I glance down at a drop of blood that has soaked into the thigh of my dark wash jeans.
I can trade them out for the extra pair of jeans I have stored in my locker in the back room.
My wardrobe planning is interrupted by the persistent blare of a car alarm. I look toward the door of my shop. Whoever was knocking is gone, but I catch a glimpse of someone darting past on the sidewalk.
Dawn hasn’t settled over Manhattan yet, but there are always people milling about. I start my daily walk here just after six. My first stop is to share a brief conversation with a bodega owner who is always sweeping the sidewalk outside his shop. In the dead of winter, when snow blankets the city, he trades the broom for a shovel, but he never fails to have a smile on his face regardless of the weather.
My last stop is at a bakery a block from here.
It doesn’t open until seven, so I stand in front of the shuttered windows and breathe in the scent of freshly baked bread.
For such a large, crowded city, those moments offer a small-town feel that I once knew and still sometimes wish for.
The phone on the counter starts ringing again.
“What?” I ask in exasperation. “Who has a floral emergency at six-thirty in the morning?”
Swiping up the blood with a tissue, I reach for the phone. “Good morning. Wild Lilac. This is Athena speaking.”
“Hey.” A toe-curling male voice greets me. “Do you have a minute to talk to me?”
I’ll give him as many minutes as he wants. Whoever he is, he’s got a voice that I could listen to all day.
“Sure,” I say. “What can I help you with?”
The low rumble of a chuckle flows out of him. “You can start by unlocking the door.”
I look back at the door and the man peering into the shop with a hand perched over his forehead and a phone tucked against his ear.
I didn’t think I’d see Liam Wolf again, yet here he is in the flesh waiting for me to open the door and let him in.
Chapter 5
Liam
Athena’s gaze glides over my gray T-shirt and the faded jeans I put on after I showered an hour ago.
On any other weekday morning, I’d be prepping for a full day at the office, but my first appointment isn’t until eleven.
Locking the door behind me, she twists in a circle sending her long hair flowing down her back.
“We don’t open until nine,” she says. “Why are you here?”
I glance down at her hand and the crumpled tissue she’s holding. Tilting my head to get a better look, I spot a red stain. “Are you bleeding?”
“It’s nothing.” Her right hand darts behind her back. “I cut myself on a piece of glass.”
“Let me see.” I curl a finger in the air. “It looks bad.”
Shaking her head, she points at an antique rectangular table set up next to a row of coolers with glass doors that house buckets filled with flowers. “I dropped a vase. It’s a hazard of the job.”
I look over at the shards of glass littering the floor. “That’s a hazard of the job?”
The pink sweater she’s wearing slides down her left shoulder to reveal bare skin. She doesn’t make a move to readjust it.
“Your hand,” I say, pointing a finger at her. “Let me see.”
Reluctantly, she swings her arm forward. When she opens her hand, she bunches the tissue in her other fist. “See? I told you. It’s nothing.”