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She wasn’t wrong. I really didn’t know her. But I liked what little I did know, and I wanted to know more.
But if she said no, I wouldn’t push it. To be honest, I was surprised enough that I’d suggested it in the first place, especially after how sure I was I wasn’t the kind the guy of guy who’d attempt such a thing and actually succeed in securing a date with a woman like her.
“Okay,” Hattie said with a sigh. “I have no idea why I’m agreeing to this, but I don’t have any other plans. Plus, my parents are practically forcing me to take the rest of the day off since I’ve been working on this wedding order around the clock the last few days.”
Relief flooded me, and I grinned. “Great. I’ll pick you up at four.”
“Guess I don’t have to give you my address,” she said with a laugh.
“No, I think I can find you.”
2
HATTIE
When I got back to the shop, my mind was still in overdrive after what happened at the venue. Did that man seriously ask me to attend the wedding tonight?
And worse, had I seriously accepted his invitation? What had I been thinking?
Well, to be fair, I was a little dazed at the time. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was about him, but there was something like recognition at the back of my mind when we’d first made eye contact.
It sounded silly in my head, but it was almost like I already knew him. As soon as he’d approached, only one fleeting thought had entered my mind.
There he is.
Ah, man. How ridiculous was that?
Did I really believe my heart had somehow recognized his, in some kind of unbelievable, meant-to-be, love-at-first-sight kind of way? That only happened in the movies.
And yet, the tightness in my chest as I stepped into the flower shop proved that some part of me actually felt that way.
A big part.
“Hey, lovebug,” Dad said when I entered the back office. He sat behind his desk, his eyes not leaving the computer screen before him. “How did it go?”
“It went well,” I replied, tucking my hands into the front pockets of the jeans I wore with my pink Bluffton Blooms polo shirt. “They’re all set for tonight.”
Dad removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, leaning back in his chair. “Tell me again that I’m not wrong for giving them a fifty percent discount.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said, knowing full well that with the way we were struggling right now, it hadn’t exactly felt veryright, either.
But the bride’s family had lost everything in a fire recently and had to dip into their savings account to make up for what their insurance wouldn’t cover. That left them with a very small budget to make her wedding dreams come true, and they simply couldn’t have afforded our services without the discount.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh.
“You did a good thing, Dad. It’ll come back around.”
He pursed his lips. “Well, I had to lay off Christine today.”
My heart sank. Christine was one of only two employees we had left. Without her, it was between me, my parents, and our last remaining employee, Debbie, to run the shop and make deliveries.
We used to have two delivery drivers, Jim and Jerry, but one had been laid off, and the other couldn’t handle the stress of handling all of the deliveries by himself. How he thought we’d manage without him was beyond me.
I squared my shoulders, pushing down the worry. “Dad, it’ll be okay. We’ll get through this. And, hey, maybe someone at the wedding will see how beautiful the flowers are, and they’ll hire us if they have a wedding coming up. A fewfull-pricewedding gigs would help a lot.”
“You’re right,” he said, standing and stretching his arms over his head. “I need a break from going over numbers. It’s slowly killing me to see how in the hole we are. Wanna go grab a bite?”
Guilt swam through me. We were so busy with the shop that we rarely had time to hang out just the two of us. Debbie was holding down the fort so there wouldn’t be any harm in joining him.
