Love in Bloom Read online

The kitchen shop was a cook’s dream, full of goodies, gadgets, cookbooks, tea towels, aprons, and oven mitts that Martha Stewart would kill for. A cheery display of copper pots and pans hung in one corner. Now, that was what Amber wanted in her kitchen someday, if she ever could afford a house again—lots and lots of copper cookware. She’d buy out the whole display. And she’d have a big kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, and an island where she could whip up incredible desserts.

  For now, all she’d be buying was lavender sugar. She drifted to the section of the store that had been set aside for baking and immediately got sucked in by the row of bins housing every kind of cookie cutter imaginable. Amber loved cookie cutters. She owned everything from alphabet letters to angels. Of course, she had all the traditional holiday cookie cutters, too. But here was one she didn’t have. Shaped like a tulip in full bloom, it was perfect for her new life. And it would be perfect for lavender cookies. Now, if she could just find some lavender sugar.

  Kizzy, the shop owner, was more than happy to help her. In her full-length red apron with its heart appliqué, she looked like she should be on a cooking show. Amber guessed this woman was somewhere around her mother’s age, but she had no gray hair and her skin was smooth and dark as carved mahogany.

  “Are you new in town?” she asked as she rang up Amber’s purchases. “I could have sworn I knew every baker in Heart Lake.”

  “I am, as a matter of fact, but I’m loving it here. And I love to bake. If these cookies turn out, I’m going to sell them at the farmer’s market.”

  “Maybe you should be making them at Sweet Somethings Bakery. Sarah Goodwin is a friend of mine. I could speak to her.”

  “How about telling her to give me a raise?” Amber joked.

  Kizzy threw up her hands. “I should have known if there was new talent in town Sarah would find it.”

  “Well, I don’t know if she’s quite discovered my talent. Right now I’m ringing up orders and making lattes.”

  “You come up with some good stuff and she’ll have you chained to the oven in no time, I can guarantee it,” Kizzy said, handing over the bag with Amber’s purchases. “And you come back and see me again soon. Let me know how those cookies turn out.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring you some,” Amber offered.

  Kizzy made the sign of the cross and shook her head violently. “I couldn’t. I’m a member of Cookies Anonymous. One bite and I’d be under the kitchen table with crumbs on my face. But they sound wonderful,” she added. “I’m sure they’ll be a hit.”

  Millie’s house was Amber’s next stop. She had to double-check the address when she pulled up in front of the place. What kind of bad karma was this? The house was big and boring, and it had no yard. Millie belonged in a little English cottage, or a farm house with flowers everywhere and a front walk made of paving stones. No wonder she was at the community garden so much.

  Millie was ready for her. “I’ve got the water on,” she said, leading the way to the kitchen.

  Amber followed her through a living room with big, leather furniture and a flat-panel TV. A black cat with white front paws trotted out from behind a chair and followed them into the kitchen.

  “Now, you know you’ve been fed. Nothing more until to night,” Millie told it.

  But once they were in the kitchen, she caved and dished a couple of spoonfuls into the cat’s bowl. “I’m a bit of a pushover,” she confessed.

  Amber couldn’t help wondering if that was how Millie had wound up out here at her daughter’s house in the first place.

  “These used to be the hit of my garden club meetings,” she said, handing over a sheet of paper with a beautifully scripted recipe. “I’m so happy a whole new generation is going to be enjoying them. You know, for a while, lavender was considered rather an old-fashioned herb, but it’s making a comeback.”

  “I hope so,” Amber said.

  “I’ll give you my carrot cookie recipe, too. People will love those and come back for more.”

  “Good. I need to make a pot of cash.”

  “I’m sure you will. And before long, your husband will have a job and then you can keep what you make for pin money.”

  That wiped the smile off Amber’s face. “Only if he can move to Seattle.”

  Millie wasn’t looking so cheerful herself all of a sudden. “Oh. You’re moving?”

  “He wants to.”

  “Does he have a job offer?” Millie became suddenly very busy setting the teapot and their cups and saucers on the kitchen table.

