“Flowers are hard core, Britt,” Kayla said with a sort of grave awe.
This was unassailably true. A date was one thing. A date who brought flowers to her was something else. Maybe he brought flowers to all of his dates. He was Southern, after all. He was a sex machine but his manners were lovely.
She didn’t have to think about that right now. Right now, all she had to do was try on that dress and then count the minutes until six thirty.
“Well,” J. T. said on an exhale. “Lucky me.”
He’d arrived on the dot, and he’d spent nearly half a minute speechless, admiring her in the lowering evening sun when she stepped out on her porch. And stood, like a diva on a stage, on her brand-new step.
“I’ll say,” she teased, gently. But her voice was a little threadbare.
Because her heart was pounding. And his expressionwasgenuinely awestruck.
“You look very handsome,” she said almost timidly.
Dear God, that was an understatement.
“Yeah?” he said distractedly.
He was wearing a jacket that fit him like a freaking poem over a crisp button-down shirt and, naturally, a pair of jeans and his favorite boots, which seemed to have been polished for the occasion.
She noticed then that he was holding something behind his back.
He followed her curious gaze. Those must be the flowers.
“Well, I was going to bring roses,” he explained, as if she’d asked that question aloud. “Who doesn’t like roses? All women do, right? But then I thought, maybe roses are a cliché. And I’ve brought them to so many women over the years...”
And he stopped.
“Sure,” she prompted carefully. “Roses are nice.” She wasn’t necessarily enjoying the reference to “so many women,” but it wasn’t as though she didn’t know this part about him, and he clearly was heading someplace with this little story.
“But then I saw something and it made me think of you, and I thought it might be better.”
He brought it slowly out from behind his back.
It was a wilted, sad, anemic-looking azalea in a little pink-foil-covered pot.
She was speechless.
She could have sworn he was holding his breath.
“Oh!” And she scooped it into her arms as if it were an orphan being abandoned at the fire station.
“The poor little thing. I... it’s... thank you!Waybetter than roses.”
He laughed. “You are a funny woman, Britt Langley.”
“Yeah,” she agreed happily. “I know. I love it. It’s perfect! Thank you for rescuing it. I will make it grow! I’ll name it after you.”
He laughed, clearly delighted.
She settled it next to her other convalescents on the shelf on her porch. And took a moment to admire it and bask in the luxury of beingknown.
Though he didn’t know everything.
“Allow me.” He strode over to his truck parked at the side of the road, and pulled open the passenger-side door for her. He held out his hand, and she gave hers to him, and he helped her up into it as if she were Cinderella boarding a gilded coach.
“I like your hair up that way,” he said. “It’s pretty.”