Love in Bloom. Arlene James
darkened windows above the awning. Her apartment. Her own shop and home. It was a far cry from Boston, but it was hers, her chance to do something real, something besides practice law and be miserable. This was her chance to break the mold, to prove herself, to be someone she liked and admired, not just a failed Farnsworth clone, yearning for what could not be.
Dorothy, she thought flippantly, we are in Kansas!
And maybe this wasn’t a mistake. Maybe, for once, she’d done the right thing.
Oh, Lord, she silently prayed for the thousandth time since she’d read that article and filled out the application, please help me do the right things. For once in my life, please help me get it right.
* * *
Glancing into the backseat, Tate saw that Isabella still slept soundly. She’d dropped off soon after they’d left the environs of Kansas City, which was no surprise considering that the hour had been well past her normal bedtime. He should have left her with his parents instead of dragging her along on this trip, but that would have meant allowing her to sleep over, and he hated when she did that. Even after all these years he couldn’t get used to sleeping out at his place alone. When he’d first brought her home from the hospital, a new father and a widower, he’d wondered if he’d ever sleep again. But they’d found their way together, and now he couldn’t seem to manage without her even for a single night. His mother said that he sometimes held on to Isabella too tightly, but he didn’t know how else to hold her.
Lily Farnsworth got out of the truck and all but skipped across the sidewalk to the door of her shop and back again, her excitement palpable. Tate took the keys from the pocket of his jeans and tossed them to her. Catching them easily, she graced him with a smile before spinning away again. He watched her fit the key into the lock and turn it. The door swung wide. Lily reached inside and flipped on the lights; then she glided over the threshold into the bare space filled only with two small glass-fronted humidifiers to display the flowers, several large flat boxes, a small unpainted waist-high counter and a steel worktable half-hidden behind a wall at the back of the room.
She poked around for a bit while Tate unloaded suitcases from the bed of the truck and hauled them onto the sidewalk. Emerging from the building a few minutes later, she pronounced the place, “Perfect.”
“Looks like it needs some work to me,” Tate teased, unable to resist her enthusiasm.
Her smile instantly dissolved. “What I mean is, it’s perfect for my purposes.”
He felt like a heel. Irritated with himself, he waved a hand at the door beside the shop, the one between her business and the bookstore next door.
“If you’ll open that door, I’ll carry these up to your apartment.”
“Oh, most of those don’t go to the apartment,” she said, pointing into the shop. “They go in here.”
Tate reached up to push back the brim of his hat, realized he’d left it in the truck and parked his hands at his waist. “What about the boxes?”
“Most of those go into the shop, too.”
“Didn’t you bring anything to set up housekeeping?”
“A few things. It’s mostly shop supplies, though. You know, vases, foam, tubes, frogs, wires, tape, cones, hooks, hangers, ribbon, pins, charms, feathers, silk flowers...”
“Frogs?”
“Uh, to hold pins. They’re not real frogs.” She seemed embarrassed. “They don’t even look like real frogs.” She shrugged and bowed her head. “That’s just what we call them.”
Tate swallowed a chuckle and shifted his weight from one booted foot to another, finding her shyness kind of cute. “I figured you’d order supplies.”
“Well, yes, I have ordered some things, but why order what I already have? Especially when I didn’t have to pay for these things. They were gifts from my former employer and coworkers at the flower shop in Boston. Going-away gifts. ‘Success gifts,’ they called them.”
The lady knew how to pinch a penny. “Okay, I get it now. So which of these suitcases goes upstairs?”
“Just the big one.”
“All right. Let’s get these others inside, then I’ll take that one upstairs.”
They rolled the other suitcases into the shop. Lily positioned them behind the work area wall while Tate went out to remove the boxes from the backseat of the truck. Isabella woke as he worked, rubbed her eyes with both fists and pronounced herself in need of a potty.
“Go inside there,” Tate instructed. “There’s a bathroom in back.” He heard her asking Lily, and the two of them went off to find “the ladies’ room,” as Lily called it. Tate knew that it was a modest little necessary tucked into a corner.
“That’s going to need some attention,” Lily muttered upon their return.
By that he assumed she meant decoration, which was her department. He nodded to the boxes. “Any of these go upstairs?”
She pointed out only two of the smaller ones.
“All right. Then if you’ll each tote one, I’ll take the big suitcase, and we’ll go up.”
Nodding, Lily took the larger of the two boxes and stood by the door while Isabella easily carried her box and her father followed. Lily glanced around once more, shut off the lights and stepped outside to close the door and lock up before moving to the door that led to the apartment upstairs. Lily began searching for the appropriate key.
“Uh, I’m pretty sure that door’s not locked,” Tate told her.
She pushed her glasses up on her nose and looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown a second head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the workmen were coming and going, and no one could say exactly when the bed you ordered would be delivered. It was just easier to leave it open.”
Her jaw dropped. “Even after the bed came?”
“Sure. I didn’t see the point in...” She found the light switch and flipped it on, illuminating the narrow, enclosed staircase. “Why lock the door on an empty apartment?” he asked as she slipped inside and started climbing the stairs. Tate stepped up and blocked the door open with his shoulder, calling after her, “No one locks their doors around here, not to their houses.” She ignored him and kept climbing.
Tate indicated with a nod that Isabella should go next. Shrugging, she started up after Lily, who quickly reached the small landing at the top and let herself into the apartment. A light came on in the small foyer. Isabella followed. Tate came last into the dark but spacious living and dining area.
“What is this place?” Isabella asked.
“This is my home,” Lily told her, coming out of the dark hallway behind her. Lily quickly moved into the small kitchen and switched on a light there. “Not many overhead lights in here. I’ll need to buy some lamps.”
“You’re going to live in town?” Isabella asked doubtfully.
“Right above my shop,” Lily confirmed, “in the very heart of Main Street.”
“We live in the country. Right, Dad?”
“Yep.”
“On the ranch. Right, Dad?”
“Right.”
“Grandpa, though, he calls it the farm. Don’t he, Daddy?”
“That’s because he’s in charge of the farming end of things.”
“And Daddy, he does the horses and the cows and all the animal stuff. And he helps with the farm, too, and sometimes the tractor stuff. And he and Grandpa do the oil lease stuff together.”
“You talk too much,” he told her, nudging her with the suitcase. He looked