“Knock, knock.”
Glancing up at her open door, she saw Ginny with a huge latte balanced on the tray she’d clipped to the arms of her wheelchair so it’d be stable. “It’s like you read my mind,” she told the other woman as Ginny wheeled herself in and put the latte on ísa’s desk. “You’ve been fantastic today.”
“It’s far more interesting working for you than being Jacqueline’s junior assistant,” the brunette confessed. “I haven’t had to make a single stupid craft thing all day.”
“Don’t get too used to it,” ísa warned after stretching out her back, then taking a restorative sip of the coffee. “I have no desire to be trapped in Crafty Corners hell.”
Ginny’s face fell. “Oh, come on ísa,” she wheedled. “You’re really good at this—I did some work for the last person your mother put temporarily in this position, and you’re like a rocket compared to his hand-powered car. You have the instinct.”
That was the last thing ísa wanted to hear.
“Oh,” Ginny said, “I almost forgot. A small package arrived for you.” She reached into a bag she had on the back of her wheelchair and pulled it out.
“Thanks, Gin.” Putting the unassuming brown box aside as she returned to the work she’d been doing, ísa forgot all about the package until seven that night. Ginny had already clocked out, and ísa was packing up to go too when her eye fell on the box.
Guessing it was either a corporate gift from a client or a sample from a hopeful craft inventor, she made quick work of opening it. “Ouch!”
She instinctively brought her finger to her mouth. But there was no blood, not even a real dent in her skin. Opening the flaps of the box with more care this time, she frowned at what she saw within. Not quite certain what it was about, she began to cut open the box so she could remove the object without further stabs.
Box surgically dissected, she pulled out the packing peanuts to free the perfectly potted cactus within. Dark green with wicked spines, it was potted in a pretty terra-cotta pot… on which someone had written in white ink: Pointy spiky things don’t scare me.
Beside it was a tiny sketched image of a kitten-heeled shoe.
ísa pressed her lips tightly together to keep from smiling.
Putting the cactus aside to take home, she looked in the remains of the box for any other sign of who’d sent it, found nothing. The external packaging didn’t provide much of an answer either. There was no return address. But ísa didn’t really need any further evidence. Who else but a gardener would fight with plants?
Her lips tugged up at the corners despite herself.
She carried the cactus carefully down to her car, then into her apartment complex. Slogging up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, she tried to think of a fitting rejoinder.
“No, ísa,” she ordered herself. “No playing this game. He’s too young, and you have a plan.” To find a man who was ready to settle down and create the kind of family foundation she’d always lacked.
A firm place on which ísa could stand and where she could shelter Catie and Harlow. And a strong pair of arms on whom she could depend, a man as rooted as an oak, with a heart in which ísa wasn’t an afterthought but a priority.
She could almost taste it, she wanted that dream so much.
A twenty-three-old with demon-blue eyes was not going to be on the same page as her. He’d just begun to stretch his wings, sow his wild oats. Even Devil ísa knew that. Though it didn’t stop her from whispering sinful suggestions in ísa’s ear about how she should follow Jacqueline’s advice and have a whole lot of fun with him.
Naked fun.
Handcuffs and leg cuffs included.
ísa’s toes curled… before she was smothered by a blanket of self-recrimination. Look at her, thinking about using a man for her own degenerate purposes. A man who was younger than her and… well, okay, he wasn’t exactly innocent, but that wasn’t the point! She was acting just how you’d expect the offspring of Jacqueline Rain and Stefán óskarsson to act.
Like a barracuda.
Maybe this was who she was—a ruthless corporate machine created by two other ruthless corporate machines—and it was time to stop fighting destiny. If genes made the woman, ísa’s genes were written in business black.
Putting her bag on the counter on that indigestible thought, not even the adorable little cactus lifting her mood, she was thinking about running away to join the circus when she got a call from Nayna.
“Can I come over?” her best friend asked. “I don’t feel like going home for dinner. The folks are all excited about the next meet and greet they’re trying to set up.”
“You know you never have to ask,” ísa said. “I just got in myself. I was going to grill some chicken and make bad-for-the-hips buttery mashed potatoes.”
“I’ll pick up a mixed-bean salad from our favorite place.” Nayna’s tone was brighter already. “See you in half an hour.”
Feeling better now that she knew her friend and confidante was on the way, ísa got out of her work clothes and into a pair of shorts and a spaghetti-string tank top that she only ever wore at home—she didn’t want to risk blinding blameless strangers with her whiteness. Nayna, however, had seen her in a bathing suit during their mutually hated phys-ed classes in school.
After pulling her hair up into a jaunty ponytail, she got the chicken pieces into the oven, set the potatoes to boil, then took a quick minute to check her phone. She smiled at seeing that she had a couple of messages from a friend she caught up with maybe three or four times a year.
She and Michelle, aka Micki, had been in many of the same classes at university and though their lives had gone in different directions, with Michelle already married and a mother of one, they still had enough to talk about that those coffee dates were fun for both of them. Expecting that Michelle wanted to set up a meet, ísa clicked open the message. But her friend had something far more juicy to share this time: Oh my God, ísa, did you see this picture of Cody? I thought you’d enjoy it!
Attached was an image of Cody with what looked like a broken jaw, the bruising ugly and his eyes scrunched as if in pain. His nose didn’t look too great either, and he definitely had the beginnings of a black eye.
Her own eyes wide, ísa scanned down to see that Michelle had also screenshotted the message posted along with the photo. Suzanne had apparently been the one who’d posted the image. And she was fuming.
Look at what some loser did to my amazing fiancé! Cody was only trying to help a woman who was about to get her bag snatched! He’s my hero even though he refuses to go to the police because he doesn’t want to waste their time. And that woman he got hurt helping ran off too, the bitch! That’s what you get for trying to help people. And now Cody’s jaw is broken and our wedding is going to be ruined!!