Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not Plot Summary

Introduction

In the sun-drenched city of Sacramento, wedding planner Ama Torres clutches her phone with trembling fingers as her car's dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree of mechanical failure. She's built her career on making perfect moments from chaos, but today—the most important wedding of her life—everything is falling apart. The bride is Hazel Renee, an influencer with millions of followers, and this wedding could launch Ama's career into the stratosphere or destroy it completely. What she doesn't expect is for Elliot Bloom, the brooding florist with soil under his fingernails and six extinct flower tattoos covering his skin, to become her unlikely savior. Their history runs deeper than professional courtesy. Three years ago, they were lovers who built magic together—his impossible floral installations paired with her visionary designs. But love and business proved a toxic combination when Elliot's marriage proposal shattered everything between them. Now they're forced to work together again, dancing around the wreckage of their past while creating something beautiful for someone else's future. In a world where weddings are supposed to be about forever, neither believes in happy endings anymore.

Chapter 1: Seeds of Connection: The Wedding Planner Meets the Florist

The flower shop smells like earth and possibility when Ama Torres first pushes through the door of Blooming, her heels clicking against worn wooden floors. She's twenty-two and ambitious, fresh from working under the legendary Whitney Harrison, Sacramento's wedding planning queen. The man behind the counter doesn't look up from his newspaper—dark hair falling across his face, shoulders broad enough to fill doorways, completely unimpressed by her presence. "What," Elliot Bloom says, not a question but a statement of irritation. Ama's rehearsed introduction dies on her lips. She's used to vendors who kiss up to Whitney's people, not this tattooed giant who treats her like she's interrupting something important. When she explains she's starting her own business and wants to work with Blooming, he doesn't even pretend to care. His father's shop has been here forty years, he tells her, and they already give Whitney Harrison a discount higher than anyone else gets. But then something shifts. She mentions she knew his father—how the older Bloom once wrapped her bruised knuckles in his handkerchief after she punched a groomsman who wouldn't keep his hands to himself. Elliot's demeanor changes, just slightly, like ice beginning to crack. He disappears into the back room and returns with a small boutonniere of buttercups and petunias, tied with pink ribbon. A peace offering, or maybe a test. Later, when she looks up the language of flowers, she realizes he's told her she's immature and he resents her presence. But he also gave her his business card, which means the game has begun.

Chapter 2: Cultivating Passion: A Relationship Without Labels

Six months pass like seasons changing, their professional relationship blooming into something neither expected. Ama discovers that Elliot's gruff exterior hides an artist's soul—he builds impossible installations, chandeliers of baby's breath that hang like clouds, wedding arches that seem to grow from dreams. She becomes his unofficial design consultant, spending hours in his back workshop surrounded by soil and stems, watching his massive hands create delicate beauty. The first time they kiss, it's in a church alcove during the Gordon wedding. Ama tastes like sugar from the donuts she's always bringing him, and Elliot tastes like promises he doesn't know how to make. They're good together in ways that terrify them both—her vision paired with his craftsmanship, creating weddings that make other vendors weep with envy. Their relationship exists in stolen moments and unspoken rules. She doesn't believe in forever, poisoned by watching her mother's sixteen marriages collapse like houses of cards. Elliot carries the weight of taking over his father's shop when cancer cut short his architecture degree, building with flowers instead of steel and stone. They make love on his worktable surrounded by rose petals and potting soil, her fingers tracing the extinct flower tattoos that cover his skin like a map of things lost forever. Ama has three rules for their arrangement: they're exclusive, they'll see each other more than once a week, but they won't call it a relationship. Labels have expiration dates, she tells him, and she's seen too many promises break to trust in permanence. Elliot agrees because having her on any terms is better than not having her at all.

