by Sienna Ciles
“Lucky you,” I said.
“Luckily for you, unless you go around shirtless, no one will ever recognize you out in the world,” Lucy pointed out.
“Just how I like it,” I told her. I’d gotten into modeling for covers because it had seemed too funny to turn down the opportunity; it wasn’t the only modeling I’d ever done, but most of the rest of the gigs I’d had had ended up more or less drying up, while the romance covers were coming faster and more frequently. I figured I’d be able to quit my side job at the bar altogether within a year or two—become the next, faceless Fabio.
It was good money, which was why I’d kept it up, but after the initial thrill of pretending to seduce or make out with beautiful women, it had gotten boring. Most of the cover shoots didn’t vary that much: there were some stock poses they wanted me in, whether I was by myself or with a partner, and mostly they wanted “neutral” locations that could apply to a bunch of different book settings, so it was the beach, or an office, or some lavish fake mansion.
But it got me out of town for a day or so at a time, and it paid me really well, so there was no reason I could see to stop anytime soon.
“Did you say a Samsung?” I looked around and spotted one of the assistants. “I’ve got a Samsung charger.”
“Awesome,” I said.
“Break’s over!”
I cursed in my head, but I was there to work: I’d ask the assistant later in the day to borrow her charger, and maybe get to use my phone before it was time to head to the hotel.
We shot four more sets, and I completely forgot about the charger the whole day, since we needed to fit in as many shots as possible before the clouds turned into rain and before the afternoon light turned too dark to be worth anything for Natasha’s film. I remembered the charger only when it was time to pack up and head back to the hotel, and by then I pretty much figured I could wait until I got in, see if the hotel gift shop had anything, and charge my phone in my room.
By the time I got up to my bed away from home, I had a charger that would never leave my travel bag. I would keep it there and not use it at my house, and that way, I’d always have a charger while I was on location, without even having to remember to pack it. I plugged my phone in and after a minute or so, it let me turn it on. I had a few missed texts from the guys, busting my balls a bit about the night before, and one from my manager, updating my schedule. No missed calls.
I might not have thought about Emma right away, except for the texts from my friends; I was bone-tired after not getting enough sleep, rushing to catch a plane, and then working the rest of the day, most of it in the sun. But apparently, Emma had made an impression on my friends, and she’d definitely made one on me, too. I wasn’t sure how to take the fact that she’d left the money behind, or that she’d left without saying goodbye, but I definitely wanted to talk her again, if only to find out if she’d meant leaving the money behind to be her goodbye. But I didn’t have her number. Call the flower shop, idiot.
But when I checked the time, it was too late. Any flower shop would have been closed at least an hour or more earlier, so there was no way that Emma was there still. I’d just have to wait for the next day to call her at the shop and hope that either she was working, or that I’d be able to get her number from one of her coworkers.
Chapter Seventeen
Emma
When I got up the morning after I’d called Stefan, I’d had a moment of hope that he had called me back while my phone had been in “Do Not Disturb” mode the night before, explaining why it had taken him so long to get back to me. No such luck; when I checked my phone, there was nothing at all from anyone—not even my friends. I tried not to be irritated by it, but it did bother me. You should have left a message, I thought, but then I rejected the idea: he should have at least seen that he’d missed a call, shouldn’t he?
I got ready to go to work and prepared myself for what I knew would be a dozen questions from Nora, Sabrina, and Ginger. I’d only just barely answered Sabrina and Ginger the morning before, and I was sure that they’d want more details about the night. They’d want to hear the “story” about the date, the nitty-gritty, and I wasn’t about to tell them that I’d slept with Stefan, or that we had sex more times than I could have even imagined in a single night. And I definitely wasn’t about to tell them that I’d called him, and nothing had come of it, even if I knew they’d be sympathetic. I didn’t want their sympathy.
“You’re looking chipper this morning,” Sabrina said as I came in through the back, headed for the computer to start everything up. Nora left that to me when I worked, since before me it had been her husband’s job, and she’d never learned how to really make the systems go. She could put in orders, she could do the basics of running them once they were up, but she didn’t know how to start everything.
“I’m feeling fine,” I said lightly.
“Oh, you’re here!” Ginger hurried to corner me at the desk. “You know you have to give us all more details than just ‘it was a regular old date’, right?”
“It really was, though,” I said, shrugging off the question. “He’s a nice guy, and his friends are decent people. One of his friends’ girlfriends wants to hang out with me.” The other girls laughed, and Nora came in. I had to repeat what was so funny.
“So, it was a good date?” I could see the hope in Nora’s eyes: she wanted me to have had a good date, so that I would have the prospect of starting a relationship, so that she could maybe see my happily-ever-after in progress a year or two down the line. It had worked out for her, so she wanted it to work out for me.
“It was a really good date, as those things go,” I said. “The best blind date I’ve ever been on.” That much was true, but I didn’t want to give too much away. “I’ve had worse Valentine’s Days with guys, so at least there’s that.”
Nora looked at me closely. “So, how did the night go after dinner?”
