Petal Plucker E-Book

Iris Morland

• Herausgeber: IRIS MORLAND
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Flower Shop Sisters
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 297

Beschreibung

“Funny, charming, and utterly captivating! I devoured this sparkling read.” - New York Times bestselling author Annika Martin
The man I hate might be the first one to pluck my petals…
Confession: I, Dandelion “Dani” Wright, am twenty-six years old and have yet to be deflowered. No man has hosed my hyacinth. Fondled my freesia. Diddled my daffodil.
You get the point.
My excuse? I was too busy running my family’s flower shop and winning floral design competitions.
Suddenly that whole pesky virginity thing becomes a big deal when Jacob West walks back into my life. The boy I once loved. The same boy who humiliated me when he stood me up for prom.
This Jacob is no boy, though: he’s all man now—confident, charming, and so sexy my metaphorical blossoms are getting scorched. I can almost forget I’m supposed to hate him forever. Almost.
To make things worse, he’s my main competition now, since he took over his parents’ flower shop. If I give into this sizzling attraction between us, it could jeopardize everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.
But if I’m not careful, he might not just be the first man to pluck my petals—he might also be the only man to capture my heart.

Leseprobe

Petal Plucker

The Flower Shop Sisters

Iris Morland

Blue Violet Press LLC

Contents

Author’s note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Enjoy this exclusive excerpt

Also by Iris Morland

About the Author

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Petal Plucker (The Flower Shop Sisters Book 1)

Published by Blue Violet Press LLC

Seattle, Washington

Copyright © 2019 by Iris Morland

Cover design by Qamber Designs

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Author’s note

If you’ve already read the prelude to Petal Plucker, War of the Roses, you can skip to chapter five.

If you haven’t read War of the Roses or if you’d like to reread, turn the page to start Petal Plucker from the beginning.

Happy reading!

Iris

Chapter One

The day Jacob West walked into my store after breaking my heart nine years ago, I had just gotten my hand stuck in a vase and was trying rather desperately to free myself from its glassy confines.

I don’t make a habit of getting my hands stuck in things, vases or otherwise. But today had been a shit-show, starting with my dad being afraid I was going overboard on the lily bouquets, and then my first customer complaining that her cut flowers had died. After two weeks, mind you. And then I’d dropped my nice little flower clippers inside a vase. Just as I’d gotten my fingers around the handle of the clippers, I realized that my wrist was too wide to get out of the vase.

And that was how Jacob found me. Because of course that would be how he first saw me after nine years.

“Dani?” he said, stepping toward the register. “Is that you?”

My back was turned, and I hadn’t yet laid eyes on him. I muttered, “Sorry, one second.” But when I whipped my head around and saw that face, the hand that had the vase attached to it dropped to the counter and made such a loud sound that we both jumped.

Jacob looked—the same. But not the same. He was older, obviously, and his blond hair had darkened to a deep gold. His eyes were the same bright blue, but he had a few fine lines at the corners of his eyes. It only made him seem more interesting. Stubble dotted his jaw where once he’d been smooth as a baby. I couldn’t remember him ever sporting facial hair as a teenager. Since he was so blond, I’d assumed his beard would grow in patchy or red. 

Not that I’d ever thought that deeply about Jacob’s facial hair. 

He seemed taller than when he’d been seventeen, and he was more filled out. He wasn’t that skinny teenager anymore, although he’d always been muscular in a skinny-boy kind of way since he played so many sports. But now he looked like a man, whereas before, he’d just been a boy. A boy who’d stood me up for prom, who I’d watched drive off with his ex-girlfriend when he should’ve been at my house putting a corsage on my wrist.

After that betrayal, I’d dated a bunch of guys who’d turned out to be weirdos, shady motherfuckers, or guys who worked for the mob but had neglected to tell me. Pretty hard to believe that I had trust issues, right? It might be the reason that I was twenty-six and had yet to have sex. I’d pretty much resigned myself to dying a virgin. Very tragic, I know.

It was amazing, though, how a history of lies and betrayal and ruined proms could fly out the window so quickly when face-to-face with someone. That someone being insanely, ridiculously, I-hate-my-fucking-life hot.

Why did he have to get hot?

