by Staci Hart
COMING UP ROSES
STACI HART
Copyright © 2019 Staci Hart
All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Quirky Bird
Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing
Proofreading: Love N Books
Playlist: https://spoti.fi/2JFtu4m
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CONTENTS
Author’s Note
1. A Good Groping
2. Poison Ivy
3. The Brood
4. Let Her Be Wild
5. Things You Can Count On
6. Big Ideas
7. Princes and Pirates
8. Rhymes with Yes
9. Double Take
10. You Can Try
11. Ever the Gentleman
12. Curiosity Kills
13. Ace
14. Just the Truth
15. Things the Cat Drags In
16. Gold Digger
17. Fudge Ripple
18. Fixer
19. Fool
20. Heart Burn
21. Empty Spaces
22. Rainbow Road
23. Tick Tock
24. A Certain Faith
25. Moments
26. Make a Wish
27. Imagine That
Epilogue
Thank you
Also by Staci Hart
About the Author
To those of you
searching for home:
Sink your roots into the earth.
Stretch your leaves up to the sky.
Because home
is where you are.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many of us can claim our love for Jane Austen, but only a few of us are foolish enough to retell her stories.
I have taken some liberties with Pride and Prejudice, and I hope you’ll allow me to imagine the Bennet sisters as unruly men (less our Lizzie) and Longbourne as a flower shop in Manhattan. And I hope beyond hope that you enjoy my nod to the Bennets, who we love so well.
1
A GOOD GROPING
LUKE
Not a single thing had changed in five years.
Not the little bell on the door that rang entries into my family’s flower shop. Not the ancient oak barrels, stuffed to the brim with petals and greenery. Not the smell, that mixture of earth and sweet perfume only made by hundreds of varieties of flowers in the same room.
That smell meant one thing: I was home.
I scanned the shop for activity—and my family, who was never far from here—but found none. So deeper into the room I went, running a hand over the timeworn wood of the counter as I passed.
But all I saw was stillness, and all I heard was music playing somewhere in the back.
I followed the sound, past a table littered with stems and scissors, twine and twigs, floral putty and pin frogs, a vase stuffed with a vivid array of poppies. But when I turned the corner where a row of humming coolers stood, I found one thing that had changed.
Before I’d left Manhattan five years ago for Los Angeles, Ivy and I’d fooled around on the regular—no strings, no relationship, just a reliable supply of flirting and flings. Her ass—which had always been the shape and firmness of a ripe, juicy peach—had filled in, rounded to utter perfection. She was hinged at the waist, reaching back into the cooler for something a little too far for comfort. A burst of desire shot through me like a lightning bolt, from the bottom of my spine to the top, inspiring my mouth to water, triggering a hard swallow.
Ivy Parker, my old fling. And I knew just how to greet her. I could already hear her giggling my name—after the year I’d had, the comfort of a familiar smile sounded like exactly what I needed.
I didn’t remember Ivy’s hair being so dark a shade of red, nor did I remember the delectable thickness of her thighs, which were pressed together. My eyes dragged up the seam and to her ass again, bouncing between her jeans pockets before sliding up the curve of her small waist.
“Shit,” she swore from inside the cooler, leaning in a little more.
I wet my lips, which tilted into a smirk. I slipped my hands into the curve of that little waist in the same moment I fitted my hips to her ass, pulling her into me.
“Miss me?” I asked as she went stiff as a ruler.
A squeal and a yelp sounded as she bolted up, slamming her head on the grate above her. Vases teetered, and my hands shot out to catch one but not quickly enough. It toppled over with a thunk and a splash, knocking over another, then another, like bowling pins full of water.
Water that spilled all over the girl caged in the cooler by my hips.
The girl who was not Ivy Parker.
Tess Monroe bucked, huffing and squealing, and I stepped back with my face shot open and stuck there like I’d just laid eyes on Medusa and she’d made marble out of me.
She backed out, standing with deliberate slowness and absolute fury as she turned to face me, the physical incarnation of Medusa herself, ready to blast me into oblivion with nothing more than a murderous glare.
My mortification was marked by a wildly inappropriate laugh, stifled at the very last second. She looked like a cat that'd been dunked in a bucket, rage wafting off her, riding every controlled breath. Limp auburn hair stuck to her face, strands of deep red against the pale of her skin. Smudged half-moons of mascara ringed her eyes, set ablaze with fury. And her fitted white T-shirt clung to every bend and swell of her body, tucked into high-waisted jeans that hugged those curves I’d just been salivating over like a second skin.
I realized then that the water must have been very cold. And her bra must be very thin.
