He kept coming back.
Every morning: his car, two doors down, a coffee he didn't drink, the same elaborate pretense of coincidence. Every day she threw the flowers he brought into the trash can out front, and every day he showed up anyway, and after a while she stopped trying to figure out what the right response was and simply decided to be inconvenient.
If he was going to be here, he was going to earn it.
---
The next delivery landed on a Wednesday.
She was in the back of Bloom & Co. unpacking stems when Clara came to find her. "That man is outside again."
"Tell him to come in."
Clara raised an eyebrow but didn't ask. She'd long since accepted that something complicated was happening between her employee and the man in the expensive suits who appeared at regular intervals looking l
