Flowers for My Love

Flowers for My Love

by

KATRINA BRITT

Davina wasn’t free to marry anyone

After the death of their parents, Davina Mawne was sole provider for her young sister and brother. It took long hours of hard work, but Davina was proud of her success in keeping her family together.

She had little spare time for a social life and none at all for romance. Then she met handsome, charming Nick Tabor, who was quite determined to marry her.

It should have been the answer to all her problems. Instead, it seemed only to add to them —

‘Looking
for the Romeo, Cheryl?’

Davina stepped back from the flower arrangement to gaze on it with a critical eye and her younger sister turned round from the window with a guilty start. Her fair face in a frame of feathery curls deepened in colour.

Cheryl Mawne was sixteen, blonde and pretty in a kittenish sort of way, a complete contrast to Davina who was brown-haired and slightly taller. Both girls were like flowers themselves in their smart lavender pink overalls with their names embroidered on the breast pockets.

Cheryl sighed. ‘I wonder why he bothers to come here when there are bigger and grander flower shops in the town?’ she mused. ‘Do you think he comes to see us?’

Davina chuckled and stepped forward to tweak a flower in place.

‘I’m sure he doesn’t. An experienced man of the world usually looks a little higher than flower girls. I bet he likes his women to be sophisticated and worldly wise.’

‘Would you go out with him if he asked you?’

‘He won’t, and he’s much too old for a babe like you. He must be all of thirty.’

Cheryl came to lean back against the till. ‘Don’t you want to get married, Davina?’

Davina worked in silence for a few minutes. ‘I haven’t had time to think about it, I’m much too busy making a success of the shop. Besides, there’s plenty of time.’

‘In the meantime the right man might come along. What then? You could lose him and that would be perfectly awful.

Doesn’t it worry you?’

Cheryl shuddered at the thought of it. But Davina worked on unperturbed. The slender pearl-tipped white hands fluttered among the flowers, coaxing them cleverly into an enchanting array. She looked at Davina’s dark head bent over her task, the delicate line of her profile, her eyes hidden by the thick fringe of lashes. She looked prettier than ever like that among the flowers.

‘You know,’ said Cheryl thoughtfully, ‘I can imagine you bending over a pram as you’re bending over those flowers now. It isn’t natural not to want a boy-friend and dream about marriage. I dream about it all the time—wondering what my husband will be like, whether he’ll be dark-haired, or fair like me. Which men do you like, dark men or fair?’

Davina smiled. ‘Dark men, of course. They’re more dynamic.’

Someone strode into the shop as she spoke. His hair was fair and clustered close to his head in curls and waves. His eyes were a deep grey, a wide-shouldered man, well built yet without any superfluous fat.

Cheryl giggled and Davina turned as he addressed them. ‘I would like two dozen yellow tulips and a dozen roses, please.

I have a card to go with them.’

His voice was deep and cultured and the hand he slipped inside his jacket was well groomed.

‘Certainly, sir,’ Davina replied, giving a nod and a smile to Cheryl to attend to him. ‘I trust the others were satisfactory.’

He drew a wallet from the immaculate jacket and extracted a card.

‘Thanks, they were.’

He gave her the card and their eyes locked. For several seconds Davina battled to lower her gaze and found it impossible. Her heart was beating twenty to the dozen as her fingers closed over his card.

For goodness’ sake, she thought, it’s not the first time I’ve served the man! I suppose it’s all this talk about men. Was it possible that he had heard her say that she preferred dark men? So what? It was true. In any case, this man was hardly her type —much too disturbing and used to getting his own way.

He was one of the new breed who pushed their way to the top, ruthlessly removing everyone in their way. She detested the kind. But he was a customer.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and moved to put the card down on the glass-topped table they used for wrapping flowers.

‘Just a moment.’

She looked up at the peremptory words. He was looking at the flower arrangement she had been working on.

‘Did you do this?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Very artistic. Would you do one for me?’

‘Yes. You can have that one if you like it.’

‘I’ll take it.’

‘Fine. Cheryl will attend to you.’

Cheryl had put the roses and tulips in their plastic wrappers and was tying bows of wide satin ribbon around the stems of each spray.

Davina said, ‘I’ll make a cuppa, Cheryl.’

She hurried out of the shop into a room at the back, the doorway of which was covered by a beaded curtain, and filled the electric kettle.

Her hands were shaking as she switched it on, and she dropped down into a chair. This was the result of getting up at four that morning to go to the market for the flowers. She had worked all morning on a cup of tea drunk in a hurry before rushing out to her little van.

Such enthusiasm was all right in the warm weather, but this morning it had been bitterly cold. She could hear Cheryl talking to their customer and the rustle of paper as the flower arrangement changed hands. The next moment there was the sound of the door opening and closing.

Cheryl came through the beaded curtain with heightened colour.

‘He asked me to thank you for the flower arrangement.

He’s using it this evening at a dinner he’s giving at his place.’

She put her head a little on one side to examine her sister’s pale face.

‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’

Davina nodded. ‘Just tired, I guess. I could certainly do with a cup of tea.’

‘Coming up,’ Cheryl smiled, and reached for the teapot. ‘I do appreciate you leaving me on my own with important customers. It helps a lot. I’m not a bit nervous ... that is, not as nervous as I would be with anyone breathing down my neck.’

