Page 59 of Jack

“I really am fine,” Jay says when we get back to the garage.

“Good.” Calling him a lair would cause an outright brawl right here in the truck. We’ve been sitting here for five minutes and haven’t opened the doors.

“What was the hold up at the bakery earlier?” Really? He waits until now to ask?

“Strange flower delivery. There was no card.”

“That’s odd. The flower shop wouldn’t tell you anything?” He finally opens the door and steps out. He just needed a distraction to snap him back to the present.

“It was an anonymous online order.” After this accident, the flowers feel off, too.

“Nothing’s too anonymous for Nick.” Jay leaves the wrecked vehicles on the rollback and walks into the shop.

“I think Emily may have a secret admirer.” I hope she does. The alternatives I have about those roses cause my skin to crawl.

“You heard it too?”

I should have known he heard the growl during Church. It's hard to believe one of us didn’t catch who it was.

Jay walks over to our bikes in the last bay. “So, you finally got Lily to ride.”

“Yep.”

“And?”

The memory brings a smile to my face. “She loved it.”

“Knew she would.” He slaps my shoulder. “It’s always the ones who say they’d never get on a bike who love the ride the most.”

That sounds a bit personal. How does he know that? I’m on his heels before he can get to the office and close the door.

“Who’ve you been riding, Jay?”

He laughs. “Nobody.”

“Why? Because she says she’ll never get on a motorcycle?” Finally, I have a reason to tease him. He’s been dogging me from the moment Lily arrived.

He totally ignores me. “You know what you should do? When Lily gets off work, have a picnic by the river. Showher a Tennessee sunset.” He insanely wiggles his eyebrows. “And maybe a few other things once it gets dark.”

“Shut up!” I grab a pen off the desk and throw it at him.

“That’s what you’re planning on doing anyway.” He laughs so hard he almost falls out of his chair.

That’s it. I can’t deal with this fool today. “Cloudy and I’ll unload the rollback.”

“And have to look into the flower delivery. Too many coincidences happening,” Jay calls out when I’m halfway across the shop. Of course, he’s still laughing at me.

On the way outside, I call Nick. Hopefully, the wreck and flowers are actually coincidences. The wreck feels like something more, though. Still, I can’t ignore the eerie feeling about the flowers. Hopefully, the worst-case scenario with them is finding out one of my brothers likes Emily Powell as more than just a friend.

Chapter 26

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Lily

This was the longest work day of my life. It was worse than pulling double shifts at the hospital. It was a hundred times worse than my three-day weekends with twelve-hour shifts. Those served a purpose, and I was thankful for them.

The highlight of the workday was listening to Emily, Ava, and Melody tease each other about the roses. Those three came up with some seriously off-the-wall ideas about who the flowers were from and to which of them they were meant for. Of course, I teased right along with them. We even started voting on the ideas.

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