Love in Bloom Read online

  Hope arched an eyebrow. “White mums?”

  Bobbi looked at her suspiciously. “That means something bad, doesn’t it? I can tell by looking at you. What do they stand for?”

  “Truth.”

  “Ha, ha. Just because I’m having you coach me on my card doesn’t mean I’m not being truthful. I picked the stuff for the basket, after all. And, if I do say so myself, it’s genius.”

  “The oysters are subtle.”

  “Never mind the oysters,” Bobbi said, blushing. “What about the flowers?”

  “You’re off the hook on the mums. We won’t stock any until late summer. What about yellow acacia,” Hope suggested, “for secret love.”

  “Oh, I like that!” cried Bobbi. “Do we have any acacia?”

  “Yeah, silk ones.” Hope started to get up.

  “I’ll get ’em,” said Bobbi. “Which ones are they?”

  “They’re over in the corner of the west wall. They’re the pouffy yellow blooms with the feathery leaves.”

  “Got it.” Bobbi sailed out through the curtains. A moment later she popped her head back in. “Um, which wall is the west wall?”

  “Never mind. I’ll get them,” said Hope.

  Bobbi trailed her. “I could have found them. I just needed you to point me in the right direction.”

  “Never mind,” Hope said and plucked a spray.

  They returned to the back room and arranged the flowers in the basket, then wrapped it in blue cellophane.

  “That looks awesome,” Bobbi said with an approving nod. “Now I just need the card.”

  “What do you want to say?”

  “That I think he’s hot and I want to go out with him.”

  “Okay,” Hope said, and handed Bobbi a gift card and a pen.

  “But I don’t want to say it like that.” Bobbi tried to hand the card back.

  “It should be in your writing,” Hope insisted, refusing to take it.

  “Okay, help me think.”

  “You don’t need help thinking.”

  “Yes, I do. Come on. The sooner you help me the sooner you can go home.” Bobbi gave her a playful nudge.

  Hope sighed. “Okay. Why don’t you make a little mystery of it? You know, intrigue him.”

  “Oh, I like that! How about, ‘Guess who?’ ”

  “You could do that,” Hope said. A bit underwhelming, but the basket would make up for what the card lacked in imagination.

  Bobbi frowned and chewed the corner of her lip. “That’s kind of dumb, isn’t it?”

  “We could do better.” We. Now she was an accomplice, caught up in deception by her own cleverness and her soft heart. Was this how Cyrano de Bergerac had felt? Never mind that. Help your little sister.

  “You’re right, we could,” Bobbi agreed and looked at her expectantly.

  “How about this? Every flower has a meaning, every petal speaks a word.”

  “Oooh, that’s so pretty!” gushed Bobbi. She wrote down the words then looked at the card. “Are you going to make a rhyme out of it? If you do, you’d better not make it a long one. This card isn’t that big, you know.”

  Hope drummed her fingers on the work counter. “Hmmm. I know. Add: But unless you speak their language, something special goes unheard.”

  “Wow,” breathed Bobbi as she wrote.

  “Then add: If you learn what this yellow acacia symbolizes, you’ll be halfway to solving the mystery of this basket.”

  “Oh, I love that!” Bobbi stopped writing mid-scrawl and looked up, wearing a fresh frown. “But that doesn’t tell him who sent it.”

  “It’s coming from this shop. We were talking about the meaning of flowers earlier today. He’s not stupid. He’ll figure it out.”

  “Great.” Bobbi slipped the card in an envelope. Then she scooped up the basket. “I’ll deliver this on my way home.” She hugged Hope, making the cellophane on the gift basket crinkle in protest. “I can help you tomorrow, too, if you want.”

  That was Bobbi, generous to a fault. She deserved a great guy like Jason Wells. “You are amazing.”

  “Aw, you’re just saying that ’cause it’s true,” Bobbi quipped. She gave Hope another quick hug and said, “Go home and get some rest. You look rotten.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any time.”

