groan.
“I’m sure he didn’t expect that you’d know,” my brother says kindly.
“No, you don’t get it. It’s bad.” I’m out of bed now, rummaging through drawers. “When I first got here and found out he was having dinner with Mom and Dad every week, I said some things …”
He groans. “What sort of things?”
“Just … you know, snide little comments about how if he didn’t spend so much time kissing up to our parents, maybe he’d have more time to visit his own …”
“Oh God. Charlotte!”
“I know,” I shriek. “You have to help me. What is the national flower of Ireland?”
“The Dudladilly,” he replies.
I pull out a black sports bra and begin wiggling into it. “Really?”
“No. I have no idea. Why?”
Isn’t it obvious? I have to fix this.
“I have to go,” I tell my brother, sitting on the bed, and shoving my feet into sneakers.
“Why? Where are you going? What are you doing?”
He knows me well enough to sound panicked, but for once, my plan is pretty safe.
“Don’t worry, nothing weird. I just have to go buy Colin flowers. Sympathy flowers. And apology flowers. It’s going to be a really big bouquet.”
I hang up on my brother’s weary sigh.
Chapter 16
Saturday, September 5
Colin’s a perpetually early riser, but not, apparently, when he has a pasta dinner and a half bottle of wine at eleven the night before, because when I get back from my frantic flower mission, his bedroom door’s still closed, and the coffee’s not on.
Breathing a sigh of relief that I have a moment to gather my thoughts, I set the flowers on the counter and put on a pot of coffee. At this point, anything I can do to endear him to me after a seriously awful gaffe seems like a good plan, and coffee is always a good start.
It also gives me a chance to arrange the flowers. None of the local florists in the neighborhood were open this early, but Whole Foods was.
Unfortunately, Whole Foods’ flower selection, while pretty and varied, had only modest-sized arrangements. After my blunder, the man deserves a bouquet the size of a small pony.
I settled for buying lots of little arrangements—six, to be exact—and now I set about unwrapping them, snipping the rubber bands, and combining them into one giant mess of flowers.
“Hmm,” I puzzle aloud, as I realize that I have no idea where Colin keeps his vases—or if he even owns any. And even if he does have a vase, I’m reasonably sure it won’t be one large enough to fit my self-assembled arrangement.
I purse my lips and study my handiwork. My flower “bouquet” is a lot more akin to a bush. One that takes both my arms to pick up, and even then, I drop a handful of blooms on the way to Colin’s door.
I hesitate briefly, realizing I forgot the coffee, but since the flowers are a two-armed affair, I’ll have to make two trips: one to deliver flowers and grovel, and a second to deliver coffee and grovel again.
In true Charlotte fashion, I didn’t think my plan all the way through, because even though it takes me about five times of rattling the doorknob, and about twenty more dropped stems before I can get his bedroom door open, he’s apparently not a light sleeper and doesn’t budge from beneath the covers.
Fantastic plan.
Here I am, sneaking into a sleeping man’s bedroom with enough flowers to fill the back seat of an SUV, standing at the foot of his bed and … watching him sleep.
I don’t mean to, I’m just trying to figure out my next move, but even as my brain races through what now options, I take in the fact that even at his most vulnerable, he’s still got that slightly haunted, closed-off vibe. There’s no softening of his brow while he sleeps, no slight smile indicating pleasant dreams.
I clear my throat. No movement.
“Colin,” I whisper. Nothing.
I say his name louder, but he still doesn’t move, and the thorns from some pokey flower are making my situation kind of desperate.
His bed frame doesn’t have a footboard, so I lift my knee to the foot of his bed and awkwardly manage to nudge his foot. “Colin!”
That does the trick.
He bolts upright, and … oopsie.
The bed covers drop all the way to his waist. It stops short of telling me whether he sleeps naked, but he definitely sleeps shirtless, and, well, all I can think is, very, very nice, said in an Irish accent in my head.
That first