I heard the dangerous saxophone sounds of “Careless Whisper” playing in my mind. I hadn’t heard that song in my brain in nine years, and I hadn’t missed it one bit. When I was kid, that song played like an absurd soundtrack every time I so much as saw Jacob’s name written on top of his homework.

In seemingly slow motion, I watched Jacob approach the counter. Was this a dream? I pinched my leg with my free hand, but Jacob didn’t disappear. 

“Um, do you need help?” He pointed to the vase. 

I’d forgotten about the vase. Nothing had mattered except that Jacob West was in the same place as I was. I picked up my hand, stared at the vase as if I’d just become aware of my current predicament, and said bluntly, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Like I was going to let Jacob help me. I said something vague and hurried to the back, desperately trying to get this thing off my hand. But to my immense humiliation, it wasn’t going to budge. My wrist ached. I pressed my forehead against the cool wall and took in deep breaths.

Jacob. West. Was. Here. 

Why was he here? He’d left Seattle right after high school and had been apparently making plenty of money as some kind of stockbroker in New York City. The last I’d heard, he had some penthouse and a hot girlfriend with fake boobs. I had a feeling that when you made enough money in a place like New York, the hot blonde with fake boobs came with the penthouse.

Okay, that was probably unfair. I’m sure his girlfriend had perfectly nice boobs, real or otherwise.

He was probably visiting his parents, but there was no reason he needed to come into my family’s flower shop, Buds and Blossoms. He could go to his parents’ flower shop if he needed to buy a bouquet for his girlfriend. 

Yes, both of our parents ran flower shops, although I’d taken over my family’s a few years ago. It’s a long story full of rivalries and bitter mistrust. Think of our families like a version of Romeo and Juliet, except with the Montagues and the Capulets being obsessed with making bouquets.

I inhaled a few more deep breaths, willing my heart to slow. I let myself inhale the scents of flowers of all kinds, which normally I found soothing. But today, seeing the arrangement I was working on for the biggest design competition in the country made me want to throw up. Or maybe I just really wanted to throw the arrangement at Jacob’s head.

Except I was extremely proud of this design: a purple monochromatic arrangement of roses, buckeye flowers and porcelain vines. I liked using flowers and plants that other people thought were common or weeds. It might have to do with the fact that I was named Dandelion, after that infamous weed.

But there were more important things at hand. I briefly considered simply shattering the vase stuck on my hand, but I didn’t want to end up with glass in a rather important artery. Sparing myself the humiliation of asking for Jacob’s help only to die from a dumb accident would be slightly worse than asking him for help. By a minuscule amount.

“Dani? Do you need help?” Jacob had followed me to the back.

Why did he have to be nice, too? I wished he would go away, except now I needed his help. He came to the doorway, and I could see him assessing what probably looked like a complete mess back here. There was a reason why it was called the back: it was so customers didn’t get to see the not-so-pretty aspects of this job.

I thrust my hand at him. “Help, please.”

His lips twitched, and my traitorous, stupid heart flip-flopped in my chest, just like it used to when we’d been kids. Why couldn’t he have gotten fat and bald? Where was the justice in this world, I ask you? Boys who stand girls up for prom should end up with a beer gut, a large hairy mole on their face, and a distinct body odor that no deodorant could eradicate. It was only fair.

“How did you manage to do this?” Jacob peered at my hand. “I’m kind of impressed.”

I rolled my eyes. “Save your compliments for later. My hand is starting to ache.”

He took hold of the bulb of the vase, twisting it back and forth before he pulled so hard I was sure my shoulder was going to be pulled from its socket. Then with a pop, I was free, my clippers clattering to the floor.

I rubbed my wrist. “Thanks for that.” I took the vase from his grip and got my clippers before asking, “What are you doing here?”

“Saving you from vases, apparently.”

“No, I mean—why are you here? And don’t tell me it’s because you need a bouquet, because we both know that’s not true.”

“How do you know what I do and don’t need?”

Good point. I shrugged, mostly because my heart was still pounding so hard that I was a little breathless. I wished rather belatedly that I had put on some mascara this morning, but today I was my usual, frizzy-haired self sans makeup. Normally I didn’t care, but I tended to care about a lot of dumb things when it came to Jacob West. 

