And I matched him smile for smile.

He brought donuts from Blanche’s every morning. I brought us leftovers to share for lunch. We ordered dinner every night and ate sitting on top of the worktables with dangling feet and endless conversation. And then everyone would leave, and it would just be me and Luke.

I looked forward to that part of the day from the second my eyes opened in the morning. The sound of the bolt on the front door sliding home was like Pavlov’s bell, indicating that dinner was served in the form of a Luke Bennet buffet.

Somehow, he had become a fixture in every meaningful part of my day. And I didn’t hate it. I didn’t hate it so much, it scared me.

He is not your boyfriend. He is your fling. He is your friend. Don’t you dare expect anything beyond that.

This, I told myself, was why it was fine that Luke was about to come to my house for the first time in a decade. Friends went to friends’ houses. They chatted with friends’ dads. It was all normal, totally normal and exactly why I shouldn’t be super fucking nervous.

Silently, I followed my friend, who I saw naked every day, out the door to the shop—which, by the way, he opened without incident despite the haul in his arms. Once I was past him, he locked up, pulling the grate down and locking it too, one-handed.

Showoff.

I smiled mischievously at him.

When he stood and caught the expression, he answered it with a matching smile before stealing a kiss.

“Lead the way,” he said.

So I did.

“Can you believe the crowd today?” he asked, his voice touched with wonder and that smile. “We should rename Sundays the Garden Annihilator.”

I laughed. “Thank God we have a week to replenish before we do it again. I thought maybe we should move the new installations to Saturdays, get the whole weekend crowd, but I don’t know if the greenhouse would survive.”

“Never in the history of Longbourne have we had such a wonderful problem. Thanks to you.”

“Psh, you’re the one who built me twelve ladders last week.”

He shrugged one massive shoulder. “Half of them I scavenged.”

“Oh, sorry. You made six ladders with your bare hands. Totally normal, everyday stuff any old joe would know how to do.”

“YouTube is a powerful tool, Tess. Anyway, it was your idea to set them up and display flowers all over them. It looks like something out of a magazine. It’s no wonder we had to close early.”

“It was either that or have nothing to offer but potted succulents.”

“Hey, we had some ivy too. Honestly, you could have made bouquets out of dying roses, and I bet people would have bought them. Marcus said we should raise prices. Supply and demand or something.”

I frowned. “I don’t know if I like that.”

“Oh, don’t worry—Mom almost cranked open his mouth and climbed into his throat. I’d say there’s very little danger of prices changing anytime soon.”