The Billionaire's Secret: A BWWM Romance Mystery Page 5

  "Maybe," Kiki was eager to agree.

  "I sure wouldn't know," Jasmine piped up.

  "Me either," I laughed. "But why would he need a bodyguard like that?"

  "Dun dun DUN dun, DARIUS!!" Kiki blurted, then fell out laughing.

  Jasmine snorted, then pressed her finger to her bottom lip for a moment and I could practically see the wheels turning in her brain. "What I'm more interested in," she announced, "is who the special flowers were for."

  I felt my stomach twist. In the magic of the evening, I had managed to shove aside the mystery of the meaningful bouquet and who it was for. He had told me I had the wrong idea about them, but so far, he hadn't told me which idea was the right one.

  "I guess I'll have to go on another date with him to find out?" I asked hopefully.

  Jasmine heard my tone immediately. "Are you asking my permission, Shay Turner?"

  I winced. It was still odd to hear my maiden name back in rotation. "Should I?"

  "Probably," Kiki piped up. "Maybe mine too?"

  "Ladies?" I folded my hands in supplication. "I formally request permission to go on another date with the hot, rich white guy who takes me on spectacular dates and makes my panties catch fire."

  Kiki giggled as Jasmine extended her hand in a regal blessing. "By the power invested in me...by you," she giggled and I could tell the whiskey was kicking in. "I hereby grant you permission for one more date." She stifled a laugh behind your hand. "But on the condition you bring this with you." She popped up from the floor and went to the kitchen.

  "What's that for?" I asked, as she handed me the fire extinguisher.

  "Your panties," she deadpanned. "Keep your head on straight, Shay."

  Chapter Nine

  I hung up the office phone, practically bursting with triumph. "Yes!" I shouted into the empty shop. "Yes, yes, yes!"

  I was in the middle of a fairly vigorous celebratory dance when an icy blast of wind heralded Kit's arrival. He froze mid-stomp, as he watched me give one last booty-shake.

  Behind him, a familiar voice piped up. "It's colder than a witch's tit out there," cried the warm, creakily maternal voice and I felt my heart flutter with affection.

  "Mrs. Young!" I exclaimed. "I'm surprised to see you!"

  Her white head emerged from behind her son's huge frame. She was a tiny as he was massive. Frail and birdlike, she had a crown of snow white curls that fell soft and wispy around her head like spun sugar, but her eyes were like sapphire steel. "I may be old as dirt, dear, but a little cold isn't going to stop me from doing what I need to do."

  "I told her she didn't need to come in," Kit grumbled fondly.

  "And I ignored you," Mrs. Young smiled; reaching up to touch her son's bearded cheek. "Payback for your teenaged years."

  "I get the feeling I'm going to be paying for those the rest of my days," Kit sighed.

  "You get the right feeling," Mrs. Young said, winking. Then she turned to me. "Shay, we need to work on getting him a boyfriend so he leaves me alone again."

  Kit puffed out his chest indignantly. "Mom, I never left you alone, not even when I was with asshole-Patrick."

  "I know, dear, " she stood up on her tiptoes. Kit bent down nearly in half to accept her kiss on the cheek. "I did too good of a job raising you to be a good man." She patted his beefy arm. "I could do with some good old-fashioned neglect every once in a while."

  "Over my dead body." Kit crossed his arms with finality while his mother just shook her head and turned to me.

  "I thought we needed an extra pair of hands," she continued. "Arthritic as they may be. The Valentine's Day orders?"

  I grabbed the stack of order off the counter and wielded them with a flourish. "We have twelve in already this morning," I announced with a grin.

  Mrs. Young clapped her hands in delight and I felt myself puff with pride. She had that effect on me. I would do anything to make Mrs. Young happy.

  "Oh that's so wonderful, dear," she cooed. "We'll be able to make rent this month after all!"

  "And!" I said, stepping lightly back into my celebration dance, "guess who I just got to pay up their past due account?"

  Kit and Mrs. Young both stared at me blankly while I shimmied in place. "No guesses? How about...drumroll please...," Kit obliged me by rapping on his thighs...,"St. Ignatius Church!"

  Mrs. Young clapped in delight and Kit clasped his hand to his forehead in mock relief. "Oh thank God you handled that, I'm too terrified of those nuns to go after them."

  "They don't scare me!" I crowed.

  Mrs. Young came up to me, all five feet nothing of her, and squeezed my arm. "Not much does," she smiled. "Thank you dear," she kissed my cheek and it was all worth it.

  Mrs. Young lived next to us when I was growing up. Even back then she seemed old, her hair prematurely white, her ways calm and maternal. I remember asking my mother why her name was even Mrs. Young, when it was clear she was old as anything.

  My mother had told me to hush and then sent me out to go play. Of course I headed right next door, the smell of cookies in the oven wafting out into the street. Over there, the door was always open, never shut in my face.