  Amber perched on a kitchen chair and eyed the frosted cookies Millie had set out on a salad plate. “No. Seattle is just the latest plot of green grass.”

  “Ah. The grass is always greener?”

  “Something like that. But I like it here. I don’t want to move, so I hope you’re not going to suggest I just pick up and follow him.”

  Millie nudged the plate her direction. “Have a carrot cookie.”

  Amber took a cookie and bit into it. And was pleasantly surprised. “You’re right. People will love these.”

  Millie smiled as she settled herself at the table and poured tea into their cups. “They’re perfect with a nice cup of tea. Constant Comment, my favorite,” she murmured. “I think it’s a comforting tea.”

  “I could use some comfort.” Emotion gathered in a tight ball in Amber’s throat and she suddenly found it hard to swallow.

  Millie leaned across the table and placed a hand on her arm. “Be patient, dear. These difficult times always feel like they’ll never end. But trust me, they do.”

  “I don’t want to move again.” Amber could feel the tears rising in her eyes. She gave them an angry swipe. “I’m such a baby.”

  “No, you’re not.” Millie patted her arm. “And this will all work out, you’ll see.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m going to pray about it,” Millie said firmly.

  “Well, good luck with that,” Amber said, her voice seasoned with bitterness. “I think we’ve done something to piss God off.”

  Millie settled back in her seat and took a sip of tea. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I have a feeling it’s about time for some good things to happen in your life.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. Don’t get discouraged. Your life is like your garden.”

  “That’s a scary thought,” Amber said, looking warily at her.

  “You plant your seeds, but it takes time for them to germinate. You don’t see vegetables or even the promise of vegetables for a while, but they’re still busy growing beneath the soil, getting ready to produce something wonderful for you. I think life is like that. At least, I hope it is.”

  “Is that how it’s worked for you?” Amber asked. If so, why did Millie look kind of sad all of a sudden?

  “That’s how I try to make it work,” Millie said. “It’s the best I can do.”

  “Well,” Amber said with a sigh, “all I can do is keep planting, I guess. I’ve got too much invested to quit.”

  She thought of Hope Walker, working hard to turn her back on a scary past and seed her life with new, good things. And here was Millie, making friends in a new place. If they can keep working at it, so can I, she told herself.

  SIXTEEN

  JASON STOPPED BY the flower shop on Tuesday to see how Bobbi was doing.

  As he leaned on the counter, spotlighted by mid-morning sunshine, Hope couldn’t help lusting just a little over her sister’s boyfriend. In his dusty jeans and work shirt, he was so very lustible. All that maleness, it charged her flower shop with electricity. Or maybe it was just her who was getting the charge.

  Bobbi didn’t seem to feel it all that much. Her smile was standard Bobbi issue. Yes, she wanted Jason Wells, but did she really WANT him?

  “So, you’re doing okay?” Jason asked Bobbi.

  “Absolutely.” She slung an arm over Hope’s shoulder. “Who n
eeds the Last Resort anyway? I’m happy here with my sis, making art.” She turned to Hope. “That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

  Hope nodded. Way to be brilliant. She was willing for Bobbi to get Jason, totally willing. But just once she’d like to come across as more than a common dandelion. Hard to do when your sister was a stargazer lily.

  Dandelions were pretty, too, she told herself. And useful, with edible leaves and petals that could be turned into wine.

  “And my money problems are solved,” Bobbi was saying. “We’re going to be roommates.”

  Jason smiled at that. “That’s got to be a chick thing.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Bobbi.

  “I tried being roommates with my brother. It lasted two months. We almost killed each other.”

  “That’s not going to happen to us,” Bobbi insisted. “We’re not just sisters, we’re best friends.” She gave Hope a squeeze.

  “Absolutely,” Hope agreed, and squeezed back. And sisters shared. Everything. Except in the case of Jason, she could hardly call it sharing since he was all Bobbi’s.

  The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Bobbi said, picking up the receiver.

  While she talked on the phone, Jason turned to Hope and asked in a low voice, “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Hope assured him.

