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So my day off is in full swing. I find myself right back where I started a day ago. Ass in the air and head down, sorting through flowers in kind of a hurry, I notice the familiar feeling of one customer after another coming in, buying anything I have ready and leaving without saying more than a polite thank-you.
Once I sell out of flowers before I’ve even unpacked them, literally making up bunches straight out of the box, I have to ask the next customer what the hell’s going on.
A professional-looking, almost sour-faced woman in her thirties flashes a brief smile, opening her mouth to say something. It’s as though she’s reminded herself not to say anything and only gives a little shrug.
“Some people would be grateful for the extra business without twenty questions,” she remarks in a friendly tone, so genuine that it’s clear she must be a lawyer. Nobody else in their right mind could act so passive-aggressively and expect to have no one raise a brow, especially in this part of town.
I try a different tactic with the next and final customer waiting behind little Ms. Passive-aggressive here. He’s much nicer about it all, and it’s the last bunch sold. He’s no suit, but something tells me they’re all in on this somehow, and it’s a reason I’m going to find out one way or another before today’s done.
“My condolences,” I murmur thoughtfully, giving my best “florist who knows your pain” face.
“Oh no,” he’s quick to tell me. “Just uhhh… just something our boss said we have to do.”
“Have to?” I ask him straight back, the tone in my voice intensifying and my hand still gripping what he wants and not letting go until he spills his guts.
He glances around as if those guys in the dark glasses might still be lurking, but I’m sure that’s a totally different thing.
“I’m just the janitor. So when the boss sends a memo toall employees…,” he says hurriedly.
He looks like a man who’s already said too much, but it only makes me need to know more.
“Look, forget I said anything, okay? I’ve got a wife and three kids. I’m just doing my job.”
He gives me a pleading look, and letting go of the flowers, I add his money to the pile so high in the register I can barely close it.
I keep an eye on him as he crosses the street, wishing I had a pair of wrap-around shades myself and a car. I see it as my only chance to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps a clue to where he might be going with these flowers everyone’s buying, courtesy of some mystery boss.
I groan involuntarily at the thought.
No. It… it couldn’t be.
Then everything Phil told me Iris said comes flooding back.
“I got it wrong. Tell Jasmine I was wrong. He’s not grieving… he is in love.”
If that means what I think it means, then I need my legs to stop wobbling like jelly at the thought and move my ass. Follow Mr. Janitor and see for myself if he’ll take me to who or whatever’s really behind all this.
Although I kind of have an idea just who….
Iris reneging on her earlier statement about James hits me so hard I feel dizzy. Like I need to lie down, but there isn’t time. Pulled by a level of excitement and fear I’ve never felt so strong before, I hail another cab, breaking rules of my own I just made because this is a life or death situation.
If I don’t find out if it’s James doing this flower thing or find out that he loves me after all I’ve put myself through… then I know my life won’t be worth living.
Deep down, I knew it. But up top, that little place everyone else likes to call the real world? It just doesn’t add up that a guy like James…
Jasmine! If you don’t move that moneymaker, you’ll never go. He’s getting away!
“Follow that car!” I bark at the cab driver, who gives me a passive look before cocking his brow. Putting the car into drive, he even makes the tires screech for effect, zooming at speed. Taking me to find out for sure who loves me and who loves me not.
We sit at a set of lights two cars back from the guy we follow. It’s where we follow him that I would never have seen coming.
Not in a million years.
CHAPTERTEN
James
Snapping awake, I figure I must’ve just been dozing. The cotton mouth I become instantly aware of and the light shining through the windows makes me groan aloud.
