by Finn, Emilia
Both of which, I did.
But now it’s Monday, I’m back at work, and though another beautiful bouquet of red roses has arrived with my name on it, I can hardly focus on that, on Mitchell’s possible apology for yesterday, because Abby stands in the front of the shop, dueling with a certain seven-foot-tall dude who may or may not fit the description of the man Mitchell was losing his mind over last night.
And I… am shamelessly eavesdropping.
“We had a price adjustment overnight,” Abby snaps at the giant, showing that spine no one else seems to know exists. “What I’ve given you is actually the VIP pricing model. For an extra five dollars and ninety-nine cents, I can offer you the Illumination spray.” She reaches under the counter to a basket beside the spite jar, and comes back with a little bottle. “Spray it onto the petals, and your bouquet will last a few days longer. Jess will love it.”
Spencer, the army muscle, narrows his eyes and leans closer to my girl, who refuses to submit under his glare. He’s twice her size—or, well, three times her size, if we’re being honest. His bicep alone, I suspect, is thicker than her stomach. His shoulders don’t fit through a doorway without turning a little to the side. And he’s squaring up to our little Abby. “What’s got your panties in a twist, Priss? You wake up horny and unfulfilled?”
My cheeks blaze, and I’m forced to shove my fist against my mouth or risk exposing my presence. Though, of course, it’s not like neither of them know I’m on the premises.
“Nope.” Abby stands taller… and still doesn’t reach higher than his impressively sexy pecs. “I woke up just fine. Then I ate a donut and gossiped about guys with my friend.”
“What guys?” Spencer shows his teeth in what I’m certain scares any other man’s bowels empty. But Abby is no man, she’s not afraid, and I have the luxury of it not being my eyes he stares into. “What guys, Abigail?”
She shrugs and brings a large vase of flowers closer to her chest. The vase he’s trying to buy. “That’s between me and my friend. Do you want the flowers, or no? If you don’t, I’ll put them on display, and someone else can have them.”
“You’re mad because I don’t know that woman’s name,” he argues. “The woman from the bar.”
“Am I?” She leans against the counter. “I had no clue you could read minds, Spencer. Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”
“Something not nice.” He brushes a hand over his chin on a groan. “Come to me tonight, Abigail. We have business to attend to.”
“No,” she lifts her nose in her best Snooty McSnooterson impression. “I don’t think we do.”
They’re at a standstill. A battle of the wills. Neither of them will break, and when the silence proves that, Abby shrugs and picks up the vase of flowers.
Walking around the counter and to the front of the shop so it’s a little harder for me to hear, she places the beautiful bunch in the window and pats her hands together as though to say job well done. “If you’re done here, I have to add water, then I have other work.”
“You want more of what I gave you the night of the wedding.” Spencer follows her across the store and away from my circling mind. More of what he gave her at the wedding? What the fuck did he give her, and why didn’t she tell me about it? “Why are you pretending you don’t want to feel that again?”
“Because I’d rather have a man that remembers my name tomorrow.”
“You think I don’t know your name?” he spits out. “You think I can forget you?”
“I think you’ve found a challenge that you’re insistent on winning. Had I been a regular girl who threw herself at your feet that first day, we would have done…” Abby chokes on her words and draws a strangled giggle from between my lips. “Sex. Then you would have walked away and moved on with your life. But because I said no, your ego was bruised. You can’t move on until you conquer me. You can’t let my disrespect go without winning your dignity back. But here’s the thing; I’m not playing your game. I’m not playing any game. I’m not trying to be rebellious, or trick you into something neither of us want.”
My blood warms when Spencer slides his fingertips along Abby’s forearm. Mitchell is going to kill them both!
“I want you.”
“And I want to be treated like a lady the next day.” She snatches her arm away from his touch. “It would seem we’re incompatible. And since I know that about us, I won’t waste my time trying to change you. I’ve already given you too much.”
