But not to Gabe. They’d been secret friends for three summers and then things had changed. Angi had changed, at least outwardly. She’d grown several inches and managed to curb her sweet tooth. One of her brother Marco’s girlfriends had shown her how to use styling products to tame her frizzy black hair and taught her how to pluck her brows. Angi had gone from ugly duckling to swan over the course of a few months. The popular girls—queen bees by anyone’s standards—had finally accepted her.

And she’d been a jerk of the worst sort to her summer friend.

He’d had the last laugh though when he’d revealed her desperation to be part of the in clique and had inadvertently managed to convince her not-so-true friends that Angi was just a hanger-on. It had taken her years to live down the reputation of a try-hard within the ruthless social circles of a small-town high school, and she had never quite regained her footing. She still wasn’t sure where she fit in.

She’d thought they were even, wanted to believe it. Needed to convince herself that she hadn’t really hurt him back then, and he’d just been another callous boy, careless with the heart she tried so hard to protect.

But the pain she’d seen on his face when he looked at his grandmother had been almost visceral, and it had taken all her will not to reach out and try to comfort him the way her mother had done.

It also didn’t help that for the past few afternoons, her son had sneaked away from the restaurant to spend time with Gabe at the flower shop.

Andrew was a wily one, and he’d left sweet notes to her, even though she’d told him not to go. Threatened him with losing his video game privileges and dessert for a week. Nothing seemed to deter him, and Angi was too busy to keep her eye on him constantly. Plus, it would make her look like a paranoid fool if she resorted to keeping Andrew under lock and key. After the first visit, Drew had assured her that Gabe had changed his mind and didn’t mind the company.

Angi found it hard to believe, but the next afternoon, her clever son had come home with a note written in a scrawling, masculine hand.

Your kid is fine with me.

Unless you’ve got a problem.

One that you care to discuss.

If you aren’t too busy with Artie.

G.

“See, Mom,” Andrew had said proudly. “I’m welcome. I help him. Gabe needs a lot of help. Who’s Artie?”

“No one,” she murmured as she racked her brain to figure out why her son was so drawn to Gabe. Andrew had never shown much interest in plants or flowers, anything outdoors for that matter. But when she pressed her boy for answers, he went vague and evasive.

“It’s not as boring as the restaurant, and it doesn’t smell like spaghetti sauce.”

A point she couldn’t argue.