The Summer Proposal by Vi Keeland

“Classy, yet sexy,” he said. Max leaned to the side and looked down at my feet. “Those hot-as-shit heels don’t look like they’d be too comfortable to stand in all day, so I’m going to guess you work in an office of some kind. You were able to get out pretty early to meet your date, so you’re probably the boss and make your own hours. You also dumped your blind date to come meet a guy for a hockey game—a sport you said you know nothing about—without knowing I was a player. So you’re either in a profession that takes risks, or one that requires you to be an optimist.”

I made a face that said I was impressed. “Go on…”

He rubbed the scruff on his chin, which had definitely gotten darker in the few hours we’d been apart. “I’m gonna say lawyer or advertising exec.”

I shook my head. “And here I thought you were doing so well.”

“Was I close?”

“Sort of. I do sit for the majority of the day lately. I also make my own hours, and I suppose starting my own company was risky. I own Eternity Roses.”

“Eternity Roses? Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Oddly enough, even though I’ve never been to a hockey game, I have advertised at Madison Square Garden. My company sells roses that last a year or more. Maybe you’ve seen one of our billboards.”

“The ones that have a guy sleeping with his head in the doghouse?”

I smiled. “That’s the one. My friend Maggie does all the marketing. She got the idea because her soon-to-be ex-husband was always in the doghouse and coming home with flowers.”

“I’ve sent your flowers to my sister-in-law. Last time I was at her house, my brother and I were goofing around and we broke a chair. She wouldn’t let me pay for it, so I sent one of those big, round, hatbox-looking arrangements. Your website is funny, too, right? I remember it had a page with suggested notes for when you were in the doghouse. I used one for the card I sent with the flowers.”

I nodded. “I used to pick all of those myself when I first started. It was one of the things I enjoyed doing most. But we update so often now, I don’t have the time anymore.”

“That’s pretty cool. But I gotta say…those things were expensive as shit. I think the big one I sent was something like six-hundred bucks.”

“Does your sister-in-law love them?”

“She does.”

“Well, regular roses only last about a week. If you buy four-dozen roses, the amount that comes in that large hatbox you sent, you’d have to spend a minimum of two-hundred-and-fifty dollars. In a year, that’s thirteen-thousand dollars for weekly roses. So six hundred is actually a bargain.”

Max grinned. “Why do I have a feeling you’ve said that a few hundred times before?”

I laughed. “I definitely have.”

“How did you get into that line of work?”

“I always knew I wanted to own my own business. I just didn’t know what kind. During college and grad school, I worked at a florist. One of my favorite customers was Mr. Benson, an eighty-year-old man. He came in every single Monday to buy his wife flowers during the first year I worked there. He’d been giving her fresh roses every week for their entire fifty-year marriage. Most of that time, he’d grown the flowers himself in a small greenhouse in their yard. But after his wife had a stroke, they’d moved to a retirement home because she needed more help than he could handle alone. After that, he started buying her weekly flowers at the store. One day he came in and mentioned he was going to have to cut back and only bring her flowers once a month because the co-payments on his wife’s new medicines were so expensive. He said it would be the first time in more than half a century that she didn’t have fresh roses on her bedside. So I started researching how I could extend the life of cut flowers, hoping I could find a way for Mr. Benson’s wife’s roses to last longer between his trips to the florist. I wound up learning a lot about the preservation process, and things just sort of took off from there. Eventually I opened an online store and started selling arrangements out of my house. It was a slow start until a celebrity with twelve-million followers on Instagram placed an order and posted about how much she loved them. Things snowballed from there. Within a month, I’d moved production from my living room and kitchen to a small shop, and now, a few years later, we have three production facilities and eight boutique showrooms. We’ve also just started to franchise the brand in Europe.”

“Damn.” Max lifted his brows. “You did that all by yourself?”

I nodded proudly. “I did. Well, with my best friend, Maggie. She helped me get it off the ground. Now she owns a piece of the company, too. I couldn’t have done it without her.”

He looked over his shoulder and glanced around the room. “Beauty and brains? There’s got to be a line of guys around here somewhere that want to kick my ass for getting to sit with you right now.”

He’d meant it as a compliment and to be funny, yet my smile wilted for the first time. The reality of why I was out on a date tonight hit me smack in the face. I’d gotten caught up in the excitement of the evening and hadn’t stopped to think that I’d have to tell Max about Gabriel. Frannie had filled my blind date in on my situation, so I hadn’t needed to consider how or when I would bring it up there. But I suppose the how or when with Max had just presented itself to me on a silver platter, so there was no time like the present.