“I really hate to bother you, and normally I’d call one of my sisters or one of the guys, but no one seems to be picking up thephone.”Okay, that was a lie.I hadn’t bothered to call anyone else. “And I just thought that maybe, if you weren’t doing anything—not that I’m assuming you’re just magically free, but—”
“Ella.” His tone was so gentle, and I halted my rambling to suck in a breath. “What do you need?”
“Okay, well, you see, Fanny hurt her back. She’s really too old to be doing any kind of manual labor anyway. But the Fawkes wedding is this weekend and the shipment of flowers arrived. If I try to unload them all myself, it’s going to cost me double while the truck sits here. He’s gotta have it back to the warehouse by a certain time, and since he drives so fucking slow, he just got here. He said he’d be back in an hour, and that was…” I checked my watch. “Twelve minutes ago. We’re his last stop of the day,” I added, explaining why he was delivering so late. It was nearly seven p.m., and I should’ve been back upstairs right now, curled up on my couch with a glass of wine andChicago Fireon the TV.
“Where is the driver?”
I snorted. “That putz went to Granny’s.” Exactly like he did every time he made a delivery up here. Technically, it was in his contract to help me unload, but he’d never been very good at following directions. I’d damn near called his superiors to complain more times than I could count, but Fanny always told me it wasn’t worth it to rock the boat and risk them not delivering to us at all.
“I’ll be there in five.”
Every muscle in my body relaxed. “Oh, thank god. You’re a lifesaver.”
“Anything for you,” he rushed out, then hung up almost as fast.
Huh. Was Liam…?
No, I shook my head firmly. That was a silly notion. One I refused to entertain.
True to his word, Liam arrived five minutes later—an impressive feat given the winery was ten miles away down a winding backroad—pushing through the front door of the flower shop and purposefully striding toward me.
“Put me to work, boss,” he said with a cheeky grin.
I relaxed further at his nearness, at having help to complete this task without having to pay the driver double because his lazy ass refused to do his job.
Deep breaths, El.
I offered Liam a grateful smile. “You have no idea how much this means,” I said.
“It’s the least I could do,” he said, lifting a single shoulder in a half-shrug.
In truth, offering a helping hand when someone reached out was really the bare minimum for anyone, but something about Liam, about the way he rushed to my aid without a second thought…I don’t know. It felt like more than that.
I wasn’t going to question it.
So I jerked my chin toward the back of the shop and said, “This way.”
He followed me down the two short hallways that led to the back door and followed me into the cool spring night. The days were thankfully getting longer, but as soon as the sun went down, there was still a bite to the air, and my breath fogged in front of my face. My boyfriend jeans kept the chill from my legs, but my skin exposed below the sleeves of my oversized tee shirtimmediately pebbled with goosebumps.
Liam, in his standard thick flannel, appeared unperturbed. He simply rolled up his sleeves, exposing those strong, veiny forearms covered with tattoos and dark hair, and directed me to hop into the back of the box truck and line the buckets of flowers up at the edge so he could carry them inside.
We worked in easy tandem, the project that would’ve taken me over two hours—yes, there were that many flowers—accomplished in less than thirty minutes thanks to Liam’s muscles.
As he hauled the final two buckets inside and placed them in the cooler, I couldn’t help leaning against the doorway and watching him work, watching his ink flex and wave with each of his movements.
I was sure there was a story behind each of the marks, but I couldn’t make sense of them. There was a blooming rose on the back of his left hand, a bright, blue butterfly on the inside of his left wrist—one that looked suspiciously like my own—and some peonies and dahlias on his right forearm, a snake wending its way through the petals. Letters across his knuckles. I knew from spending time with him in the muggy greenhouse, when he traded his signature uniform for a cutoff tee, that there was a topless mermaid with devil horns on the inside of his right bicep. Even now, as he lifted a bucket to place it on a higher shelf, I could just make out the tips of her fins. On that same deltoid, I’d seen a woman’s lips with her tongue sticking out. I knew, like me, he had more covered by his clothing that I’d never seen and probably never would.
Why did that thought depress me so much?
“Enjoying the show?” he asked, his voice jerkingme from my optical exploration of his body.
Shit. My cheeks heated with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I was just looking at your tattoos.”
Liam extended his arms in front of him and twisted them side to side, examining them. “What about them?”
“Just…curious about their stories,” I said, mimicking him with my own arms. “Obviously, tattoos fascinate me.”
