Page 2 of Silver Sanctuary
Hawk stared at him, his mouth hanging open.
“I can almost guarantee that sentence has never come out of a Navy SEAL’s mouth before.”
“Yeah, well, we aren’t in the SEALs anymore, are we? Besides, you don’t hear Mae, or Lily, or Sloane complaining that I’m bringing them flowers every week, do you? You’d think you guys would learn that if you want peace and happiness, you leave little treats for the women you care about.”
Nash was grateful to be living the dream with his buddies after they decided to leave their careers in the military behind. It certainly helped that their former team lead, Sebastian Montgomery, was now a billionaire businessman, and employed the rest of the team within the new defense company he’d built. The whole team—Gunner, Stone, Hawk, Gage, and Nash—had all recently settled down in Silver Springs, opening a security consultation business that alsohoused the only commercial gym in town. Hawk’s sister, Mae, handled the administrative tasks there, and also at their brand new, state-of-the-art training facility for Special Ops teams and law enforcement agencies that they were now running. She was a firecracker, and Nash wasn’t lying about trying to stay on her good side.
Lily Brooks and Sloane Donovan were a different story. Lily, Gunner’s wife, was a sweetheart. He often thought about the first time he met her—just a few weeks after she had her daughter—and how she’d still taken the time to bring him his favorite childhood treat. And Sloane… well, the small town psychologist was dating their other business partner, Gage Walker. The two of them had survived something truly awful just a few months before. It fucking ripped Nash’s heart out that he was supposed to have their backs, and he failed to keep them safe. The scar on his forehead was a good reminder of that, and the flowers? Well, he guessed they were the only way he could think to atone.
“Right. ‘Cause you care so much about the girls that you spend your lunch every Monday picking out flowers, bringing them back, tending to them all week, and making room for new ones to start the cycle all over again,” Stone teased.
“Fuck off. So I have a hobby…”
“Yeah, right.” Hawk laughed as he turned to walk down the hallway back to his office. “Tell your cute little hobby I say ‘hi’ today when you go over to Petals to flirt with her… I mean,when you get more flowers for the office.”
“Don’t you dare laugh,” Nash warned Stone as soon as Hawk was out of earshot. “Or I’ll tell him about you and Mae.”
Stone held his hands up by his face. “Damn, buddy. Don’t worry. No laughter here.”
Nash looked down at his watch. God, he was antsy. There was a pile of work waiting for him at his desk, and that wouldtake well into the afternoon to finish. But he normally left around lunchtime on Mondays—yes, to get flowers for the office. Maybe the guys were right. The truth was, he did it to have a little time to flirt with the sweet single mom who ran the shop.
Would she be worried when he didn’t stop in? Fuck. He thought he had a cute little plan in place since he knew it was her daughter’s first day of school… but what if she spent all day worried he wouldn’t be in to make his usual purchase. She never mentioned business being slow, but in a small town, it was easy to see that the shop was struggling.
People avoided her shop. People avoidedher. Unless they were the assholes who wanted to bring up her family’s history in the town. Those people seemed to never leave her alone.
Christ, take a breath, would ya?
Nash was working himself up over something silly. He’d see her later that afternoon, once school was out and he knew she had a chance to get her daughter back to the shop. Until then, he’d tackle his mountain of paperwork.
“Well? How was it?” Lacy asked as Embrie climbed into the back of their car. It must have been a busy day, her hair was sticking out in every direction and her ponytail had fallen about halfway down her head. “Do you love your classroom? Your teacher? Did you make any friends? How was your lunch?”
“Mom!” Embrie sighed as she plopped down on the seat.
“What? I’m so excited to hear about it all! I was going to wait until we got home, but I’m making tacos for dinner tonight to celebrate!”
“You are?” Embrie launched herself—backpack and all—into Lacy. The half forward, half backwards hug was awkward, but she’d never deny her sweet girl a cuddle.
“Yup. So spill before we get back to Petals and have to close up to get to your doctor’s appointment.”
“It was good.” Her backpack hit the floor with a thud. “Ms. Tillman seems really nice, and Mr. Ike sat with me during lunch!”
“Mr. Ike?”
“He’s the janitor, but he also works in the cafeteria as a monitor. I didn’t have anyone to sit with, but he let me talk to him about the Hubble Telescope and asked me a bunch of questions about it. And when our class got together with the class from across the hall, I met a girl who played with me during outdoor time. She likes math and science just like me.”
“Brie, that’s amazing.” Her heart clenched at the idea of her daughter eating lunch alone, but the fact that a kind adult had stepped in to not make her feel bad about it gave Lacy such hopes that things might be different for Embrie in Silver Springs than they were for her growing up.
They continued talking all the way back to Petals—Embrie filled her in on the rest of her day and all the nine-year-old gossip. How the popular girls all had glittery strands clipped in their hair, and how they all seemed to share the same lip gloss. Embrie had immediately agreed with Lacy that the practice of sharing lip gloss wasn’t actually cool, just a surefire way to catch the flu as soon as winter rolled in.
Lacy unlocked the store door and walked through, heading to the back counter where she’d left her purse. She flipped through a pile of paperwork on the counter until… yes! There were the forms she needed for Embrie’s physical.
“It would be nice to have friends, though. Last year was tough.” Embrie moved a small arrangement from the display table in the center of the shop to the window. “I think these should be over here, Mama. They’re so pretty.”
“Thanks, ladybug. And I know last year was tough. And the year before that. But we left all that back in West Virginia, right? We’re going to have a great year now, and I’m so happy you had such a great first day.”
The door to the shop opened, and Lacy smiled as butterflies took flight in her belly. That was the way it always was since the very first time he’d walked into the shop a few months ago. Nash walked in and the weight of unrelenting worry eased from her shoulders just a bit.
The anxious feeling of not seeing him at lunchtime finally released its hold on her. Each and every Monday—usually on his lunch break, at eleven thirty—Nash would stroll into her shop, flirt a little, and buy some flowers. It was like clock work. Which was why her heart fell when he hadn’t shown up at his regular time.
