Because there is a huge display of flowers on my desk.
My favorites, irises, are included, even though I swear I’ve never disclosed that fact to this man.
I stand there, admiring them for a moment.
They’re big and bold and beautiful, so much like what I feel for him.
Then I process where they’re sitting.
And what it means.
Jean-Michel knows something is up, I’m meeting with him in—I check my watch—twenty minutes, and there’s a giant arrangement of flowers taking up most of my desk.
“Crap,” I whisper, shoving my phone back in my pocket.
I’d pulled it out, intending to text Jace, to thank him.
But now I kind of want to throttle him.
I hurry over to the bouquet, reaching for the ornate glass vase, and freeze, noticing the envelope with my name scrawled on the front.
In Jace’s handwriting.
Which means he went down to the florist himself, that he wrote the note inside. Not an online order or something his assistant took care of for him.
He’d done it himself.
My heart goes pitter-patter, and I snag the envelope out of the plastic fork thingy that’s holding it in place then tear it open.
Yup. Definitely Jace’s handwriting.
A fact that makes my pulse speed up…and that’s even before I process the words on the little card.
To deepest, darkest secrets. And your ability to take their power away.
-J
P.S. I talked to JM yesterday. Handled the worst of the inquiry. But he’s going to want details from you too, cookie.
Thud.
My heart collides against my rib cage, and I don’t know how to handle the swell of emotions in my chest.
Mostly because every time I think that Jace can’t get more wonderful, he does.
“So it’s like that, huh?”
I turn, see that Jean-Michel has walked into my office without me noticing.
His mouth tips up. “Yeah, kid,” he says, answering for me. “I can see it’s like that.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” I begin. “But?—”
“You and Jace have been seeing each other for weeks now, Marie,” he says, slipping by me and leaning back against my desk. “Is there a reason you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I didn’t want to step on what you and Tiff are building,” I tell him.
“That may be part of it.” He lightly touches one of the flowers, glances down at the torn-open envelope, and I clutch the note with Jace’s precious words a little tighter to my chest. “But it’s not all of it.”
