Page 105 of Crazy for this Girl

Now I’m stuck in a flower shop with Anna—the only other person that’s on aunt’s payroll—in the bathroom, pretending she had to go when really, she’s wiping away tears because my aunt didn’t like her cherry blossom arrangement for yet another wedding this week.

“Anna! I need more kraft paper and some boxes for vases.”

“Aunt Sharon,” I recite through my teeth. “Another person by the end of next week, or I’m doing it myself.”

She lifts a slightly gray brow at me in challenge. “Are you going to sign their paychecks too?”

My eyes slit because this is where I must get my stubbornness from. “If I have to.”

“Why are you here?” she counters. “I thought you had the day off.”

“I did.”

“So…”

“You called me this morning, telling me how overwhelmed you were.”

“That wasn’t code for help me, honey. Lorenzo will be back any minute.”

“Lorenzo can’t even fold the kraft paper how you like it,” I object. “You just got done bitching at Anna about it.”

She rolls her chestnut eyes. “I’m teaching Anna to have a thicker skin. You can’t be a baby walking around in Chicago.”

“Aunt Sharon, Lorenzo sucks.”

“Lorenzo brings me lunch.”

“Lorenzo is—”

“Damn, I shouldn’t have walked in just then,” he quips, leaned up against the door frame of the hall that leads out the back. He smiles at me, with his tan skin on display in a white wife-beater that shows off every muscle that bulges from his biceps, and a smile that makes your body just hum in a chorus of yeses and damn, boy, you’re fine as fuck. “Feel free to continue, Laynee. Pretend I’m not here.”

I slit my eyes a bit, trying to shove back his Italian suave good looks and cocky attitude. He’s got them, wearing that arrogant bravado like a pro, and I’m immune. “Too late, you already are.”

“That hard to miss, huh?”

“Boy, you better have come back with my sandwich,” Aunt Sharon chides, blowing a piece of stray hair from her eyes. “And if you’re gonna flirt with my niece, at least ask her to go out for dinner first.”

Lorenzo pushes off the wood door frame and comes over to my aunt with a brown paper bag in his hand. “Gotta see if she’s interested first, Mrs. James.”

“She’s interested,” she replies confidently like I’ve spoken about it before. “She hasn’t dated since her last boyfriend went to prison for—” I nudge her, a little too hard accidentally, with my elbow, flogging the next comment out of her mouth.

“Bad boys, huh?” My gaze flicks back to Lorenzo who’s smirk just got ten times bigger. His tongue pushes out his lower lip as his dark eyes do the same down my body. “How about bad boys that love their mom, Italian cuisine, and cooking?”

Geezus Christ, that kinda sounds perfect.

“I’m not…dating right now.”

“But you should,” replies my noisy, disloyal aunt. “Lorenzo, take her out and show her a good time.”

The bell rings in the front, alluding that someone has walked in, and I take it as God having mercy on me.

“Oops,” I falter with a smile. “I should go get that.” I turn but not before leaning into my aunt’s ear to whisper, “I hate you.”

She chuckles as I get my butt to the lobby, and just as quickly as I’m happy to get away from that situation, it fades just as fast.

Cal stands at the counter, his green eyes latched onto me as soon as I’m within view. The already warm temperature of my body, thanks to my Aunt Sharon’s prying and embarrassment that I can’t get a date on my own, quickly cranks up to unbearable heights.

Crap.

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