He’s just some guy who you don’t even know anymore. Don’t get all weird.

We returned to the front finally. Jacob perused the flower arrangements that were for sale. “Do you run this place now?”

“Yes. I took over a few years ago when my dad retired.”

“That’s nice,” he said, like we were catching up over lunch.

“You never did answer my question. Why are you here?”

Jacob leaned on my counter, all casual-like. He was way too good at casually leaning. “Can’t a guy stop by to see one of his childhood friends?”

I raised an eyebrow. “A friend you haven’t talked to in almost a decade?”

He winced a little. Damn, I was being a total bitch. Forcing myself to retract my metaphorical claws, I added, “Sorry. It’s nice to see you. How’s it been with you?”

“I’m actually back in Seattle for good.”

I almost dropped the clippers again. “Why?” My voice was embarrassingly shrill at this point.

“My dad had a stroke recently, and he needs me to help take over the business.”

I swallowed, a lump in my throat. My hands were shaking. Jacob West was back? Jacob West was going to be my direct competitor? Things were getting more complicated at a speed faster than light.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I managed. “About your dad, I mean. Are you living in the neighborhood?”

“I am. I just got a place a few blocks from my parents’ place.”

Oh God, that meant he’d be in my neighborhood. I lived in an apartment right next door to Buds and Blossoms, which also happened to be four blocks from both my parents’ and Jacob’s parents’ houses. The thought of running into Jacob all the time made me want to crawl into a hole and die. 

“Well, welcome back,” I finally managed to croak.

His smile did annoying things to my insides. Oh God, was I going to do something stupid like get a crush on Jacob West again? I considered myself a smart woman. I knew how the world worked, even if my dating experience was limited to nonexistent. 

Okay, yes, I was a virgin at twenty-six. What could I say? I’d been busy going to college, then learning the business, and then running it. I didn’t have time for Tinder, hands down my pants, and a quick dry hump that ended with the guy collapsed beside me, snoring. I liked to tell myself I just hadn’t gotten around to it, like someone else hadn’t gotten around to cleaning out their garage. It’d happen—eventually. I wasn’t in any hurry.

Suddenly, though, that whole virginity thing felt a bit bigger in my brain than cleaning out the garage. Because here I was, a virgin florist with a neurotic cat, and it just so happened that my first ever crush looked like some golden angel who was now wandering around my store.

Thankfully, Jacob wandering gave me a second to collect my thoughts. And to ogle him, if I were being honest. He wore what looked like an expensive leather jacket and a watch that gleamed in the natural light that flooded through the windows of the store. I wondered why his parents hadn’t sold their business instead of having Jacob give up his career. I didn’t know the Wests well anymore, but from everything I’d heard, they were immensely proud of Jacob’s success. 

Since I’d taken over running Buds and Blossoms, I was primarily in charge of designing arrangements and making bouquets. Currently we employed two other workers, Judith and Will. My dad still tried to help, but my mom would force him to come home, insisting that retirement meant not working. But he wasn’t thirty years old anymore, and working sixty hours a week simply wasn’t possible for him now. 

Right now, the shop was filled with gardenias I grew in my apartment, along with the usual types of flowers people could easily recognize: roses, lilies, hydrangeas, tulips, daisies, to name a few.

All I wanted was to expand Buds and Blossoms and start giving classes while winning the most prestigious floral design competition in the country this summer. With the prize money and the year-long contract with a major wedding vendor, I could achieve all of my dreams with the added revenue. I didn’t have time for complications.

Jacob West was a major complication.

Jacob bent down, and I couldn’t help but ogle his ass. I wanted to touch it. Squeeze it. Make him groan. My lady bits perked up at the thought, but I had to douse them in cold water. Metaphorically speaking. Because no matter how amazing Jacob’s ass was, it was not mine to grope.

He pointed to a gardenia arrangement. “This is nice. Did you make this?”

“I did the arrangement, yes, and I grew the gardenias.” I couldn’t keep the pride from my voice. 

“I could never get gardenias to do what I wanted. Or maybe I just never had the patience for them.” He touched one of the bright green leaves. “But my mom loves them. She has one that sits in our kitchen window.”

