Page 9 of The One You Want

“Minuscule,” I said, stilllaughing.

“Hey,” he argued, grinning now, chocolate brown eyes bright and sparkling with amusement. “Talking to plants helps. There’s like, science to back thisup.”

“Uh, huh,” I told him. “Sure.”

He sighed, setting the rose down. “I’ll deal with you later,” he told it, causing another peal of my laughter to escape. He pointedly ignored it, keeping a straight face as he came around the worktable. “I take it you’re here for thearrangement?”

“I am.” I followed him over to a larger row of coolers. “I hope you did a good job with these. My grandmother is very demanding.” He shot me a narrowed eye glare—no one questioned Grant’s ability with flowers. “These need to be top level flowers,” I continued. “So, you know, I hope you like, read them Shakespeare sonnets orsomething.”

“Oh, ha ha,” he muttered, reaching into the cooler to pull out a huge bundle of absolutely perfectflowers.

“Wow,” I murmured as he placed them in my arms. Huge ivory peonies nestled together with soft garden roses in the softest pink, contrasting with the soft green-white of fluffy hydrangeas. The colors were muted and sophisticated—absolutely perfect for my grandmother. “These areamazing.”

Grant flicked the end of my ponytail as he passed on his way back to the table. “Damn right theyare.”

“I didn’t doubt you for aminute.”

I carefully laid the bouquet on the table, perching on one of the work stools. “This must have taken hours,” I murmured, fingering the edge of a soft pinkpetal.

He shrugged. “It was a fun arrangement. I prefer using more color but from what you’ve told me about your grandmother, I thought that look would be more up heralley.”

“It absolutely will be,” Iagreed.

“Oh, I wanted to show you something else,” he said, hopping up from his stool. Grant was always like this—constantly on the move. I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him sit for longer than five minutes at atime.

Though a relative newcomer to the island, I had known Grant for a few years now. We first met on the craft showcircuit.

Yes, you read that right. Mr. Brawny Farmer Man spent most of his Saturdays hanging out in high school gymnasiums with a bunch of hippies selling soy candles and old ladies trying to hawk their latest crochetpieces.

Okay, that’s not quite accurate. The first few fairs I attended with my jewelry pieces had been a lot like that. While I met some really nice people, those fairs were very much a hobby atmosphere. But the longer I stuck with it, and the more attention my pieces received, I started getting invitations to the more legitimate street fairs and markets, which did a much more thorough job of curating their vendorlists.

Vintage markets were definitely in right now. People really seemed to like the whole farmhouse chic style with its restored furniture and recycled, distressed decor. My jewelry style tended to lean towards the vintage look, garnering me a lot of invitations to some of the biggest markets in the area. And Grant’s dried flower arrangements perfectly fit the farmhouseaesthetic.

At the start of the summer, we’d both been invited to sell at the Artisan Market, a high-end collection of extensively vetted artists. I was pretty damn proud of that invitation, if I did say so myself. The Artisan Market traveled between different cities on the mainland throughout the summer and fall, attracting huge crowds, and I was spending more and more time locked up in my craft room, trying to keep up with the stock I wasselling.

“I was messing around with some dried blossoms for my autumn wreaths,” Grant said, rifling through the papers that completely covered his desk. “I think this might be just what you were lookingfor.”

“Ooh,really?”

I’d been wanting to experiment with dried flowers suspended in resin for some pendants I had been working on, but I was having trouble finding the right blossom. Most of the flowers I tried had lost a lot of their color in the drying process, making them look washed out in the resin. I’d mentioned the problem to Grant at the last market and he promised to do some investigating forme.

“So the best way to keep vibrant color with dried flowers is to flash dry them,” he explained. “Stick hydrangeas in a car trunk for a couple days and they’re good togo.”

“If you live in a place that hascars.”

He grinned. “Right. A box out in the sun works just as well. Unfortunately that works better for bigger blooms, like hydrangeas, and that doesn’t helpyou.”

I held up my thumb and forefinger, making a two-inch space between them. “Yeah, my pendants aren’t reallybig.”

“Exactly. So I needed to find something small that I could flashdry.”

“And youdid?”

He held up a bundle of bright purple round blossoms. “Gomphrena. They’re usually a lot bigger, but I’ve been messing around with some hybrid growing. See I cross-pollinated the gomphrena with—” he cut himself off, smiling sheepishly. I had probably taken on the glazed look I usually got when he went all botany scientist with me. “I grew these ones smaller,” he summedup.

“Thanks for dumbing itdown.”

He grinned, then bent to riffle through the mess again. “Lavender worked really well, no surprise there. Then there was the astilbe.” He held up a bunch of hot pink flowers. “False goat’sbeard—”