Love in Bloom (2 page)

If it had been anyone else, Hope would have been embarrassed. She shrugged. “Just myself. I had the weirdest order. This woman wanted to send a wilted bouquet to her dog.”

“Oooh, can I do it?”

Hope pointed to the bouquet next to her. “It's already done.”

“Those don't look wilted to me.”

“By tomorrow when we deliver, they'll be as close as I can get. If she's not happy, I'll refund her money.”

Clarice frowned and shook her head. “It's a good thing you've got the touch with flowers 'cause you suck at business.”

“Look who's talking,” Hope retorted. “I swear if you ever get a real job, you'll get canned the first week.”

Clarice dumped her messenger bag behind the counter with a sigh. “I know I'm late. I overslept. I met the most amazing guy last night.” She hugged herself and closed her eyes. “He was like, totally incredible, with the most amazing mouth.” She opened her eyes and shrugged. “I was dreaming about him this morning. I just couldn't wake up. Sorry.”

A teeny weed of jealousy popped up in Hope's heart. She gave it a mental yank and threw it as far from her as possible. Just because she would probably never find a man didn't mean that she had to resent it when someone else got lucky.

Clarice got lucky a lot.

Another weed. Yank, toss. Sigh.

The bell over the door jingled again and in walked the hunk of the century.

“Wow,” breathed Clarice, speaking for both of them.

Hope shot her a look, then asked, “May I help you?”
May I have your children? How soon?

He looked a little embarrassed, whether from Clarice's unbridled
admiration or the fact that he was in a flower shop, who knew? He was tall, with an Arnold Schwarzenegger chest, and fit with the flower shop as well as the proverbial bull in the china closet. Dressed in jeans, a denim shirt, and work boots, he had sandy hair and brown eyes and the tanned skin of a man accustomed to working outside. He belonged on a calendar. Mr. March. No, lose the shirt and make that Mr. July.

“I need to order some flowers,” he said, stating the obvious.

Hope walked over to him. He smelled like sawdust and aftershave, a fragrance more enticing than gardenias. “Did you want an arrangement?” She suddenly felt like every bit of estrogen in her body had decided to samba. She smoothed her hands down her jeans in the hope that the rest of her would get the message and stop with the attraction tremors.

He looked around, taking in the Easter frillies, the balloons, and the flowers in the refrigerated case. His gaze rested on Audrey, the shop mascot. “That's quite a plant.”

The Christmas cactus that got away. Many people had offered to buy Audrey. With those red glittered heels holding up her pot and her Feed Me sign, she was something. “Audrey's not for sale,” Hope said quickly. Audrey had shared her apartment and cheered her up when she went through those nightmare months. Audrey was family. A girl didn't sell her family.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Audrey?”

Hope felt her cheeks warming. “Like in
Little Shop of Horrors
. It was a musical. About a plant that ate people.”

He grinned and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I should have got that.”

A man who knew about musicals. Was he gay? “You know that musical?”

He shrugged. “I was in it in high school. I played the dentist. Rode a Harley up on stage.”

“Awesome,” gushed Clarice.

It wasn't hard to picture this guy all studded up in black leather making an entrance on a motorcycle. Hope cleared her throat. The tremors were still there. The hand-smoothing thing hadn't helped.

He shook his head. “The bike's probably the only reason I got the part. Anyway, don't worry about your man-eating plant. I'm looking for something smaller.”

“Do you have anything in mind?” Hope asked. She did, but it had nothing to do with flowers.

“I don't know. Some kind of arrangement.”

“For your girlfriend?” chirped Clarice from behind the counter. Clarice of the short-term memory loss. So much for the amazing guy she had met the night before.

The customer shook his head. “My mom. It's her birthday.”

A hunk who loved his mother. The man had to have a flaw somewhere. Hope walked over to the wrought-iron café table where she kept the book with pictures of all her arrangements and flipped it open. “Would you like to look at some samples?”

He eyed the delicate white chair as if he was wondering whether or not it would hold him. “Uh, I actually have to get back to work. My company's doing the renovations on this building.”

The renovations on the long building that housed her flower shop, Something You Need Gifts, and Emma's Quilt Corner had made the sound of hammers and saws familiar background noise as builders shored up some of the sagging structure at the back of the building. So she'd heard him before she'd seen him. Emma was fretting about sawdust filtering into her new shop and coating her fabric, but the idea of sawdust didn't bother Hope. Good topsoil always had some sawdust in it.

“Maybe you can just pick something out,” he suggested.

Hope hated it when people said that. Flowers had a language all their own, and every arrangement should say something special that reflected the heart of the giver. Even the angry woman who wanted
to send flowers to her dog had had something in mind when she came in.

“Flowers are so personal,” Hope told him. “Does your mother have a favorite?”

“She likes roses.” His brows knit. “She doesn't live in Heart Lake. She's closer to Lyndale. Do you deliver that far?”

For you? To the ends of the earth.
Hope nodded. “No problem. How much did you want to spend?”

“Cost doesn't matter.”

“Dark pink roses symbolize appreciation. You could also add some daffodils, and the color contrast would be striking.”

“Do those symbolize something?”

“Every flower does. Daffodils symbolize respect.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her like she'd just come up with something brilliant. “Perfect. Add those.”

“All right then,” she said. She moved to the counter and he followed her, pulling out his wallet. She brought up an order form on her computer and took the name and address of the lucky flower recipient. “And how would you like the card to read?”

“Happy birthday.”

“You don't want to say anything else?” Hope prompted.

“Happy birthday, Mom?” he guessed.