“You just can’t let them get waterlogged. They’re fussy, but worth it.”

“I know. Also, that sounds like every woman I’ve met.” His fingers caressed a petal, and Christ, I wanted him to caress my petals in that very moment.

“Now you’re just being sexist,” I groused.

He flashed me a grin. “And you’re just as charmingly sweet as when we were kids.” 

It was strange, having him reference the past so easily. Did he ever wonder what would’ve happened if we’d remained friends? I doubt he’s thought much about me in nine years, I reminded myself.

“I was the kid who ripped up dandelions for fun. You knew what you were getting into,” I said.

“Did I?” He sounded almost like he didn’t know the answer himself. He gazed down at me, the laughter in his eyes suddenly gone. The moment felt almost unbearably intimate. But why should it? Jacob was nothing to me. He’d only been a mixture of nostalgic childhood memories and painful adolescent realizations until this random reunion.

“Why did you rip up dandelions?” he asked suddenly. “I don’t think you ever told me why.”

“Because I was a weird kid who also carried around plants in her backpack?”

“I’d forgotten that. I kept hearing rumors in high school that you were growing pot in your locker.”

I scoffed. “You can’t grow marijuana in a dark locker. At least, it would be a huge pain in the ass. It prefers a nice, humid climate.”

“I’m so relieved you know the ins and outs of marijuana cultivation.”

I bit back a smile. “Well, it’s legal here now, so for all you know, I have a huge greenhouse overflowing with pot, with all kinds of species and strains.”

He smiled, shaking his head. “You never answered my question.”

Leave it to Jacob to pull me back to what he really wanted to know. Why had I ripped up dandelions? Probably because we shared a name, and for whatever reason, I had wanted to claim them. As I’d gotten older, I’d grudgingly begun to respect dandelions’ hardiness. When you ripped them out of the ground, their root systems were so complex that they would grow back, like they hadn’t even noticed that you’d tried to kill them.

“Well, since you answered mine. I guess I just liked to see if I could kill them,” I said. Right then, the front door bell chimed, and a customer walked inside.

Thank God. This entire conversation was just getting weird.

“That’s morbid.” Jacob shook his head. “I’ll take this one,” he added, before he set one of the gardenia arrangements on the counter. 

“I thought you said gardenias were too fussy for you?”

“Just because I couldn’t get a flower to do what I wanted when I was younger doesn’t mean I can’t manage it now.” His words held a promise that made me shiver, a flame curling inside me. If I weren’t sane and aware of who I was, I would’ve thought he was flirting with me.

After paying, Jacob held his gardenia plant like a newborn baby and saluted me. “See you, Dani. Don’t get any more vases stuck on your hand.”

“What did that young man say?” said my customer, who was the old woman who’d been angry that her cut flowers had died and who also tended to yell because she refused to wear her hearing aids. “You got mace stuck on your sand?” she yelled.

“Yes!” I yelled back, because that sentence made about as much sense as this entire day had—absolutely none at all.

Chapter Two

I usually had dinner with my family every Sunday evening. My older sister, Marigold (who we all called Mari), sometimes joined us if she wasn’t busy doing something with her fiancé, David. My younger sister, Kate, only joined us because the food was infinitely better than the stuff they served at the dorm cafeteria at UW, and, as she would elegantly put it, “I can’t eat Chipotle every day or my asshole will explode.”

It was three days after Jacob had visited Buds and Blossoms. I’d told no one of his moving back to Seattle, although I knew my parents wouldn’t be thrilled. Actually, they hated him for what he’d done to me at prom. My mom had even cursed him using her most powerful crystals; my dad had gone so far as to call him a “selfish little shit.” My dad never swore, so that was saying something. 

So, I had no reason to tell them. Besides, it felt like a secret I’d rather keep for myself—a secret I could hold close to my heart and ponder over in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. I still didn’t know why he’d stopped by in the first place. My more negative side wondered if he had wanted to scope out Buds and Blossoms, but why now? They’d been our direct competitor for years. If they were just starting to snoop around, they were about twenty-five years too late. Then again, things were different now that Jacob was back.

“Dandelion, I’m so glad you’re here,” said my mom as she hugged me, as if I hadn’t just seen her last Sunday. “Come help me pot these begonias. Your sisters are useless with plants.”