  He drummed the counter, calling Hope’s attention to his hands. They were big and work roughened. Strong hands. He looked to where Bobbi stood with her back to them, still busy on the phone. “I don’t want to rush her to share personal stuff with me, but if she’s got a problem, if she’s got a big bill she can’t pay . . .”

  Thanks to her skill with a charge card, Bobbi always had bills, but they weren’t anything she couldn’t handle, especially with her rent now cut in half. She was doing fine. Hope shook her head, confused.

  “Hospital bills?” he prompted.

  “Hospital bills?” Hope repeated. What could her sister have told Jason to make him believe she had hospital bills? Someone in this shop had them, but it sure wasn’t Bobbi.

  “Look, I saw a book when we were helping her load her bookcase, the one about cancer.”

  Hope felt her cheeks warming. If she’d seen that book first, she’d have ditched it.

  “When I saw her Saturday, she talked about having bills to pay. I assumed . . .”

  Hope wasn’t about to step forward and say, “I’m the one who had the big C.” But she couldn’t let him think Bobbi had had it. “It wasn’t her. It was . . . someone else in our family. Bobbi was helping her.”

  Jason looked at Bobbi like he was watching a saint in action. “Is this person okay now?”

  “She’s doing fine,” Hope said.

  “A fighter, huh?”

  “She is.” At least on some levels.

  Bobbi hung up and announced, “We just got an order for a fiftieth birthday. They want an over-the-hill theme, but not a mean one. How do we do that?”

  “We’ll . . . you’ll think of something,” Hope corrected herself, conscious of Jason standing there, listening.

  Bobbi’s cheeks turned pink. “Oh, yeah.”

  Jason gave the counter a thump. “Well, I’d better get back to work. Just thought I’d see how you were doing, if you needed anything.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” said Bobbi. “I need your body.”

  Who didn’t? Hope kept her features neutral.

  That got his interest.

  “And any other help you can find. Bring your friend. This Saturday is moving day, and I need to take a bunch of stuff to storage. I’ll feed you,” she added.

  A corner of his lip lifted. “Food is good.”

  “Okay then. Ten A.M?”

  “Ten A.M.,” he repeated, and left the store, giving them a quick salute as he went.

  Bobbi turned and beamed at her sister. “There. That takes care of the muscle. Jason’s got a really cute friend. Maybe he’ll bring him.”

  “Getting greedy?” Hope teased.

  “Not for me, for you.”

  “I’m not interested,” Hope said, and slipped behind the velvet curtain to the work area.

  Bobbi followed her. “You will be when you see him. He’s gorgeous, Phantom of the Opera gorgeous.”

  Hope made a face. “I wasn’t the one who had the hots for the Phantom. Remember?”

  “Well, you’ll have the hots for this guy, trust me.”

  “Speaking of trust,” Hope began.

  “What?”

  “Jason saw one of my books.”

  Bobbi gave a snort. “He saw a lot of your books.”

  “The one on cancer.”

  “Oh.” Bobbi gave her lower lip a good gnawing.

  “I told him someone in our family had it, so I don’t think he’ll bring up the subject again. But if he does, don’t tell him it was me.” She wasn’t exactly on Jason’s radar, but she didn’t want to suddenly pop up there as Miss Cancer of Heart Lake. Too humiliating.

  Bobbi nodded, her face serious. “Don’t worry. I won’t. If the subject comes up, I’ll tell him it was a cousin or something. And you know what else I’ll tell him? That woman is my hero.”

  Hope just shook her head. “Oh, Bobs, you need to get out more.”

  Bobbi grinned. “That is definitely not my problem.”

  The day drifted pleasantly by, like so many dandelion seeds on the wind. The sisters got their orders filled and, that afternoon, while Hope was doing paperwork, Bobbi delivered them.

  Bobbi wasn’t the world’s best driver, so Hope spent much of the afternoon imagining her sister in a ditch somewhere, all the arrangements spilled and ruined. But Bobbi made it back, mission accomplished, and Hope decided she didn’t need to worry so much. This was all working out beautifully.

