Mary lost every word in her head as one of the most devastatingly beautiful men she’d ever seen in her life walked past the front window of her shop. Tall, wiry and broad-shouldered, he had light brown hair and was wearing a construction vest to boot. He looked like he’d walked out of a porn that Mary herself had cast. The man did a double take at Mary checking him out through the shop window, shooting her a cheeky grin as he walked.

Damn. “Better than a shot of Red Bull,” Mary muttered to herself.

“Do you mean the red boxes filled with the fake grass?” Kylie called.

Setting the paper flowers down in a heap in the window, Mary walked back to the storeroom to help out Kylie. After half a minute of searching, Mary found what she was looking for.

“Ah,” Kylie said drily. “You meant the blue boxes filled with the mason jars. How could I have possibly misunderstood?”

Mary laughed. “Sorry. Got distracted by a hottie walking past.”

Though there was more than twenty years of an age difference between them, Mary and Kylie were closer to friends than they were boss and employee. When Kylie had come to live with her half brother, Tyler Leshuski, one of Mary’s best friends in the world, around last Thanksgiving, Mary had offered her a job in the shop. Both as a way to discreetly keep an eye on her when Tyler was at work and as a way to get to know Kylie. She hadn’t expected the kid to be so freaking helpful. Seriously, Kylie worked less than fifteen hours a week and got more done than Mary’s other two employees combined.

Mary’s phone dinged in her pocket and she tugged it out to make sure it wasn’t one of her artisans contacting her. It was just an email from her mother. The subject line was “Time Sensitive, Please Read Immediately.” Mary clicked into the email and was surprised when her molars didn’t crack down their meridians. It was an article about the drastic drop in a woman’s fertility after the age of thirty. Apparently her mother meant the phrase time sensitive in the cosmic sense. She deleted the email without reading the article.

The front bell on the shop jingled and Kylie peeked her head out the storeroom door. She ducked back in. “Was your hottie wearing a construction vest?”

“Eep! Is he out there?” All thoughts of her meddling mother evaporated away.

“Sure is. I’m gonna...grab lunch for us.” Kylie scampered toward the back door.

“Charge it to the company card!” Mary hollered before she smoothed her hair, sat a box of the jars on her hip and left the storeroom with a big old smile on her face. “Hi there, can I help you with anything?”