  Mrs. Young was not only my unofficial mother. She was den mother to the entire block. She was the kind of woman who took you in when you forgot your key, remembered and sent a card for every birthday and knew the names of all of your friends like they were her own. She was always outside in the tiny garden she had managed to coax from the bare patch of earth in front of her rowhome. The flowers spilled over from her porch in a waterfall of color and texture that brightened and softened the otherwise treeless block. I loved sitting on her porch and peering through the blooms, pretending I was exploring the jungle.

  I spent as much time at Mrs. Young's as I could.

  I was still doing that as an adult. Maybe it seemed strange to some that I went to her after my divorce, rather then my own mother. But it was never strange to me. Mrs. Young was my refuge. She always had been.

  "And with the random order Shay got from the cheater," Kit was still adding the month's invoices up in his head, "we should almost be whole for next month too?"

  "The cheater?" Mrs. Young interjected, just as I piped up, "He isn't a cheater."

  Kit looked at me quizzically. "Oh?" he raised one eyebrow. "I believe I demanded details?"

  Damn him. He knew I was incapable of lying. "It...was nice."

  Kit heard the innuendo and clapped his hand over his mouth, but Mrs. Young just squeezed my hand. "Well that's wonderful, dear. Putting yourself back out there again, I'm so glad to hear it."

  Kit seemed to recover the power of speech finally and crossed his arms over his prodigious stomach. "I'm still not sure I approve of him."

  I froze. "Really?" Did he know something about the bouquet? Had he figured something out? "Why not?"

  His eyes twinkled. "No one has a right to be that handsome," he declared firmly. "It's unnatural."

  I burst out laughing while Mrs. Young tutted. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Christopher," she said, reaching up and tweaking her son's ear. She shook her head and then turned to head into the back office.

  He shot me a look and then followed after her, protesting. "I'm not jealous, Ma, you should have seen the guy. He looked like he walked off the pages of GQ. You know how I feel about slick guys...."

  Mrs. Young had disappeared around the corner, but her voice still reached me in the front. "Yes, Christopher. You love them...," she sighed.

  I stifled my laughter behind my hand and felt the blush that had been threatening the whole time Kit grilled me. He was like a brother to me and I knew he was only looking out for me. Just like Jazzy and Kiki.

  For a moment, I let myself flit back in time to the darkest days with Tre, when he had me holed up in our apartment together, convinced that everyone I loved wanted us to fail. "You need to trust me, baby. Don't let them fill your mind with this poison!" he insisted. And I believed him again, and again and again.

 
Not this time. This time I would listen to the ones who loved me. And in this instance, Kit was absolutely right. It definitely wasn't natural how handsome Liam was. That dove-grey sweater clung to him unfairly.

  I felt the warmth of a different nature creep up from inside of my core and I looked down in surprise.

  Eagerly I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my contacts. His number was there, taunting me. Liam Graves, just another name in the list, but with so much meaning behind it. My finger hovered over the text button. Should I tell him I had fun last night? Should I say I wanted to see him again?

  The phone buzzed in my hand, scaring me half to death. I dropped it onto the glass counter and it ricocheted to the side, landing on the tile floor, right on the corner.

  "Oh shit..." I cried, picking it up from where it lay face down on the floor. "Oh shit!" I said again as I saw the crack spiderweb its way across the screen. "Oh shit," I said a third time, when I saw the name on the text alert.

  Liam Graves: "See you soon?"

  Chapter Ten

  Soon stretched into "later," which stretched into "a while." I checked my phone obsessively, even took it to the shitty place in the Gallery mall to get the screen fixed in an hour, but still I didn't hear from Liam.

  It was enough to drive a person mad. One fantastic, blow-my-mind first date...and then nothing? Not even a kiss...though that was my fault. Still, he didn't even try. I kept looking at the text. "See you soon?" How soon?

  I went through all the stages of grief: denial, bargaining and all that, and had just come out on the other side and accepted that I wasn't going to see Liam Graves again. Something had gone wrong, maybe my need for time had put him off. After all, a man like that; who looked like him and kissed like him and took girls on thoughtful dates that showed he had been listening...a man like that could have his pick of women. Why would he want to waste his time on a recently divorced florist who seemed to be a born again prude?

  Having reached acceptance, I decided to go one further and go with anger. I declared him an asshole to Kit. I agreed he must have been cheating after all with Jasmine. I swore to Kiki that I'd be okay, then started talking about him again in spite of it.

  *****

  It was the first morning the temperatures had climbed into the twenties. Walking to work wasn't excruciatingly painful and I was actually in a good mood. Recent snowfall blanketed the city in a new coat of white, covering the dirty mounds and frozen trash. I barely felt my phone buzz in my pocket, but a sixth sense made me check it.

  Liam Graves: "It's been too long. Hoping you can give me a little more time. How about tonight?"

  "Are you fucking kidding me?" I said out loud in the empty shop. No contact for two weeks and then he thinks I'm going to drop everything? All my plans? Who did he think he was?

  "Ok," I texted back.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was still deciding if I was actually going through with seeing him right at the moment the car rolled up in front of the shop.

