands are in his pockets, but a muscle feathers in his jaw. His gaze starts at my pink-painted toenails and eases like a caress up my entire body.
I am unwell.
“Yes, flowers for my mother.”
I swallow hard and shove my hands in my apron as I walk past him, just in case a rogue finger reaches out to smooth along his lips or, I don’t know, unzip his pants.
Stop it, Sunshine. The man is here for flowers for his mother. Not a supernatural booty call.
Even though his do-not-eye-fuck-strangers system seems broken, too.
I go behind the counter. What is it about him that makes him so otherworldly?
His ethereal beauty? His soulful eyes? Maybe it’s just his habit of repeating things.
With that untraceable accent, he really could be from anywhere, and maybe he doesn’t understand everything I’m saying.
It’s a shame he’s not French, or I could pull out some of what I learned in high school.
I distract myself with work talk. “Do you have something in mind? Is it for her birthday, or…”
His chiseled brow furrows. “Er….”
Damn he’s cute when he’s confused.
“Or we can start with your budget.”
His eyes widen, and he freezes. He does that a lot, as if he doesn’t trust himself to move that well-sculpted body. “My budget.”
Ah. He is repeating the words he doesn’t understand. “Yes, you know, how much money you have to spend.”
His face lights up, and he digs into both pants pockets.
His left fist hovers over my desk and deposits three quarters, a nickel, a doubloon from the Krewe of Thoth, a discarded losing lottery ticket, and a plastic bottle cap.
His right hand repeats the gesture, letting loose a cascade of other ephemera: three metal bottle caps, another doubloon, a bunch of pennies, and pocket lint.
One of the pennies goes spinning out and off the counter, and he hunts it down through the forest of flowers like it’s the proverbial lost lamb.
It’s kinda weird, not gonna lie.
He lets out a soft “Ah!” as he picks up the rogue penny and sets it carefully back on the counter. “Money,” he says with pride.
I look from him to the pocket litter and hold back a confused giggle. Is he trying to be funny? Being an ass? Making fun of me?
His face reddens. “Are these not…I don’t know…” His brown eyes are so sincere. He’s either some kind of entity trying to befriend me, or a foreigner who was woefully unprepared for coming to the states. I don’t get it. A man with a suit like that can’t not understand money.
I force a smile. “It’s perfect.” I pull out a quarter and a penny, just to make him feel like he’s paid me fairly. It’s not enough to pay for even one flower, but how can I not help him anyway? I look around and spot some hydrangea stems. “Does your mother have any pets?”
“Pets,” he says blankly.
“You know, like a cat or a dog that lives with her?”
He shakes his head. “No, no pets.”
“Great! Then I have the perfect thing.” As I walk around the counter to a bucket of hydrangeas, he orients himself toward me like a hot sunflower following the sun.
“What about a hydrangea?” I run my fingers gently across a pink one.
“These look like dozens of little flowers, but they’re actually sepals.
On this one”—I pull a bright green one from the water—“the flowers themselves are these tiny little florets in the middle of each sepal.”
He steps slowly to me and smiles into my eyes before hooking his hands behind his back and bending slightly to politely observe the hydrangea. “It’s green, like your eyes.”
His brown eyes lock on mine, and I’m putty. “Um. Green hydrangeas represent rebirth and good fortune. Would you like this one?”
He straightens. “Yes. That one.”
I step around him and grab some baby’s breath on the way to the counter. “And these little white ones represent loving dedication. They’ll set it off nicely.”
I grab a sheet of tissue paper and arrange the flowers inside it, taking a moment to slide a water tube on the bottom of the hydrangea stem.
“Cut hydrangeas need a lot of water, so be sure to tell her to take this tube off and set them in water right away.” As I wrap everything up, he collects the items left on the counter, one by one, carefully placing them back into the pockets they came out of.
What an adorable, perfect weirdo. On one hand, his presence is so reassuring, like he bottle-feeds kittens in his spare time and would be the safest place in any storm.
On the other hand, he seems to be blundering through life completely confused.
It’s cute now, but that might get really annoying in everyday life unless he really is not of this world.
And on yet a third hand, I would like to sit on his face. Respectfully.
I step around the counter and present the wrapped-up flowers to him. “Here you go. I hope your mom likes them.”
He delicately takes them from me, soft wonder on his face. “They’re beautiful.”
His gaze raises from the flowers to mine, and my breath catches. I’ve stepped up rather close to him, but he doesn’t move away. Instead, he sways nearer, bends his head closer like he did at the church. But this time, I won’t get spooked.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I ask softly. I can’t let him go without him asking me out, or me asking him out. His eyes drop to my lips.
Or yes, please, a kiss. I lift my chin and smile softly.
His lips part, and a shiver skips up my spine. He’s staring at my lips like he isn’t sure if he should go for it.
So I will.
I gently kiss his bottom lip, and the act lights my body up like a bonfire. He breathes out the softest, achiest groan…
But he doesn’t kiss me back.
A breeze hits my face, and I open my eyes.
He’s already outside my door.
How the hell did he do that? “Cor, wait!”
By the time I get to the door and peer both ways down the street, he’s just…gone. Chills run down my skin, and I feel like shit. I thought he wanted me to kiss him.
I stand in the sunlight holding the door open, filled with regret and more than a little fear that I’ve offended something supernatural.
Did I just kiss someone who’s…not human? Honestly, I don’t know that I care. He’s kind, and he’s gentle, and he’s familiar almost. I step back inside and hug myself. I royally fucked that up, and I want him to come back so I can apologize and make things right.
“I’m sorry, Cor,” I whisper to my empty shop.