Like the flowers, I’d first dismissed their sender as a weed in the wild, but once I’d cut through the rough ...
Ugh.
This wasn’t the time to get poetic. Or to mix metaphors.
I would have to add an ice cream on the street (maybe eat it first?) to my Chinese splurge.
Flowers? For me? I was the one who should be apologizing, not him.
And the champagne glass? He really seemed to know the way to my heart.
Not to mention his voice, which rang in my ear all the way home. I took the subway in an effort to drown out my imagining his sandpapery voice reading his note aloud. I stood there, clutching my floral arrangement over my bag across my chest, thinking a cab would have been better but I needed the distraction.
It didn’t work, though. In my mind, Layton’s eyes were fixed on me and really seeing me, checking my reaction. His inspection of me felt real, sending tingles over my skin and need clawing down my spine. I itched to see Layton in real life and not only in my mind, which was so strange considering I’d only met him once.
Finally, we arrived at my stop. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks as the bustle of exiting the subway station and holding on to my present was enough to put an end to my overactive imagination.