“Too much?” he balks. “You haven’t given me anyth—”
“When I find my real prince, I’m going to have to explain to him what I let you do. I’ll be ashamed, I’ll be sorry. And then I’ll spend the rest of my life feeling guilty for not saving myself for him. The same way you should feel guilty about not remembering that girl from the bar.”
“So because I gave the sex to a woman who wanted exactly what I wanted—a casual hookup—I’m to be condemned? That’s not how this works, princess. Adults have casual sex. It’s what we do when we stop coloring and playing video games. It’s what we do when we grow the fuck up.”
Ohhhh… no cussing, soldier. You’re gonna lose her.
“It would seem you haven’t grown up yet,” Abby retorts. “Because you still can’t find a way to express your thoughts and feelings without cussing.”
Called it.
“Perhaps if you’d spent more time listening in school,” she continues, “and less time hounding the female population for meaningless sex, you would know how to speak intelligently.”
Angry, Spencer leans closer and narrows his eyes. “Do you get off with your Miss Priss attitude? Does it make you feel superior to speak down to me that way? I said I like sass. And I do. I fucking love sass—outside the bedroom. But in it, you’ll submit, and you’ll fucking love it.”
I clap a hand to my mouth and die a silent death. Not only will Mitchell kill them both, but he’ll kill us all. World burning down, apocalyptic type stuff.
We’re all doomed.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree.” Abigail tries to take a step back, only to stop again when Spencer hooks an arm around her narrow waist. “Let me go, then leave my store.”
“I’m not leaving, because we’re not done. You’re the most sexually repressed woman I know. Twenty-five and still a virgin, because you think there’s a mythical Adonis out there waiting for you. He’s not real. This romanticized idea you carry around with you is nothing but a dream. It’s for little girls who lay on their pink bed on a Sunday afternoon and marry their Barbie and Ken dolls.”
He squeezes her closer, and there isn’t a person on this planet that could convince me she isn’t panting for this brute. “But I’m here,” he continues, “I’m real, and I can make you forget your inhibitions for a little while. I could free you from the constraints you put on yourself. I could show you things you didn’t know existed.”
Folding lower, Spencer nips at her jaw and draws a gasp from… well, both of us. “I could make you come right now, and you wouldn’t be able to stop it.” He grins when she says nothing, when she has no argument. “You’re playing a game, alright, Priss. But it’s just you, and you’re the only one you’re trying to convince.”
“I will not come to you, Spencer.” Her voice is quiet, but steely. “I will not submit. I will not waste my one and only first time. And I will not live the rest of my life trying to make it up to my husband when he asks why I made poor choices.” Slipping out of his grasp, Abby clears half the store in long strides and heads in my direction. “Leave, and don’t come back.”
I stay in my place, my hidey-hole for minutes, while Spencer tries his damnedest to find a loophole in Abby’s clear directions. And then, when he fails and steps outside to loiter by his massive ride, I still remain in place while Abby has a moment to herself in the silence.
Her head droops low, her shoulders fold in. Her hair dangles over her shoulders while she composes herself. And when I simply can’t hold
it in any longer, I burst from the back of the shop and reveal myself.
“Oh. My. God!” My cheeks blaze, I’m certain of it. My fingers tingle. “Are you serious right now? Is this real life? You and him?”
Abby’s head snaps up. “No! Not me and him.” Her eyes go back to the road while Spencer backs out and idles in the street for a moment. “He’s… he’s…” She exhales when he’s gone, so the sound almost rattles. “I don’t know what he is.”
“I know.” I make my way toward the desk with a wicked smirk and a stomach swirling with an odd mixture of adrenaline, glee, and doom. The doom is for poor Mitchell when he finds out about this. “He’s into you. That’s what he is.”
“He’s crude and more sexually active than a stray mutt,” Abby counters. “I mean, yeah, he kind of wants me, but it’s only because I said no. I’m a challenge he feels he must conquer.”
“I’d let him conquer me.” I thrust my hips forward, then snigger when Abby’s cheeks pale. “I’d let that man conquer the shit outta me.”
