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She stared at them then her eyes flickered up to mine. “You…picked flowers for me?”
“Yeah. Probably dumb. I should have left them in the ground, but I saw them and pictured them in a jar on your desk. I thought you’d like to look at them while you’re working.”
Her hand covered the top of mine. “It’s not dumb at all. You surprised me. I haven’t gotten flowers in ages, and I didn’t expect you to go out of your way to pick me some.” She prodded my fingers open enough for her to slip the flowers from my grip and held them up to her face. I couldn’t name a single one, but they were yellow, blue, white, and purple. “I love them, Miles. I bet you picked that other bouquet for Elise, didn’t you?”
Something in the roughness to her voice alarmed me. I dipped down to get a good look at her face. She had her bottom lip pinned between her teeth, and her dark eyes were glassy.
“Hey.” I took her chin between my fingers to raise her head, bringing her eyes to mine. “What’s this about, Cupcake?”
She gave her head a shake, but it was halfhearted. No effort into breaking free from my hold.
“I told you, I’m not used to this type of kindness. I don’t know how to handle it.”
“Daisy—” I had a thousand questions, and my biggest was about her ex-boyfriend. If he hadn’t treated her with kindness, how in the hell had he treated her?
Before I could bombard her—what I would have done—Elise and Weston made their way back to us. Daisy popped off the rock and waved her bouquet at Elise.
“Look what Miles found. Aren’t they so sweet?”
Elise’s gaze bounced to me, and her brow lifted in a way that signaled her approval. That did something to me. Meant more than I could explain. Elise and I were friends now, but we hadn’t always been. Our history was steeped in mutual trauma and a flurry of mixed feelings. Slowly but surely, we’d been working our way out the other side. This felt like it could have been the final step to putting it all behind us.
Too bad it was all pretend.
I waved the second bouquet. “Got you one too, Lisie.”
She claimed it from me, giving me a half hug. From the pure annoyance in his gaze, if Weston could have lit the flowers on fire, he would have.
On the way back, Weston ended up beside Daisy, while Elise and I took the lead. I kept an ear open, just in case, but mostly trusted Weston not to mistreat her.
Elise leaned into me, keeping her voice low. “Saoirse didn’t tell me you were dating anyone.”
“She doesn’t exactly know.”
Her brow crinkled. “Do you think she’ll have a problem with you dating a client?”
“Hope not.” I took off my hat, shoved my hair off my forehead, then replaced it. “I have no intention of making a habit of it. There’s just something about Daisy…”
“Yeah, there is,” she agreed. “Are you going to bring her to the wedding?”
“I—uh…”
This was where being impulsive got me into sticky situations. In six weeks, I was going to be the best man at West and Elise’s wedding. If Daisy were my real girlfriend, she would be there as my plus one. Since it hadn’t really crossed my mind—yeah, terrible best man, I know—I hadn’t discussed it with her.
When I didn’t respond quickly enough, Elise took the job out of my hands.
Twisting around, she said, “Hey, Daisy—are you free the evening of June seventh?”
Daisy shot me a wide-eyed look before shifting her focus back to Elise. “If it’s a Saturday, I normally work, but I can take the night off since I’m technically my own boss. Why? What’s happening June seventh?”
Weston chuckled. “You just got invited to our wedding.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? I mean, wow. Thank you. I’d love to come.” Her quick recovery was impressive. It was almost as fast as the threatening look she shot me.
I imagined we’d be discussing this later.
“Good. We’d love to have you.” Elise elbowed my arm. “See how easy that was?”
“Thanks, Lisie.” I almost threw my arm around her to drive Weston crazy but stopped myself, not wanting Daisy to feel weird.
