by L. K. Rayne
Silk and Thorne
(Silk and Thorne #1)
by
L. K. Rayne
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch’d by the thorns.
- Thomas Moore
Old Blooms
“They’re dead.”
The over-perfumed lady sniffed haughtily and pushed the vase of limp daffodils across the counter to me. She used both hands, the rings on each of her fingers skittering off the glass vase. Her small neck scarf almost fell off her shoulder before she snatched it in a huff like her day couldn’t get any worse.
Technically, the daffodils were dead the moment they were cut and wrapped in cellophane. I did my best impression of a charming smile, mentally pushing away a fantasy of me strangling her so that she’d hang limp like the flowers on the glass counter.
I could picture the tabloid blurb already: “Sierra Kinsey places movie producer’s wife in chokehold in flower shop brawl.”
“I see. When did you purchase these from us?” I asked pleasantly.
“I don’t remember,” she said, crossing her arms defensively over her Louis Vuitton bag. “Why does that matter?”
“Well it looks like you’ve had them for some time ma’am.”
She furrowed her brows in righteous indignation. “So? What are you saying? That it’s my fault they died?”
“No ma’am,” I chose my words carefully, “We keep our flowers as fresh as we can, but the thing about cut flowers is—”
The lady shook her head and pointed her claw heatedly at April, who was currently taking shelter behind me. “Ask your employee, she was the one who sold me these dried flowers. How do you sleep at night?”
Just another day in the line of fire of someone perfectly primed to explode.
Right before closing too. Lovely.
“Just a moment please, ma’am.” I excused myself and beckoned April to follow me into the back.
April gripped the outer layers of her dress. Her meticulously curled locks of hair tumbled around her shoulders as she swayed nervously. “I’m so sorry, Nev. I just—”
“Let me guess,” I said, “she used up more than an hour of your time only to end up buying the cheapest bouquet we had out. And wait, I bet it was more than a week ago, based on the sorry state of those blooms.”
April’s eyes slid habitually to the right as her red lips pursed into the opposite direction. She always did that when she knew I was right.
“Either that or you,” I made quotes in the air, “deliberately sold her some dried flowers when we have perfectly healthy ones all over the shop.”
“Well, I guess it was more like two weeks ago,” she mumbled.
“How long have we been in this together, Ms. Santos?”
She looked up at me, eyes glittering, eyelashes fluttering. “Since the beginning, since college, since forever, Nev!”
“Exactly. Why are you getting all apologetic when you know exactly how these stuck up lizard ladies are?”
“W-well you always let me take time off to run to auditions, and I’m so grateful to work here and be your employee, and I don’t want to—”
“Oh my gosh,” I threw my hands in the air, “tell me right away if I’m treating you like an employee!”
April took a deep breath to suppress her laughter. “Come on, Nev, the shop is growing and if I screwed things up…”
“You know by now that part of working at a boutique like this is dealing with the constant stream of entitled Mercedes driving ladies who think they’re better than you because their jobs consist of going to pilates at 9AM prompt.”
“Yeah! I know! Exactly! That’s why I could’ve told her that...uh, cut flowers don’t last forever after they bloom?”
I sighed. “April…sometimes the customer is wrong and doesn’t want to admit it.”
She looked down at her favorite cute red heels but I could see the little grin on her face.
“So what should we do?” April asked. She looked nervous watching me wring my hands together like I was imagining my fingers on someone’s throat.
“Gotta grit our teeth and bear it in this case. Someone who doesn’t understand that cut flowers have a relatively short display life is liable to get all her friends to trash us on Yelp. Not worth the headache.”
April nodded. “You’re right.”
“We’ll go back over there and pretend we’re sorry and that this will never happen again. Do you think you can put those acting classes to use and look sad, like I chewed you out?”
April looked back up at me with the cutest sorriest puppy eyes I’d ever seen.
“Perfect.”
When we made our way back to the front of the shop, April gave an award winning performance that greatly satisfied Mrs. Lizard and—after sealing the deal with a free bouquet—the lady was out the door and out of our hair. When April locked up the front door, the little bell made a satisfying jingle.
I cleared my throat loudly, turned up my nose and gave my best golf clap.
“Thank you, thank you!” April curtsied and clasped her hands together. “This is all so unexpected! I’d like to thank the Academy, my agent, my parents and most of all my best friend, Sierra. And, and, uh...”
I whirled my index finger in the air, signaling her to wrap up her speech.
“I really haven’t taken that long!” April laughed.
I laughed too before motioning her to turn the sign hanging on the door to “closed” so we could get started on prep work for the Imperial Grand Hotel event tomorrow. April joined me in the back of the store as I got the ceramic vases. Since the event would be April’s chance to take the lead, I let her play her favorite K-pop music videos in the background. Even though Thursdays were usually my day to pick the music, I conveniently forgot to mention it.
“So…” April began as I started arranging the vases in neat rows on the large work table.
