Bloom of Love (Long Valley #10) - Erin Wright Page 0,21

people flowers. I was hooked. I learned a lot from my neighbor – like how to forgive overeager kids who strip your prized garden of every petal – but also what the names of the flowers were and which season brought which variety. I worked several summers after that for her; luckily, she was kind enough to pay me after that first year! Finally, I was old enough to drive to Franklin and work at the floral shop there, so that became my job during high school.”

She shrugged with a self-deprecating laugh. “But yes. You’re on a date with a flower thief. I probably should’ve told you beforehand.”

A date. He liked the sound of that, even if it was with a confessed flower thief.

“I will restrain my impulse to call Sheriff Connelly and report you,” Christian said dryly.

“Thanks,” she said with an impish grin that sent a bolt of lust straight to his dick. Did she know what she did to him, sitting in the cab of a tractor, so innocent and beautiful?

She couldn’t know how gorgeous she was. Hell, he hadn’t realized it himself until Mother’s Day. Somehow, he’d overlooked her all through high school and beyond.

Not anymore.

“So tell me something about your family,” Carla said, clearly wanting to change the subject back to a topic not related to thievery. “Something you wouldn’t normally tell a girl on a second date.”

His mind froze for a moment as he scrambled for something to say, and then snapped his fingers, rotating the steering wheel with his other hand as they made the turn at the bottom of the field. “Yesenia is going to college,” he said proudly. “The only one in the family to do it. My parents are a little weird about it – if I’d been the one to go, that would’ve been fine with them. Of course, we were too poor back then, and I had to go to work right away out of high school. But for Yesenia to go as a girl…”

He trailed off, not wanting to air dirty laundry about his family with someone else, even if that “someone else” was his date, and even better, Carla Grahame.

“I’m helping her pay for it,” he plunged on, getting to the important part of the story. This was definitely not something he would’ve mentioned on a second date – or a twentieth – under normal circumstances, but Carla was so damn good at asking great questions, the info was spilling out of him without him quite realizing it. “She’s working and she has a first-generation college scholarship, but it doesn’t cover everything. It’s…not always fun,” he said delicately – understatement of the year, right there, “but she’s the smartest kid in our family. It wouldn’t be right for her not to go to college – to just get married and pop out seven kids of her own. My other sisters have that covered. Yesenia…she’s different.”

Carla pulled his left arm against her generous chest, squeezing it tight. “That is so sweet, Christian,” she said softly. “Not many brothers would do that.”

He shrugged, feeling his bicep slide against her tits, and deciding in that moment that every night that he’d eaten Ramen Noodle or the Yellow Death was worth it.

“Yesenia was born four months before I graduated from Sawyer High School. She was my fifth sister. A new baby girl? Nothing special in our family at that point. Except, she was. From the beginning, there was a bond between us. She’d wrap her tiny fist around my finger and pull it to her mouth, sucking on it. When I left the night of graduation to go sit with my classmates in the auditorium, she put up a huge fuss that I’d dared to leave her behind. My mom eventually had to take her out. I was there when she took her first steps – she was holding onto my fingers. She became my shadow around the farm, following me and asking me a million questions. She can fix a tractor almost as well as I can. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since yet another squalling, red-faced baby girl was born into the Palacios family. She’s…well, she’s Yesenia. She’s different,” he said again, lamely.

“You graduated in 2000, right?” she asked.

“Yup. Best class of the century.” He winked at her.

“I do believe that was the class of 2001,” she said haughtily, and then ruined the effect by laughing. “I always told my mom that she should’ve had me a