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Chapter One

This wasn’t part of the plan. I did not move into this apartment to listen to a bad rendition of Dolly Parton at five-fifteen in the morning. But that’s exactly what I’ve gotten for nine days.

I kick my feet over the side of the bed, pull on a pair of jeans and T-shirt and do what I shouldn’t do. I take the outside stairs two at a time, barefoot, cross the stretch of gravel behind the shop and knock on the back door hard enough to rattle the glass.

The singing stops and twenty seconds later the door opens.

The woman looking up at me is about five-four, with brown hair piled on top of her head and a pencil stuck through it. Her body is covered by a green apron over a blue sweater and jeans.

“Good morning, neighbor,” she says, a chipper lift to her voice.

There’s a pair of clippers in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. She also has the best mouth I’ve ever seen, which is not what I came down here to notice.

“It’s five-fifteen.”

“I know. The roses come in on a truck at five. They need water.” She holds out the mug. “Here.”

I look at the mug, but I don’t take it.

“I came down here to ask you to stop singing,” I say and it sounds shitty to my own ears.

“I know you did. You’ve been thinking about it since you moved in.” She pushes the mug at me again. “You stomp. The ceiling’s thin. Take the coffee.”

Frowning, I take the coffee and even take a drink. It’s black, strong as liquid steel. It’s exactly right.

Not good.

“How’d you know I take it black?”

She glances down at my body. “You look like a man who takes it black.”

“I take it with cream.”

“No, you don’t.” She turns around and walks back into the workroom, leaving the door wide open behind her. “Come in or don’t. You’re letting the cold in either way.”

Fucking hell. I stand in the doorway with her coffee in my hand.

The workroom is a long room with a concrete floor and a big steel table down the middle. Buckets are everywhere. Roses, sunflowers, some orange flower I don’t know the name of are on the table. Piles of leaves and stems clutter the floor. It smells green and wet and cold, like the inside of a forest after a rain.

She picks up a rose and snips the end off the stem at an angle, quick and sure, and drops it in a bucket. Another follows.

After glancing my way, she clips five more flowers.

This is what she does every morning and now I don’t have to imagine what she looks like doing it. I know her routine by now whether I want to or not. The workroom light comes on at 0458. The truck arrives by 0502.

The radio comes on at 0510, and the singing starts by 0515. Then there’s the humming in between, which gets louder when she’s worried about something.

Last night she was down here humming at midnight. I know because I was up there listening.

“You’re the Army one,” she says, without looking up this time.

“I’m a probie with the fire department, but you know that if you know I’m Army.”

“You’re a thirty-six-year-old former Ranger. Cassia told me. She tells me everything.” Snip. Drop. “Including the rumor that you don’t talk.”

“I talk plenty.”

“You haven’t talked to me yet. Until this morning.”