I busily tugged at the baby’s breath, untangling each branch from the bunch. “We went over this already, it’s just another delivery,” I said, hoping that she’d take the hint.
April pulled over a metal stool and started helping me with the flowers. She leveled a skeptical eyebrow at me. “Just another delivery? Sounds like someone is in,” she sang the word, “denial!”
I continued working on the flowers without making eye contact. At this point, any reaction from me would only encourage her, and if I learned anything since we landed the Imperial gig, it was that April did not need any more encouragement when it came to the topic of Ethan Thorne.
She veiled the bottom of her face with a cluster of petite white blooms, then flashed me a dramatic look over the top, “I can picture it already. You’re placing a fabulous bouquet on the table in the Crown Gallery—”
“Royal Ballroom,” I corrected, “which is on the opposite side of—”
But April continued as if she hadn’t heard me, “When you look up, he’s entering the ballroom, tall, dark and oh so handsome in his tuxedo. You look away but you can’t help yourself, so you shyly sneak another glance. And that’s when it happens. Your eyes meet across the room, like a beam straight through the crowds of people. Your heart goes pitter-pat, pitter—”
“Pretty sure that pitter-pat will be from running around with a bunch of other vendors, since we’re getting there a whole three hours before—”
“—electricity shoots up your spine and—”
I winced, “Sounds painful.”
“—when he touches you, it’s like not a single day has passed. Two souls, separated by the world, entwined by fate. Like two moths, fluttering,” she crossed her hands at the wrists and flapped them, “unknowingly, dangerously, into the flames!”
She flapped frantically.
I couldn’t help but crack up. Ever since I’d told her that I had once known Ethan when we were children, she’d been hounding me about our “reunion”, describing one scenario after another. At the very least, each one was different, though recently I noticed that they were getting more and more outlandish.
April froze with her hands still forming moth wings, looking eagerly at me.
When I got control of myself, I said, “I’d rather not get burned in this wild fantasy of yours,” then continued preparing the rest of the vases.
April let out a long sigh, deflated. She placed some loose stems down on the table. “Okay, fine...then how do you see this going down?”
“It doesn’t,” I said, placing roses into each thin vase, “We’ll be long gone by the time the guests arrive. Real life doesn’t work out like it does in your romance novels, you know.”
“Hey, you read them too,” she said.
“Uh, correction, I read one, and that was only because you begged me for two weeks straight.”
April huffed and went to the other side of the room, where her polka-dotted red purse—perfectly matching her shoes—was hanging and retrieved her phone. She pecked at the screen for a few seconds, then held the phone up to me, confronting me with a full body shot of Ethan mid-walk like he was on his way to a meeting.
Was he really that handsome? The baby fat on the face that I remembered had melted away into a chiseled jawline, framed by a neatly trimmed beard. His gaze gave the impression of stoic seriousness like he was someone who floated above the concerns of mere mortals.
I purposefully made eye contact with April and then shrugged.
April turned her phone back to herself and started scrolling. “Ethan Thorne, possibly the most eligible bachelor of the century, is defying odds with the most ambitious engineering project since the launch of the space shuttle.”
“It’s just some fluff piece for that high tech transportation system, I’m sure they’re exaggerating.”
“You know about it!” April squealed excitedly.
“Who wouldn’t? The news can’t get enough of it.”
I avoided googling him nowadays, but after that humid summer fifteen years ago, I’d occasionally looked him up, curious about how he had turned out. With how high profile his family was, it wasn’t hard to find out what he was up to. He graduated as valedictorian of his Stanford University class before starting an engineering firm making biomedical devices. Then he sold that company before doing the same with a few more companies. Then came the bidding to build some sort of fancy transportation system, the first of its kind between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Now I couldn’t help but hear his name in the news all the damn time.
“Tell me he doesn’t look like he stepped out of a GQ cover,” April demanded.
He actually had been on the cover of a GQ magazine a few months ago, but I wasn’t about to feed this monster.
I rolled my eyes then started to set the prepared vases into the milk crates on the floor. “I can admit that he’s attractive, but just because we chased each other through the woods for a couple of weeks when we were kids, doesn’t mean we’re fated to be together.”
“Fated to be together,” April murmured to herself.
“It’s just a saying.”
April raised an eyebrow at me.
“Come on, don’t get all mystical on me, you know I don’t believe in that stuff.”
Her eyes scanned me up and down skeptically, like it was only a matter of time.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I’m sure Ethan’s a busy guy. Doesn’t make sense to get in the way even if we did see him.”
April looked at me appalled. “How can you not even wonder if there’s something there?”
I pinched my thumb and forefinger together. “You might be projecting a teensy bit,” I said. “Could it be that you’re the one who can’t get him off your mind?”
She considered it for a moment. “Are you saying that you’ll catch a cold tomorrow and then I’ll be solely responsible for setting up? Leaving me to…interview the billionaire?”
“Fat chance,” I snorted. Then I tapped a finger pensively on my chin, “Maybe I shouldn’t let you take lead now that I know you’re planning an impromptu interview with the guest of honor.”
