I propped open the cooler door and knelt down, towel in hand as I inspected the damage. Nothing had broken, though some of the flowers had been smashed in the fall. I pushed up to stand with a sigh of my own and began hauling the damaged arrangements out of the cooler, fixing them up as best I could.

Tess scowled at me from across the room. I smirked back at her, unfazed, if not a little guilty.

Really, very little could faze me. It happened to be one of my special gifts along with the unfastening of a bra with two fingers, making a woman orgasm in under two minutes, and generally getting my way by sheer force of charm.

One of the few women immune to that charm was Tess Monroe.

Tess had been working for my mother since high school. Of course, that was back when we’d had half a dozen flower shops spread over lower Manhattan before the slow choke that brought on a retreat that left us with only the flagship store. Where Ivy was always up for a flirt, a laugh, and a subsequent romp behind the banana plants, Tess was her unamused, disapproving opposite. One of my particular joys in life was making her uncomfortable in the hopes she’d reveal a crack in the wall or the flesh of her soft little underbelly. I knew it was there—I’d seen her light and laughing and kind with literally everyone else. Once upon a time, we’d even been friends.

But now? My presence alone shot her hackles off her back faster than you could say Pass the peonies. And that drove me just a little bit crazy.

As I set the last vase on the table and turned for the cooler once more, I resolved to give grown-up Tess all of my grown-up charm.

While I mopped up the water, she worked behind me, the snap and click as she rearranged what I’d already arranged sharp and irritated. It was always like this with her, an impatient, intolerable sharing of space.

She was the literal worst person on earth for me to have inadvertently groped, and I had a feeling I’d be paying for that infraction for a good long while.

Tess didn’t let anything go easy.

When I finished with the cooler, I tossed the soaked towels in one of the waste buckets and wandered into the shop to gather the flowers needed to fix the bouquets. A few stems of sweet pea. A handful of lavender astilbe spires. Chestnut pods, green and furry. A bunch of craspedia, round and the color of sunshine. Dahlias, pink—no, peach—and white. And then I made my way back to her as she fussed over the vases.

Her eyes narrowed as she cataloged my wares—looking for a mistake, no doubt. When she didn’t find one, she let out a huff.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, picking up the sweet peas and submerging them in the bowl of water next to her to trim the stems.