A Violet by Any Other Name Read online

  A Violet by

  Any Other Name

  a

  Growers & Showers

  Novel

  Shaye Marlow

  Copyright

  2019 by Shaye Marlow

  All Rights Reserved

  This story is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events in this book are the products of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Shaye Marlow

  Alaskan Romance

  Two Cabins, One Lake

  Two Captains, One Chair

  Two Brutes, One Barista

  Two Crazy, One Wild

  Cowboys & Mages

  Calamity’s Curse

  Erotic Sci-fi

  Erotic Adventures of an Alien Captive

  Dreamer Awakened

  Firefighters Erotica

  A Newsletter Exclusive!

  Sign up for Shaye’s Mailing List to get the fastest updates on her new releases, as well as her Starter Library, including Two Cabins, One Lake, The Erotic Adventures of an Alien Captive and the Firefighters story bundle, all free!

  Contents

  Also by Shaye

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Two Cabins Excerpt

  1

  JoBette

  My least favorite thing to subtitle, hands down, is romance.

  Why? Because the heroine has a handsome man doting on her, and I don’t. Because she’s dainty, and cute, and says all the right things: feats I couldn’t manage on my best day. Because the hero’s eyes shimmer at her, and no one’s eyes had ever shimmered at me.

  This particular movie was a Western, and I’d just plugged in *gunfire*. Then, *hoofbeats*. I had to choose where subtitles would start and end, as well as what they’d say.

  Start here. “Darlin’, are you all right? Speak to me!” End here.

  Start here, just after she opens her eyes. “Oh, Ham. You came for me!” End here.

  Start. “You knew I would,” as the hero named after a chunk of meat is touching her face. “You’re my angel.” End.

  *Sighs*

  *Kissing sounds*

  Oh, look at the time. I eagerly dragged my headphones off over my hair and tossed them beside my keyboard. The image of Ham and Dina kissing was frozen in front of me, the various action bands waiting patiently beneath them. And they would have to be patient because I was going to lunch—

  After I tended to my violets. I’d noticed the fuzzy leaves on the plant next to my monitor were starting to droop, so I made sure to water it first. Then I got the other two on my desk, as well as the seven on the overhead shelf. Then the five on my book case, the two in my book case, the eleven on my windowsill, and the three clustered on the little table just to one side. I plucked off the old brown flower stems and turned several of the plants that were starting to tilt toward the light coming through the window. I really should get some sort of plant light, at least over the bookshelf…

  A splattering sound drew my attention to the water dribbling from the shelf perilously close to my computer. I shoved the plant to one side, only to slosh water from its little saucer. A miniature Niagara Falls sluiced from the shelf, wetting the mess of notes and paperwork beneath and endangering my keyboard.

  By the time I’d wiped it up, fifteen minutes of my lunch had blown by. The only stragglers left in the big open office were the few who’d brought their Hungry Man or Lean Cuisine to eat at their desks while browsing cat memes.

  Snagging my purse, I hustled from my cubicle and took the elevator to the lobby. My low heels clicked across the shiny marble floor, and as I passed, the spindly plants in the corner of the atrium caught my eye. They should’ve been smack dab in the middle of the windows, not tucked in next to the bathrooms like that. And also, they needed bigger pots.

  I gritted my teeth against the urge to go help them as the exterior doors whooshed open. It was a nice day out, the lawns shining green, a mower droning somewhere in the distance. The daisies out front were overcrowded, and the shrubs had been trimmed to within an inch of their lives.

  Dashing across the busy street, I had to stop in the median for a moment, as an older-model white truck pulled onto the road with a squeal. Coughing smoke from its exhaust, it chugged-wheezed-chugged its way by. I gazed after it for a moment, thinking I’d never heard a vehicle make quite that sound.

  Then I held my breath as I crossed the exhaust-hazed lanes, and hustled up to Grenier Nursery. The parking lot was full, with the flowers in the displays out front looking happy as could be. Grenier was a big operation, a long wood frame building out front and greenhouses, fruit trees in big black pots, and yard sculptures behind.

  As I hurried into the shady interior of the main building, my eyes skimmed over the racks of seeds, the dangling glass baubles, and brightly painted pottery, looking for a certain brunette with hair as straight as the needles she often wielded. I found her behind the customer service counter, digging plants out of a box. *Rustling sounds*, I mentally subtitled.

  Maisey looked up. “You’re late.”

  “Yep. Which means we have limited time, so we should—”

  “I gotta get these first.” She was arranging a variety of strange-looking succulents on a wheeled display, which she would then, I guessed, move into position to charm and be bought and hopefully coddled by the nursery’s patrons.

  “But didn’t you want to hit Ella’s shop, too?” I asked, referring to the clothing consignment store in the middle of the strip mall next door. The Japanese place at the end, where we usually went for lunch, had fast service, but…

  “Yep. Don’t worry, we’ll have time.”

