‘You did?!’
‘It was a particularly bad night, but the smashing helped.’ He laughed. ‘And now I eat my cereal out of one of the surviving bowls every morning. They’re ivory with pale blue roses.’
‘That sounds lovely.’
‘It makes me feel very fancy.’
Daisy shook her head with another laugh and grabbed Elliot’s hand, pulling him one more shop down.
‘Well, here we are.’
‘You live at the flower shop?’ Elliot sounded surprised.
Daisy sighed. She did, in fact, live at the flower shop. ‘There’s a small apartment in the back. It isn’t really supposed to be a permanent solution but when I had to move out of David’s apartment… this is where I ended up.’ Luckily, her parents hadn’t rented it out to anyone else in a long time.
Moving back in here had not been a good day for her. Too bad she hadn’t thought to smash something. Maybe that would have helped.
She thought she had escaped the little flower shop of her destiny. She thought her mother was going to have to find someone else to take over. Maybe Iris. Maybe a new flower was going to run this place. She was going to be the Daisy that broke the chain.
But life had other plans.Davidhad other plans. Maybe shewascursed. All signs were starting to point in that direction. Her fiancé left her. She was forced to come back home. Forced back into her little Daisy life, like it was all meant to happen this way. Not that she’d managed to make a life anywhere else. Everything she knew was here. Everything she loved.
She’d given it all up for David and then he’d given up on her.
Just like that.
She shook her head. ‘So, do you want to come in? We can talk about how we’re going to do this. You know, set some guidelines.’
‘Guidelines?’ Elliot sounded amused and Daisy watched the corner of his mouth kick up. It was fun, this game they were playing, the secret they were telling. Things didn’t have to be romantic with Elliot, but maybe they could be fun.
‘Yeah, we should get our story straight. You know, our history and things we should know about each other. Like do you have any allergies? I don’t want to feed you something that ends up killing you.’
‘This is the second time you’ve made a joke about being a killer, Daisy, and honestly, I’m starting to get nervous.’ Elliot’s smile grew. He was so weird. She liked it.
Daisy laughed. ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling him inside. ‘Let’s talk. I promise not to kill you.’
‘Sounds like something a killer would say.’
‘You got yourself into this situation, buddy.’
‘Wow, way to blame the victim.’
Daisy scoffed. ‘I’m just saying, you volunteered for this fake-boyfriend gig without really knowing me. It’s possible you’ll agree with my exes by the end of this.’
‘I doubt it.’
They’d stopped inside the small, dark space that was her apartment. Elliot was suddenly very close to her.
She tipped her head up and found him gazing at her from behind his dark frames.
‘I like your glasses,’ she said because the closeness of him was making her brain short-circuit.
Elliot smiled. ‘Thank you.’ Still so close. So warm and close and she could reach up and press her hands to his chest and just…
Woah.
What the hell was that?
Too long without human contact. That was it. It had been too long since Daisy was this close to a man. Any man. It had nothing to do with Elliot and his sexy glasses.