“Mari is good with plants,” I pointed out.

“She is, but she says she just got her nails done and can’t handle the soil.” My mom sighed, as if Mari had told her she was disowning the family entirely. 

I went outside with my mom after saying hello to my dad. He was the one cooking dinner; my mom had a green thumb but zero cooking skills. One time she made us pancakes and had forgotten the flour. She’d basically made us curdled, milky eggs that had scarred us all for life. To this day, I couldn’t eat real pancakes.

“I heard some interesting news,” my mom said after we’d put on gardening gloves. “I heard that boy is back.”

I didn’t need to ask her who she meant. “And?”

She shot me a surprised look. “He broke your heart and that’s all you have to say?” She clucked her tongue before picking up a begonia plant. “Move the dirt for me, will you? Apparently, he’s back for good. Josie told me about it. His father had a stroke and wants him to take over the business.” She snorted. “Like a boy like him could run a store like that. He’ll run it into the ground, mark my words.”

“Didn’t he get an MBA?”

“So? It’s one thing to know about the business side of things. It’s another to understand the floral side of things. I bet that boy hasn’t grown a plant since he left home.” My mom said the words like you would say that someone hadn’t bathed in ten years—with complete and utter disgust. The statement was immensely ironic, given that Mom had handled the business side of things for Buds and Blossoms since its opening.

I had no reason to defend Jacob West, yet I found myself doing just that. He had fucked me over quite thoroughly nine years ago. I had a right to be angry, but at the same time, my parents had never liked the Wests to begin with. When Jacob had stood me up for prom, they’d almost been strangely pleased, as if the universe had finally shown me the light. What can you expect? He’s a West, they’d said over and over again.

“He stopped by the store,” I said.

My mom froze. “What? Why?” She wiped her forehead, which left a streak of dirt there. “He must be trying to learn our secrets. Did he buy anything?”

“Mom, come on. He just wanted to say hello.”

“I can’t believe you’re being this naive, Dani! That boy is no good.” She wagged her finger in my face. “No good, you hear me? He wants to take over our store, maybe buy us out.” She took another begonia out of its plastic container so roughly I stared at her in shock. My mom never handled plants with anything except gentleness. She usually treated them like delicate china dolls. She wouldn’t even step on the dandelions in our yard, reasoning that they had a right to live as much as any other plant or animal.

“Mom, it’s fine. He isn’t going to keep coming around.”

“Who isn’t going to keep coming around?” Mari came outside, leaning against the doorframe.

With her long, auburn hair, milky skin and bright green eyes, Mari looked like something out of a magazine. She’d always been pretty, but when she’d started learning how to become a makeup artist in high school, she’d managed to turn herself into a knockout. Everything about her was perfectly manicured, from her nails to her hair to her clothes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with so much as a zit. A large diamond sparkled on her left hand. Her fiancé had proposed two months ago, and she’d been on cloud nine ever since.

I’d always thought her name was too banal for her. Marigolds were cute, but Mari herself was more like a hibiscus: eye-catching and gorgeous, her hair the deep red of the center of a hibiscus. I’d once told her that I’d thought of her compared to that flower, and she’d told me I was silly before going out and buying a hibiscus plant for her apartment.

I’d yet to understand what Mari saw in her fiancé, David. He was average in every way: average height, average appearance, average bank account. He talked of average subjects (the weather was his number one favorite), drove a Prius, and had a dog very aptly named Spot. He had no imagination; he thought gardening was pointless. He talked to me about the pros and cons of a traditional and Roth IRA for an entire evening once, and I almost died of boredom.

Mari was too vibrant for a guy like David, but she seemed happy. So when she told us she was engaged, we all acted like we were excited and gushed over her ring. At least he’d gotten her a nice, big diamond.

As far as Kate, she was more like me, in that she preferred sweatshirts to dresses and didn’t know how to put on eyeliner. The only reason Kate didn’t have a flower name like me and Mari was because my mom had been so doped-up on pain meds after Kate’s birth that my dad had been able to fill in the birth certificate with a normal name. My mom hadn’t been particularly pleased when my dad had told her what he’d done.