  I doubt it. “Can’t you get one of your flunkies to do that?” She was assistant manager, commanding an army of college students eager to do her bidding.

  “This may surprise you, but we don’t call them ‘flunkies’. In the general populace, they’re known as ‘employees’, and here, we call them—”

  “Minions?” I ventured.

  “Gardeners.”

  I groaned. Call a spade a spade, I thought, eyes wandering. I usually tried not to let my eyes do that, because when they did, I bought something. Just about everything in here could be useful to me, after all. I could always use another watering can. The sparkly baubles would look charming hanging in my living room window. That big hat would shade my eyes when I—

  Well, hello. The object of my attention—which I could also put to use, in a number of ways—was perusing the fertilizer selection, arranged on shelves toward the other end of the building. He looked tall and solid with the breadth of his shoulders stretching a rather nice, finely knit wool sweater.

  “How’s work?” Maisey asked.

  “Fine.” Ohhhh, he’d turned to the side. Straight nose, strong chin… dark hair with just enough curl to catch on a woman’s fingers.

  “Still working on Dina’s Ride?”

  “Mmm.” Those weren’t highlights in his hair, but rather, streaks of silver
at the temples. Around my age, then. And he was holding a tub of my favorite violet fertilizer in a strong, sun-browned hand. Better and better…

  “You only make that face over a man or a burger, so what…” Maisey leaned into my field of vision, practically lying across the counter in order to follow my gaze. “Oh.”

  “I know, right?”

  My friend of six years propped her chin on her fist and sighed very much like the heroine in the Western had. “That’s not a burger.”

  “Mmm. But I wouldn’t mind eating him up.” Not one bit.

  “Shit, he’s looking this way,” Maisey said, and slid abruptly back to her side of the counter. She swatted at my arm, because I was still staring at the hottest greenhouse patron in the world. “Act natural,” she hissed.

  “As if I could even if I tried, or under the best of circumstances,” I murmured.

  He had brown eyes, the kind that were so dark, they became the natural focus of a person’s face. Which was actually a bit of a shame in his case, because his face…

  “You’re drooling,” Maisey pointed out.

  He started toward us. I probably would’ve panicked, except I was mesmerized. He approached like a pirate striding down the beach, and if I’d been filming it, it would’ve been in slow motion. Faint breeze riffling his hair and plastering his shirt to killer pecs, smoky look full of promise in his eyes… It took me a moment to realize that he’d actually stopped in front of me.

  The sweater-wearing pirate asked, “Do you work here?”

  “Um.” I stared up at him, mouth open. He was even better-looking up close, and taller than me. At 5’10”, not too many people were. And when wearing heels, that number dwindled even more.

  Maisey popped up from behind the counter. “Can I help you?” she asked, giving him a friendly smile.

  The sexy beast glanced her way, obviously confused by my lack of customer service and speech in general. “I had some questions about your African violets.”

  “Oh, great! JoBette can help you,” Maisey said, making shooing motions at me.

  She might as well’ve punched me in the gut. I was perfectly capable of appreciating a hot guy, but interacting with one like a human being? Still staring up at him, I whimpered.

  “Just give me five more minutes and we can go,” she told me, then ducked behind the counter.

  The tall drink of water was looking at me, and I supposed if there was something I could help him with, besides taking off his clothes, it’d be the violets.

  I drew a blank for a moment, then remembered where they were. “C’mon,” I croaked, and led him to the display. Studiously ignoring him, because it seemed the only way to maintain my train of thought, I started talking. “So, these are the African violets—but that’s a misnomer ’cuz they’re not actually violets, and not actually edible, so don’t try to decorate a wedding cake with them.”

  “No danger of that,” he said. He pointed at the emerald green specimen front and center, with its clusters of coral pansies. “This one.” He opened his mouth to say more, but I’d gotten excited.

  “That’s Boo’s Sunrise, one of my friend’s hybrids. Maisey, the gal that voluntold me to help you.” She was a widow whose late husband had called her ‘Boo’, and so she’d put that prefix on all of the plants she bred. Boo’s Diamond Tiara, Boo’s Darling Deviant, Boo’s Busybody. “Standards are the biggest violets, over semi-minis and minis, and that one’s the biggest of the big.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m thinking it might get two feet across, which is fine by me. I love big violets. Gotta be at least ten inches or I’m not interested, you know? That’s actually the one—not that exact plant, but one of the same name—that I’m going to win this year’s national show with.” And oh, crap, he smelled good. Probably just fabric softener, but it was warm and spicy, and his sweater looked soft… I had to fight the urge to rub my face against his chest.

  He was watching me with lip-quirked bemusement. “An African violet show? There can’t be much competition in that, can there?”

  “You have no idea. There’s this guy named Westbrook that wins best in show every year. Little does he know that this will be the year of his glorious upset, and it will be at my very green and dexterous hands.” I flexed the hands in question, and then, so as not to grab the handsome stranger, I picked up one of the violets. I plucked out a sucker, then started arranging the red-backed leaves. Spotting the wet, firmly-packed peat, I said, “If you get one of these mass-produced plants, you’ll want to repot immediately.”

