"Good. So it's you and me."
"It's you and me," she repeated.
"I have to be on-site at seven."
Here it comes, she thought. Early day tomorrow, honey. It was great. I'll call you.
"Any objection if I stay, since I'd need to get up at about five?"
Her lips curved. "No objection."
JACK DISCOVERED WHEN THEY FINALLY SLIPPED TOWARD SLEEP that Emma was a snuggler. The sort of woman who burrowed in and wrapped around.
He was generally a man who liked his space. Space kept a man from getting tangled up-literally and metaphorically.
But he found, under the circumstances, he didn't really mind.
She fell asleep like a stone dropped in a pond. Up and moving one minute, submerged the next. He was a drifter, with the movie reel of the day's events and the previews of the next running through his mind as his body settled down.
So he drifted, with Emma's head nestled in the curve of his shoulder, her arm flung around his waist, and her leg twined between his.
He woke, in nearly the same position, about six hours later to the beep of his cell phone's alarm. And as he woke to the scent of her hair, she was his first conscious thought.
His attempt to ease away without waking her resulted in causing her to snuggle closer. Even as his body cheerfully responded, he tried to nudge her away.
She said, "Hmmmm?"
"Sorry. I've got to get going."
"Time's it?"
"Just after five."
She sighed again, then lifted her mouth to brush his lips with hers. "I've got about an hour. Too bad you don't."
He'd managed to shift her so they were front to-front, and her hand was making slow, lazy circles over his ass.
"There are two things I'm finding really convenient at the moment."
"What?"
"Being the boss, so I don't get fired for being late. Even more, my own habit of keeping spare work clothes in the trunk. If I leave right from here, I've got most of an hour."
"Convenient. Want coffee?"
"That, too," he said, and rolled on top of her.
CHAPTER TEN
WHILE TIFFANY PROCESSED ANOTHER DELIVERY, EMMA COMPLETED the third hand-tied bouquet. She loved the combination of frilly tulips with the ranunculus and hydrangea. And though wiring the tiny crystals among the blooms abused her fingers, she knew she'd been right to suggest it. As she had with the strips of lace, the studs of pearls securing the stems.
With the steps, the details, the precision required, even with her experience each bouquet took nearly an hour to create. Wasn't she lucky, she thought, that she enjoyed every minute of it?
There wasn't a better job in the world, as far as she was concerned. And just now, as she began the painstaking assembly of the next bouquet, with Tiffany working quietly at the other end of the counter, with music and perfume winding in the air, she considered herself the luckiest woman on the planet.
She turned the flowers in her hand, adding tulips at varying heights, adjusting, interspersing the ranunculus to create the shape she wanted. She added the beads, pleased with the touch of glitter, and time clicked away.
"Do you want me to start on the centerpieces?"
"Hmm?" Emma glanced up. "Oh. Sorry, off in another world. What did you say?"
"It's really beautiful. All the textures." As she admired the work, Tiffany gulped down water. "You've got one more to go after that. I'd start it, but I'm not as good at the hand tied. I can get the centerpieces started though. I've got the list and the design."
"Go ahead." Emma used a cable tie to secure the stems, clipped the excess plastic with her wire cutters. "Tink should be here . . . Well, she's already late, so she should be here." She exchanged cutters for clippers and began trimming the stems. "If you take the centerpieces, I'll get her started on the standing arrangements."
Emma wrapped the stems in lace, anchored the lace with pearl corsage pins. Once the bouquet was in its holding vase and in the cooler, she washed her hands-again-rubbed in Neosporin-again-then set to work on the final hand-tied.
When Tink wandered in, guzzling from a bottle of Mountain Dew, Emma merely lifted her eyebrows.
"You're late," Tink said, "blah, blah, blah. I'll stay late if you need me." And yawned. "Didn't get to bed-well, to sleep-until after three. This guy? Jake? He's Iron Man, in all good ways. Then this morning . . ." She trailed off, blowing a streak of pink out of her eyes as she angled her head. "Somebody else got lucky last night. Jack, right? Hey, Jake and Jack. Cool."