Clarice snickered and Hope frowned at her.

“Am I missing something here?” he asked.

“Well, women, even moms, sometimes like to receive a special message. We're sentimental that way.”

“Words aren't exactly my specialty. I was more of a math-science guy in college. I appreciate words though,” he added. “I'm open to suggestions.”

Hope loved this part of her job. She enjoyed helping people with the little cards that accompanied their gifts almost as much as she enjoyed creating the floral arrangements. “Since you're picking such symbolic flowers, it would be nice to tell her what they mean.”

He beamed. “Great idea.”

“So, how about something like, ‘Roses for gratitude, daffodils for respect.' ”

“Maybe they'll make up for my neglect,” added Clarice, and Hope shot her a silencing look.

“I like it,” he said with a nod. “Not the part about neglect though.”

“Of course not,” Hope said. “And sign it?”

“Love, Jason. Wait. Make that love and gratitude. How's that?”

“Aw, that's sweet,” said Clarice, who was now busy watering plants.

He was looking at Hope as if waiting for her approval. “That says it all,” she told him.
You're perfect.
For some other woman, not for her. “Now,” she said briskly, yanking herself out of her lust trance. “Do you want to put that on your charge card?”

He handed over the card, nodding. She looked at the name on it. Jason Wells. It was a nice, solid-sounding name to go with those nice, solid muscles.
Oh, stop already
.

Their business done, he gave her a nod and a smile and an easy “Thanks,” then left the shop.

Hope watched him go.

“Great butt,” Clarice said, echoing her thoughts. “No wedding ring. I wonder if he's got a girlfriend.”

“Didn't you just meet Mr. Amazing last night?” Hope teased.

Clarice made a face. “Not for me, for you. He's probably at least thirty. That's your age.”

“Me?” Hope shook her head. “He's not my type.”

“A man like that is anybody's type.”

Not anybody's, thought Hope. A man like that needed a perfect woman, not one who was scarred and had an alien implant where her left boob used to be.

Never mind. You may look like the Bride of Frankenstein and have an alien implant, but you have your flower shop, you have your life. And you have a floral arrangement to make.

 

 

 

 

 

 

S
EVENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD MILLIE
Baldwin felt like the Invisible Woman. What did it take to snag a boy's attention these days? “Guess what I did while you were in school?” she asked her twelve-year-old grandson.

No response.

“I stole the Liberty Bell.”

Eric gave a grunt and frantically pressed the controls on his video game.

“I buried it in the neighbor's backyard,” Millie continued, trying to make herself heard over the sound of gunfire coming from the TV. “Of course, it won't stay over there. That's just temporary, till I can find a buyer. I would have buried it in your backyard, but it would have been too hard to hide all that freshly dug sod under gravel and a bonsai bush.”

“Oh, man, he killed me!” cried Eric in disgust.

Millie sighed and let him go on with his game; something called “Halo” that he played on-line with his new best friends who happened to be total strangers. Maybe if she had expressed an interest in killing virtual people when she first came to stay with Debra, she and her grandson would be spending more time together now. Maybe they would talk. Maybe when she talked he would listen. Probably not though. Who wanted to listen to an old woman?

She had tried to figure out the game one afternoon, thinking it would be fun to surprise Eric and challenge him to a duel when he got home from school, but she'd been unable to even make the game start, let alone decipher the purpose of all the buttons on the controller.

“I think I'll just scoot out to the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea, plan my next heist.”

“Whoa!” he hooted.

“Would you like something to eat, Eric?” she offered.

“Fritos,” he said, and jerked in sympathy as his on-screen action hero dodged a barrage of bullets.

The child had been programmed with selective hearing. Millie fetched the bag of chips, then returned to the living room and stood in front of the couch where her grandson was planted dead center.

“Hey, Gram,” he protested, leaning to the right. “I can't see.”

“Maybe you've been playing that game so much that you're going blind.”

“I don't play that much,” he argued, frantically pressing the game controls.

“Your mother wanted me to make sure you did your homework.”

“I didn't have any,” he said, not missing a beat. His face suddenly crumpled in pain and he dropped the controls and fell over on the couch with a moan. “I'm dead again.”

She dropped the chips on the coffee table in front of him. “These should resurrect you.”

He sat back up, reaching for the chips while simultaneously punching the game controls.

“You're welcome, dear,” she prompted.

“Oh, yeah. Thanks, Gram.” He shot her a quick grin and she tousled his hair. He was a cute boy. They used to have fun together when he and his sister came out to visit, playing games like
Sorry
and
Steal the Pack
. But here, on his home turf, those quiet games couldn't compete with the action on the TV screen. Neither could she.

Back in the kitchen, Millie fed Socks the cat, who was winding around her legs, begging for food. Then she put the kettle on to boil and stood looking out the window. She saw a drizzly Pacific Northwest day and a stark landscape of raked rocks, dotted with a few ornamental bushes. Her daughter claimed it was restful. How could a yard with barely any vegetation be restful? And if it was so restful, why was Debra always so tense?

That, of course, was a rhetorical question. Debra was a single, working mother with a stressful job and spoiled children who required the latest of everything. How could she be anything but tense?

Fourteen-year-old Emily bounced into the kitchen, freshly home from school and ready to forage for food. She planted a quick kiss on Millie's cheek and gave her a casual, “Hi, Gram.” Like Eric, Emily was a beautiful child, with golden hair and blue eyes. She was two years older than her brother and just as skinny. She also had an equally never-ending appetite. Millie was beginning to suspect these children had tapeworms.