Chapter 3
Every single time he ordered, she asked. Every single time, she hoped he would finally let go of whatever phantom was choking him, just enough to put words to it. She wanted him to say a name. A wife? A fiancée? A lover who had slipped away before they could make a promise?
“Sawyer,” she began carefully, keeping her eyes on the page. “Would you… would you like to write a note this time? Even if it’s just an initial. Or a date. The shop has handmade pressed-flower cards from the stationer on Elm. They’re very simple.”
Sawyer didn't answer right away.
The silence dragged out, punctuated only by the rhythmic dripping of water from the shop’s awning onto the iron grating outside.
When she finally looked up, his face was like stone. But his eyes were dark, burning with an emotion so raw, so violently suppressed, that it made the breath catch in her throat. He was staring at her mouth. For one terrifying, incandescent second, she thought he was going to lean across the two feet of floorboards and take her face in his hands.
His chest rose and fell in a slow, controlled expansion.
“No card,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, rough around the edges. “Never a card.”
“It helps sometimes,” she whispered, unable to help herself. “To write it down. When Julian… when Julian died, the first six months, I couldn’t even say his name out loud. It felt like if I said it, the air in the room would disappear. But writing it on the invoice for the headstone… seeing the letters carved into something real… it made the dying stop being a secret.”
Sawyer looked at her, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.
“I am not like you, Amalia,” he said quietly. “You look at something broken and you want to coax it back to life. You think everything can be arranged into something beautiful if you just trim the stems and change the water.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” she asked, gesturing toward the empty vase on the bench. “Buying flowers every three months for someone you can’t let go of?”
A strange, humorless smile touched the corner of his lips. It was the saddest expression she had ever seen on a living man.
“You have no idea what I’m doing,” he murmured.
“Then tell me.”
“I’m buying flowers, Amalia. That’s all.”
The wall slammed back down between them, heavy and impenetrable. The corporate attorney was back, smooth, polished, and unreachable.
He reached into his pocket, drew out a small silver card case, and extracted his business card, setting it beside her order book.
“The courier will arrive on Saturday at ten in the morning,” he said, his tone brisk, professional, entirely devoid of the heat that had flickered between them moments earlier. “Call my office if there is an issue with the Dutch auction. My direct line is on the card.”
“I know your direct line, Sawyer.”
“Call it anyway. Don’t wait until five o’clock to let me know the rent is due.”
Amalia felt the hot sting of tears at the back of her eyes, born of fatigue and the sudden, cold distance he had put between them. She blinked them back fiercely. She would not cry in front of him. She had too much pride for that.
“I don’t want your charity,” she said, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. “I appreciate the order. I appreciate you handling Geller. But this is a business, Sawyer. I am not your pro bono case.”
Sawyer paused. His hand was on the brass handle of the front door, the collar of his coat turned up against the cold.
He looked back over his shoulder. In the amber glow of the shop’s lamps, his eyes looked impossibly deep, almost black, and for a fleeting moment, the armor slipped. The longing in his face was so absolute, so devastating, that it made her chest ache.
“If you were a charity case, Mrs. Redford,” he said softly, “I wouldn't have to spend three months waiting for an excuse to stand in your doorway.”
Before she could process the words, the latch clicked.
The brass bell chimed once, high and sharp, as the heavy wooden door swung open and shut.
Sawyer Vance stepped out into the pouring rain, his dark figure cutting through the gray mist of the street, leaving behind nothing but the cold draft of the winter wind, the smell of freesia, and the sound of Amalia’s own heart hammer-striking against her ribs.
March arrived not like a lion, but like a slow, damp rot.
The winter snow had melted into soot-colored slush along Market Street, pooling against the cracked sandstone foundations of Redford Botanicals. With the thaw came the groaning of the building’s ancient cast-iron plumbing. By the second week of the month, the overhead copper pipe connecting the shop’s rear conditioning sink to the basement boiler began to weep—first in rhythmic drops that chimed against a galvanized bucket, then in a hot, steady trickle that filled the back room with the sulfurous stink of stagnant rust.
Amalia stood on the second rung of a rickety wooden stepladder, a rusty pipe wrench clamped in both hands, her hair twisted up into a frantic knot held by two wooden florist picks. The sleeve of her oversized flannel shirt was soaked to the elbow in warm, mineral-heavy water.
“Turn, you miserable piece of junk,” she grunted, putting her entire ninety-eight pounds of leverage against the handle.
The rusted coupling didn't budge. Instead, the wrench slipped with a violent, metallic screech, scraping her knuckles against the rough brick and sending a fresh spurt of scalding water splashing down the bib of her apron.
She gasped, stumbling back on the rung, her heel catching the edge of an empty terracotta flat. The ladder swayed.
A hand gripped her waist from behind—wide, unyielding, fingers splaying flat across her ribcage through the flannel.
Her breath hitched as she was lifted bodily down from the rung and set onto the dry fir floorboards before her feet even registered the fall. She spun around, heart thrashing against her sternum like a bird trapped in a chimney.
Sawyer stood there, towering over her in the cramped, humid utility corridor.
He had already shed his heavy wool coat, draping it heedlessly over a sack of potting perlite. His charcoal suit vest was unbuttoned, his silk tie loosened an inch at the throat, and the cuffs of his crisp white poplin shirt were folded twice back over his forearms, exposing lean muscle, dark hair, and the sharp angle of his wrist bones.
“You’re going to break your neck, Amalia,” he said calmly. His voice was lower than usual, thick with the damp air.
“What are you—how did you get in?” she stammered, clutching her bruised wrist against her chest. “The deadbolt was turned.”
“The latch didn’t catch. The frame has swelled from the damp.” He reached out, his thumb catching the edge of her chin to tilt her face upward into the glare of the bare overhead bulb. His eyes swept her forehead, checking for impact, before dropping to her hand. “You’re bleeding.”
