16. Wildflower

16

Wildflower

I Don't Mind The Mess

"Are you sure that's necessary?" Leo eyes the boxes in my hands as we stare each other down from the foyer of the house.

"I don't want people not to like me."

"Everyone is going to love you," Darby says behind him.

"That's not historically accurate."

She rolls her eyes as she brushes past us and out the door. Construction on Honeysuckle Florals is coming to a close, which means it's time that Darby gets to work on the decorating aspect of the flower shop. She's dropping Leo and me off at work for my first day, and then she's going out with Monica to get some inspiration on paint and wallpaper.

"Because you never allow people to get to know you, Dal. Now, let's go!" she shouts from the driveway.

"This is how I get people to know me!" I call back.

"By dumping your leftovers on them?" My soon-to-be brother-in-law raises a brow as he pushes off the doorway and follows his fiancée out to his car.

"Rude."

I mean, sure, it's a half-eaten cake, a pan of lemon bars, and eleven of the twelve chocolate chip cookies I whipped up last night. In my defense, the reason there isn't a full dozen is because Leo ate one for breakfast this morning.

I carry the boxes out to the car and climb into the back of Leo's old, red Mustang. I cherish the sea breeze whipping through my hair as Darby drives us the two minutes it takes to get down the hill their house rests upon to the boardwalk.

In another life, I'd own a convertible.

My sister drops us off on the backside of the surf shop, and I follow Leo up the staircase into the Pacific Shores Small Business Initiative offices. "I'm nervous," I whisper.

"You're going to be great." He laughs at me as he unlocks the doors and steps inside, flipping on the lights. "Plus, I told everyone to come in a little later this morning so you don't feel bum-rushed on your first day."

"Thank you," I sigh.

Apparently, Leo and Everett only have three staff members under them anyway. Adam, Leo's assistant who's kind of known as a Jack off All Trades. He picks up shifts at Heathen's, manages Leo's schedule, and runs errands around the office. Then, there is Scarlett, their Event Planner. She works with the city on community outreach and services and acts as a liaison between the local government and the small businesses. Finally, they have Jeremiah, their intern. He's a law student who helps the team look over contracts, negotiations, and general operations.

My responsibility will be to help create marketing plans for local businesses, as well as the initiative itself, and assist Scarlett with event promotion and advertising.

It's not entirely different from what I did working for my father, though, instead of a company led by a corrupt criminal, I'm doing something to actually benefit where I'm living. I wouldn't say I'm passionate about marketing, but I'm fairly decent at it. I majored in graphic design in college, so marketing felt like a natural path to that.

In reality, I'm not entirely sure what I'm passionate about. I love baking, but it has never been anything more than a hobby and a stress reliever.

As I enter my office, I remember for the first time in two weeks my monstera. Fully expecting a dead plant in the corner of the room, I instead find it thriving, long, swiss cheese looking leaves pointed toward the morning sun filtering through the window.

"Everett watered it for you while you took that extra week off," Leo says from behind me, as if he heard my smile.

"Oh," is my response as my eyes flicker throughout the room, my mind reeling from the man's thoughtfulness that I'm still not used to. I take in the desk to the right of the door and the filing cabinet next to it. Across from it on the other side of the office is a small meeting table that fits four chairs. Directly in front of me is a window that spans the length of the room, my plant in the corner beneath it.

And on my desk, there's a vase of bright red flowers. Dahlias. My breath catches as I step up to it, running my fingers through the soft petals. A sweet, light, floral scent filters up to me as I pluck the card that's pinned to one of the stems, assuming it's from my sister.

Leo laughs to himself as a surprised gasp escapes me when I unfold the slip of paper and read the note attached.

Good luck on your first day. I know you'll do great, Wildflower.

P.S. don't forget our lunch date. I'll see you at noon.

-Boyfriend

"Now that Honeysuckle is well underway, we need to focus on what comes next. We still have two vacant suites here on the strip. Do you have any proposals that have caught your eye?" Scarlett asks.

