Chapter 10
James
Iswirled the pretty yellow flowers between my fingers.
I couldn’t remember a time anyone had ever given me flowers before–I was pretty sure Savannah giving me a handful of dandelions with their roots still attached and dropping clumps of dirt when she was five didn’t count–and I was oddly touched by the gesture.
Logically, I knew Marc wasn’t the one who’d actually gotten me the flowers, but he’d been the one to hand them to me, and there was no convincing my ridiculous lizard-brain otherwise.
God, he’d looked fucking adorable with his lips tipped in a half smile, a light pink staining his cheeks…
his great aunt smirking in the background.
“Hey, you about ready?” Marc said, as he came back from concluding his transaction with the salesman, because of course his aunt had sent us up to a town called Spanish Fort with a massive shopping center, and more importantly, a mattress shop.
“Sure thing. Pleased with your purchase?” I tried to hide the flowers, but he clocked them before I got far.
“Yeah, I guess.” He plucked at a sticker some kid had stuck to the bench I’d commandeered. “You know, you don’t have to keep those if you don’t want to. I know the game my aunt and I play is kind of silly.” It sucked that he felt like he needed to give me an out.
Watching him with his great aunt and with the flowers had been eye-opening and a little magical.
At the risk of being “woefully unimaginative,” as my brother would say, Marc had blossomed.
He clearly had a passion for nature, and the pervasive toxic masculinity often found in the army had taught him that was something to be ashamed of.
The army might bring out the best in some, but it could also bring out the worst.
I carefully set the flowers aside, determined to protect them until I could find a more suitable place to keep them safe. “What’s this about a game? First I’m hearing of it,” I said with a grin, hoping to distract him from the flowers I had zero intention of discarding.
“Oh, yeah, that, uh.” He picked more aggressively at the sticker.
“So, it was always sorta my great aunt’s thing?
People would come into the shop for custom bouquets and arrangements that ‘said something’.
See, back in the day, like way way back in the nineteenth century, proper etiquette frowned upon displays of emotion.
So, they came up with a way to communicate true feelings in more subtle ways by connecting symbolism and meanings to flowers.
” He shrugged and finally abandoned the shredded remains of the sticker that refused to surrender.
“That actually sounds pretty cool. And useful as f—” I spotted a little girl bouncing animatedly beside a mom walking by and quickly amended my vocabulary, “useful as heck.”
Marc snorted, catching the source of my adjustment, and angled his head for us to make our way back to the car. “You really think so?”
“Well, yeah. Think about how many ops could have gone smoother with an easy visual message of flowers. Though I guess some of them might have been harder to get ahold of, which then would have made them more obvious. Okay, maybe not so great in some places, but I can definitely see the merits. How did you get pulled in?”
His tentative grin bloomed into a full smile.
“When my sister and I started spending our summers down here when we were younger, it turned out I had a real knack for it. So Aunt Petunia taught me. First, they were like little tests, but as they got more complex, they became more of a game. And, I don’t know, it was fun.
” He shrugged as if it were nothing, but his smile continued to split his face and his eyes danced with remembered joy.
“It only got more fun when she started having me make bouquets for customers.”
“Sounds like a blast.”
“Yeah, it was.” He tilted his face up to the sun, bathing in the warm light, and looking goddamn beautiful with his soft smile curving his lips and his entire expression perfectly at peace.
“So…”
He angled his head back up and gave me an expectant look. “So?”
“So, if I want to know what the yellow flowers mean, you could tell me?”
His grin took on a mischievous edge. “I could. The real question is will I?”
I punched him in the arm, not hard enough to actually hurt him, but with enough force to get his attention. As I’d hoped, he laughed and rubbed his arm, shooting me a playful grin. “I oughta tell your aunt that you’re not being a very hospitable host.”
He gasped. “Oh my God, you haven’t even been here a week and you're already threatening to rat me out to the matriarch? Scandalous! And, I’ll have you know, that snitches get stitches everywhere, even in the South.”
“Does that mean you won’t tell me? Even though I came all this way, got lost in the Atlanta airport for two hours, and am sleeping on the couch?” I asked with an exaggerated sad face as I bumped his shoulder.
He tried to scowl, but his persistent grin was having none of it. “Fuck you. The new mattress will be delivered in two days. You’ll live.” And obviously Marc was finally feeling good enough to joke about it, thank fuck. “But I suppose I could be nice. Just this once.”
We stopped at the edge of the sidewalk before embarking into the vast swath of black tar that made up the parking lot so I could fully absorb the moment.
And I had to admit, finally getting to see Marc really relax and be playful was like fresh air and sunshine after navigating a collapsed building.
“The pink flowers were camellias. They represent a longing for someone dear. While the white were lily of the valley and mean a return of happiness.”
“In short, your great aunt really missed you and is glad to finally have you home.”
He nodded. “Got it in one.”
“And the yellow ones you gave me?”
He huffed a small laugh, but didn’t correct me.
“Those are buttercups. They mean radiant with charm.” He kept looking at me with those eyes.
Their hazel rings seemed to absorb the sunlight, and I thought back to what his great aunt had said when he’d asked about the flowers: she said he was handsome and had good manners.