“Nadia! Stop.” Turning away, Abby snatches up the vase of pink flowers she refused to sell, then bringing them back to the counter, she begins fussing with the bunch. “And you absolutely cannot mention this to anyone else. Especially not the guys.”
“The guys? Your brothers?” I laugh. “You couldn’t pay me to deliver that news. They’d explode, and they’re too sexy to mess up.”
“Stop!” she literally cries out. “Why is everyone crushing on my brothers lately?”
“Because they’re sex on legs, and wear uniforms for work. I mean, really. Tell me you don’t want to touch yourself after he came in here in camo and said dirty things in your ear.”
“You better be talking about Spencer,” she snarls, “and not my brothers, sicko. And no. Because he had guns. I hate guns.”
“Are you referring to his biceps?” I taunt. “Because yeah he did. And you don’t hate guns. You respect them. You understand their importance for some vocations.”
“Right. Some vocations. Like military, and police, maybe farmers, and possibly, if the need truly called for it, spear fishermen.”
I laugh.
“But not all the handbag carriers, and not a guy walking through a flower shop. It’s unnecessary.”
“You’re looking for reasons to hate him!” I pass a spool of ribbon when her hands search, but her brain is elsewhere. “All I’m saying is, I couldn’t stop looking at his thighs while he was feeling you up just now.”
“He wasn’t feeling me up! He was demanding things that he’s not entitled to. He was saying those things with tasteless cussing. And he was trying to take something from me that I’m not willing to give.”
“Yeah?” I lift a single brow and drop a hand to my hip. “And what’s that?”
Her eyes scream a million things. Fear, anxiety… exhilaration, and anticipation. “My body.”
“And you’re not giving in… why?”
“Because I’m saving myself.”
I jolt back, like she smacked me. “For who?”
“For my future husband!”
“But what if… and hear me out…” I lean in a little closer, and effectively kamikaze the relationship I have with an overprotective Rosa. “What if he was your future husband?”
Barking out a startling laugh, Abigail turns and walks away. “Bite your tongue, Nadia. He wouldn’t understand the concept. Now go back to work. I have things to do.”
“I’m just saying, he might be on to something. You’re the only person you’re trying to convince. You’re allowed to want a slice of the forbidden pie, Abby. You’re allowed to be naughty every once in a while. You don’t even have to admit it to me, because I can see the truth in your eyes. But maybe you should admit it to yourself. You want the guy, and he seems pretty keen to oblige your wildest fantasies.”
“No, I absolutely do not.”
She walks the newly perfected flower display toward the fridges in the back half of the shop and mumbles nonsensical things under her breath.
Her words are one thing; I hear her, and I respect her right to say no.
But I don’t believe her. Not one bit.
* * *
Abby accepts Idalia’s business somewhere around three minutes before the end of business hours that day, sliding in under the deadline Ms. Mazzi laid down for us by the skin of our teeth. It took that long because Abby and I had to discuss costs, deliverability, and man hours for assembling something so big every single week when there are only two of us employed here and working full-time hours. But together, we did it. We decided yes, high-fived, made the call, and then… nothing.
Now we wait to see if Idalia even purchases the hotel and renames it something much cooler than ‘hotel’.
Soon after that decision was made, Abby slid into her car and drove away from the shop in a direction I know for a damn fact is not the way she normally goes to get home.
Perhaps she’s heading to one of her brothers’ houses for dinner. Perhaps she’s heading out to see Spencer. Either way, my lips are sealed on the matter when Mitchell’s name flashes on my phone, and I take his call.
* * *
Mitchell steps up behind me as I work at my stove and stir bolognaise sauce for dinner. He’s steamy from a shower, shirtless, because I love him most that way, and when he wraps his arms around my torso and pulls me against his chest, I breathe out a sigh of… geez, I don’t know. Contentment? Happiness? Like.
