Page 37 of Smoke and Roses

Saturday afternoon, before we deliver the flowers to the church for the wedding, I pin a boutonniere on Travis just for the fun of it. It took me thirty seconds to make one for him.

“You’re flinching.”

“You’re holding a pin an inch from my chest, Lindsey.”

“Big tough guy, afraid of a little pin,” I tease.

He’s grumbling as I slide the pin through his shirt, through the stem of a single white rose with a sprig of statice, and out the other side. “There. Perfect. You look handsome.”

Travis looks down at the flower on his shirt like it’s a spider.

“Let’s get to work.”

He grunts.

There are fourteen centerpieces, a bridal bouquet, five bridesmaids’ bouquets, a flower girl basket, and heavy garland that’s eighteen feet long.

“We have fifty minutes,” I tell him as I pop open the door on my white delivery van.

“Do all your assistants wear flowers?”

“No. You’re special.” I grin.

“I’m your muscle.”

“My very handsome muscle who wears a flower.” I pat it. “Now pick up that garland—the giant green rope thing. Do it carefully. It weighs about forty pounds, and if you drop it, the bride’s mother will kill us both.”

He picks up the heavy strand of flowers and greenery as carefully as if it’s made of glass. Then he puts it on.

I stare as the man carries it into the church draped over his big shoulders like a feather boa.

Lord. He’s such a mess.

I love it.

The mother of the bride is a small, terrifying woman named Darla in a mint-green suit. She meets us at the door and looks Travis up and down with naked suspicion.

“Who is this?”

“My assistant,” I say.

Darla looks at the flowers on Travis’s shoulders. Then at Travis’s shoulders. Then at Travis’s bare arms, because he rolled his sleeves up in the van.

“Well,” Darla says, in a completely different voice. “Aren’t you helpful.”

“Ma’am,” Travis says.

Darla turns pink. Damn. He’s good.

I make Travis hang the garland and move the arch three inches to the left, then two to the right, then back one. Then I make him carry fourteen centerpieces down the aisle one at a time, because Darla is watching from the front pew with her hand on her heart.

Let it be known, I am not above using my assets. The more she stares at him, the less she nitpicks at me.

Halfway through the centerpieces, he stops in the aisle with one in his hands and frowns at it.

“What?” I ask.

“There’s a candle in this.”