I shrugged, not quite able to fully meet Nora’s gaze. “It went fine. We had drinks with his friends, did some dancing, and decided to part as friends.” I didn’t want to outright lie to my boss, who I respected; but I also didn’t want to give anyone an opening to figure out how things had really gone down.
After a few more questions didn’t give any of them anything interesting, we all got busy opening the shop up for the day. After Valentine’s Day, things tended to slow down for a while, so I was looking forward to a fairly slow shift. I helped Nora get the system running and started prepping the ready-to-buy bouquets with her, while Ginger and Sabrina went to work on the first batch of deliveries to go out.
I’d told myself that I was resigned to Stefan’s apparent decision to let me slip away, but as customers came in—most of them men—I found myself bristling a bit at each one. “And who is this for?” I asked one of them, gathering up the bouquet he’d chosen and bringing it to the register. “We have complimentary cards you can add to the bouquet, you know.”
“They’re for my girlfriend,” the man replied. “I’m going to be giving them directly to her, so I shouldn’t need a card.”
“And one would hope that you can remember her name, anyway, right?” I smiled.
The man laughed. “Yeah, we would hope that I’d remember her name after two years.”
Another man came in after him and picked up a bouquet of pink and red roses. “Would this be good for my wife?”
I looked at the bouquet. “That depends. Are you getting her flowers because you messed up?” The man started slightly, and I caught myself. “Or is it a special occasion?”
“Her birthday is tomorrow,” the man said.
“They’d be perfect for that, then,” I said, taking a quick, deep breath to keep my composure. “And if you do ever make a mistake—forget to call her back, or something like that—we have the perfect bouquets for that, too.”
“Good to know,” the man said, smiling. I rang him up, and he actually did take a card. I watched him write up a fairly lengthy note.
On an impulse, I grabbed beautiful, deep red rose and tucked it into the bouquet.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“This is my bonus to you, for being thoughtful,” I told him. “I hope she loves her flowers.”
By the time I was able to take my lunch break, I’d decided that for my own peace of mind, I would need to call Stefan again. I needed some kind of closure. I told Nora that I was going to head up the street to Soup Plantation and asked her if she wanted anything. She gave me a look like the one my mom used to give me when she knew I was up to something but didn’t know what it was. She asked me to pick her up some chicken soup and let me go.
Chapter Eighteen
Stefan
I got home from the shoot after the second day, late. Once again, I’d been too busy either between checking out of the hotel, or on the shoot, or rushing to the airport, to pay much attention to my phone. I thought about just leaving the thing plugged in on its charger until the morning, but then I might miss out on something.
I didn’t recognize the number that came up in my notifications of missed calls and voicemails, but I hoped against hope that it was Emma. I hit play on the earliest message, and I grinned to myself as I realized that it definitely was.
“Hey, Stefan, it’s Emma,” the message started out. “I realized that you probably don’t have my number, and when I called yesterday, I didn’t leave a message, so I hope you’ll give me a call back. I’d like to talk to you again.” She rattled off her number and said she hoped she’d hear from me soon.
The next message from her was from maybe ten minutes later. “Hi, again, Stefan,” it began. “I guess you’re pretty busy with something. This is Emma, by the way; I hope you haven’t forgotten my name again. Give me a call back when you’ve got the chance. Hopefully, I’ll hear from you soon.”
The final message had come in maybe twenty minutes after that, and I grinned to myself again as I pulled it up to listen to it. If I’d had any doubts at all about whether Emma wanted to talk to me again, they were answered. “Hi, again! In case you did forget my name, this is Emma: the girl who got you off nine times the other night and bailed your ass out on Valentine’s Day. I’d appreciate it if you could take some time out of probably talking to dozens of other women again to let me know if you even remember me or ever want to see me again.”
I chuckled to myself at the message, remembering what she’d said when I’d explained to her how I’d managed to forget her name, and the other things from that evening. It was all seared into my memory, and I definitely wanted to see her again.
I realized how late it was, and thought that Emma was probably asleep. It’d be a better idea to send her a text message. That way, if she was sleeping, it wouldn’t wake her up, and if she was awake, she could always reply, or call me when she got the message.
I definitely remember you, I wrote, and tapped send, after putting her phone number in my contacts list. As soon as I finished it, I realized I was even more tired than I’d thought. I waited long enough to see if Emma would text me back or if she would call me, and then I set my alarm for early in the morning, took a quick shower, and went to bed. I would get up early, call Emma, and see if she was free that night.
I curled up in bed and thought about the woman, and as I drifted off into sleep, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually answered the second half of the question in her last message. But I figured that a message like hers, playful and sarcastic as it was, would merit a playful message in return. Besides which, when I called her in the morning, I could clear anything else up that I needed to take care of, and anyway, I was too exhausted to do anything more that night. I let myself drift off, knowing that my alarm would be going off way too soon.
