The Bouquet List by Barbara Deleo

your own life—the days and now the nights—is pretty dedicated.”
    He shrugged. “It’s just what friends do. I owe your family, Yasmin. When I was a kid, Nick and your family were the only people I could count on in my life.” Even though he tried to cover it, there was hurt in his voice. “Part of me used to feel as though everything in the world revolved around the Palace and the Katsalos family. Like your family was the sun and everything else was only worthy of orbiting it.”
    An overwhelming urge to reach out and touch him overtook her, but she fought it and put her palm flat on the table. He wouldn’t want her sympathy. “I’d have thought my family was a lot less like the sun, and more like a pile of space junk hurtling haphazardly through its own universe into a yawning black hole.”
    He gave her the briefest of smiles, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “It was a good, solid piece of space junk.”
    “Were you here for all the raised voices and the threats to disown one another?” she asked, throwing her hands around the way her family did when conversations got heated.
    He shrugged, but not with his usual casual confidence; there was something deeper going on behind his eyes. “I came to understand that the raised voices were about passion, and the threats to disown one another were just another way to say you couldn’t live without one another.”
    The tight tone to his voice betrayed an old pain, and more than anything, she wanted to take it away for him. Giving in to the need for connection that her body demanded, she reached out a hand and touched the crisp cotton of his shirtsleeve. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of what you went through with your own family. I know I take for granted what I had. I think that’s part of the reason Mom went back to Greece. We’d all been taking one another for granted for far too long.”
    He looked down at her hand and then up into her eyes, and her pulse began to quicken. Now it made sense. Why he’d rejected her last night. He didn’t want to mess up his friendship with Nick, didn’t want to run the risk of losing touch with her family if something went wrong between the two of them. Suddenly she felt like the most selfish person in the world for even suggesting a fling with him. She gently removed her hand and laid it in her lap.
    “That’s the whole crazy thing.” He rubbed a hand down his face and let out a breath. “I didn’t go through anything particularly bad with my family. I just didn’t have much of one. Neither of my parents was in a relationship again after they split when I was young, so I remained the focus for both of them, and a lot of that focus was about who was doing the best parenting, whose place did I want to spend the most time at? My whole childhood was about scoring points and one-upmanship. It was a relief to come to the Palace where people talked about other things, played practical jokes, and stuck up for one another.” He smiled at her again, and this time it was genuine. “That’s the sort of family I want to have one day.”
    She didn’t want to dig too deep and ask him to lay more of his pain bare, but she was fascinated about one thing. “Do you think it’s affected the way you’ll want to be as a parent?”
    He carefully laid his fork on one of the empty plates. “Absolutely. No child of mine will be moved around all the time. I want a stable place for them to live, predictable and constant parents. I want to work hard to give them a comfortable life, and live near family so we can create bonds and lasting memories, not to feel isolated and alone.” He rubbed two fingers over the frown lines that had appeared on his forehead. “I intend to give my kids everything I didn’t have.”
    Yasmin thought about her own future. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted children, but if she eventually did decide to have them, she’d want them to travel the world with her. Even when she was studying full