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I snag the cups and hand Imp hers. Our fingers brush, and a spark of tingles races up my fingers and through my hand.
Imp’s chest rises in a heavy breath, and I know the chemistry is there for her too.
The question is why she’s fighting it hard enough for the both of us.
* * *
“Hey, Warrick. You got the order for Mr. Jensen?”
I glance up from my worktable, where I just sat down after spending the morning prepping Christmas trees for sale.
“Yeah. It’s packed on a flatbed in the loading dock.” Mr. Jensen orders the same thing every December. Enough poinsettias to build the display for the town holiday party. Two hundred and fifty of them to be exact. Originally it started out smaller, but every year it’s gotten bigger and bigger until the town council put a limit on the amount of space it could take up.
Byrne Nursery and Landscape Design was my father’s baby. I’ve always worked here, and after he and Mom retired down to Florida last year, it became my baby.
I have eight full-time employees and then seasonal staff that comes on board during the spring and summer to help with the gardening rush. My interests lie more on the landscape design side of the business, so most of the time I’m in the field either digging up other people’s yards or maintaining the landscape they hired us to create.
Getting my hands in the dirt, creating something pleasing to the eye with what nature has provided, is something that’s second nature to me.
“I’ll be out to help load in a minute. Go ahead and get started without me.” I toggle over to the spreadsheets that house the finances for the business to make sure that I don’t need to make an extra payment to the government before the calendar year ends.
Unlike plants, soil, and the like, numbers don’t come easily to me. I punch in the sales and expenses for the last week and wait for Excel to do the math for me. Satisfied that I’m not going to give my accountant a heart attack come tax time, I save and close the document and start toward the back.
My boots scuff across the gravel, and I jump into the back of the moving truck that Mr. Jensen hires to get the flowers from us to the town hall where the holiday party will be held.
“How’s it going, Mr. Jensen?”
The old man’s hair went white before I was out of high school, and if you asked me to pinpoint his age, I’d rather eat the dirt that he’s older than before stepping onto that land mine.
“You going to be at the party this year?” he asks.
“Probably make an appearance.”
The Byrnes have lived in Mistletoe Creek since it was a one-road town with no stoplights. We take our duty to the town very seriously, and while I don’t like going to the parties, the events, and participating on the committees, it’s expected of me, and I stopped fighting it a long time ago.
Once Mr. Jensen’s on his way, I make my way back to the office that I have set up on a worktable at the back of the shop. The actual office was consumed by paperwork before I took over, and I haven’t had the time or the energy to get it cleared out and organized.
I make a mental note to look for an office manager again, but the last three times I tried, no one fit what I was looking for, or they took one look at the “office” and ran for the hills.
There’s a rap of knuckles at the door, and my best friend, Gunnar, pokes his head in. “Lunch?”
I glance at my watch and see it’s already after noon, the coffee and muffin I ate this morning a distant memory.
“Sure.” I lock my laptop before closing it, and we head out through the front of the building. I let the front-end manager know that I’ll be back in an hour, and we climb into my truck.
“You coming to game night on Friday?”
Fuck. I forgot about that.
Gunnar married Samantha, his high school sweetheart, and once a month they host a game night for our friends. I usually find a way out of them because being the seventh wheel isn’t interesting to me. I can’t remember the last time I actually made it to one.
All of my friends have found their people and settled down, and until recently I would have simply wished them the best. But now? I’m not so sure.
The thought of finding someone to come home to every night is starting to appeal to me. Someone to make pancakes with at dawn on Sundays, before going to cuddle in bed for the rest of the day.
What doesn’t appeal to me is a packed weekend, and with my impromptu barbecue lie, it’s going to be a busy one.
“I’ll do my best,” I say.
