Page 49 of The Love Destroyers

Could it? The smell in the car was so overpowering I can still taste it in the back of my throat.

I turn toward all of the sick and injured people gathered in the emergency room on a late morning in late February. It takes half a second for my gaze to find them—a couple of bedraggled looking women, one of them is young and a bit mousy, wearing a Buchanan Brewery hoodie sweatshirt.She’s cradling her arm, giving us a good view of her huge diamond ring, and has tear tracks down her face. Her companion is an older woman with a cane.

Well, hell.

Mark, found. These two ladies would surely appreciate the flowers I’m desperate to unload.

I approach them, Chuck falling into step with me.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks in an undertone.

“That we can unload the flowers on those women and look like heroes?”

He rubs his chin. “I was actually thinking we could stop by the drive-through on the way home. I could really use a spicy chicken sandwich. One of those biscuit ones from that one place. You know, the one that Claire brought us to last week.”

I start to laugh, but the things it does to my head convince me it’s not as funny as I thought. As we get closer, I hold out the huge bouquet of dahlias and lilies.

“Looks like you had a hard morning, ladies,” I say with a wide smile. “We have some flowers for you.”

“Excuse me?” the older woman says with a scowl, tapping the linoleum with her cane.

“They’re for you,” I repeat.

“Do you think this is funny?” the older lady asks scathingly. She looks like she’s five seconds away from getting up and beating me with her cane.

“Uh, no?” I say, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. In another five seconds, I’m prepared to say screw this good deed and go find the nearest dumpster. Or leave the bouquets on someone’s gravestone, even if their relatives end up thinking they must have had a secret life.

The brunette woman reaches out with her good hand to touch the older woman’s arm. “It’s not his fault, Aunt Penny. How was he supposed to know?”

The older woman gives me a distrustful, narrow-eyed look that says otherwise.

Staring up at me, the brunette says, “It’s just…I’ve had a bit of bad luck related to flowers. My fiancé proposed last night, and he gave me this bouquet he made himself, which was just so sweet, but it had poison ivy in it.”

The older woman, who’s got to be her great aunt, makes a pfft sound.

“And then this morning, I woke up to find out my favorite pansies had died. Not ten minutes later, I got hit by one of those bicycle delivery trucks, carrying a bunch of flowers. Aunt Penny thinks it’s a bad sign because Jonah and I want to get married at a flower farm. She says we should see a psychic.”

“For goodness sake, Sophie,” the old lady says, shaking her head. “You’re going to get yourself murdered someday. Don’t talk to strange men who come offering you gifts.”

Sophie smiles fondly at her. “If I didn’t, I never would have met Jonah.”

From the pursed look on Aunt Penny’s face, she thinks this example proves her point, but she settles for a grunt.

Chuck eases out a gusty exhale and rubs his bare ring finger, no doubt thinking about the lost ring.

“I don’t believe in signs,” I say pointedly. “Why would God bother with signs when he could just pull fast ones on us? That would be way more entertaining for him to watch.”

The older lady gives me the stink-eye. “You’re still talking to us, young man?”

Well, goddamn, what’s it with me and pissing off older ladies all of the sudden?

“Look, I have no interest in murdering anyone,” I say, giving her a broad smile. “I’m just allergic to flowers, and someone bought me this bouquet. I figured I’d pay it forward, that’s all.”

“It’s kind of you,” Sophie says with a soft smile, “but we’d really better not. You know…just in case my aunt’s on to something.”

Chuck clears his throat, glancing at Aunt Penny. I silently will him not to speak, but he blurts, “I believe in signs too.”

Oh, here we go…

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