Leo, leaning back in his chair and bouncing a small basketball off the door, glances over at her. "Only person who applied in the last six months was Bill Turner. He proposed moving the barber shop to the boardwalk, but I didn't feel it was the best location for it. The boardwalk should be more focused on tourism. Locals love Bill, but not everyone decides they need a haircut while they're on vacation."

"Yeah," Scarlett breathes. "True."

"Haven't had anyone else apply."

Scarlett raises her brown eyes to me, long braids falling into her face. She brushes them behind her shoulder as she smiles, and I wonder if how overwhelmed I am is written all over me.

"Let's set up a meeting next week to talk through a campaign for advertising the two open business suites here and see if we can get at least a handful of proposals submitted by the end of the year."

"Yeah. Of course." I jot it down on the legal pad sitting in front of me. I have a lot of notes written across it, but I have a feeling when I go back to look later, I'll have no idea what any of them mean.

I have three meetings set for next week with small business owners to help them create marketing plans and set up their social media accounts.

"You're doing great," Scarlett says reassuringly.

"Thank you." I attempt to smile back at her.

It's weird working for an initiative that's so small. Nobody has held my position before, so there isn't really anyone around to show me the ropes. I'm being given the freedom to make it my own, and I know that Leo trusts me completely to do the right thing. It's the kind of freedom I've always wanted, but I'm not sure what to make of it now that I have it.

"After lunch, you and I can meet with Jeremiah and go over some of the contracts. Every business is handled individually based on their needs, so we'll make sure you're familiar with everyone before you begin meeting them," Scarlett says.

I nod, adding that to my notes. "What time?" I ask. "I have a…" I shake my head as Leo eyes me knowingly. "I have somewhere I have to go at noon, but–"

Scarlett scrolls through the tablet in her hand. "How about two? Jeremiah has an opening then. I'll put it on your calendar."

"Sweet." Leo sits up and claps his hands together. "Are we good then? I've got a hot blonde I need to see about a thing."

He's definitely talking about fucking my sister right now.

I roll my eyes and scoff. Scarlett chuckles to herself as she leaves.

Leo winks at me as he strolls out of my office and shuts the door behind him.

About fifteen minutes later, I hear a bellowing laugh from the main workspace. "No, I'm at the shop all day today. I'm just taking a break to have lunch with a pretty girl."

I don't know who he's talking to, but a moment later, there's a light knock on my office door. "You knock as if I can't hear you squawking out there," I call as I stand from my desk.

The door swings open, and I'm met with that playful, wicked smirk. Brown eyes glitter at me beneath thick brows, and full lips invite me in with that smile behind his trimmed and manicured beard. Tattooed arms cross at his chest as he casually leans against the doorway.

He roams the length of my body, eyes snagging on the form-fitting black skirt that runs from just above my knee to my waist, the white blouse I have tucked into it, and the black heels adorning my feet. "You look ravishing, Wildflower."

I try to fight the smile that wants to bloom at his words, but I can't help it. My cheeks flush, and I duck my head to hide it. I swipe my purse off my desk as I brush past him and out the door. He follows close behind, that warm, reassuring hand on the small of my back like he held me at the beach yesterday.

"Thank you for the flowers," I murmur abashedly. "They're beautiful, but you didn't have to do that."

"You're right. I didn't," he says as we make our way down the staircase. "I wanted to. You can allow people to do things for you just because they want to, Dahlia."

I don't know how to respond to that, so I only nod.

"Have you eaten at Surfside Fish Co. yet?" he asks.

I shake my head. "I don't like fish."

He laughs. "They've got more than fish. Soups, salads, sandwiches, burgers. The best goddamn french fries I've ever had in my life."

"Okay." I chuckle. "That's fine. I can pay." It's the least I can do for him agreeing to be my fake boyfriend for the foreseeable future.

"You are not paying, Dahlia."

I scoff as we make our way down the boardwalk. "You can allow people to do things for you just because they want to, Everett ."

"Are you offering to pay because you want to, or because you feel like you should ?"

