Page 23 of Red Flags Only

Unfortunately for me, a sale is a sale, and a scary maniac is a scary maniac. So I led him to the nursery and sold him some flowers through my horrified anxiety over the possibility of him mentioning his brother or my connection to him. Or, even scarier,spyingfor his brother.

Spying onwhat, I couldn’t say, especially when all he did was purchase a slew of potted orchids and leave, balancing them in his bike basket with such skill that I nearly forgot he was a scary maniac and asked him to show me how to do it myself.

Still.

Spooky.

Almost as spooky as Jove being on my doorstep for thesecond time in as many weeks.

“I wrote you your letter!” I protest through the little window on my front door. “You’re supposed to stay away now!”

His lips compress, and wrinkles appear beside his eyes. “I wrote you back,” he says, holding up a huge, irregularly shaped… something.

I squint at it. That’s not an envelope. It’s way too big to be an envelope. It’s…

Oh.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I scramble, stuttering over the lock in my haste to flip it free, then rip the door open to the deep rumble of Jove’s laughter, grabbing for my pretty, shimmery, giant comma butterfly.

He holds it above his head, out of my reach.

“Jupiter!” I whine, stretch stretch stretching in vein as I jump for my letter. “I want!”

In my hopping, his feet end up under mine, knocking me off balance until I’m falling, landing against his chest.

He hums, teasing, and an arm hooks around my waist to pull me tightly against him. “I’ll give it to you inside,” he says.

I have, once again, found myself in a dangerous situation due to my letter-induced tunnel vision excitement. First I’m almost run over by old man Norman, then I’m pressed up against the town Scary on my porch. What’s next? I follow a trail of ephemera straight off a cliff?

My goodness, I’m like a little crow.

“Crows are cute,” Jove says, possibly reading my mind, possibly responding to words I did not mean to say out loud. Who could say?

“This is bribery,” I inform him, pushing backward to get away from his really flagging solid chest. Does criminalbehavior usually make a person so fit?

“Yes,” he answers, body following mine until we’re past my door frame and standing firmly in my living room, chest no farther from me than it was outside. “Blatant bribery, in fact. Can’t forget our adjectives.”

“I do love adjectives,” I tell him. “So why don’t you unwrap your sturdy, uninvited arms from around me, hand me that incredible, splendiferous butterfly, then walk your long, well-working legs back to your old, perfectly-running truck before you head to your cozy, safe home?”

“You’re acting uncharacteristically sassy today,” he replies. “Maybe you need your best friend here to put you in a better mood, hm?”

“You’re not my best friend.” I wiggle out of his arm and take a nice big step back, then wince. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he assures me. “Because I know you’re lying.”

I’m really not. Jupiter is my best friend. Jove is… scary. And scary is not my best friend. Surely.

I move to the living room, putting some distance between me and my not-so-welcome guest. “Do you need something? Besides dropping that off?” I ask, deluding myself into thinking I could possibly understand the machinations of Jove Rogue.

“Yes, actually, but we can talk about it after you read my letter,” he replies, dropping his arm now that I’m further away.

Um.

“I was thinking you could leave that with me, then I could write you back, then you could write me back, then we could repeat that several hundred more times.” Or zero times, since I won’t be writing him back. I will be playing crow with my butterfly and never answering my door again.

“Let’s start with you reading the letter, then we can talk about how we’ll handle things going forward. Okay?”

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