“For how long? Ten years? Twenty?”
“Maybe, yeah,” he shot back. “Until my mother gets back to where she was. Until she gets to a point where she can trust me again.”
I shook my head, stunned. “Trust you towhat?”
“Well. I have this idea,” he said slowly. “A possibly stupid, but really exciting idea, that I want to expand the landscaping side of the business. Do bigger jobs, design jobs, like the kind we did when my dad was alive but… even bigger. My mother was never into that. Like,at all. Which is why we focused more on the floral side of things and… You know what? Talking about Ross stuff with you crosses all kinds of lines.” He waved a hand in the air. “Maybe we should—”
I snorted. “You think I’m going to use this information for corporate espionage? How? I swear, I have zero interest in branching into landscape design. And I have no interest in destroying Ross Landscaping either.”
More to the point, I had a definite interest in Constantine Ross.
He hesitated, then said, “Well, the thing is, right now we’re committed to the flower business. Like, hardcore committed. The shit with me had some far-reaching repercussions, beyondjustthe financial. Vince—the lawyer—he had a lot of friends and family in the area, and after… everything… they didn’t like me much. We lost some clients and had to deal with lots of bullshit from our suppliers.”
I closed my eyes as facts clicked into place. “Like HG Supply.”
“Like HG Supply,” he confirmed. “Pat and Donnie are Vince’s cousins or something. Anyway, we always had a little nursery, for landscape stock, but we built hothouses and stuff. We grow most of our own floral stock now, too, which isawesome. But it required, you know, investment.”
“Alotof investment,” I corrected.
I’d considered that move myself, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford it foryears, and I hadlotsof things to put in place before then, like having multiple, fully-staffed shops open, a significant uptick in my corporate clients, and a fifty percent increase in my net profits.
I remembered overhearing Angela talk about taking out loans to build the greenhouses, and a mental picture was starting to come together. I wasn’t sure I liked the image I was seeing.
I also wasn’t sure how to point it out to Constantine or even if I should. A blow job and single deep conversation didn’t give me that right.
“So there’s not a lot of, you know, flexibility, money-wise, to move into landscape design. It would be a risk. AndIknow I could make it profitable. But my mother’s not as confident as I am. She thinks I’m gonna fuck it up. Which, based on past experience, I don’t blame her for.” He hesitated. “But this morning, I got a little, tiny bit… frustrated.”
“A tiny bit.”
“A lot, then. It was just impatience. And resentment, because it felt like things weren’t changing. I couldn’t see past it.”
“You were stuck in your head.”
“Yeah. Last time I felt anger like that…” One side of his mouth quirked. “A Camaro paid the price.”
More like, Constantine had. And still was.
“Maybe I need to take up kickboxing,” Constantine mused.
“Or maybe you need to take some steps toward actually changing things, instead of just waiting. There are lots of ideas you could consider for Ross to start moving in that direction. You could pull back on—”
Con held up a hand. “No. No business advice, please. Look, it’s enough that I just spewed all this to you, especially since I’m already walking a fine line justworkingfor you. And I want to trust you. I mean, Idotrust you. Personally. But…”
“But professionally, I need to butt out.” He wasright. I knew he was. But it still stung.
He shrugged. “You wanna tell me all about the finances at Blooms?”
“You help me do bookkeeping!” I protested.
“I help you organize and pay invoices. You wanna show me your profit and loss?”
I ran my teeth over my bottom lip.
“Thought so. There are lines we can’t cross.” He shrugged. “It’s cool. We just ignore the shit we don’t want to discuss and move on.”
I snorted. “That’s the most Constantine thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He grinned and his gaze turned playful. “But since there are certain lines we’vealreadycrossed…” He glanced at my crotch and wiggled his eyebrows. “I have a debt to pay.”