"I–" I pause. I mean, I'm not enthusiastic about spending money in any circumstance, really. I do feel like I should pay, but it's not like I don't want to, either. "I don't know. Both?"

He laughs as he guides me to the front entrance of the restaurant. "Look, I know the owner here, and it wouldn't be very boyfriend-like of me to make you pay for our first official date."

I roll my eyes. "Small town values."

"My small town values and your small town values are very different, I think. I'm not doing this because of a complex or because I think I'm superior to you. I was, however, raised to be a gentleman, and if my mother knew I was making her favorite girl pay for my meal?" He lets out a low whistle. "That would be the end of me, Wildflower. Then, you'd really be fucked."

I'm embarrassed by the cackle that escapes my throat, but the way his eyes light up in surprised amusement, eyes flaring with something like pride, diminishes it immediately.

We enter the restaurant, and the hostess, of course, knows Everett by name. She blushes when he smiles at her, and I wonder if that's how everyone he meets reacts to his charm. I bite down the rush of nausea that floods my stomach as I think of all the pretty girls and boys Everett has smiled at the way he smiled at me that night.

I have no right to be jealous. At least, not in real life.

We're seated at a booth near the back, next to paneled windows that look out at the beach beyond us. "So what do we need to discuss, Wildflower?" Everett asks as we look over our menus.

"Jumping straight to the point, Ramos?"

He smiles to himself behind his menu. "I just want to get the heavy stuff over with quickly so I can actually enjoy a meal with you."

His eyes lift to mine just in time to see my face fall as those words settle over me.

"Okay." I swallow. "Well, I guess I just want to set the right expectations and boundaries. Rules. I feel like this has potential to get…messy."

"I don't mind the mess," he says.

"I'm sure you don't, but regardless…" I sigh. "How long do you reasonably expect this to go on? This shit with my dad could last…" I close my eyes. "A while. I don't want to hold you back from your own life indefinitely."

"I'm not going anywhere, Dal. My life is here. My businesses, my family. Whether I'm ‘dating,'" he holds up his fingers to gesture quotation marks, "you or not, I'm here anyway."

"Right. But what if you meet someone? I mean, you understand you've got to keep your hookups on the down low from here on out, right? I'll be honest, I don't pay a ton of attention to water sports, so I don't know what kind of status Leo really has, but I imagine that he's got some kind of media coverage interested in what he's up to, especially as we get closer to his wedding. That means it won't be hard for my dad to keep track of what we're all doing, and I can't have him finding photos or something of my boyfriend with another person."

I take a deep exhale after that long winded explanation. It almost feels as if I was fighting extra hard to justify why I'm not okay with Everett seeing other people, but I push that thought away.

He drops his menu to the table and lifts his head, brown eyes blazing through me so deeply, I think I feel them searing my skin. "I wouldn't worry about that if I were you."

The intensity in his face makes me not want to question him, so I decide to take his word for it for now. "Okay," I drawl. "Can you keep giving Lou surf lessons?"

"Of course," he says immediately.

"She wants to play soccer too. Would you come to games every once in a while?"

"I'll come to all of them." He looks over the menu again.

"Alright. And what do you need me to do?"

He pauses for a moment, chewing on his lip. "You only need this arrangement around cameras, but I kind of need it…everywhere. I need the people around town, the ones who've been here years and know my parents—the businesses—to see I've settled down. I need them to believe that when they take their car into my shop, or they come to Heathen's to buy a new board, that they're supporting a family business. We've always been known as that, and I think I've ruined it." His jaw tightens, and his eyes drop. Guilt coats his words. "It turns out people don't want to support a twenty-something bachelor who treats the world like his own personal playground and doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself as much as they want to support a man who's working to provide for his family."

"I can't imagine anyone thinking that of you, Everett."

"According to my father," he scoffs, " and my brother, that's exactly what people around here think of me."

"Leo said that to you?"

"Not in those words, exactly," he murmurs. "But yeah, especially now that he's settling down himself. It's like the same expectations are extended to me. When he was single and fucking around with socialites, it made him a god around here, so I don't think people cared so much about what I was doing. Now, suddenly, he's engaged, and the world has flipped on its axis."

