existing before my entrance and seemingly likely to remain when I was gone.
He didn’t move but for the uptick of one corner of his lips, framed by that square, utterly masculine jaw.
Caught off guard, I defaulted to my work smile.
“Lila!” Ivy sighed, smiling. “If you’re here, that means it’s almost pizza time, and thank God. I’m starving.”
The room chuckled.
“I’ll buy you all the pizza you can eat.”
“The cruelest part of that joke is that I can’t even finish one slice. I’m too full of baby,” she said on a laugh, running her hand over the swell tenderly.
“Well, half a piece it is, and I’ll get you one for the fridge. You can eat it in a couple hours when you’re hungry again.”
“Deal. How’d it go with the Femmes?” she asked.
“Well, Angelika and Jordan fucked in a confession booth, and I had to divert a nun who almost caught them.”
The three of them blinked at me, mouths hanging open, before they burst into laughter.
“I know.” I set my bag on the worktable, bending to smell the lilies in Tess’s vase. “If they weren’t totally goo-goo over each other, I’d have figured it for a stunt.”
“I mean, it probably was a stunt,” Ivy noted.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But still. At least something about the ordeal was genuine.”
“And at least one of the Femmes is actually in love,” Tess said. “I’m convinced the others are in marriages of convenience.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I changed the subject to avoid talk of Natasha’s romantic interest, lest I lose my appetite with pizza on the horizon. “Ready to walk me through the flowers for the Statham wedding?” I asked Kash.
“Born ready.” He pushed off the table, flicking his head toward the back.
I eyed him. “Don’t you need our paperwork? The concept designs Tess came up with?”
“Nah. I got it all up here,” he said, tapping his temple like he did.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and said flatly, “If you say so.”
“I say so. Come on,” he said, and I had no choice but to follow.
His back was a landscape of muscle in shadows and highlights, the topography clear, even swathed in his dumb T-shirt. The fleeting thought of what those rolling muscles would look like undisguised by his shirt made me salivate. Actually salivate, a hot rush of slobber like I’d been offered that pizza I’d been daydreaming of. I swallowed hard, shifting my gaze to the greenhouse the second we’d passed through the swinging doors.
The greenhouse was humid despite the brisk autumn weather, a wall of thick air that absorbed me, pulled me in behind Kash. It smelled like heaven, of wet earth and perfumed blossoms, of leaves and moisture. It was alive, the heady fragrance so elemental, it seemed to call to something deep in my chest—remember me?
“Statham wedding is the one Tess is most excited about,” he said as we walked. “It’s rare we get anyone who trusts us enough to incorporate cabbage in their floral arrangements.”
I chuckled. “Well, the bride is an interior decorator, so she’s a little more avant-garde than most.”
He stopped in front of a series of planters suspended from the wooden rack that ran the length of the greenhouse. In each planter sat row after row of blooming cabbage—purple and white crane cabbage that looked like delicate roses, the green crane reminiscent of succulents. A feathered varietal, veined like coral.
“They’re coming in nicely,” he said, thumbing a leaf before rooting around in the dirt to free what had been caught under a fresh dusting of earth.
“They’re beautiful. I can’t believe they’re not flowers.”
His smile tilted. “Nature’s a curious thing. Sometimes it disguises one thing as another, hides its nature to protect it.”
“Indeed it does,” I agreed quietly, struck by the sentiment.
Kash jerked his chin toward the back of the greenhouse. “I’ve got the greenery we ordered for you, if you want to see.”
“I do, thank you.”
I followed him, the two of us pausing at the marigolds to peer at their lush amber heads. Sometimes nature disguises one thing as another. How true it was. There was more to Kash Bennet than I’d realized, a revelation that struck me like a match.
There was more to me too. And I wondered what he was hiding to protect himself. I wondered if he knew what I didn’t say, what I didn’t show, and got the distinct impression that he did.
It was as thrilling a thought as it was terrifying.
Once at the black buckets lining the workspace in the back, he