Damn my fair skin. I could literally feel my face heating as he continued to look at me. “Would you agree with that assessment?” I asked, because clearly I had no sense of self-preservation where Marc was concerned, especially when he looked at me with those fucking eyes.
Finally, he gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah, I do.” Then he stepped off the sidewalk, leaving me to gape after him.
How the hell could I keep my wits about me in the middle of a firefight with literal explosions, but all Marc had to do was smile and look at me for my brain to forget how to function properly? Not cool, brain. Not cool.
The drive back to the shop was uneventful.
While Marc was changing back into work-appropriate clothes, I snagged a book on The Planting & Care of Perennials in Sub-Tropical Climates and carefully pressed my buttercups between the pages before squirreling the book away beside my duffel.
I’d need to look up how to preserve pressed flowers later, because no way was I going to let them wither into nothing.
No sooner was it secure than Marc reemerged from the bedroom looking like a goddamn snack.
I promptly metaphorically smacked my brain upside the head.
He was dressed for work, sweaty, dirty work that would show off his muscles and make him grunt with effort–record scratch.
There was nothing metaphorical about my subsequent facepalm before following him down to the shop.
For fuck’s sake, Gallagher, get it together.
We fell into the same pattern as the day before, with me working on clearing out the receiving bay, which was a hot fucking mess of boxes, bins, and what-have-you, while Marc tackled the front of the shop.
Though I did keep an ear out for him… and maybe made sure the sledgehammer was on my side of the shop this time.
It had really freaked me out yesterday when I’d heard the ruckus and found him rage-demolishing the fucking wall.
I was in the middle of untangling some gnarly wire-mesh-looking-shit from broken plastic pots and trying to figure out if it was still any good when Marc popped up like a goddamn meerkat out of fucking nowhere.
Startled, I took a step back, but instead of solid ground my heel came down on slick cardboard.
Balance compromised, I tilted back, dragging the mesh, broken plastic, and pretty much everything else in the pile I’d been deconstructing with me. “Shit.”
“I’ve got you.” On cue, a warm arm wrapped around my middle, steadying me and halting my backward trajectory. “Sorry about that. I should know better than to sneak up on guys like us.” He squeezed my bicep with his free hand, but I was too busy trying to remember how to breathe to respond.
God, he was handsome. Even with a smudge of dust on his cheek and his brown hair in wild disarray, he looked kissable as fuck.
And why did his arm around me have to feel so right?
I didn’t know if he was straight, bi, curious, or what, but I was positive the desire to kiss him was going to kill me before the summer was over.
“JD.”
“Huh?” I grunted, unable to make words or even string two coherent thoughts together with his body pressed against mine.
“I think you can let go of the wire now.” His lips twitched as if he were fighting back a grin, and I finally blinked.
A quick glance revealed that I had a death grip on the wire and had practically relocated the entire pile a good three feet with my lovely and not at all embarrassing interpretation of Curly.
I released the wire and flexed my hands to get the blood flowing again. “Thanks for that. I swear I’m not normally this jumpy. Or clumsy,” I tacked on, because I was really acing this whole being smooth around him thing.
He let his grin free and squeezed my side before removing his arm.
Let’s just say I’m not proud of how tempted I was to feign slipping again to bring it back.
“I know. Besides, I'm pretty sure it’s impossible for anyone built like you to be clumsy.” He probably meant it as a tease, but I could feel his eyes sliding down my body.
So, of course, my dick decided that now was an excellent time to get involved.
Stand down, you goddamn horn dog. You act as if I don’t give you any attention at all.
Which, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t since the interrupted blowjob from the brunette tag-chaser.
And I hadn’t been able to finish then either, not with all the pervy thoughts about Marc running rampant in my head.
I quickly shut down that line of thinking.
It wasn’t helping my current predicament at all, especially while he stood close enough for me to smell the sharp salt of his deodorant and the intoxicating musk of exertion.
I masked a whimper of need by clearing my throat.
Jesus Fucking Christ, what is wrong with me?
“You, uh, needed help with something?” I asked, hoping getting back to work might get my brain and hopefully my dick back on track.
He visibly gave himself a shake, and his grin broadened into a smile that made my pulse spike.
At this rate, I was going to need heart medication.
Would they let me back into the army if I were on heart medication?
Which reminded me, I had a lovely, not-so-passive aggressive email from my CO reminding me I didn’t have all year to decide whether to re-up and sooner was always better.
A little too late, I realized Marc had been talking while my brain had been busy hopping down a bunny trail.
“Yeah, so if you could give me a hand moving the counter, that’d be great.”
“Are you sure it’s not bolted to the ground?” He gave me a funny look, and I mentally facepalmed. He’d probably already addressed that when I’d been too busy getting lost in my own thoughts. “Right, duh,” I said in a half-assed attempt to cover and gestured for him to lead the way.
Letting me get away with it, he walked a few paces toward the front before pausing and turning to face me again. This time when he ran his gaze over me, he started at my feet and dragged it up the full length of my body with agonizing slowness while I willed my rebellious dick to behave.
“I might also need you to be tall,” he said.
Then the motherfucker went and winked before resuming his casual trek to the front of the shop.
Winked, as if he had absolutely no idea the effect his gaze had on my body, which, okay, he probably didn’t, but come on.
Couldn’t I catch like the smallest of breaks here?