  Bobbi left and Hope locked up the shop. Then she drove to her apartment, wondering all the while if Bobbi had found Jason and been able to deliver her basket in person. She made herself some green tea and ran a bath, filling the tub with extra bubble bath. She picked up her well-worn copy of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and climbed into the tub to drink tea and read more about the adventures of her all-time favorite heroine, Fanny Price. Fanny wasn’t your typical heroine. She was plain and quiet. But she had a good heart, and in the end Miss Austen rewarded her goodness by giving her the man of her dreams. Hope liked that.

  Usually. But to night Fanny seemed insipid and undeserving—a real little weenie. What man in his right mind would want a Fanny when he could have a Bobbi?

  What were Bobbi and Jason doing now?

  Hope closed the book and tossed it away from her. She ran a hand through a mountain of bubbles, scooped the frothy summit up and watched it dance and shimmer in her palm. Instead of smiling she blew it to pieces, shook the remainder off her hand and got out of the tub. Bubble baths were overrated. So was green tea. The stuff tasted like grass. She turned her back to the mirror, dried off, dressed in her favorite tee and jammie bottoms, and then wandered out to her living room to slump on the couch. Tea hadn’t worked, her book hadn’t worked, and her bubble bath had been a failure. She still felt grumpy.

  She turned on the TV, found a sitcom, then picked up her knitting and went to work on a half-finished scarf. Okay, she was fine now. Something to create, something to laugh about—life was good again. She could be happy with or without a man.

  So there.

  JASON WELLS SAUNTERED into Changing Seasons Floral on Saturday. If a fish going after a lure could smile, it would look like that, Hope thought. He was dressed in guy casual, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker, and once again he started those attraction tremors in her.

  “Hi. Back for more flowers?” she asked, playing dumb.

  “Back to solve a mystery,” he replied, and leaned on the counter.

  “Oh?” So, Bobbi hadn’t found him when she made her gift basket delivery. The little spurt of glee that surfaced in Hope wasn’t very sisterly. It wasn’t very bright, either. From the look on Jason Wells’s face it was clear that this love rocket was already launched; too late to change its course now.

  And she wouldn’t even if she could, she told herself firmly. “So, what can I do for you, Sherlock?”

  “I got an interesting gift basket from here yesterday. I’m thinking you might know who’s responsible for it.” He looked past her shoulder and nodded in the direction of the workroom. “Would the person who sent it be back there by any chance?”

  She hadn’t even made his list of gift basket suspects. That sucked. She forced her smile to stay put. “Sorry, Bobbi’s running some errands right now, but she should be back in an hour.”

  He grinned and gave the counter a little thump. “I’ll be back.”

  He was just turning to go when the door flew open and in blew Bobbi, looking adorable in jeans, a pink sweater, and a red leather jacket. Her face flushed at the sight of him, and she lifted her carefully highlighted hair off her neck as if she was suddenly hot. “Well, hi.”

  “Hi,” he said.

  The way they were looking at each other, Hope felt like she was watching a movie. She was painfully present, but not part of the scene. You love romances, she reminded herself.

  “I got a cool basket,” Jason said to Bobbi. “Did you have something to do with that?”

  Bobbi smiled. She was the queen of the flirty smile.

  Hope decided she had to clean up her work area. She slipped into her workroom, turned on the radio, and be
gan sweeping bits of stems and ribbon off the counter into the garbage, trying to ignore the burble of voices drifting in past the old, velvet curtains.

  Bobbi laughed. What had he said to make her laugh?

  Oh, what did she care? She plopped down on her work stool and scowled at the row of ribbons hanging in front of her. Pinks, greens, and reds, fat ribbon, skinny ribbon, ribbon so delicate it looked like butterfly wings—so many colors, so many ways to add the perfect finishing touches to her floral arrangements.

  She sighed. She was human ribbon, tying up her sister’s love life with a pretty bow. Well, why not? Making things beautiful was what she did. She pulled on an end of pink ribbon and twisted it into a tight knot.

