Page 36 of Perdition
As the door swung shut behind the younger man, Frost couldn’t stop the dread, that wary knowledge, that Sgt. Bradley Copper wasn’t just going to stop.
Goddammit!
His desperate task to win Em back had just gotten harder.
If only he knew.
ELEVEN
After a day of lazing,binging shows and carbs, and just generally feeling like a lump, she hadn’t expected to get the call she did.
“Um…Em,” Tina murmured over the line, sounding nervous. “There’s a customer here who wants to place a big order for next month, but she won’t talk to anyone but you about it.”
Em sighed.
Apparently, being the boss meant that even on her one day off, she really couldn’t take the day off.
Which was okay…because there were only so many times she could wipe the salt and grease off her fingers before she really started feeling gross. And as much as she said she enjoyed a good Passionflix binging sesh, there were only so many times one could cringe while watching two people kissing.
Yeah, she was one ofthosepeople; the type that enjoyed sex but shied away from watching other people show affection. She’d always been that way, too. What was worse than seeing people kissing and getting all up and personal washearingit. For her,hearingpeople kissing was as close to awkward Hell as she could get—all that smacking, the wet slurping, and the heavy breathing….
She shuddered just thinking about it.
“Em?” Tina’s nervous voice shook Emily from the straight up weirdness of her own thoughts.
Tossing aside the bag of white cheddar popcorn she’d just emptied, she replied, “Is she willing to wait thirty minutes?”
There was a moment of muffled conversation, then, “Yes.” Then more muffled sounds, then Tina whispered, “Em…I’m not so sure about this customer.”
Wariness ping-ponged down Em’s back. “What do you mean?” she asked as she hurried to the guest room to put on clothes that weren’t stained in shame and carb gluttony.
Tina answered, her voice still quiet, tense, “She doesn’t seem like she really wants to talk about flowers.”
Em pauses her efforts to tug up her jeans. “What else would she come to a florist for?”
There’s a moment of silence, then Tina replied, “Honestly, I don’t know. I just think it’s weird that she’s refusing to talk to me or Maria about a flower order.”
Maria was a skilled and talented flower artist, and was a trusted assistant manager, someone Em depended on to get things done when Em had other responsibilities to deal with. More often than not, when Em was on-site at weddings, arranging the flowers and handling the bridezilla and her mother, Maria was back at the store, handling business.
Maria also lived a block from the store, so she’d get there faster than Em could.
“She doesn’t want to speak with Maria?” Em asked to clarify, confused and now more wary than ever.
“No,” Tina said, “she says she’ll only talk to you. Like…she’sadamantabout it.”
Once again, Em sighed, shaking her head.
“Fine. Give me thirty.”
Em finished the call, tugged on her shoes, and headed to her car.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, her gaze caught on the rearview mirror, and her thoughts immediately jump to what she’d stowed in the back of her Durango the night before, right before she determined to forget her own name by way of wine and silent weeping. That didn’t take long, thankfully, but she’d spent too long that morning suffering for last night’s “forgetting.”
Pointing her Durango toward Flower’s Blooms, Em refused to let her mind wander to things best left to consider until she wasn’t concerned about whatever was going on at her shop.
You’ll have to talk to him eventually, that too reasonable for the moment voice chirped, like that annoying noise the smoke detector made when the battery was low.
And it just kept beeping.