Well, shit.
I was ready to throw the flowers into the vase and call it a day. But then I saw something peeking from under the bunches of mint.
“Honeysuckle!” I squealed. “I love honeysuckle.” I pulled off the stem of one of the flowers and placed the drop of nectar on my tongue.
“Perfection.”
Sebastian made a strangled noise.
“You’re trying to distract me,” he growled into my ear.
“No, you are trying to distract me,” I retorted. “Go back to your station and let me win this competition!”
34
Sebastian
Ihad not intended to become so caught up in a flower-arranging contest, of all things.
After I returned to Harrogate, Hunter had insisted that we practice flower arranging. It was like the blind leading the blind.
“This is a good distraction for you,” Hunter said after Alfie and the Svensson brothers had ambushed me when I went to pick him up.
“Why do we have to practice?” I asked with a sigh. “Why can’t we just show up?”
“There’s betting involved. Besides, we have developments we’re trying to get passed at the next town hall meeting. There are several senior citizens on the planning approval committee, which reviews all the designs before they make their recommendation at the town hall. We need to be on their good side, and women love guys who bumble around with decorating-type activities.”
“Then let’s just show up and fumble,” I said as I tried to corral Alfie.
“We can’t do so terribly that it gives the impression that we’re disrespecting the flower competition,” Hunter said. “We need to at least pretend we tried.”
Thus had commenced several hours’ worth of flower-arranging tutorial videos.
“No!” Alfie yelled as I tried to stick a large trumpet-shaped flower into the arrangement. “The lady on the video said big flowers go in first!”
“Your arrangement looks like it was dropped out of an airplane,” Hunter said critically.
“And yours looks like it was run over by a horse.”
* * *
Now there we were,at the flower-arranging contest.
I didn’t care about winning.
Actually, scratch that. I cared very much about winning. As much as I hated to admit it, my father and I were alike in that way.
But there was no way I was winning the competition, especially with Amy over there erotically licking honeysuckle.
I wanted to taste it on her mouth and suck the sweet nectar off her tits.
“Ten minutes are left in our competition,” Meg announced. “After a slow start, Amy, the reigning champion, seems to have an idea in mind. Let’s see if it’s a winner. Sebastian and Hunter have yet to start at all. Hunter, you need to clip the bottom of that hydrangea before you put it in the vase. It’s too tall.”
“You don’t know what I’m doing,” Hunter shot back. “I could have a brilliant plan.”
“And your flower arrangement is listing.”
“Shoot,” Hunter said as the hydrangea keeled over. “I promise that is not what I’m like at home,” he said.
