Page 9 of Flowers To Give

“What’s the rush?” A completely different voice asks them.

Jeremy and Barry push each other away, fearful eyes looking over the source of the unwelcome voice behind a bright light. Anincredibly gorgeous woman with sphinx eyes grins back at the them. She’s squeaky clean with an angelic golden glow in the dimmed light of the early evening, wearing expensive athletic wear and holding her cell phone flash light up to the two men. Jeremy dares to say he recognizes her from the movies, although it’s hard to tell from here. She bats her mascara laden eyelashes and pouts innocently, “What?”

“May we help you, miss?” Barry asks, leaning against the wall as casually as possible.

“Missus,” she corrects, eyeing Jeremy’s groin, “Mrs. Laurelai Radison.”

“Oh, ma’am,” Barry sputters so much it looks like he’s about to bow, “Sorry. Didn’t recognize you at first.”

“And you two?” She asks even though she suddenly sounds bored.

“Barry Loweman,” he offers freely. Jeremy shoots him a look that clearly reads for him to shut his damn mouth but Barry is already spitting out the rest under the spell of being star struck, “And this is Jeremy Munday.”

“Oh, Jeremy?” She slowly struts over to him, “You’re the modern day cowboy, no?”

He gives her a once over before nodding, “Yes, ma’am.”

Pivoting on one foot and looking over her shoulder as if striking a pose, she tells him, “Come. Clark wants you at our’s for dinner tonight.”

“Ah,” Jeremy glances over to Barry but he’s no help, fending for himself, “That’s mighty kind of y’all, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, well, because I-”

“It’s his turn to clean up,” Barry interjects, finally coming to life, “After dinner. He’s in charge of the mess this week.”

Laurelai looks between the two men with a raised brow before finally pointing out, “Weren’t you two just about to leave to go bang each other?”

So she did see. They share a glance of mutual horror. If old man Wilcox had caught his ranch hand and cowboy necking then they would be packing up without a spare breath. But Laurelai looks at them expectantly, not with anger or disgust.

Defeated and not wanting the situation to get any worse, Jeremy steps forward and asks, “So, dinner?”

Laurelai triumphantly smirks between them before tossing her head of long hair back and walking along. Horny and sad, Jeremy turns back around to Barry to throw him an eye roll and shrug. Barry watches him leave, slumping back into the shadows.

“So, what is Barry?” she suddenly asks as they walk along, heading for the main house.

“Uh, he’s a ranch hand, ma’am.”

“No,” Laurelai says slowly, as if speaking to a child, “What is he to you?”

“Oh. Um,” suddenly choked, Jeremy can’t find a good enough answer. He shrugs, incredibly uncomfortable and giving her the most innocent answer possible, “A friend.”

“Huh. You treat all your friends like that?”

Chewing on his lip, Jeremy looks down at his feet and huffs an explanation to Clark’s wife, “I don’t know. No. We just started doing that a while back, it doesn’t mean anything. We’ll stop. Promise.”

She laughs, “Why? I don’t care.”

“Really?” He looks over to her, a hopeful twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, yeah,” Laurelai throws a smirk over to him, her own mischievous glint in her gaze, “It’s hot.”

Jeremy could fall over dead from embarrassment. He rubs at his reddened neck, ducking his head down again bashfully.Another horrid thought comes to his mind, summoning up the courage to ask her, “Say. Will you not tell anyone about this?”

“No.”

Blinking, Jeremy looks back to her shit eating grin and asks, “What?”