But of course, my heart and head scream at me not to be like my mother, not to depend on a man or get used to having one in my space. So I ignore those wings of panic that beat at my stomach when I think of my affections, and focus on his hard cock pressed against my back. I think of his wide hands, callused from work, scratching along my belly. And I think of his strong arms, ropy with muscle, holding me up, now and in the bedroom.
“This smells delicious,” he murmurs against my neck. His stubble scratches my skin, but it’s the best kind of scratch, the most luxurious feeling when with a man like this. “Old family recipe?”
I lean back against him and let him hold my weight. “From a jar, dear Mitchell. My family does not have recipes passed down from generation to generation.”
“From a jar?” Scandalized, he sniffs the air once, twice, three times. Then he snatches the wooden spoon I work with, and scoops up a little of the sauce.
I watch with a smile as he brings the sample to his lips, snicker under my breath at the obvious disdain he holds for anything that came from a jar, but then I feel that wash of smug satisfaction when his eyes cut to mine.
“Tastes pretty good, huh?”
“From a jar?” he insists. “Straight off Jonah’s shelves?”
“Yup. Grandma Patsy’s recipe. Not my grandma,” I laugh and point toward the offending jar, “but someone’s grandma, who decided to bottle it all up and sell it for a couple bucks a pop.”
“I’ll teach you tomorrow night how to make real pasta sauce.” Mitchell sets the wooden spoon on the counter, brings his arm back, and circles it around my stomach. “Rosa family recipe. Then you’ll know the difference.”
“What?” I try to dig my elbow into his gut. It’s a failure, though, when his stomach is all muscle, and my elbow stops before I elicit even a grunt. “You just said Patsy’s was good. You literally said that, so why the hell would I learn something else when I can pick this up by the jar?”
“Because in the Rosa family, we do not buy recipes in a jar. My poor mother would have a heart attack if she knew you did this.”
“Your mother’s heart,” I turn my eyes to my sauce and try, I try so damn hard, to ignore the panic in my stomach, “is for you to guard. What I cook in my home and what your mother knows about are two entirely different things. If you tell her and hurt her heart, that’s on you.”
“You’re a hard nut to crack.” Mitchell brings his lips back down to my neck and helps alleviate a little of the tension circling the room. “Kari texted me while
I was in the shower.”
“Uh… okay?” I laugh, but it’s a damn fake. “Thanks for telling me about your lady callers.”
“No.” Chuckling, he slides his hands on my skin while I stir my sauce. His palm moves over my stomach, my hips, the tops of my thighs. “She’s Luc’s fiancée, my coworker, and perhaps the sweetest chick I know besides my sister.”
Oh look, Mitchell mentioned Abby again.
“Dare I repeat myself? Uh… okay?”
“You’re grumpy today, huh?” He pries the spoon from my hand, sets it on the counter, then spins me so the knobs on the front of the stove dig into the small of my back. “What’s wrong? I thought I was the surly one in this relationship.”
“I’m not grumpy.” And to prove it, I wind my arms up, around his neck, and nuzzle my lips against his chest. “I’m tired, and I’m a little pissy about your slur at my bolognaise sauce. But I’m not grumpy.”
“It’s not your bolognaise sauce. It’s someone else’s grandma’s. But if you don’t want our recipe, that’s cool too. I’m not gonna force it on you.” Folding a little and meeting my eyes on my level, Mitchell stares. “Wanna talk about whatever is bothering you?”
“No. Wanna tell me about the sweet Kari some more?”
His lips flash into a wide grin. “You’re jealous?”
“No need to be. She’s Luc’s fiancée, you value friendship over women any day, and she’s allegedly the sweetest thing ever, so it’s doubtful she’s returning any possible feelings, since sweet people don’t cheat on their fiancés. It took me by surprise that you name-dropped another woman and ‘shower’ in the same sentence, but I’m not mad about it.”
“Well…” He searches my eyes, pries, and works on reading my brain. “Fine. She and Luc are getting married in a few months, and I’ve been invited to his bachelor party.”