Chapter 3: Wilted Dreams: A Proposal and a Painful Rejection

New Year's Eve arrives wrapped in champagne bubbles and wedding planning chaos. Ama spends the night before Senator Laura Gilbert's wedding in Elliot's arms, her mind spinning with last-minute details and worst-case scenarios. She's designed the perfect evening at Sacramento's elite Sutter Club, every detail orchestrated to showcase her skills. This wedding could change everything for her business. The ceremony goes flawlessly, her vision realized in white roses and golden light. During the reception, as "The Way You Look Tonight" plays, Elliot asks her to dance. It's the first time they've been publicly together, and Ama feels something shift in her chest—a door opening to possibilities she's always feared. In the middle of the dance floor, she tells him she's falling in love with him, the words spilling out like water breaking through a dam. His eyes light up with something dangerous and beautiful. "Marry me," he says, the words soft as prayer. The world stops. Ama feels the familiar panic rise in her throat, the ghost of her mother's sixteen wedding dresses haunting her peripheral vision. She says no with such finality that she watches something die behind Elliot's dark eyes. He tries to backtrack, to pretend the words never happened, but they hang between them like smoke from a fire that's already consumed everything. Their argument plays out in harsh whispers while other couples dance around them. Elliot can't understand why she'd rather let fear dictate their future than take a chance on forever. Ama can't make him see that she's not afraid of marriage failing—she's certain it will, and she loves him too much to put him through that inevitable pain. By the time the last song plays, they're already over, two people who found everything they wanted and threw it away because they wanted it differently.

Chapter 4: Forced Replanting: Professional Paths Cross Again

Three years pass like seasons in drought. Ama builds her business one wedding at a time, her reputation growing steadily in Sacramento's competitive market. She works with other florists, creates beautiful events, and tries not to think about the magic she once made with soil-stained hands and dark eyes. Elliot transforms Blooming into something extraordinary, building a custom installation studio that attracts clients from San Francisco and beyond. When Jackie Nguyen and her fiancée Hazel Renee walk into Weatherstone coffee shop, Ama thinks this might be her golden ticket. Hazel is a beauty influencer with millions of followers, and their October wedding could launch Ama's career nationally. The meeting goes perfectly until Jackie mentions their florist—a family friend named Elliot Bloom. The coffee shop suddenly feels too small, too warm, the walls closing in like a trap. Ama forces her professional smile while her heart hammers against her ribs. She could refer them to Whitney Harrison, could walk away from the biggest opportunity of her career. Instead, she agrees to work with her ex-lover, gambling everything on the hope that three years has been long enough to heal the wounds they inflicted on each other. Their first meeting at Blooming is a masterclass in professional courtesy layered over personal devastation. Elliot has transformed his father's old workspace into something magnificent—white walls, dramatic lighting, installations hanging from the ceiling like captured starlight. He's grown into the artist she always knew he could become, and seeing his success feels like vindication and loss rolled into one sharp-edged package.

Chapter 5: Unexpected Blossoms: Crisis Reveals Lingering Feelings

Wedding planning becomes warfare disguised as collaboration. Ama and Elliot communicate through emails and brief encounters, their shared history crackling between them like electricity before a storm. She pushes her design vision to its limits, knowing he's the only florist who can execute her impossible dreams. He responds with installations that seem to read her mind, creating beauty that makes her chest ache with remembered intimacy. The week before the wedding, everything falls apart. Ama breaks her foot trying to lift an antique bathtub into her failing car, trapped and helpless while the most important day of her career ticks closer. Elliot finds her in a hospital waiting room, abandoning his own responsibilities to orchestrate the ceremony from his hospital bedside. Through her Bluetooth earpiece, she listens to him cue musicians and coordinate vendors, stepping into her role with competence that shouldn't surprise her but does. Whitney Harrison arrives at the reception venue uninvited, claiming Ama called for backup. The confrontation that follows is years in the making—mentor versus protégé, establishment versus innovation, filmed by reality TV cameras that catch every barbed word. Ama realizes that Whitney has been sabotaging her all along, booking phantom weddings to block her access to vendors, threatened by the talent she once nurtured. Standing in the street outside the venue she's created from nothing, Ama finds her voice and her power. She tells Whitney exactly what she thinks of her manipulations, that she's worth ten of her former boss, that she's coming for Whitney's market share and there's nothing Whitney can do to stop her. When Whitney lunges forward to grab her arm, nearly getting trampled by a horse-drawn carriage in the process, the cameras capture everything.

