Monday
It
was one of those days when Missy Garretson was annoyed with the world.
Nothing
particularly bad had happened today. She’d woken up at a reasonable hour, drunk
plenty of coffee, and come into work at her family’s garden shop without
incident. Her father was busy in his office with accounts, so he hadn’t had
time to nag at her for working all the time and not meeting any nice guys. And
Zach, her former stepbrother, who had hung around their small town in North
Georgia even after his mother had divorced her father, hadn’t made an
appearance yet.
There
wasn’t any reason why she wanted to glare at every email that popped into her
inbox and snarl at every customer who walked through the gate.
But
she did.
It
had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that beautiful, talented Cassandra Vance—with
her quiet, untouched air that attracted every man in a two-hundred-mile
radius—was back in town.
Cassandra
had been two grades above Missy all through school, and she’d moved to New York
a few years ago, trying to make a success of her paintings with the art crowd.
She was supposed to be far away, where she wouldn’t be making random guys of
Missy’s acquaintance drool and act like idiots. But Missy had seen her at the
coffee shop that morning, looking just as gorgeous and superior as ever.
Missy
was twenty-seven now. It really shouldn’t bother her so much. So what if all
the guys Missy had liked in school had been crazy about Cassandra? So what if Zach
had been head-over-heels for her for years, only to get his heart broken when
Cassandra had married Silas Vance.
Missy
was a mature, confident woman now with a life of her own. She hated still
feeling like a teenager whom none of the good guys had ever been into.
Sometimes
she did, though. She wondered if people ever truly grew out of that feeling.
At
the moment, Missy was at the main desk in the garden shop, which was made up of
one large building and a couple of acres of property outside. She was scowling
at her computer screen because she’d gotten another spammy email from someone
trying to sell them a secret formula for miracle fertilizer.
“What
are you all pissy about?” a voice came from her right side.
She
jerked in surprise and turned her head to see Zach standing in the opened
double-door entrance that led outside. He had reddish brown hair, hazel eyes,
and a look of unselfconscious sexiness that girls really liked. This morning,
he was arching his eyebrows at her and wearing a stained T-shirt and a pair of
cargo pants that must have been eight years old. “I’m not pissy,” she said
coolly. “When did you get here?”
“I’ve
been here for more than an hour. I was unloading that truckload of grasses
while you’ve been sitting around glaring at anything in your line of sight.”
She
tried to retain her dignity around Zach, since she knew he was pleased when he
got a reaction out of her, but he’d been driving her crazy since she was
thirteen, when her father had married his mother and she’d been stuck with a
mopey seventeen-year-old stepbrother. She barely managed not to make a face at
him now. She wasn’t in a good mood, and he was making it worse. “I haven’t been
glaring,” she said coolly.
“You
have every time I’ve glanced in this morning.”
She
must have been really distracted, if she hadn’t noticed he’d arrived. She was
usually weirdly attuned to his presence. Since she couldn’t think of a response
that wouldn’t let him see how annoyed she was by him, she turned back to her
computer without a word.
“If
you don’t want to work here, you don’t have to,” Zach said, coming closer to
her desk, just when she wanted him to go away. He was always contrary that way.
“Your dad and I could get by fine.”
“Right.”
She took a sip of coffee from the travel mug she filled up in Grounded, the
only coffee shop in the area, every morning. “Dad would have a heart attack,
and you’d lay down and
It
was one of those days when Missy Garretson was annoyed with the world.
Nothing
particularly bad had happened today. She’d woken up at a reasonable hour, drunk
plenty of coffee, and come into work at her family’s garden shop without
incident. Her father was busy in his office with accounts, so he hadn’t had
time to nag at her for working all the time and not meeting any nice guys. And
Zach, her former stepbrother, who had hung around their small town in North
Georgia even after his mother had divorced her father, hadn’t made an
appearance yet.
There
wasn’t any reason why she wanted to glare at every email that popped into her
inbox and snarl at every customer who walked through the gate.
But
she did.
It
had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that beautiful, talented Cassandra Vance—with
her quiet, untouched air that attracted every man in a two-hundred-mile
radius—was back in town.
Cassandra
had been two grades above Missy all through school, and she’d moved to New York
a few years ago, trying to make a success of her paintings with the art crowd.
She was supposed to be far away, where she wouldn’t be making random guys of
Missy’s acquaintance drool and act like idiots. But Missy had seen her at the
coffee shop that morning, looking just as gorgeous and superior as ever.
Missy
was twenty-seven now. It really shouldn’t bother her so much. So what if all
the guys Missy had liked in school had been crazy about Cassandra? So what if Zach
had been head-over-heels for her for years, only to get his heart broken when
Cassandra had married Silas Vance.
Missy
was a mature, confident woman now with a life of her own. She hated still
feeling like a teenager whom none of the good guys had ever been into.
Sometimes
she did, though. She wondered if people ever truly grew out of that feeling.
At
the moment, Missy was at the main desk in the garden shop, which was made up of
one large building and a couple of acres of property outside. She was scowling
at her computer screen because she’d gotten another spammy email from someone
trying to sell them a secret formula for miracle fertilizer.
“What
are you all pissy about?” a voice came from her right side.
She
jerked in surprise and turned her head to see Zach standing in the opened
double-door entrance that led outside. He had reddish brown hair, hazel eyes,
and a look of unselfconscious sexiness that girls really liked. This morning,
he was arching his eyebrows at her and wearing a stained T-shirt and a pair of
cargo pants that must have been eight years old. “I’m not pissy,” she said
coolly. “When did you get here?”
“I’ve
been here for more than an hour. I was unloading that truckload of grasses
while you’ve been sitting around glaring at anything in your line of sight.”
She
tried to retain her dignity around Zach, since she knew he was pleased when he
got a reaction out of her, but he’d been driving her crazy since she was
thirteen, when her father had married his mother and she’d been stuck with a
mopey seventeen-year-old stepbrother. She barely managed not to make a face at
him now. She wasn’t in a good mood, and he was making it worse. “I haven’t been
glaring,” she said coolly.
“You
have every time I’ve glanced in this morning.”
She
must have been really distracted, if she hadn’t noticed he’d arrived. She was
usually weirdly attuned to his presence. Since she couldn’t think of a response
that wouldn’t let him see how annoyed she was by him, she turned back to her
computer without a word.
“If
you don’t want to work here, you don’t have to,” Zach said, coming closer to
her desk, just when she wanted him to go away. He was always contrary that way.
“Your dad and I could get by fine.”
“Right.”
She took a sip of coffee from the travel mug she filled up in Grounded, the
only coffee shop in the area, every morning. “Dad would have a heart attack,
and you’d lay down and
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