“And you’re privileged to have a sister who hasn’t shared it with the rest of the family.Yet. I’m worried about you! You work all the damn time. My precious babies forget what you look like.”
I scowled. “That’s low.”
“I know!” she said sunnily. “But you know what? Forget that I care about you as a person. You’re getting all these new contracts, Micah. Your business increased by a fullthirdlast year. You can’t keep growing that way without help.”
“It’s under control,” I told her. “I have a plan.”
“Oh, gravy. You and yourplans.”
“Excuse me? In another six to eight months, if things keep going this way, I’ll be in a position to hire a full-time personandkeep Belle on part-time.”
She shook her head. “The stress will kill you first, and I’ll put ‘He had a plan’ on your tombstone.”
I snorted. “Right under ‘Best Brother Ever’?”
“Right under ‘Stubborn Ass.’”
I laughed out loud. “Same difference.”
“Oh my Lord!” someone yelled.
My head shot up to find Constantine Ross standing stock-still in the aisle between our tents, pointing at me and grinning.
“Ladies and gentlemen of O’Leary, the end times are upon us! Micah Bloom hassmiled.”
He was wearing his bright-blue Ross Landscaping polo, carrying a huge bucket of pre-wrapped bouquets, and dragging a cart packed with even more flowers and plants. His ink-black hair was bed-rumpled and damp with sweat, like he’d just woken up. His red-rimmed eyes and the oil smears on his shirt suggested he hadn’t woken upalone.
How. Typical.
If I’d been smiling before, I sure as fuck wasn’t smiling now.
“Mrs. O’Brien! Quick! Did you see Mr. Bloom smile?” Con demanded of a startled, middle-aged woman wearing pink nurse’s scrubs.
He set his bucket on the ground and dropped the handle of his cart so he could wrap one arm around her shoulders and extend the other one in aslooooowarc in front of them, like a carnival storyteller setting the stage.
“Legend tells,” he said in a whisper loud enough that people at all the nearby booths turned to stare, “that when Micah Bloom’s smile appears, great turmoil will sweep the land! Time will fly backward, crops will die, children will cry, men will curse their terrible misfortune, andchaos will ensue.”
Mrs. O’Brien shook her head, dishwater blonde hair dislodging from her bun, but looked like she was fighting a grin. “Oh, Constantine,really.”
Constantine shook his head. “No, mark my words, Mrs. O’Brien! I know we all thought he was just a great, soulless beast of a man with a chip on his shoulder the size of Syracuse, but there’s areasonno one in this town has ever seen Micah Bloom smile before. I feel a portent in the air!”
He gave a dramatic head-to-toe shudder and I heard more than one spectator snickering.
I folded my arms across my chest, desperately unamused.
Meanwhile, my least-favorite sister Leandra wasshakingwith suppressed laughter. I glared at her, but she only laughed harder.
“Mrs. O’Brien, this is the part where you’re supposed to yell,Can no one save us?” Constantine stage-whispered to his reluctant accomplice.
Mrs. O’Brien, who was all-out grinning now, rolled her eyes and obediently complied. “Can no one save us?”
Constantine shook his head sadly. “I just don’t know. If only I had someone who knew more about fairy tales. Someone like…Oh my gosh,Sivan Siegel? Is that you?”
The menace with the bubble ass moved away from Mrs. O’Brien and pointed at a little blonde girl with thick glasses standing in the gathered crowd. “You arejustthe expert I need. What can be done to break a curse, Sivan?”
Sivan looked around at the adults watching her and shook her head shyly.
Leandra leaned closer to me over the table. “Is the Ross kid single?” she demanded in a whisper. “Will he marry me?”