  The rest of the week followed the same pleasant pattern until Friday, when Jason came in at noon with sub sandwiches from the Safeway deli. Hope was ready to slip into the back room to give them some privacy, but both Bobbi and Jason insisted she stay and eat.

  “There’s plenty,” he said easily.

  And so she stayed and played third wheel, listening while he and Bobbi compared growing up stories. He regaled them with tales of the many fights he and his brother had growing up, and the creative ways they managed to torture each other. “One Christmas my buddies and I tied him up with a string of Christmas lights and stuck him in the closet.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Bobbi.

  “It could have been worse,” Jason said with a shrug. “I wanted to plug the lights in.”

  “What happened?” asked Hope.

  “One of my other friends felt sorry and set him free while we were playing a video game. He told my mom. I was grounded for two weeks.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t have a school newsletter where you published his private information,” Bobbi said, looking accusingly at Hope. “She got mad at me one time for using all her new makeup to give my friend make overs and published some stuff about me that got her on restriction for a whole month.”

  “Let’s not go into that,” Hope said quickly, her face hot. Jason didn’t need to learn that she’d published an ode to her thirteen-year-old sister’s bra size.

  He flashed a puckish grin at her as he said to Bobbi, “I had a sister. I can imagine what yours published.”

  “She got her revenge,” Hope said. “She stole my journal and read the most embarrassing parts to all her friends at lunch.”

  “Not that you ever did much to be embarrassed about,” put in Bobbi, “since you were the perfect one.”

  “I thought enough to be embarrassed about,” Hope retorted.

  “Of course, she told Mom, and then I was on restriction, too,” Bobbi said.

  And they’d spent the rest of the month with a social life that consisted of only each other. They’d watched movies and played board games and forgotten that they hated each other.

  Jason said to Hope, “Journals, newsletters—looks lik
e you’ve got a way with words, like your sister.”

  “I guess,” Hope said, feeling suddenly squirmy.

  “So, how come you didn’t end up as a writer?” he asked.

  Hope toyed with a flower-tipped pen. “I guess I like speaking with flowers more. And I can still dabble in writing when I help people with their gift cards.” Wait. That was probably TMI.

  He pointed a finger at her. “I remember how you helped me when I first came in here.”

  Hope felt her face warming. Definitely TMI. She felt like a criminal boxed into a verbal corner by a clever detective. She sneaked a look at Bobbi. Her cheeks were tea rose pink.

  “You did most of the work on that,” she told him, sending the awkward moment slinking away.

  She’d been having so much fun turning Jason’s visit into a threesome that it took a while for Hope to remember to make herself scarce. As she ducked behind the velvet curtain to start the birthday arrangement, she told herself in no uncertain terms that she was not going to make a habit of hanging around every time he visited her sister. This could prove hard when he came to the apartment, but she’d manage it.

  And then she realized that it was only a matter of time before Jason wouldn’t be coming over to the apartment at all. He and Bobbi would want privacy, and Bobbi would be at his place all the time. And then she’d be moving out, just as quickly as she moved in.

  And you’ll be glad, she told herself firmly. Bobbi will finally get settled with a good man. You’ll have the flower shop. Everyone will be happy.

  HOPE WAS AT Bobbi’s apartment on Saturday, helping Bobbi finish packing her dishes, when the moving team showed up. Jason was his usual delicious self, wearing his favorite outfit of jeans and T-shirt. Those brown eyes, that smile—every time he entered a room, she had to fight the tremors. The other guy was even more muscled than him, with swarthy skin and dark hair and Johnny Depp eyes. The newcomer was wearing black jeans and a ripped gray T-shirt, partially covered by a black leather jacket. And black boots, the kind guys wore to drive Harleys. Next to her, Hope was aware of Bobbi smoothing her hands on her jeans. She’d never done that when Jason came into the shop.

  The men had brought an intriguing scent into the apartment, that mix of musk and sawdust that Hope always smelled on Jason, and something else. Motor oil? This new addition had to come from Duke, Hope thought as Jason introduced them.