  The bell over the shop door jangled and a moment later Bobbi was dancing into the workroom. “He loved the basket. And the card.” Bobbi hugged Hope. “You’re a genius!”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Bobbi pulled away and began playing with one of the ribbons. “We’ve got a date. We’re going out to lunch next week at the Family Inn.”

  “Great,” Hope said encouragingly, concentrating on the corsage she was making.

  Bobbi was suddenly quiet. That wasn’t normal.

  Hope looked up to see her sister gnawing on her lower lip. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

  “I didn’t tell him why I couldn’t go out for dinner.”

  “He’s going to find out what you do for a living eventually.”

  “I know, but meanwhile . . . He, um, thinks I work here.”

  “Well, you’ve sure been doing a lot of work the last couple of days. That qualifies.” Why was Bobbi looking so guilty?

  “He thinks we own this shop together.” Bobbi looked at her like she was bracing for Hope to wrap one of the ribbons around her neck.

  “What?”

  “Please don’t be mad. I couldn’t tell him I’m a cocktail waitress. I mean, he runs a construction company.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Hope.

  “He runs a company. I just serve booze. I know it was wrong, but I didn’t want him to think I’m a nobody.”

  “You’re not a nobody,” Hope insisted. “You’re gorgeous and creative.”

  “But I’m not like you. You’re smart. You own your own business.”

  Hope shook her head. “If I had to pick between you and me, I’d pick you in a heartbeat.”

  “Well, that’s because you’re nuts.”

  “What’s the point of dating someone if you don’t let him know who you really are?” Hope argued.

  “I will,” Bobbi said. “As soon as he gets to know me better. So, can we please, for a little while, let him think I’m somebody?”

  The candy bar, the man, the shop—with sisters it was always about sharing. But this flower shop was Hope’s baby. She wasn’t sure she wanted to share her baby.

  Hmmm. The drives to chemo, the concern, the help—yes, with sisters it was all about sharing. There was nothing wrong with Hope’s baby having more than one mommy. She’d already put words in her sister’s mouth. Might as well put a feather in her cap, too.

  “You are somebody,” she told Bobbi, “but if you need this shop to prove it, that’s okay.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Bobbi gushed, and hugged her again. “You’re the best sister in the whole world.”

  Not really, but she wanted to be.

  And she kept reminding herself of that as she moved through the rest of her day, as she drove home, as she entered her apartment. She’d made it cozy, filling it with books, plants, souvenirs from trips to Ocean Shores, and framed photos she’d taken on hikes in the Cascades. But it was still lacking something. Testosterone.

  Never mind that, she told herself and got busy with her juicer making a Hope Walker Cancer Shield Cocktail, something she’d have started taking a lot earlier if she’d known that a woman could get cancer in her twenties. Parsnips, beets, and wheatgrass—yum, yum.

  Blech. She plopped down at her vintage yellow Formica table and opened up the night’s issue of The Heart Lake Herald. She idly flipped through the pages and suddenly found herself staring at the pictures of newly engaged, smiling couples. How soon till Jason and Bobbi were there?

  The features of one of the women on the page suddenly morphed into Bobbi’s face. She stuck out her tongue at Hope and taunted, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”

  Hope shook her head to clear it and quickly turned the page. “I’m a sick puppy,” she scolded herself, “the hogweed queen.” Maybe she needed therapy.

  And then, like a gift from the flower gods, she found it. Garden therapy. She’d call first thing Monday and reserve a plot at the community garden.

  FIVE

  THE HEART LAKE Park and Recreation offices opened at nine A.M., Monday through Friday. At exactly 8:50 A.M. on Friday, Millie Baldwin climbed into her Buick LeSabre to go stake her claim on a garden plot.

  She was pleased with her new car, a nice solid used model. “Preowned” was the term the car salesman had used. How silly! As if she didn’t know what that meant. But it would do her just fine. It should certainly last for the rest of her life. Debra had worried that it was a gas-guzzler. And she didn’t see the need for it. Not, she said, when she had a perfectly good car and could take her mother anywhere she needed to go.

  “She actually said that?” Millie’s friend Alice had asked when Millie repeated their conversation. “Does she think you’re in your dotage?”