Chapter 6: Full Bloom: Finding Courage to Try Again

The wedding is magnificent, a testament to what Ama and Elliot can create when they stop fighting their connection. Abandoned dance studios become fairy-tale ballrooms, littered streets transform into romantic processionals, and love blooms in LED-lit dance floors filled with queen protea. Hazel and Jackie's joy is infectious, their gratitude overwhelming, and for the first time in three years, Ama remembers why she became a wedding planner. As the reception winds down, she finds Elliot in the alley behind the venue, exhaustion etched into every line of his face. The words spill out of her before she can stop them—that she loves him, that she's always loved him, that watching him save her career today reminded her what they could be together. She kisses him with three years of longing, tasting soil and roses and the salt of her own tears. But Elliot steps back, putting distance between them that feels like centuries. He can't do this again, he tells her, can't survive another round of her loving him on her terms only. The rejection cuts deeper than the first one because now she understands what she lost, what she threw away out of fear and stubbornness. The next morning, Ama wakes up to interview requests and feature articles, her career exploding in exactly the way she'd dreamed. But success tastes like ashes when the person who made it possible won't even look at her. She's got everything she thought she wanted and nothing that actually matters.

Chapter 7: Perennial Love: Creating a Future Together

Desperation makes cowards brave and fools wise. Ama drives to Blooming on a Sunday morning, still wearing yesterday's clothes and walking on crutches, her pride abandoned somewhere between her empty bed and his locked door. She finds Elliot in his workshop, surrounded by the installations that built his reputation, and she gets down on one knee like he did three years ago. "Marry me," she says, the words scraping her throat raw. She means it this time, means it with every cell in her body, but Elliot just stares at her like she's speaking a foreign language. He helps her to her feet and tells her it's not necessary, this grand gesture. She thinks he's talking about someone else, some other woman who broke his heart after their relationship ended. But then he traces her jawline with soil-stained fingers and tells her about counting days—five years, four months, three weeks, and five days since they first met. Two years, nine months, one week, and one day since she walked away from his mother's wedding and took his heart with her. They make love on his worktable again, surrounded by the ghosts of their younger selves and the promise of something better. When she asks to see his newest tattoo, he reluctantly shows her the Red Pearl amaryllis blooming over his heart—her namesake flower, the one that's not extinct but might as well be, since it can never live in his shop. "You're a sap, Elliot Bloom," she whispers against his skin, and he agrees. He won't marry her, he tells her with lips curved in the smile she's missed like breathing. But he'll date the hell out of her, and maybe that's exactly what they both need—time to grow into the people they were always meant to become, together.

Summary

Six months later, Ama wakes up every morning in Elliot's arms and asks him to marry her. He always says maybe tomorrow, and she's learned to find joy in the ritual rather than frustration in the answer. Their combined business thrives in ways neither imagined possible—her vision and his artistry creating weddings that bring couples from across the country to Sacramento. She's booked solid for two years, her reputation built on the foundation of believing in other people's forever even when she couldn't believe in her own. The happy ending isn't in the proposal she keeps making or the answer she keeps receiving. It's in the morning donuts Elliot picks up without being asked, the way Lady Cat-ryn has learned to tolerate his presence in exchange for premium tuna, the silk rose wall in their shared workspace that spells out "Because I'm coming" in pink and white blooms. It's in learning that love doesn't always look like what we expect, that sometimes the greatest act of faith is saying "maybe tomorrow" and meaning it, every single day, until tomorrow finally becomes today.

About Author

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Julie Soto

Soto reflects on the interplay between romance and suspense, crafting narratives that captivate with emotional depth and humor. Her books, such as "Forget Me Not", use spicy humor to explore the tension between a wedding planner and her ex, highlighting her skill in weaving engaging romance with witty dialogue. Beyond her novels, Soto’s theatrical expertise shines through in her musical "Generation Me", which received acclaim at the New York Musical Festival with awards for Best Musical and Best Book. This multifaceted approach enriches her storytelling, appealing to readers who appreciate a blend of drama and lightheartedness.\n\nJulie Soto's work resonates with audiences seeking both entertainment and emotional connection. Her blend of romantic comedy, adult fantasy, and thriller elements ensures a diverse reading experience. Titles like "Rose in Chains" and "The Thrashers" demonstrate her range, achieving bestseller status and showcasing her ability to capture complex themes within accessible narratives. Soto’s recognition as a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author underscores her impact in contemporary fiction, drawing readers into her vibrant worlds. This bio captures her dynamic career, where each book builds a bridge between heartfelt stories and adventurous plots, ensuring a memorable journey for her readers.

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