“Tess?” I said stupidly. “You look…different. I thought—”
Her hands fisted by her sides, and I braced myself to catch one if she swung at me. But she didn’t. No, she stood there, unmoving, with water dripping off her in a steady pat, pat, pat on the polished concrete floor.
“And you haven’t changed at all,” she shot with her smart little mouth. “Still the same degenerate you always were. I’ll have to update the sign. We’ve gone eighteen hundred twenty-five days without anyone getting groped in the greenhouse. Should have erased it the second I heard you were coming back.”
I laughed. “Admit it. I give an excellent grope.”
She made a noise somewhere between a squeak and a growl, her jaw bolted shut as she stormed past. But I hooked her arm, chuckling.
“Hang on, Tess. I’m sorry—I really am. I thought you were Ivy,” I admitted.
Instead of looking forgiving like I’d hoped, she seethed. “Well, sorry to disappoint,” she ground out.
“Who said I was disappointed?”
I stepped into her before she could speak, and she froze when I cupped her face. The first taste of her skin against my palm was cool, warming immediately as her cheeks flamed with a brilliant flush. I couldn’t tell if it was an angry flush or not.
But I didn’t hesitate to consider it as I inspected her, turning her head so I could check it for bangs or cuts.
“You hit your head pretty good,” I said gently. “I wouldn’t have grabbed you like that if I’d realized it was you. You okay?�
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“I’m fine,” she snapped, removing herself from my grip.
She turned on her heel, blowing past the table and to the back where we kept the cleaning supplies.
I followed her like an asshole. “I’m looking for Mom. Have you seen her?”
Tess swiped a scratchy white towel off a stack and blotted her face. “She’s at home, waiting for you. You should go. Now.”
“Oh, you’re not getting off so easy.” One of my brows rose with one corner of my mouth.
She rolled her eyes so hard, I was pretty sure she saw Bleeker Street. “Go away, Luke.”
My smile slipped, and I glanced back at the coolers. “I mean it. At least let me clean up the mess.”
“I’ve got it,” she fired because surely her mouth was a weapon.
“I insist,” I said with velvety persistence, reaching around her for a couple of towels. “Let me try to make it right.”
She froze but for her eyes, which tracked my hand like it was a goddamn cobra.
“You know,” I started with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. Her eyes cut to me with a flash. “I don’t bite.”
“That’s not what Ivy said,” she countered.
That bought her a full-blown laugh. “Fair enough. But I haven’t nibbled on Ivy in half a decade.” I turned for the coolers. “Where’s she at?”
“She’s off,” Tess said, toweling off her hair. When she thought I was out of earshot, she let out a heavy sigh.
I propped open the cooler door and knelt down, towel in hand as I inspected the damage. Nothing had broken, though some of the flowers had been smashed in the fall. I pushed up to stand with a sigh of my own and began hauling the damaged arrangements out of the cooler, fixing them up as best I could.
Tess scowled at me from across the room. I smirked back at her, unfazed, if not a little guilty.
Really, very little could faze me. It happened to be one of my special gifts along with the unfastening of a bra with two fingers, making a woman orgasm in under two minutes, and generally getting my way by sheer force of charm.
One of the few women immune to that charm was Tess Monroe.
Tess had been working for my mother since high school. Of course, that was back when we’d had half a dozen flower shops spread over lower Manhattan before the slow choke that brought on a retreat that left us with only the flagship store. Where Ivy was always up for a flirt, a laugh, and a subsequent romp behind the banana plants, Tess was her unamused, disapproving opposite. One of my particular joys in life was making her uncomfortable in the hopes she’d reveal a crack in the wall or the flesh of her soft little underbelly. I knew it was there—I’d seen her light and laughing and kind with literally everyone else. Once upon a time, we’d even been friends.
But now? My presence alone shot her hackles off her back faster than you could say Pass the peonies. And that drove me just a little bit crazy.
As I set the last vase on the table and turned for the cooler once more, I resolved to give grown-up Tess all of my grown-up charm.
While I mopped up the water, she worked behind me, the snap and click as she rearranged what I’d already arranged sharp and irritated. It was always like this with her, an impatient, intolerable sharing of space.
She was the literal worst person on earth for me to have inadvertently groped, and I had a feeling I’d be paying for that infraction for a good long while.
Tess didn’t let anything go easy.
When I finished with the cooler, I tossed the soaked towels in one of the waste buckets and wandered into the shop to gather the flowers needed to fix the bouquets. A few stems of sweet pea. A handful of lavender astilbe spires. Chestnut pods, green and furry. A bunch of craspedia, round and the color of sunshine. Dahlias, pink—no, peach—and white. And then I made my way back to her as she fussed over the vases.
