Page 30 of The Florist and Her Alphas

A black SUV sits at the curb next door. Quiet engine. Blacked-out windows. The back passenger door opens.

Cole Frostwood steps onto the sidewalk.

Dark hair, shorter on the sides, slightly longer on top. He’s wearing a black shirt under a dark jacket that sits across his shoulders, paired with black jeans and combat boots.

“Who is that?” Mira says, low.

“One of them.”

“Which one?”

“I think his name is Cole.”

Cole crosses the street. He walks up to the sage-green door of Marsh Florals and tries the handle. Locked. He steps back. He tilts his head up toward the second floor, to the windows of my apartment, the ones I leave cracked at night because I like hearing the street. He looks like a man trying to decide how long he is willing to stand on a sidewalk.

The answer, apparently, is indefinitely.

“Lia,” Mira says. “Why is a Frostwood at your shop at five in the morning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I look at him. He still hasn’t seen us. He’s standing with his hands at his sides, perfectly still, looking up at my window with an expression I cannot read from here.

“No,” I say. “But I want to know what he wants.”

“Are you sure?” Mira’s voice drops.

“I’m sure,” I say, standing up from my chair. I brush the croissant crumbs from my apron with two quick strokes. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle this.”

Mira looks at Cole. Looks back at me. “If he tries anything, I’m calling the police.”

“Mira…”

“Okay, okay.”

My footsteps on the sidewalk are soft. Cole hears them anyway. He turns before I’ve covered half the distance, and his slate-blue eyes find me in the dim light with the ease of a man who never stops watching.

“Liana Marsh,” he says.

“Why are you here?” I ask bluntly. I don’t trust him, like I do Julian…at least somewhat.

“I want to talk to you,” he says. “May we go inside?”

I look at him. He waits. He doesn’t reach for me, or fill the silence with charm or explanation or anything at all. He just waits, and his patience undoes my defenses.

I pull my keys from my apron pocket.

“Sure,” I say.

Inside, I flip on the single warm lamp behind the counter. It throws a low gold circle across the mahogany, leaving the rest of the shop in soft shadow. The cooler hums. The radiator ticks. The shop smells like damp soil, eucalyptus, the faint beeswax candle I burned yesterday evening.

Cole steps inside. He stops two feet from the door, not advancing any further.

He looks around systematically, carefully, missing nothing. His gaze moves from the divided-pane windows to the mahogany counter to the wall of cubbies to the glass cooler full of sleeping stems.

“The shop is beautiful,” he says, sounding like he means it.