he said, looking at the double stroller. “It might be better if we carry them. And you won’t need your hat in here either.” He slipped off his white lab coat, threw it over one arm and scooped Meg up in the other. Meg was the heavier of the babies, so he’d instinctively reached for her to save Jenna’s arms, but he’d surprised himself lately by liking Meg in his arms almost as much as Bonnie. She had such a sweet personality even at this young age.
Jenna picked Bonnie up and followed him through the doors.
“I’m glad you could make it,” he said as they walked down a corridor.
“We wouldn’t have missed a personal tour for anything, would we, girls?” Meg gurgled in his arms at her mother’s voice.
Beyond family and his research staff, he’d never allowed anyone into his rooms. Corporate espionage was always a concern—if there was a flower he’d developed and was about to patent, a competitor would love the opportunity to see it and try to trump him.
But there was a personal element too.
Since the day his father had given him a plot of land and free rein to breed his own flowers when he was fifteen, he’d always grown his plants with a fair amount of privacy. He had staff to help now, to carry out tasks such as replicating his experiments to ensure the plants would throw the same flower every time and that the cultivars were healthy. But, in his own lab on a day-to-day basis, he still worked alone. It was a more personal space to him than his home.
So why he’d invited Jenna Peters into his inner sanctum was anyone’s guess. He inwardly winced. He could rationalize it and say he was letting his daughter visit him at work—something he hoped she would continue to do as she got older—and she needed her nanny to bring her, but he knew that wasn’t the truth.
There was something about Jenna that he trusted. Sure she’d been reluctant to talk about her childhood when asked, but he’d decided it must be painful for her. She simply wasn’t the type of person to hide anything from him.
As they walked down the sterile white corridor past rooms filled with activity, a few of his staff rushed over to coo over the two babies, but even those who didn’t watched his progress. Having non-research or admin staff in the building was enough of a surprise to raise eyebrows, but his personal assistant had told him that his instant fatherhood had been a hot topic of gossip among the staff, so he was sure the rumor mill had filled everyone in on whose baby was in the nanny’s arms. He found he didn’t mind the extra attention as much as he usually did.
They passed through a set of double doors into the area where he worked. Usually he was the only one in these rooms unless he called on an assistant to lend a hand. His heart rate felt uneven and he realized he was uneasy, waiting for Jenna’s reaction.
Jenna stood in the middle of the first room, Bonnie in her arms, and turned around in a full circle. “This is where you work, isn’t it?”
His attention snapped to her. “How did you know?”
“It...” Her voice trailed off as she looked from the surroundings back to him. “This is going to sound crazy, but it feels like you in here.”
“Feels like me,” he repeated dubiously. He narrowed his gaze as he took in the rows and rows of seedlings that he hoped would grow up to be something special, the whiteboards covered in diagrams of the generations of the cultivars, the computers and microscopes. “I’m not sure how it ‘feels’ any different in this room from the other rooms we passed along the way.”
“That’s the crazy part.” She grinned at him. “Maybe—” She leaned in and sniffed his shoulder, and Meg made a grab for her hair. “No. I was thinking maybe it smelled like your cologne in here and my subconscious picked it up, but you’re not wearing any.”
He tried to get his lungs working again after she’d leaned so close. “None of the staff wear cologne to work,” he said, hoping his voice was normal. “We often need to smell fragrances from a flower, so we don’t want outside influences floating around.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what it is then. I’ll keep thinking about it.” She wandered over and peeked through the glass panels in the door to the next room. “What’s through here?”
A small swell of pride filled his chest—this project had been his greatest success so far. “Something I’ve been working on.”
Watching her face so he didn’t miss her reaction, he opened the door and waved her through.
As Jenna stepped through the doorway of Liam’s laboratory, her breath caught in her throat. The windowless room had artificial lighting beaming down on rows of benches covered in small black pots that were bursting with glossy green leaves, each with the same flower on long stalks rising elegantly. It was a single, curved petal of a lily, but this bloom was darkest blue. It was stunning.
“Liam, you created this?” she asked once she’d found her voice.
He nodded. “Well, it was a joint project with Mother Nature.”
“It’s amazing.” She walked along the benches, looking at flower after flower, each as perfect as the last. “Has anyone else seen them?”
“Just the staff here. And Adam and Dylan, so they’re ready for when we release it to the public.”
She couldn’t stop looking at the lilies. She’d never seen anything like them. “This will create a sensation.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m hoping so.”
Unable to resist, she reached out and ran a fingertip over a thick, waxy petal. “What sort of launch are you planning for it?”
“I leave that to my brothers, but Dylan’s office usually has window signs made up for all the Hawke’s Blooms stores when we release a new flower, and Adam’s office will probably put out a press release. Gardening magazines and TV shows usually pick up on it, and occasionally we get lucky and the mainstream media mentions it.”
This flower deserved more than a poster and a press release. This flower deserved fanfare and fame. “Have you ever done anything more to promote your creations?”
“What more is there?” he asked, frowning.
Her mind kicked into gear, suddenly full of possibilities. “Maybe an event. Something to really make a splash. Something that would get you a lot of publicity and make the blue lily the most sought-after flower in the state.”
Liam handed Meg a rubber stress ball from his desk as he asked, “What are you thinking?”
If there was one thing Jenna knew about, it was events. She’d been attending large-scale occasions since she was a child. “It could be almost anything, like a media stunt, or maybe a snazzy release, like the way a bottle of champagne is smashed against the bow of a boat.” She’d christened her first ship when she was sixteen. It was more fun than cutting a ribbon, but there was always the danger of splashing her dress. “Perhaps something elegant. How about a ball?”
“For a flower?” he asked dubiously. “People would go to that?”
“Sure