Her eyes narrowed as she cataloged my wares—looking for a mistake, no doubt. When she didn’t find one, she let out a huff.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, picking up the sweet peas and submerging them in the bowl of water next to her to trim the stems.
“Hey, that’s my line,” I said with a sideways smile. I picked up a dahlia, measuring it to the vase before doing the same.
“You really don’t have to do this,” she said quietly, tightly.
“I owe you one, Tess. And honestly, I don’t mind. I’ve been doing it for Mom since I was little.”
She huffed a laugh. “So much for Hot Wheels and frogs.”
“Hot Wheels and frogs were why I was cutting flowers. You think I wanted to be making bouquets at eight? Mom nearly broke her neck on a car show I’d set up behind her table, and the frog came in a shipment of plants and lived in my pocket until it kamikazed into her lap. I arranged funeral lilies for a week.”
Another impatient laugh, coupled with the shake of her head. She hadn’t met my eyes. “So you have been a menace since conception.”
“As the youngest of five, it’s my birthright.”
Her cheeks flushed when she laughed again. Her eyes were rich and brown, like fresh-turned earth, her lips dusky rose to match her cheeks.
God, she was pretty. I could still remember the girl I’d known, the one who’d been my friend so many years ago. I couldn’t seem to recall what went wrong, where that friendship fell apart and turned into whatever this was.
“You know, there’s something I can’t figure out,” I said blithely.
“Why you’re so insufferable?”
“Why you don’t like me, Tess. Everybody loves me,” I joked.
Her face flattened, and she finally looked up at me. “Really? You can’t think of a single reason why someone wouldn’t—don’t touch my scissors.”
I lifted my hands like she’d pointed a gun at me. “Ever stop to think it’s not me who’s insufferable?”
“Nope, never. Not once.” She snatched the scissors I’d tried to use on the craspedia and pointed them at me. “You’re the most arrogant, ridiculous man I have ever met, and you just happen to be the very last man I’d ever entertain.”
“In the bedroom?”
“In the hemisphere.”
A laugh burst out of me. “Don’t worry, Tess. There’s plenty of time to change your mind about what latitude you can tolerate me in. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other now that I’m home.”
Her face bent in a frown, the point of the scissors dropping a hair. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ll be working here. Every day. Right over there.” I nodded to the counter. “Meet your new counter attendant and delivery boy.”
She sucked in a breath through her nose that threatened to seal her nostrils. “No.”
“All hands on deck if we’re going to save the shop from ruin. I didn’t think you’d balk at the help.”
“Well, you aren’t just any help, Luke Bennet. You are trouble, and you always have been.” She jabbed the scissors in my direction.
But before I could argue, my mom walked in, and as always, the universe tilted in her direction.
The moment I drew her into my arms, I was truly home.
And not one thing had changed.
2
POISON IVY
TESS
Everyone hates parts of their job.
Maybe it’s the paperwork. Maybe it’s the day-to-day grind. Maybe it’s that client who never knows what they want, or the guy who always cooks fish in the microwave.
But not me. I loved every corner of that store, every flower, every petal, every stem. I loved the greenhouse. I loved Mrs. Bennet. I loved creating, and I loved making something beautiful.
I didn’t hate anything at all.
Except for Luke Fucking Bennet.
There were many adjectives to describe how I felt in that moment. Furious was paramount, followed closely by defensive and bewildered, touched with a hint of unease and a healthy helping of attraction, which was a noun, but also an undeniable fact between Luke and me.
He lit up
like a lighthouse when he saw his mother, pulling her into a hug with arms like tree trunks. She squealed like a girl when he picked her up and spun her around wildly.
Wild. That was perhaps the best adjective to describe him. His hair, dark as sin, disheveled and untamed. His eyes, crisp and bright, a shade of blue so electric, so luminescent, it defied logic. Golden skin, kissed by the California sun that had shone on him the last five years. His smile told a tale of lust, loose and easy, given without thought or care. And though he didn’t have the discipline of a predator, his body moved with the ease and grace of a great black cat.
His lips said he’d come home to help save the shop, but his history said otherwise. I’d believe he ran out of money. Or that he was running from Wendy Westham, their marriage come unraveled, just like we’d all known it would. I’d believe just about anything beyond altruism.
Luke Bennet had come home to wreck everything he touched, just like he always did. And the saddest thing? He didn’t even have a clue. Not one.
He was feral, a thing unbridled, without rules or constraint. He went where he wanted, did what he chose. Never, not in a million years, would he be called responsible or dependable. And he hadn’t changed a bit in five years, but for the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes.