  "Shay." Liam sounded relieved when Darius opened the door and let me in the back seat.

  "Liam," I said coolly.

  He understood at once. "I took too long. I know it." He patted the seat next to him and slid over to make room for me. When I was settled next to him, hands folded tensely in my lap, he sighed audibly. "You know, I don't even know where I can begin to tell you why I couldn't see you again right away. Since words were failing me, I thought this..." he turned behind him in the seat, "might say what I wanted to say."

  He turned back to me holding a single, perfect rose. It was the deep, velvety pink of a sunset, the edges of the petals just unfurling from the bud. It took my breath away.

  "Gratitude?" I stammered.

  He nodded. "For agreeing to see me again."

  "You looked up the meaning of a deep pink rose?"

  He cocked a crooked grin. "Actually, I did a bunch of googling to find the right meaning that went with a flower that wouldn't make you laugh in my face, I'm not going to lie." His gray eyes twinkled at me. "Figured you wouldn't appreciate me showing up with a four leaf clover."

  I giggled in spite of myself. "Be mine?"

  His smile grew shy. "Yeah."

  "Good call on the rose, then," I teased, inhaling the deep scent.

  "I'm glad you like it, Shay."

  The way he said my name.... It wasn't fair. Here I had planned on being cool and aloof tonight, and he goes and does something so thoughtful...and then says my name in the way he has that makes every cell in my body sit up and take notice.

  "So," he leaned back, throwing his arm casually against the back of the seat. "I'm planning on having you out a bit late this evening, Shay. Should I be worried about any overprotective brothers or daddies who have shotguns?"

  I burst out laughing. "Ah, no. I'm an only child and I'm pretty sure my father has never touched a gun." I giggled a little, feeling high off of the rose's scent and the way Liam's arm rested lightly against the back of my neck. "He's pretty near-sighted too, so all you'd have to do is knock his glasses off and...."

  "And I'd be free to run off with you?" Dear sweet baby Jesus, how did he get so close to my neck?

  I dodged both the question and the way it made my belly fall and float at the same time. "How about you, any nosey mothers I need to worry about?"

  He drew his arm away. "I do my best to give Dahlia as little information as possible," he said, his voice tight.

  For a moment, the only noise was the sound of the car shushing through the streets. We were headed West on the Schuylkill Expressway, the traffic inexplicably light. But the air inside of the car was heavy with unsaid meanings.

  I decided to be bold. "Dahlia again. You really don't call her Mom, do you?"

  His mouth worked, gray eyes flashing in anger. Now, I understood sons being protective of their mothers. But Kit and Mrs. Young were much different from this reaction. They had humor, while Liam had only blank duty.

  "Sorry," I muttered, wondering what exactly I should be sorry about.

  "Dahlia can be...tough," he said, his voice strained. It made me shiver a little, in spite of the warmth of the car. "She keeps things pretty well bottled up." He spread his hands. "Unfortunately that includes stuff like warmth and human emotion."

  I didn't know if I should laugh. But he did. His laugh was grimly sarcastic, even bitter. I watched him, a strange feeling of protectiveness growing in my belly as he went on. "I won't lie, she can be downright cruel. But I've learned I'm not going to change her, so I decided to just accept it. Bashing my head against a brick wall is more effective than trying to change Dahlia Graves." He looked back up from his hands. "I'm done wishing I had a different kind of mother."

  I nodded slowly. "I know the feeling. I really do."

  He shifted in his seat. "Your mom?"

  I felt the air shift, like he was happy to have the focus off of him. Now it was my turn to pick at my scars. "My mom is all about appearances," I began. "From day one, I learned nothing from her but 'what will the neighbors think?' You could be going through hell and back again, but you never ever let on that something was bothering you. I think..." something suddenly slid into place, "I think that's why it took me so long to leave my ex."

  "And why you are always trying to find some deeper meaning in everything?"

  I looked up at him in sharp surprise and he shot me an amused smile. "Yeah, I'm smarter than I look, I guess. I notice things. Especially things about pretty ladies I'm interested in seeing a lot more of."

  I softened, but my inability to lie came right to the surface. "Why did you ask me out?" I blurted.

  "Are you going to try to find deep, hidden meaning in that too?"

  "Maybe," I smiled archly. "Maybe it's my gift to the world."

  "Okay, great oracle of truth, tell me yourself." He leaned forward, his gray eyes keen. "Why can't I get enough of you?"

  I blinked. That was a question I couldn't possibly answer, but he was looking at me so expectantly
I had to try. "Because you think I'm....different."

  He nodded. "Beautifully so."

  "You don't come across many poor, Black, divorced florists in your day to day life."

  He cast his eyes down. "Well, that's true."

  I was warming to the subject. "You're tired of everything always being the same. Maybe I'm a diversion, a little bit of rebellion against Mom." I bristled at the thought. "Have you told her about me?" I demanded.

  He looked wounded. "Yes, Shay. I have."