Kate was seven years younger than me and had been an oops baby. It had been strange, suddenly becoming the middle child after years of being the youngest, but Kate was such a mixture of enthusiasm and unintentional deadpan humor that it was difficult not to like her. Even if she’d liked to pluck blossoms from the flowers I had blooming in my window when she’d been little. In a twist of irony, Kate had grown up to have a completely black thumb. I’d been a little worried she was a serial killer when she was younger, but she’d only grown up to be a science nerd instead.

“No one is coming around,” I said at the same time my mom replied, “That West boy. He’s back.”

Mari’s eyebrows rose. “Reallllllly?” she drawled. She crossed her arms. “I thought he lived in New York.”

“Not anymore. And he came to Buds and Blossoms to scope it out.” My mom took off her gardening gloves as she shook her head. “Dani was just telling me about it.”

Hurt curled inside me—stupidly so—that my mom hadn’t even considered that Jacob had come by to see me. But why would she? The only thing she knew was that Jacob had played a cruel prank on me nine years ago.

“Who’s living in New York?” This came from my dad, and soon Kate was standing on the porch, the entire family together.

I groaned inwardly. I didn’t need Kate teasing me about Jacob, and I didn’t need my dad warning me away from him. 

“Jacob West is back. He’s moved back to Seattle to take over Flowers. His dad had a stroke, in case you didn’t know. He stopped by the store a few days ago to say hello. Nothing else happened and nothing else will.” I stood up and went inside the house to forestall further questions. I heard Kate say, “What’s her deal?”

Dinner was a little awkward after that. My mom kept shooting me concerned looks, while my dad kept asking me questions about how the store was doing. “Did you sell those peonies? They weren’t growing well last time I checked” and “What are you planning to enter into the next competition? You can’t keep doing these weird arrangements. You’ll get pigeonholed. You don’t want to be known as a designer who can only do one kind of arrangement.”

Mari leaned over to whisper in my ear, “I want to hear all about Jacob.” She was the only one who had an inkling of my prior feelings for Jacob. Even then, she’d never known the extent of it. It had been too humiliating to confess that I loved a boy who hadn’t really cared about me, while Mari had to fend off boyfriends left and right. But I wasn’t seventeen anymore. I wasn’t going to wallow because, God forbid, some guy only saw me as a long-lost childhood friend and nothing else.

After dinner, my dad called me into his office, which was more of an indoor garden center. There was a desk somewhere amongst the plants, but it had been hidden long ago. His beloved orchids sat next to the large window that faced south, receiving lots of sunlight when Seattle felt like being sunny.

I touched a set of tiny seedlings on a chest of drawers. “Brussels sprouts?” I guessed.

My dad raised an eyebrow. “How could you tell?”

“Mostly because you always start your sprout seedlings this time of year,” I said, smiling.

He chuckled. “Of course. Your old man is nothing if not predictable.” He sat down in his favorite chair and began to prune one of his bonsai trees. He’d recently bought a few and had declared that he loved them almost as much as his orchids. “Sit down. I wanted to talk to you.”

On the bookshelf across from where we sat stood dozens of trophies and ribbons: some were mine, while most were my dad’s. Trophies I’d earned from floral designer competitions as a kid and teenager still resided here, while the ones I’d earned as an adult were at my house. I wasn’t close to overtaking my dad’s number, but I would by the time I was fifty if I kept winning at my current rate, I’d calculated.

“You remember this one?” My dad stood up and took down a trophy that wasn’t remotely trophy-shaped, but instead a glass lily. “I was sure that girl who’d made the arrangement in the pumpkin would win, but you sneaked by her. You won by ten points.” Pride lit his voice. “The one you did was pure genius.”

“Oh, I remember,” I said dryly. “You cornered the previous grand champion, and when she wouldn’t tell you her soil composition for her orchids, she almost started crying. I remember, distinctly, security tried very hard to throw you out, but you bribed them with free bouquets for their girlfriends on Valentine’s Day.”

“A man has to do what a man has to do.” My dad folded his hands. “Speaking of competitions, you haven’t told me what you have planned for the LA show.”

