Read Online Rushing Amy: A Love and Football Novel by Julie Brannagh - Free Book Online

going on. The phone rang again as she was digging under her workbench for her shears, which she’d dropped. Again.
    “Crazy Daisy.”
    “Hey, Amy,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “Matt Stephens told me that you can get me off my wife’s shit list in short order. I need some help.”
    The mystery about where the increased business was coming from was over. She had to smile. He was sending her business, which would warm the heart of any small-business owner.
    “I’ll do my best,” she assured the caller. “What would you like to send, and where’s the delivery going?”
    “This is Tom Reed of the Sharks.” Amy’s heart skipped a beat. Tom Reed was the Sharks’ QB. It was going to be all she could do to keep from gushing over him. “Matt says you’re a football fan, so I know you’ll get what I mean when I tell you the wife’s pissed because I’ve been spending more time with my playbook than her.” He let out a sigh. “I want every red rose in your store. If you’ll get her a pound or so of some really good chocolate, too, and deliver the stuff today, I’ll throw in a couple of suite tickets for a game next season for you. It’s going to our house in Bellevue.”
    Amy promised Tom she’d have three dozen red roses and a pound of Fran’s sea salt chocolate-covered caramels at his house by five o’clock that afternoon, thanked him for his business, and hung up the phone. She was torn between excitement at the amount of money she’d made and the fact she knew she had to hire the delivery driver she now needed desperately. She could put an ad on Craigslist, just as soon as she had five minutes to do so.
    W HEN M ATT WASN’T stopping by her shop to order flowers he was having his executive assistant order them, and Amy was crafting a dazzling array of arrangements sent to what she imagined was every female Matt had had a relationship with since he hit puberty. A disproportionate number had first names ending with “i” as well. The messages on the enclosure cards were getting progressively more ridiculous. Matt must have had a full-time ghostwriter on retainer. When he wasn’t devising new and more ambiguous enclosure cards for elaborate floral arrangements going to a small army of women, he was still asking her out for coffee.
    “Come on, Amy. It’s twenty minutes out of your life.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “I think you really want to go,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice over the phone, too.
    He was right, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to give him the pleasure of admitting it quite yet. Even more, he sounded like he was getting a cold. That wasn’t good. Despite the fact she pretended indifference, she didn’t want him to be sick.
    “I can’t figure out when you’d fit me in. After all, if you’re dating all these women you keep sending flowers to, you must be exhausted,” she blurted out.
    She heard raspy laughter.
    “I’ll make time.” He let that one sink in for a minute or so. Amy slumped against the front counter. She closed her eyes and sighed. His voice dropped to an intimate rumble. “I’ll ask again tomorrow, Amy.”
    “Whatever makes you happy, Matt,” she said. He let out a snort.
    “Tomorrow.” He hung up.
    A MY’S NEW DESIGN assistant Estelle started at the shop the next morning. Amy told her to answer the telephone.
    “If Matt Stephens calls, please tell him I’m dead.”
    “Matt Stephens, the football player? He’s a hunk,” Estelle shouted back.
    Estelle was somewhat loud when she didn’t have her hearing aid turned up, but Amy liked having her around. She was already reducing Amy’s workload. Even more than that, it was nice to have someone to chat with when the shop was slow. The phone rang, Estelle grabbed it, and Amy could tell from the blushing and laughter exactly who it was.
    “Oh, Matt, you are such a flirt,” Estelle trilled. “I wish I could have coffee with you, but Mr. Estelle would have a problem with that. He doesn’t