Bloom of Love (Long Valley #10) - Erin Wright Page 0,4

things a couple of times when he was young and dumb and full of cum, but hadn’t in years.

In this moment, a bucking bull seemed a lot less scary than Carla Grahame. Her, with her thick, long brunette hair, and her big hazel eyes that could change from blue to green and back again in the space of a heartbeat, and her even bigger tits.

She was gorgeous.

She was way too good for him.

Her straight, white teeth flashed through his mind, her natural cheeriness omnipresent even in his memory, when snap! The strand of wire broke, his pliers flew out of his hand, and the roll of wire zinged back onto the spool, the end slicing across his left forearm, leaving a thin red line in its wake, already oozing blood.

He let loose with a few of his choicest swear words and Dave looked up from his work. “You okay, boss?” he called.

“Yeah, yeah,” Christian said, waving the farm hand’s concern away. It was what he deserved for concentrating on Carla’s smile instead of the damn fencepost.

Grumbling, he pulled the spool of wire back into place and began wrapping it around the T-post again. Between the bleeding cut across his left forearm and the rashy bumps across his right forearm, though, he was having a damn hard time paying attention to what he was supposed to be doing. His temper wasn’t much improved by the fact that his mother had been downright pissed with him when he’d visited his parents’ place after ordering the flowers from Carla. Didn’t he know he was supposed to ask her what kinds of flowers she was going to use? Didn’t he know that he was supposed to get all of these stupid details that only women cared about?

Christian yanked the wire into place with a little more savagery than he probably needed to.

Women.

How was he supposed to know he was in charge of asking Carla all of these questions? No one had said a word to him about it.

Show her the fabric samples and give her the budget, they’d said.

Not Reenact the Spanish Inquisition on her ass.

Pissy, his mom had huffed that she’d go and pick up the flowers the morning of the party to make sure that they’d work. He’d tried to tell her that Carla had offered to drop them off, but his mother had dismissed that suggestion angrily. No, she had to go check on them herself. She shouldn’t have let him order them to begin with.

With a grunt, Christian clipped the wire and then looked critically at the fence repair. It looked good, which meant he could call it a day. Finally.

He waved to the farm hands further down the fence to let them know he was heading out, and then grabbed his tool bag to head for the farm truck.

So what if his mom was going to pick the flowers up for Nieves’ quinceañera. That didn’t mean Christian couldn’t trump up some other excuse to go back to the flower shop. He could…

Dammit. He was drawing a complete blank. Yesenia, his favorite sister, didn’t have a birthday until February. It was the start of June. He wasn’t willing to sit around for another eight months.

There was Mother’s Day, but that was even further away – almost a full year. Mother’s Day this year was why he’d crossed paths with Carla to begin with.

Weeks ago, he’d been heading home from the morning chores when he’d remembered that it was Mother’s Day, and he hadn’t bought his mom a damn thing yet. Happy Petals had been right there, so he’d taken a left into the parking lot, intent on grabbing a small bouquet in under five minutes to save himself from the guilt trip that would’ve otherwise happened.

Except…

Well, he didn’t think the heavens had opened and the angels had actually sang, but he’d be willing to go so far as to say that they should have. There she’d been, behind the counter, working and smiling and chatting easily with customers, always moving, efficient but warm and friendly. He’d watched her for a bit, the stream of customers seeming to be neverending, and was just trying to decide if he had the guts to ask her out, when a kid – she had to be in high school – came over and asked him if he was going to buy something or not. Christian had flushed red; he hadn’t even realized that there was another employee in the store, and to be caught