  Apparently. But Millie had shown Debra otherwise. One of the first things she’d done when she arrived in Heart Lake had been to insist her daughter drive her right to the nearest car lot so she could get some safe, dependable transportation.

  “I think she was worried I couldn’t afford it,” Millie had said.

  As if Debra was the mother and Millie the child. Really, who was here in Heart Lake to help whom? Millie hadn’t come out of Duncan’s medical debacle with much, but she had something. And she had been managing money long before her daughter was born. She was going to have her own car and drive it, and she was going to have a life of her own, and a garden of her own, thank you very much.

  She smiled as the park came into sight. This was a lovely park. She could easily picture herself spending mornings in a small corner of it among a cozy patch of flowers.

  Grandview Park not only offered a peek aboo view of the lake, it came with a view of the Cascade Mountains. Forty acres of land, it had been put to good use, and now the community enjoyed a soccer field, a broad walking path that followed the circumference of the park, a play area for children, tennis courts, a sand volleyball court, and a section of small plots for would-be gardeners.

  Just past the entrance sat two small houses, side by side, both painted blue and trimmed with yellow shutters and window boxes filled with plastic geraniums. One belonged to the groundskeeper; the other housed the offices of the Heart Lake Park and Recreational Department. Out front a few angled parking spaces had been reserved for visitors.

  Every parking space was full except for one. She hoped all those cars didn’t represent people wanting a garden plot.

  She had already pulled into the space when she noticed the faded paint that proclaimed it a handicapped parking spot. No wonder there had been so much room. There was nothing for it but to back up and find another spot.

  She put the car in reverse, turned the wheel, and started to back up. And suddenly crashed into something unyielding. This couldn’t be good.

  She let down the window and peered out. Oh, dear, just as she suspected. She had just managed to back into another car. Millie, you fool!

  She put a hand to her chest to still her fluttering heart and took a deep breath. Calm down, she told herself. In the eternal scheme of things this was nothing.

  But this nothing had certainly shaken her up. Well, it served her right. Haste makes waste, and she had been in a hurry to get in and sign up for her garden plot.

  She turned off the engine with a shaky hand and got out of her car to inspect t
he damage. She had managed to effectively crunch both cars. Two for the price of one, as Duncan would have said. Oh, dear. This probably wouldn’t be good for her insurance. She could almost hear her daughter pointing that out.

  Well, there was nothing for it but to go and see whom she had hit. The sky was blue, but Millie walked into the Park and Recreation offices under a black cloud.

  The office was cheery, paneled in pine and smelling of fresh air, thanks to the open windows. Colorful posters and fliers hung on a bulletin board on one wall announcing various community events. Three women sat at desks in a work area behind a long counter, each desk decorated with family pictures and flowers. The long counter held a pile of catalogs for spring classes and community activities, a little bowl of candy, and a pot full of silk flower–tipped pens for people to use. A burble of voices made for welcoming background noise as people waited to register for various classes. A couple of middle-aged women stood chatting over by the bulletin board. At the counter, a young woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt was conducting business with one of the employees. At her side, a freckle-faced little boy who looked about four hung from the counter, regarding the room as if searching for something to interest him.

  So many witnesses—oh, this was embarrassing. Millie cleared her throat. “Excuse me? Does anyone own a white car, rather small? It’s parked outside in one of the parking spots.”

  The two middle-aged women regarded her blankly. The clerk at the counter shook her head and looked sympathetically at Millie as if she somehow knew Millie had a problem.

  The younger woman turned around. “A Honda?”

  Millie experienced a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. Not the young mother, please. She probably couldn’t afford to be without transportation while her car was getting the dent ironed out.

  “I’m not sure about the make,” Millie said, “but it’s the only white car out there.

  “It’s mine then,” said the woman.

  Millie took a deep breath. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m afraid I’ve hit it.”

  The young woman’s questioning smile dissolved. She looked like she was experiencing the same sinking feeling Millie had felt out in the parking lot.