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He’d hugged her earlier, overwhelmed by the worry he felt after she revealed someone had been following her. He hadn’t been able to stop himself.
“What happened? Did that guy do something to you?”
Taking a deep inhale, she stepped out of his embrace. Losing her body heat bothered him, but he didn’t have time to question the realization.
Sparkling green eyes looked up at him. “No. Noah’s fine.” She looked back at the door and then around Aiden at the sliding glass door. Moving around him, she climbed onto the loveseat to check the lock on the sliding glass door. She slumped, exhaling as she pressed her forehead to the back of the loveseat.
“Charlotte.”
Her head snapped up, and she spun on the loveseat. “I think someone followed me home.”
“What?” He looked back at the door. “Hang on.” He turned. He didn’t know what he would do when he found the piece of trash who thought it was okay to follow a woman around, but he had a few ideas.
When the sharp sting of nails pinched his arm, he looked down. She held his forearm in a death grip, looking up at him with wide, pleading eyes.
“Don’t go. I’m sure they’re gone now.”
He looked at the door and back again.
She added in a soft whisper that he almost missed, “Please stay.”
A faint tremor wracked her hands as she held onto him tightly. Abandoning her in this state was out of the question for him. He could practically taste her fear saturating the air.
With a nod, he decided changing the subject and shifting her focus away from the scary encounter might be the best course of action. “Something came for you while you were at lunch.” He glanced at the kitchen. “I signed for it. I hope that’s alright.”
She finally released her grip on his arm and stood, already calmer now that he agreed to stay. “A package? I wonder if it’s from my moms.”
“Nah. It was from a flower shop.” He paused, watching the color drain from her face. “Uh… The delivery guy said normally he leaves them at your door, but since I was here, he had me sign.” His stomach tensed as he took in the look on her face.
“Where is it?” Her voice sounded hoarse. She swallowed, and after clearing her throat, she spoke clearer. “Where are the roses?”
He didn’t specify roses.
“On the kitchen counter next to your other vase of similar ones.”
She pushed around him and raced to the kitchen, staring down at the bouquet of roses lying on the counter next to the vase of wilted ones.
He had wondered why she kept half-dead roses in a vase when he arrived earlier, but now he questioned the identical bouquet, and why she seemed almost frightened by it.
“What’s going on?”
She turned her face up to the ceiling, closing her eyes and muttering something under her breath. When she opened her eyes and looked down again, she unceremoniously scooped the dying roses from the vase and tossed them in her garbage bin. She emptied the vase, and then filled it with fresh water, mixing in the packet of powder that came with the roses.
Plant food? He assumed it was plant food.
She pulled a pair of scissors from the drawer. Unraveling the wrapping around the new roses, she clipped each of the stems at an angle.
Since she wasn’t answering him, he tried something else. “Why are you cutting them?”
“Makes them live longer.”
“How so?”
“Well, it prevents blockages. Cutting at an angle makes more surface area for water to be absorbed.” At his bewildered expression, she picked up a rose she hadn’t cut and dropped it into the vase, then another that had been cut. “See how the uncut one sits flush on the bottom and the other one doesn’t?”
“Uh huh…”
“If it’s against the glass, the stem doesn’t soak up much water. The angle,” she said, motioning to the cut rose in the water, “has the entire cut area exposed to water. If I left the rose in there like this, it would have the best chance of survival versus the other. Something Ma taught me.” She plucked out the uncut rose, snipped the end, and dropped it back in the water.
