She'd seen me.
And now she'd know I'd been watching.
Fuck.
Back at the Palmetto Rose, I stripped off my jacket and paced the suite like a caged animal.
The image of her wouldn't leave. Her smile. Her hands. The way she'd looked through the window—right at me—and I'd bolted like a coward.
I tried to push it away. Tried to focus on anything else.
The laptop sat on the table, closed and silent.
I opened it again, navigating back to the forms, but there was nothing new. Just a confirmation that my submissions had been received.
So, I did the only thing I could think of.
I looked her up.
McKinley Flowers Charleston.
The website loaded—simple, clean, photos of arrangements and fields and a family standing together in front of rows of blooms. Her face was there, smiling, younger than she looked now but unmistakably her.
Joy McKinley.
Joy.
The name fit. Too well.
I clicked through the pages. The farm on Wadmalaw Island. The shop downtown. A blog about seasonal flowers and weddings and the care that went into growing things that wouldn't last.
Every word sounded like her. Earnest. Thoughtful. Sweet.
I closed the laptop and shoved it away.
This was a problem.
Not the job. Not Dominion Hall. Not the contracts or the background checks or the future I was walking into.
Her.
She was the problem.
Because I couldn't stop thinking about her. Couldn't stop replaying the way she'd looked at me in that garden—first with curiosity, then with disappointment. Couldn't stop imagining what it would be like if I'd been different. Kinder. Better.
If I'd been the kind of man who deserved to stand in her light instead of lurking in the shadows outside her shop.
I crossed to the bathroom, turned the shower on, and stripped down.
The water was hot. Scalding. I stood under the spray and let it burn.
But even that didn't help.
Because my mind kept circling back to her.
What she'd look like if I touched her. If I pulled that braid loose and wrapped it around my fist. If I backed her against a wall and showed her exactly what men like me did to women like her.
My hand dropped, gripping myself hard.