The noise of it pulled me out of bed immediately the next morning, and I remembered after two or three seconds exactly why I’d set the alarm so early: so I could call Emma before she went into work. I shut off my alarm and checked to see if there was a text from her, or if I’d missed a call from her somehow. I hadn’t. I found her number in my contacts list and tapped “call”, and waited for the line to connect. Instead of ringing, it went straight to voicemail. I frowned, wondering whether or not to leave her a message as her recorded response played, and decided against it. I wasn’t sure if it had gone straight to voicemail because her phone was shut off, or for some other reason. But if she hadn’t replied to my text message, she had either not seen it, or it hadn’t been what she’d wanted to see as a response from me.
I thought about it for a moment and then smiled to myself a bit as an idea began to form in my head, and I pulled up the browser in my phone. I remembered something that Emma had said, and thought about it for a few moments before starting my search. I had to hope that it would work, but if it didn’t, I could at least tell myself that I’d done the best I could to make it happen.
Chapter Nineteen
Emma
Since I’d been scheduled for the “late” shift, only coming in after lunch, I’d set my alarm for eleven in the morning. Because I’d been exhausted and angry and sad, I’d gone to bed early, Bast curled up against my side, just under my arm, comforting me. She might not have understood why I was upset, but she knew that I was, and she’d done what she could.
When I woke up, I checked my phone as always—and that was when I saw that I’d gotten a text message from Stefan in the middle of the night, about an hour after I’d set my phone to “Do Not Disturb” and curled up in my bed feeling sorry for myself. I definitely remember you. I stared at it for a moment, trying to figure out why he would have sent that as a message, and then after beating my brains about it, it came to me: my last voicemail to him.
“Well, what am I supposed to do with that?” I scowled at my screen as if it might give me the answer. It didn’t answer what I really wanted to know: whether Stefan still wanted to have anything to do with me. I closed out the message and decided to worry about answering it later. Stefan had kept me hanging all day and all night; I could, in fairness, leave him hanging at least a few hours until I decided whether he was just messing with me.
I got ready for work and had homemade brunch, since I would be getting in after the meal break and not staying long enough to have a meal break of my own before the shop closed. The shop would have already been open for a few hours by the time I got there, so at least I wasn’t going to have to deal with any of the opening chores. I would just have to work with customers, help build bouquets for orders, and help close at the end of the day. Not a bad situation to be in at all.
I pulled into the back parking lot for the employees and saw that Sabrina was at the shop—the delivery van was parked where it normally was when she was between runs. I thought about asking her about what to do about Stefan and smiled to myself as I imagined what her response would be. If nothing else, at least Sabrina would have an interesting viewpoint, and if I asked her not to mention it to Nora—who still seemed to be waiting for me to say something about Stefan—she wouldn’t betray my trust. Ginger might, with the best of intentions.
“Emma! You’re just on time,” Nora said. “You have a customer up front.”
I frowned. “Isn’t Ginger still in? And Sabrina?”
Nora shrugged, and I caught a strange look on her face, but it was gone before I could really tell what it was.
“The customer asked for you specifically,” she said. “Mentioned that you knew more about flowers than anyone else he knew, so he wanted your consultation on a bouquet.”
I walked out to the front, ready to lecture someone on the right kind of flowers for whatever occasion they needed them for. But instead of some anxious man wanting to get the right flowers for his first date with a new girl, I saw Stefan standing at the counter. Sabrina and Ginger were talking to him, looking as if they were fast friends. In front of him, there was a big, beautiful bouquet: purple hyacinth and white gladioli. I’m sorry, I’m sincere, the flowers were meant to symbolize.
“We’ve spent half the
day waiting for you to get here,” Ginger told me. “We helped Stefan here pick out the flowers, though he had a pretty good idea of what he wanted when he came in.”
“They’re for you,” Stefan told me quietly.
I looked at my two coworkers, and at Nora, who’d come up to the front with me.
“You knew you wanted those?” I frowned a little, confused and starting to feel almost tricked.
“You know, he’s a lot nicer than you led us to think,” Ginger told me.
“I have to admit, my first impression of him being kind of a jerk was wrong,” Sabrina added.
“You knew you wanted those?” I looked at Stefan firmly.
“I hope I chose right,” he said, shifting a little and meeting my gaze. “I’m sorry I missed your calls, and I’m sorry if I didn’t get the point across to you the right way in my message last night.”
I crossed my arms over my chest; I didn’t really want to hear him out, but I had to admit I was curious. “So, what kept you for so long?”
Stefan grinned at me. “You remember how you thought you recognized me from somewhere?”
I felt the blood starting to rise up into my cheeks.
“I do some modeling. These days, almost all of it is for romance novel covers.”
“Which I think is an excellent use of your talents,” Nora told him.
Stefan laughed that off and turned his attention back onto me. “I was out of town on a shoot, and I forgot to bring my charger. I was a total space cadet. I’m sorry.”
I knew he had to be telling the truth, or at least I had to suspect he was; after all, I had already known that he was the cover model for my most recent book purchase.
“That does make you kind of a bonehead,” I said with a little bit of a smile.
“Unfortunately, when I was looking up the language of flowers earlier today, I couldn’t find a flower that represents that one,” Stefan told me.
“Columbine,” I said tartly.