Page 79 of Branded
But it wasn’t people when it was this team, these people who were becoming mine.
Hazel was staying—because she didn’t travel with the team either—but Pru was flying out, using the first part of the trip as a jumping point for her job as a scout. She’d be home before the guys, though, since her scouting wasn’t going to take as long.
How did I know all this?
The day before, as I’d been getting ready to leave and go to my place for dinner and another make-out-slash-oral-sex-extravaganza evening that ended with me falling asleep in Smitty’s arms, and him tucking me into bed before leaving in the wee house of the morning to catch his flight, Hazel had come into my office and asked me to go out to dinner with her in a couple of days on Thursday night with her friend, Beth, along with Pru, and Raph’s pregnant girlfriend—new fiancé—Monica.
Thursday night apparently meant it was Cheese Extravaganza Night.
Which sounded incredible (although not as incredible as the Oral Sex and Touching His Yummy Body Extravaganzas I’d had with Smitty), especially since it was at CeCe’s, and I not only had a special place in my heart for the restaurant and bar because it was where I and Smitty had gone that first night, but also because…cheese.
Yum.
More than that, I’d said yes.
I’d said yes.
Without nerves coiling in my stomach, without my throat closing up and words stoppering up in the back of it, without worrying—too much, anyway—that there would be new people there I hadn’t met before.
Not Beth, who was lively and energetic and impossible not to like. I had met her a few times since she’d begun working for the team, as she, Pru, and Hazel were all very close and she visited often now that her two best friends lived in Baltimore.
But Monica was an unknown element.
Still, I’d been crushing the anxiety game of late.
It was time to keep working on it.
And if Monica was a troll, at least I would get fried cheese.
Win-win.
Smiling as I closed my office door, I flicked on the lights and…stopped, my breath catching. Because my office wasn’t empty. Wait—no. It was empty of people, save me. It just had several non-human occupants making themselves at home on my desk.
A pair of plants.
The same flowers from the barbecue several weeks before.
“Oh, Smitty,” I whispered, realizing that he must have planted one for me that day and kept it alive for me ever since.
I moved across the room, tracing my finger lightly over the velvet soft red petals. It was brightly colored and cheerful…and had a note tucked in beneath the leaves. Laughter bubbled up and out of my mouth when I realized the first one was Smitty’s pot, and the note was instructions on the care and feeding of Bailey, his flower.
There was a postscript at the bottom, though, with an arrow to turn over the page.
And on the back was a cute drawing of the pair of us in cartoon form, hearts overhead, and the words,
Because sometimes winning means getting a little help.
“Aw, fuck,” I breathed, my heart squeezing hard, a spark of something big and life-changing settling into my soul. I sat in that feeling for a second, sat in how good it made me feel, and then I set the drawing down and moved to the other flower, seeing that this one’s name, written in glitter pen on the side of the ceramic pot, was Donner.
The man wasn’t subtle.
But he was fucking wonderful.
Hands shaking, I reached for the package, unwrapped the cheerfully printed paper, opened the box, and smiled, my eyes prickling I was so touched.
A tiny unicorn sat inside, its expression a little grumpy, but in a cute way.
The mane was rainbow-colored fluff, threaded with glittery gold and silver strands, and its fur was so, so soft. Pulling it out, I cuddled it close, and noticed a piece of paper beneath, more of his slanted, compact writing scrawled across the page.
