Page 47 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

Isobel went back to studying the red roses before she clipped another for Mrs. Pan. I could tell she was trying to pick the best, and that made my chest expand. She had such a good heart.

Then she said conversationally, “You know there’s no such thing as black with blue-tipped roses, right?”

My mouth sagged open, before I blinked and shook my head, unable to believe what I’d just heard. “Say what again?”

“Roses only come in shades of white, red, yellow and purples or variations and mixes between those. Anything else is artificially created.”

Still slowly shaking my head back and forth in adamant denial, I said, “No…no, that can’t be right.”

My absolute unwillingness to believe such a thing amused her. “It is.” She clipped another rose for Mrs. Pan.

I gaped at her. “But…” Spinning wildly, I found a rose that was an exception to her rule. “There!” I pointed. “You have a black rose, right there.”

Her lips tightened as she held in a smile. “Look again, Hollander.”

I stormed to the rosebush in question and knelt to its level before the redness of it began to show through. “I’ll be damned,” I murmured in awe. “It’s not black; it’s just a dark, dark red.”

When she laughed for the second time in the last minute, getting a kick out of my shock, I looked over at her. “Wait, then…those seeds?” I whirled to take in the buds sprouting from the tiny starter pods.

“Whatever they are, they aren’t midnight supreme roses, that’s for sure,” Isobel admitted, “because there’s no such thing as a black and blue rose.”

I gulped, shocked and mortified that my gift had been…it’d been… “But the lady who worked in the flower shop said…she said…”

Sending me a wince of genuine sympathy, Isobel murmured, “Whatever she said was a scam. She had to have known black and blue roses weren’t possible.”

“But…” I shook my head, feeling like a big gullible idiot. “I read all these rose books on roses, and I didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t either. Maybe—”

“Wow,” Isobel murmured, watching me kind of sadly. “You just can’t believe anything bad about anyone, can you?” It looked as if she felt sorry for me—me—so I scowled defensively.

“She might not have known,” I cried. “She was so nice and helpful, and—” I threw up my hand, remembering. “She gave me a discount. What kind of scammer gives a discount?”

Isobel wrinkled her nose before saying, “Probably all of them, to convince suckers like you that they’re kind and benevolent souls.”

I scowled at her moodily, wanting to argue my case. But there wasn’t much to say except, yeah, I was a total idiot sucker who’d gotten taken in by a freaking scammer. I hissed out a huff. “I can’t believe this.” My gaze strayed to the baby rose plants. “I wonder what color they’ll turn out, then? Or if they’re even rose plants.”

“Oh, they’re definitely roses,” she assured me. “But your guess is as good as mine on the color.”

Reaching out, I just barely grazed one of the new leaves with my fingertip. “I guess our babies are going to grow up and surprise us all.” Grinning tenderly, I added, “I kind of like the sound of that. You grow big and strong, baby roses. Show the world you’re better than any fake midnight supreme rose bush.”

I glanced toward Isobel to share the joke with her, but she was gazing at me with the strangest expression. “What?” I asked, immediately reviewing what I’d just said in my head. Yeah, it’d been strange, but all just teasing fun, until I remembered the words, our babies, as if we were their parents.

An immediate heat stirred through me. The idea of raising anything with Isobel, even just a rose, was intimate and bonding. I gazed back at her, wondering if she felt the same connection stirring between us.

Face flushing, she cleared her throat and suddenly looked away, focusing on the roses in her hands. “Get your ass over here, Hollander,” she said, “and help me pick off the leaves and thorns. This was your idea.”

“Right.” I cleared my throat and made my way to her. “Do we really have to take off the thorns?”

She sent me a look as if that were a stupid question. “We want it to appear as if he really likes her, right? Taking off the thorns is a sign he’s serious. If he’s willing to go through all the work of stripping the stems to protect her valuable fingers from getting pricked—”

“Okay, I’m sold,” I told her, lifting a hand. “The thorns gotta go.”

“Here.” She held out the roses she’d already picked out and plucked. “There’s another set of gloves in the—”

But I was already reaching out with my bare hand, and yep, pricked myself right in the thumb with a damn thorn. “Ouch! Shit.”

I plunged the injured appendage into my mouth and sucked the blood away. Isobel sighed as if dealing with a misbehaving child. “Gloves,” she repeated. “Right there.”

I fetched the gloves, but soon found out they weren’t my friends either. I had no idea how Isobel worked with these clunky things on. I couldn’t get a good grip on the flower because it felt as if I was crushing it if I held it too hard, and it was damn near impossible to slip gloved fingers into the handles of the scissors and then get them to work properly. I glanced repeatedly toward Isobel to see how in the world she was handling them with such aplomb, but it was something I just couldn’t master. I was more of a hands-on kind of guy, I guess.

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