“Chandra’s going to help me with the dance. I think it’ll be fun,” Heather mused, eyeing the other rings. “You should join the committee.”
That was a negative. “I’m in for all the flower donations you need, but I don’t do committees.” He supported with cash and donations, but when it came to committees, he was no good. Too much talk, not enough action. Committees were his mother’s domain; she loved telling people what to do. Chairing a committee was the perfect pastime for her.
Jase leaned toward Heather, the scent of lavender and vanilla swirling in the air around them. “Second chance. Dinner. No tacos.”
“Saturday?” Heather asked, her voice breathy.
“Works for me.”And that’s how it’s done.
“I have plans.” Heather’s brown eyes sparkled.
“Fuck me,” Jase said under his breath, low enough so only he could hear it.
Well, maybe Heather caught it, too.
Heather nudged his shoulder with her own. “What good is a breakup if you keep asking me out?”
He laid his hand on her arm, the warmth of it settling in his palm. “We can always try for round two.”
“Nah. Why ruin a perfectly good breakup?” The laughter in her tone hit him straight in the gut. She’d won this round, but he’d make sure there was another.
3
Chapter Three
The delivery van pulled up right behind Jase’s shop door in the alley behind his building. The alley was tight, only room for one vehicle at a time, and bordered by a metal chain separating it from the parking lot where the business owners parked so the street spots stayed open for customers.
He stepped up to the back of the van, opened the double doors, and did a quick check that everything was ready for the rest of the morning deliveries to be loaded.
Jase held a clipboard and scribbled the delivery instructions for the funeral flowers before passing it to his driver, Ethan. “Funeral starts early, so those need to be there before nine thirty. Hit the mortuary first.”
“Sure thing.” Ethan set the clipboard on the bumper of the delivery van, hopping inside to adjust arrangements so they wouldn’t topple over.
Jase glanced across the parking lot. Along the opposite side, Heather had parked her hot-pink delivery van with a giant, plastic chocolate chip cookie perched on top. The thing was loud, obnoxious, and it made him crave cookies whenever he saw it. Her marketing worked, he’d give her that.
He focused on the van, just as his grandmother’s black Buick crept across the lot. Slowly. Too slowly.
He squinted. She was driving.
His gut dropped to the floor of the alley.What the hell?
She couldn’t fucking see well enough to drive. That’s why the family had hired her a professional driver. That’s why they’d taken her keys away. Last time she’d driven, she’d taken out three cars and one of those big blue mailboxes outside of the post office. They were lucky no one had gotten hurt. It’d taken some tricky legal work for the family attorney to get her off the hook with only a fine, restitution, and the loss of her license.
And now she was behind the wheel again.
Son of a bitch.
She edged toward Heather’s cookie van like a slow-motion replay on Monday night football, with Al and Frank and Dan…
“No. No. No. No. No.” Jase hit the side of his delivery van with the palm of his hand and sprinted toward his grandmother. He jumped over the cable chain midrun, skirting the cars in his beeline for the Buick.
“What?” he heard Ethan say behind him. Followed by a loud, “Shit.”
The bumper of the Buick made contact with the side of the van. The soles of Jase’s tennis shoes pushed against the asphalt, propelling him toward the accident.
Breaths came ragged, not because he was winded from the run but because his grandmother was going to hurt herself. And get her ass arrested.
He ran straight to the driver’s side window of the Buick and banged against the glass. His grandmother ignored him, put the damn tank in reverse, and backed up.