  He made a little choking noise. “Mass produced?”

  I glanced curiously up at him, and almost sighed at how tall and scrumptious he was. He was like one of those impossibly handsome cologne models, but more seasoned, tragically more clothed, and less poutily focused on a spot in the distance. “I think Maisey orders them from Westbrook Greenhouses, actually, and yeah, they ship out thousands of plants every year. Hard to give each one the attention it deserves when you’re dealing with so many,” I said, picking up another violet to try and distract myself from my need to sidle closer to him.

  I smiled, gazing down at the plant in my hand. “I’ve often wondered if violets make a sound when they grow. And if they did, what would it be?”

  “I think they’d probably sound excited.”

  “Like a squeal of delight?”

  “Like a kid running toward a pool, ready to do a cannonball.”

  I grinned at him, delighted with his response. Usually when I started in on my weird musings, the best I could hope for was a blank stare. “Did you know it’s a myth,” I said, “that you can’t get African violet leaves wet?”

  “I think I’d heard something like that.” He reached for a violet.

  “No, no,” I said. “You want this one.” Fetching Maisey’s hybrid from the shelf, I put it in his hands. I froze there, his hands cradling my hands cradling the plant, stunned by the sensations his touch triggered. I existed in an almost constant state of chill, but that small contact had banished the cold instantly. A veritable heat wave flushed my cheeks and teased my breasts to aching arousal. There were things going on farther south, too, but I stepped away before I could embarrass myself.

  “I do?”

  Oh, hell, what had we been talking about? Oh, yes! Maisey’s plant, which he definitely wants. “Yes. It’s the best plant on the shelf.” The man smelled amazing, his touch was my Kryptonite, and his eyes were deep pools of dark chocolate fondue sucking me in. They were compelling, those eyes. If, at that moment, he’d told me to strip, I would’ve been naked inside five seconds.

  I’d like to be naked with him, I mused. I’d like to discover whether he was tanned under that sweater or pale. He had a nice build, that much I could see. Would he have those ridges of muscle over his hips, pointing right at his—?

  “Even better than Westbrook’s?” he asked, seeming faintly amused.

  “By far,” I said with confidence, determinedly keeping my gaze away from his crotch.

  He examined my expression. “JoBette, was it?”

  “Yes,” I answered, glancing down to make sure a greenhouse nametag hadn’t mysteriously appeared on my chest before remembering Maisey had cheekily called me by my full and legal name.

  He lifted Maisey’s hybrid. “Thank you.” The tone in which he said it was warm and intimate, like we were in bed and I’d just given him a squirmy, face-squinching orgasm. Or maybe—probably—that was just my imagination. I was terrible at reading people, and usually just plain terrible with people, period.

  “You’re welcome.” The graceful thing to do would be just let him escape, but he was about to walk away with Maisey’s violet. About to walk away, period. “But, real quick,” I said, stalling him. I pointed out the white fantasy streaks on the petals, and explained he’d need a bigger pot soon. “Where are you planning on putting it?” I asked. “In an office? Or a window? They need bright light, but—”

  “I’ll take goo
d care of it,” he promised. He looked like he might say something more, but then shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, and started toward the registers. Oh, hell, the rear view was just as compelling as the front. Maybe more so.

  Feeling like I was losing my opportunity at something amazing, I tailed him until he passed Maisey. She popped up in time to see her violet float by and I gave her an excited thumbs-up.

  She laughed, then let herself out from behind the counter.

  I tore my gaze from the eye candy to check my phone. “Only thirty minutes left,” I said accusingly.

  “Good thing that shop is right next door.”

  “But I still need to eat,” I pointed out, following her. My pirate seemed to have become true north on my internal compass. I walked toward the doors, and the arrow turned to track him. He was north northwest, then northwest, then…

  As we passed the registers, I couldn’t not take another peek. I wanted to give him a stupid little lovesick wave, but managed to restrain myself. Barely. As it was, he caught me giving him moony eyes and he got that little quirk in the corner of his mouth. If he were mine, I would consider it my duty to kiss that quirk at least once a day.

  I bumped into Maisey just outside the front door.

  “Did you get his number?” she asked.

  “No.” Even though my heart was aching at having walked away, no.

  “Well, why not? He’s still in there.”

  “I didn’t, because I don’t need it.” I winced, as the statement rang false even to my ears. “I have a roommate, and a bird, and a vibrator—”

  Maisey snorted. “I thought you were going to say something about being old and dried up.”

  I bristled.

  “Oh, don’t even. That’s what you usually say, and you know it. You must really like him, to be giving me other excuses.”

  I’d opened my mouth to argue some more, when I realized the dreamboat was standing just behind me. I realized, because the little hairs on the back of my neck were pointing, and a flush rippled from head to toe.