"That's not fair of him to put those kinds of expectations on you just because his life has changed."

Everett shrugs. "I don't know if they're expectations, I just think there always has to be a gossip mill working overtime around here. He carried that weight for years. Except, even when he was at the center of it, everything was kind of okay. He could fuck around and act like a bachelor because he was also setting records, getting rich, and appearing on magazine covers. All the single women in town secretly hoped they could change him, and all the older people in town secretly hoped he'd fall for their daughters. Everyone has always wanted their piece of Leo Graham. There were limits they'd go to on what they'd say and how they'd treat him." He bites his lip. "It's not fair for him to take on that kind of pressure. I'm glad it died down now that he's engaged, but it just means that attention has turned on me, and I don't get the same allowances he did."

"I'm sorry you have that pressure now." I find myself reaching across the table and covering his hand with mine. "I'll do what I can to help alleviate that. I'll even let you buy me lunch, I guess."

A small smile ticks up at his mouth. "Thanks, Wildflower."

I smile back as the waitress arrives at our table and takes our orders. We talk about everything and nothing as we wait for our food. He tells me about his sister living in New York and the way she self-published her first few books while she was in college before having one take off online. That led to her landing an agent and a publishing deal at the age of twenty-one.

"So, yeah. Record-setting, future legend surfer for a brother, international best selling author for a sister. Two one-in-a-million kids in one family…and then me." He chuckles at the sentiment, but it's not real. He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

"What you do is important, Everett. You have not one, but two successful businesses, and you're not even thirty. You provide for your community and support your family. You should be proud." He only shrugs in response. "Your parents seem really proud of you, if that makes a difference."

"I know." He nods. "They're great, and I'm lucky. They don't compare us. I know enough about Darby's life to know that you two didn't have that. I'm sorry."

"You're right. I think…" I sigh. "I think that's why I'd rather it be my sister and I against the world than continue relying on people who manipulate us, who are only concerned about how our existence benefits them." I've never said this to anyone before. I don't know why I let my thoughts spill from my head when Everett's around. "I just want my daughter to have better than I did. That's the only thing that matters to me."

"She already has better. She has you, but it doesn't have to be you against the world anymore, Dal." He pushes his empty plate aside and places his hand over mine on the table like I did earlier. "You've got people here who want to support you. No ulterior motives. No manipulation. I know it's a foreign thing for you, so I get that it's hard to accept, but we truly just care."

"I don't trust anyone," I find myself whispering. My voice nearly cracks as I add, "I don't understand why anyone would ever want to be around me, support me—love me—if they didn't have to. I don't understand why anyone would choose it."

I watch his brown eyes ripple with devastation as he soaks that sentence in, and it's that exact moment that our waitress returns with the check. I pull my hand back from Everett's and quietly blink back tears as he pays. Once he finishes, he stands from the booth and extends a hand toward me. I take it silently as he leads me outside the restaurant, though instead of turning toward the surf shop, he takes me down onto the pier.

Sea breeze coats my face as birds chirp in the sky above us. The sun is high, piercing the white caps in glittering gold. "I know the best compliment I can give you is that you're a great mother," he says, finally breaking our silence. Everett isn't looking at me; he's looking out at the horizon as we pause at the railing. "I see how much you love her, how much you sacrifice for her. I see the way your face lights up when she says your name, when she smiles at you. I think you're patient, supportive, and loving. You're nurturing, but you also teach her right from wrong, how to set boundaries and when she's crossing them too." He turns to me. "You're a good fucking mom, Dahlia. But you don't need to be all alone in order to be a good mom. I just hope you figure that out eventually."

I look down at the water, watching waves break and crash against the wooden beams of the pier. "I hope I figure it out too." I lift my head to meet his gaze. "I hope you realize that you have a lot to offer, and that you have value regardless of what your siblings—or anyone else—do with their lives. I hope you figure out your worth."

He smiles softly. "Yeah, me too."