Page 11 of The Florist and Her Alphas

I won’t sign the contract.

I don’t care what Ezra Frostwood says in his crisp black suit with his pale gray eyes and his voice that could freeze the East River. Seventy-five thousand dollars is life-changing money. It’s also blood money. It’s the price of everything I’ve built with my own hands, every flower I’ve cut and arranged, every customer who’s walked through that door and left smiling. This shop is my grandmother’s garden brought indoors. It’s the only piece of my family I have left.

They can evict me in ninety days. Fine. But I’m not leaving early. I’m not taking their money and running. This is my fight now.

The key turns in the lock.

I don’t move.

Mira pushes the door open with her hip. Flour in her dark chestnut hair. Her embroidered apron still tied around her waist, dusted white. A brown paper bag in one hand, a bottle of something expensive-looking in the other. Her silver nose hoop glints when she turns her head.

She sees me. Sees the half-empty cup. Sees my face.

“You started without me,” she says. “Rude.”

She kicks off her shoes and pads across the floor in sock feet, dropping onto the plum velvet sofa with the ease of someone who belongs everywhere she goes.

“Sorry.”

“Want to talk about it?” she asks, uncorking the bottle with a practiced twist. No corkscrew needed. She pours herself a generous measure into a mug and leans back, tucking one foot under her thigh.

I tell her everything.

I tell her about the four alphas. Ezra Frostwood in his charcoal suit, cold and controlled, pushing a folder across the table like he was doing me a favor. Julian, with his warm hazel eyes and his charming smile, reaching for my hand. His fingers brushing my wrist and me running away from them.

“How hot were they, on a scale of one to fuck-me-now?” Mira asks, taking a sip of wine.

I blink. “What?”

“Come on. I need details.”

“They were...” I struggle for words. “Ezra was... intimidating. Cold. But in a way that made you want to…” I stop. My face burns.

“Ooh, oh my god,” Mira says, her eyes widening.

“Shut up.”

“You wanted to be knotted by him? Is that what you were going to say?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, my god.” She grins, her eyebrows raised. “And the wrist-toucher? Julian?”

“He’s charming,” I mutter into my mug. “Flirtatious. He has dimples.”

“Dimples,” Mira repeats the word like it’s evidence in a trial. “And the other two?”

“One was quiet. Watchful. His name was Cole, I think. And the youngest, August, was writing in a notebook the whole time. I liked him.”

Mira sets her mug down with a definitive clink. “Okay, so let me get this straight. Four billionaire alphas demanded to buy your shop?”

I stare at the wine stain on my floor. The silence stretches.

“Yeah,” I say finally. “And Ezra smelled like bergamot.”

Mira’s mouth drops open. She covers it with both hands, her eyes wide above her fingers. “Oh, my God.”

“Don’t.”