‘I’m not the bossy type and I know my own sister. You might not love it like I do, but you do your best, and no one can do more.’

Cheryl spooned tea into the warmed pot. ‘I do like it, you know. Your enthusiasm is kind of infectious. It’s interesting working with someone who’s keen on their job.’

Davina drank her tea, but it did not banish the wobbly feeling in her stomach. Cheryl had gone to fetch their lunch from a delicatessen just around the corner and Davina relaxed for a few precious moments over the order books. It made pleasant reading, but somehow this morning Davina could not whip up enough enthusiasm for it. Was it because spring was just around the corner and that the shop was now on its feet after months of hard work and heart-searching about making the right decision?

Difficult to believe that twelve months ago they had been a happy, compact little family living on a smallholding in the country. Her father had run a prosperous business providing fruit vegetables and flowers for a thriving community.

Davina still shuddered upon recalling the accident that had resulted in the death of her parents. They had been returning early one morning from fetching produce from Covent Garden Market when their car had crashed into a party of young people driving drunkenly home from a late party. They had been killed instantly.

Davina had been left the eldest of the three, Cheryl, Darren and herself. Fortunately she had been one of the reasons why the market garden had been so successful. Her skill with flower arrangements had brought in customers from far and wide.

Even so, setting up a shop was a venture that gave her qualms as to the wisdom of leaving the market garden. But good assistants who worked hard were few and far between and a woman was not likely to receive the same loyalty as a man, so it had been decided to sell the smallholding to their chief assistant who had long wanted a place of his own.

Cheryl had been happy enough to go into the shop on leaving school, but it had been mostly for Darren, their eighteen-year-old brother, that Davina had made the move.

A good-looking boy with a shock of dark unruly hair, he had not been doing very well. Spoiled by an indulgent mother, he could not have cared less about going on to a university. He was not a bad boy, just spoiled, and Davina was determined to do something about it. In her opinion he was devoid of incentive to any ambition, so they had sold the house and established themselves in a roomy flat where Darren was given a room with access to a roof garden.

Davina had encouraged him to cultivate flowers and shrubs and instilled it into him that he was now on his own and it was up to him what he made of his life. There would be enough money to see him through university, so he had to make up his mind what he was going to do.

He did. He decided to become a doctor, which meant that Davina just had to make a success of the flower shop. Cheryl was in a world of her own dreaming romantic dreams and taking every date she had very much to heart. She was sweet and vulnerable. By contrast, Davina was radiant, vital and oblivious of her own enchanting face and figure. She was too immersed in the task of making the flower shop a success. It was doing well. She had her quota of good friends to make her life full and exciting.

At least that was how it had seemed until her encounter with the big blond man in the shop. Davina closed the order book with a sigh and went into the shop to pick up the tulips and roses the man had ordered. There was a card with each in his masculine confident scrawl.

On one was written, ‘To Darling Kate. All my love, Nick.’

The other said, ‘Love and kisses, Nick.’

Davina smiled wryly to herself as she picked them up. Was Kate his wife and the love and kisses one his mistress? Both bouquets were in the delivery van when Cheryl returned with the lunch from the delicatessen.

The moment she arrived back in the shop Davina saw that something was wrong.

‘What is it?’ she asked as Cheryl put down the lunch on to the table before her face crumpled up.

‘It’s Rex,’ she cried. ‘He passed me in his car just now with a beautiful blonde. He was so interested in her he didn’t even see me and they stopped close by to wait for the traffic lights.

You should have seen the way he was looking at her, the beast! He never looked at me like that.’

Davina set the table and said matter-of-factly, ‘I told you what kind of man he was—besides, you’re much too young to be serious with anyone yet.’

Cheryl drew a hand childishly across tear-wet eyes. ‘I wish I could be as hard as you are. Just wait until you fall in love!

You’ll have more sympathy for others then.’

‘But I have lots of sympathy for you, dear,’ Davina assured her gently. ‘At the moment my stomach is crying out for food.

Do let’s eat.’

Cheryl eyed her balefully. ‘Nobody’s stopping you. Go on, eat! You can have my share as well. I couldn’t eat a thing—

I’d choke!’

‘Nonsense.’ Davina bit hard on her lip, wishing that there was someone who could help her in an awkward situation which seemed to be beyond her own powers to deal with. She decided to be diplomatic.

‘You’ll lose your looks if you don’t eat a balanced diet.

Who wants to go around looking yellow and dried up? Rex or any other man won’t look at you then. Come on, sit down, there’s a pet.’ Her smile was beautiful. ‘Tell you what, why not do me a good turn this afternoon by delivering the orders?

Who knows, you might bump into some smashing hunk of man at Belcourt Mansions. The place reeks of money.’

But Cheryl was only half mollified and did not budge.

Davina tried again. ‘Forget about Rex and I’ll take you out this evening. I have a flower arrangement to make for a party at Belcourt Mansions, and I promised to take it round this evening. I was also invited to stay and join in the party if I wanted.’

Cheryl sat down at the table unconsciously. Her blue eyes were fixed in surprise on her sister’s face.

‘You gave that flower arrangement to Nick just now, didn’t you?’

‘Nick?’ Davina echoed. ‘Are you on first name terms already?’

Cheryl laughed and wiped her nose. ‘I don’t know his other name, do I?’