3. Lily #2
I forgot how to breathe. I forgot about the pyramid, the invoices, the meddling family, and the swan-shaped gourds.
My brain, usually a whirlwind of checklists and to-do lists, went completely, blissfully blank.
There was only the solid feel of him holding me up, the startling intensity in his eyes, and the sudden, insane urge to find out if his mouth was as firm as it looked.
He blinked once. His grip on my waist loosened slightly, but he didn’t let go. His thumbs brushed against my sides in a small, almost imperceptible movement that sent a fresh jolt of warmth spreading through me like cider in October.
“You okay, Flower Girl?” he murmured, his voice a low vibration that I felt more than heard.
Flower Girl? The ridiculous nickname should have annoyed me. It should have made me pull away and snap at him. Instead, it sent another ridiculous, fizzy wave of heat straight to my cheeks.
I opened my mouth to say something—anything. I’m fine. Thank you. Get your hands off me. But all that came out was a pathetic little squeak.
The spell was shattered by a third voice, high and clear and brutally honest.
“Are you two in love now?”
Olivia.
She was standing a few feet away, holding her glitter-encrusted pumpkin, her head cocked to the side. Her expression was one of genuine, academic curiosity, as if she were observing a fascinating new species of insect.
The question hung in the air, a bright, sparkly grenade.
Mario and I sprang apart as if we’d been electrocuted. He set me on my feet, dropped his hands from my waist, and I stumbled back a step, a sudden chill replacing the warmth where he’d been holding me. My face went from hot to thermonuclear.
Mario shoved his hands in his jeans pockets, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere over my left shoulder. A dull red flush crept up from the collar of his shirt. For the first time all day, Mr. Cool, Calm, and Competent looked as flustered as I felt.
“No, sweetie,” I managed, my voice strained. “We are not in love. I just … tripped.”
“He caught you. In the air,” Olivia pointed out, as if we might have missed that crucial detail. “Like in a movie.”
Oh, God. It got worse.
I was desperately trying to come up with a way to redirect the conversation— Look, a bird! —when a new voice joined the party, this one sickeningly sweet and dripping with insinuation.
“Oh, what a picture!”
My heart sank into my boots. I didn’t have to look. I knew that voice.
June.
My nosy neighbor June, who lived three houses down from me, volunteered for every committee in town, and possessed a supernatural ability to appear at the precise moment of maximum mortification.
She was standing by the half-finished hay bale maze, her phone held up in front of her face, a shark-like grin spreading across her features. The setting sun glinted off the screen.
“You two are just the cutest,” she cooed, lowering her phone. The tell-tale click of a photo being taken echoed in the suddenly quiet air.
“The whole town has been wondering when Ben’s mysterious friend would finally pop up. And here you are, sweeping our Lily off her feet! Literally!”
She wriggled her fingers in a little wave and then, with the air of someone who has just secured a major news scoop, turned and bustled off in the direction of the bake sale planning committee, no doubt to share her photographic evidence.
I stood there, frozen. My near-fall, the catch, the charged moment, Olivia’s question, and now a photo. A photo that, by sundown, would be on the Autumn Grove Community Facebook page, complete with a caption full of winking-face emojis and speculative hashtags. #FallForLove #PumpkinPatchRomance.
A groan escaped my lips. I bent down and started gathering my scattered invoices, mostly to hide my flaming face from the world. My hands were shaking.
This was a disaster. A complete, five-alarm, gourd-fueled catastrophe.
I’d spent the last forty-eight hours trying to convince myself—and my family—that my life was perfectly fine without a man in it.
Now, thanks to a runaway pumpkin and Mario’s surprisingly fast reflexes, the entire town was about to think I was dating my brother’s broody, gorgeous, F1 race car driver, and utterly infuriating best friend.
I risked a glance at Mario. He was staring after June, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
His face was a thundercloud. If he’d been radiating silent disapproval before, he was now emitting waves of pure, undiluted fury.
The anonymity he’d come here for had just been blown to smithereens by a meddling neighbor with a smartphone.
He finally looked at me, his dark eyes narrowed. “Flower Girl,” he said, and this time it was not a term of endearment. It was an accusation. “Your town is a menace.”
And then he turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving me standing there amidst my scattered paperwork, my half-built pyramid, and the lingering, phantom warmth of his hands on my waist. My daughter was humming to herself again, applying a final, triumphant layer of glitter to her pumpkin.
The air was getting cooler, the sun dipping lower.
All I could feel was the weight of June’s speculative stare, the heat of my own blush, and a deep, sinking certainty that my perfectly organized, man-free life had just become very, very complicated.