During the drive, he thought about her situation at the store and located another candy shop in town. He talked with the owner about cost-related factors and inventory. Then he noticed an enormous display of suckers. They were Lexi’s favorite—round and colorful with an assortment of flavors from watermelon to gourmet coffee. A mischievous grin surfaced because Wes had once revealed how he bribed his baby sister.
Her birthday was tomorrow and Austin had been thinking about getting her something special. He never bought birthday gifts for anyone; it’s not something the Cole brothers did. But Lexi always loved her birthdays and he wanted to do something special to make up for lost time.
“Do you make arrangements?” Austin inquired. “I mean, can you take some of these and make it look like… hell, I don’t know. Something girly?”
“Certainly,” the man replied with confidence. “I have several containers in the back with foam, unless you want them tied in small bundles. I can do lots of creative things with these—you’d be surprised.
“What about a bouquet?”
“I designed one for a wedding two years ago, believe it or not,” he admitted with a chuckle. “Let me know what you want, or how many, and I’ll put something together.”
He sure did.
When Austin arrived at Lexi’s apartment, he was beaming with pride. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he gave them to her, not just because of the way they were arranged, but no one would have thought to get her something like this.
Austin walked quietly up Lexi’s stairs with the heavy bouquet in his right hand. The man had done an excellent job, somehow attaching them to a ball in the center so that they stayed in place and gave it a handle that he could hold on to. It looked just as good as any flowers, and a delicate white ribbon wrapped around the bottom. The man urged him to fill out a card, but Austin found out he had more to say than what would fit on a small note card. He ended up writing his message on a sheet of paper that was folded up and burning a hole in his back pocket.
“Lexi, these are just the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!” he heard a woman exclaim through the cracked door.
Austin eased up at the entrance, holding the bouquet behind his back. He peered in and his jaw slackened when he saw the obscene amount of roses all over her table. The woman in the tall shoes he recognized as her neighbor.
“Lorenzo,” Naya said, holding a card. “Is he Spanish? I love Spanish men.”
“You love all men.”
“Italian?”
“No, I think he’s Native American,” Lexi replied with her back to the door. She touched one of the flowers. “They are pretty, aren’t they?”
“Pretty penny,” Naya agreed. “And the note! Totally swoon-worthy. I can’t imagine a man topping an offer like this, Lexi. You should take it. If he’s good-looking, then that’s just icing on the cake, but you already have my approval,” she declared, placing her hands on her hips and jutting them out.
Lexi shouldered her and they both admired the roses. Austin’s nose filled with the smell of defeat and he stepped back.
One of the suckers clacked on the concrete beneath him and Naya said, “What was that?”
“You left the door open,” Lexi chastised. “Always lecturing me about locking up and you get all swept up by flowers and lose your mind.” They giggled and Austin quickly backed away, hurrying down the stairs.
His chest actually hurt. Like someone had a grip on his heart and was strangling the breath from his lungs. It felt like the walk of shame across that lawn as he heard the door shut behind him. Austin squeezed the handle to the bouquet even tighter and wanted to throw it, but it would have scattered a hundred suckers across the lawn, leaving evidence he had been there.
Instead, he tossed the cheap bouquet in the passenger seat and moved his Dodge Challenger into a less obvious parking space. As he watched Naya leave her apartment, Austin glanced at the candy beside him and then back at her window. The lights eventually dimmed and he rolled down the car window, wishing he had a shot of something strong.
It was a stupid idea to give her cheap candy. They weren’t kids anymore and she would have been insulted.
Lexi deserved to be taken care of. There was no rule that she had to be mated to the Packmaster or anyone else in a pack in order to be part of the family. It didn’t stop how fiercely protective he felt of her. How when another man’s eyes roamed across her body, Austin wanted to rip them from the guy’s sockets. Lexi wasn’t abrasive like many of the female Shifters, and that made her vulnerable. Growing up in a pack (and within the Shifter culture), a woman learned how to talk to men and get what she wanted. Ivy was an exception with her shyness, but he could sense a tough girl beneath her quiet exterior.