As a kid, I’d loved having these sessions with my dad to discuss my ideas for a competition. I traveled cities across the country, entering my arrangements for prizes and trophies, and every time I won, I loved making my dad proud the most. But every time I lost or didn’t get first place, I always felt the failure immensely. My dad would look disappointed, give my shoulder a squeeze, and say, “Next time, kiddo.”

Now, though, I didn’t want to talk about my ideas, because my dad rarely understood them. Our design aesthetics were day and night: he thought I was too outlandish, that I missed the point entirely of what an arrangement was supposed to be. I always countered that his designs were too safe. He would then point out that he’d won more trophies than me.

He always pointed out that little fact, never mind that he was twice my age. He never took that tidbit into account.

“I haven’t completely decided yet,” I hedged. It was true—mostly. I was ninety-five percent sure at this point what I was going to do.

“What about an arrangement with peonies and dusty miller? It could’ve used more greenery and it rightly won fourth place, but I thought you could improve upon the design.” He pulled up a photo on his phone, only to show me one of him lying on a bed, buck naked. The only good thing was that he had his hand covering his junk.

I let out a screech of horror. “Oh my God, Dad! What the hell?” I covered my eyes and shook my head, as if I could dislodge the photo from my mind. Fuck, I’d see my dad in that pose until I was dead, wouldn’t I? I’d probably go to hell with that memory in my mind.

He glanced at his phone. “Oh. Yes. Oh dear. Your mother and I—”

“Do not finish that sentence. Don’t even think it.”

He cleared his throat, a faint blush tingeing his cheeks. “Anyway. Here’s the photo.”

I was afraid to look now. What if he accidentally swiped to a dick pic? I’d never recover. I really would die a virgin.

I looked at the photo—thankfully, it was just an arrangement—and said, “That’s nice.”

“I agree. You can make a better version of it.”

I blew out a breath. “I don’t want to do one with dusty miller. It’s safe. Boring. They always look like wedding flowers.”

“Then what are you going to use instead?”

“I’ve already put together one with roses and buckeye.”

My dad grimaced and rubbed his temples. “Dani, I know you’re in some kind of phase right now—”

“Dad, I’m not thirteen.”

“—where you think using flowers that aren’t suited for arrangements is somehow more interesting, but we both know it isn’t. Didn’t you get second place last year when you did that one with ragweed?”

I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, but the judges were total hacks.”

“I won’t disagree.” His lips tilted into a smile. “Look, sweetheart. You know I just want you to do your best. Take your old man’s advice for once, huh? Thinking outside the box is all well and good, until the box turns into a spaceship and you’re catapulting to the moon.”

“That metaphor doesn’t even make sense.”

He patted my hand. “It does if you squint.” He returned to pruning his bonsai tree, effectively dismissing me.

I kissed his cheek and headed home after saying goodbye to my sisters and mom. I’d tell Mari about the Jacob thing some other time; I didn’t have the energy right now.

As I walked home, the summer sun just beginning to set, I felt a heaviness settle onto my shoulders. Not just because I’d gotten an eyeful of my dad—I shuddered at the memory—but because I wasn’t sure I’d ever measure up to what my dad wanted me to be. He’d always pushed me to be the best, the smartest, the most ambitious. He’d always told me that my sisters were lovely girls, but I had grit. Gumption. And a thumb as green as his.

I also just realized that my parents had a better sex life than me. How tragic was that? I had cobwebs practically growing from my vagina and here my dad was, sexting my mom. Did they send each other lewd plant-metaphor sexts? I can’t wait to stroke your stamen. I’m dying to pet your pistil.

“I need psychiatric help,” I muttered as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. When I opened my door, my cat came bounding toward me.

“Hey, Kevin.” I picked him up and he started purring. With only three legs and one eye, Kevin wasn’t exactly a looker, but I adored him anyway.

I thought of Jacob suddenly. Was he alone in his apartment right now? Or with his parents? Or maybe his girlfriend had moved to Seattle with him. My stomach curdled at the thought, which was so very, very stupid.

Strangely, I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe that he’d just come by my store to say hello, but I had no reason to trust him. Not really. He was my direct competitor, for one thing. Was he just another Scott or Paul, destined to show his true colors and disappoint me?

It’s not like you’re going to be dating him, my mind reminded me. So there’s no reason to get worked up over him.