“You’ve been prepping me for the past three months. I got this!” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “And don’t worry, you can count on me. Watch and learn...”
The mischievous grin she flashed me wasn’t comforting. April, noting my skepticism, crossed her legs, produced a pen and held it to her smartphone like she was a hard hitting journalist. “So, Mr. Thorne…to what do you owe your success?”
“See! That’s what I mean!”
“I’m kidding, Nev,” April said, giggling. “Sisters before misters. I am not going to mess up this delivery for the shop, even if it means I’ll miss out on a once in a lifetime chance to find out what a bad boy billionaire is really like…in bed.” She giggled again at her own joke.
She swiped through some more photos on her phone, then presented me with another one, this time a half-body shot. Ethan was dressed in a white suit exiting a Ferrari, his body elegant and graceful despite the stillness of the photo. That same serious expression. “Mmmm,” April sighed. “I bet a man like that knows his way around a pair of cuffs.”
“Ho-okay,” I said, “you’ve officially gone off the deep end. I’m pretty sure Ethan isn’t like that.”
“How do you know?” April challenged, swiping through more pictures on her phone. “You said yourself you haven’t spoken to him in fifteen years. I mean, look at those eyes." She placed her phone on the table next to me displaying a headshot so that I could get a good look while she finished organizing the vases.
I had certainly changed over the years, and now, looking at the photo April was showing me, I wondered how much Ethan had changed too. Was there still anything of the dorky kid hiding behind the suave exterior? I wasn’t going to let it slip to April that I was a tiny bit interested. I mean, I wouldn’t have turned down a chance to catch up with him to find out what kind of man he’d become… If only to satisfy my curiosity.
My eyes lingered on the photo. It was hard for me to reconcile this new version of him with the bookish boy that I once knew. His eyes were the same dark shade, but though the corners of his eyes crinkled into a relaxed smile, now there was a glint of something else under the surface. Dark and intense. Maybe April was right, maybe Ethan was exactly the type of dangerous playboy that he seemed to be presenting to the media.
But unlike April, I wasn’t prone to flights of fancy. I understood the chances of us meeting at the event tomorrow was nil. And given how that summer way back then had ended, I doubted that he ever wanted to see me again.
I mentally shook away those unpleasant memories. “April, that picture definitely looks edited. Way too dramatic.”
April leaned over to take another look at the picture while holding one of the crates. She tilted her head, considering, before flicking her eyes back at me. “You sure you aren’t projecting a teensy bit?”
“Very funny. Come on, that’s the last crate, let’s head home.”
“Don’t be scared Nev, sometimes the universe conspires—”
“If the universe was really conspiring to fulfill my deepest, darkest, fantasies, I’d have a slice of Death by Chocolate cake in front of me right now.”
She rolled her eyes. “The universe gives us what we need, not what we want.”
I let April have the last say on the topic. We’d have a full day tomorrow, and I didn’t want to get her riled up about “the universe” when she had plenty on her plate already.
After we closed up, I dropped April off at the apartment she shared with Roger and Philippe, a stunt couple she’d met through a film production, and finally headed home.
Tomorrow would be like every other event: quick, simple, and easy.
Big Cats
&nb
sp; April tapped her freshly manicured fingernails along the rim of the steering wheel, her work gloves sitting partially tucked into the front pocket of her work apron. “Marigold Sunshine” was the nail polish color, as she had cheerfully announced upon bouncing into the shop for her shift yesterday. For every major event we did, she always painted on a new nail color. Today’s color matched the pale yellow dress that peeked out from under her work apron.
When we first started doing deliveries, I kept warning April that she’d chip her nails since our jobs always included some manual labor, but she somehow knew how to keep them looking perfect. For whatever reason, I could never keep mine looking professionally done. It might have had something to do with my weekend trips to the indoor rock climbing wall or plain old carelessness, but either way, I certainly wasn’t going to chance it even if we did wear gloves.
April was focused on the busy highway as we made our way to the Imperial Grand Hotel. Their gorgeous ballroom with a breathtaking view of the city was an exciting location, even if we’d be spending most of our time behind the scenes. We were making pretty good timing despite the usual bumper to bumper Los Angeles traffic.
“I can hear your voice in my head, Nev.”
I realized that I’d been staring at her. “What do you mean?”
“You know I’m ready for this, but you look like you’re about to pester me about something.”
“I wasn’t. Your nails look nice.”
“Nev.”
“What? They do!”
“Nev.”
I sighed heavily. April always knew when I was a tad nervous for her despite her seemingly perpetual confidence. “Well, I wasn’t going to make a fuss yet anyways. This is your first time taking point after all. I want to make sure you don’t get overwhelmed.”
“I’m ready for this! You won’t need to do a thing. I’m great at delivering, and setting up, and presentation, and—”
“Not so great at networking.”
She gripped the steering wheel and flashed me a shocked look. “What? I am so good at that!”