Love in Bloom (11 page)

“There is no golf club. Trust me on this. Dale Eversleigh considers himself Bygones’s gift to women. He was hitting on you.”

Lily pointed out the door through which Eversleigh had so recently passed. “He… But he’s so…” Suddenly she clapped her hands over her lower face. A snort was quickly followed by giggles and several hard swallows and, finally, a deep breath, after which she lowered her hands. “I, um, have never before seen an undertaker d-dress in yellow-and-green plaid.”

Tickled, Tate forced a sober manner. “Well, the shirt was yellow-and-green. Technically, the pants were yellow, green
and orange.
”

Her lips wiggled. She straightened them and squared her shoulders. “Is he actually an undertaker? Not a bereavement counselor o-or casket salesman?”

“Third-generation mortician,” Tate confirmed evenly. “All the Eversleighs are certified undertakers, three brothers, three funeral homes around the county.”

Her blue eyes grew quite large behind the lenses of her glasses. “Are the other two Eversleighs like him?”

Tate shook his head thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, no. Dale is one of a kind. The other two are more staid, I guess you’d say, and both married.”

She shrugged so eloquently that Tate grinned, feeling quite generous all of a sudden.

“All kidding aside, Dale’s harmless and a decent guy. He’s given plenty of folks around here a break when they couldn’t afford his services. I doubt he even thought of applying a surcharge for letting people order your flowers from the funeral home.”

“That’s good to know,” Lily said, smiling. “I’ll keep that in mind in the future.”

“Just don’t play golf with him,” Tate warned good-naturedly.

Lily chuckled. “No, I wouldn’t, even if he were interested in me, which I doubt.”

Tate, who for some reason couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone, scoffed at that. “He’s interested.”

Lily ducked her head, pushing up her glasses at the same time, and said, “Not likely. I’m not the sort men notice. If I were, I’d have had at least one real boyfriend by now. Don’t you think?”

For the second time in the space of a quarter-hour, Tate felt his jaw drop. She could not be serious. How did a woman like her get to be twenty-seven years of age without some guy seeing how special and lovely and talented she was? Dale had seen it, and Tate felt certain that others around town had seen it, too. Sure, she was a bit reticent, but her sweetness more than made up for that. Isabella adored her.

What was he thinking? Isabella would adore any woman who gave her the time of day, any woman of an age to be her… The word
mother
made him step back.

Lily tried to smile, but her gaze did not meet his and the apples of her cheeks glowed a pronounced shade of pink. “E-excuse me, b-but I have some…things to do.”

“Right,” Tate muttered, remembering the paper curled inside his fist. “I, uh, brought over the list of people the committee recommends.” He spread the paper on the counter. “Everyone listed here is anxious to work.”

“I understand.”

He left the paper on the counter and rubbed his hands together lightly. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He all but ran from the shop and leaped into the truck.

What was wrong with him, anyway? He had no business getting upset by the likes of Dale Eversleigh. What did he care if Lily played golf with Dale? Not that she was going to. A fact about which he had no business being relieved.

He had done his duty, and now, for all intents and purposes, he was done. Lily would hire someone from Bygones to help in her shop, the first person on the list, most likely, and that would be that.

Kenneth Wilbur would serve her well. Nearing forty with a teenage son and a mother suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, Kenneth had managed to keep body and soul together by eating out of his impressive garden and doing odd jobs around town. He was scruffy and a bit rough around the edges, but Kenneth had a true affinity for anything that grew out of the ground. Lily would surely see that and hire him. With Kenneth Wilbur around to take care of things, Tate could essentially wash his hands of Lily.

And anytime now, he was going to be relieved about
that
.

Chapter Seven

I
t was a tough decision. Lily had not expected hiring someone to be so tough. In Boston an employer advertised, collected resumes, interviewed prospects and chose the person who seemed to be the best fit for the position. Here in Bygones, however, everyone desperately needed the income and no one was a great fit for the job. Lily was so terrified of making a mistake that she thought about calling Tate to ask his advice. In the end she called Coraline, who came and prayed with her.

“Now, don’t worry,” Coraline told her. “You’ll do fine. Trust God to show you the right person for the job.”

“I just feel so bad for those I can’t hire.”

“Of course you do, but God will provide. Tate can help you notify those whom you can’t hire.” Knowing that helped a little.

Lily went to bed confident that she would soon have answers. Sure enough, she woke the next day with a specific person in mind. She realized at once that she’d been leaning that way all along, and when she really thought about why, her reasons crystallized. She dressed, ate breakfast and went downstairs to open the shop. Then she called Sherie Taylor and let her know that she could start work right away. Sherie was thrilled. The others, naturally, would not be, but Lily depended on Tate to help her notify them that they had not been chosen.

When she called his cell phone, it went to voice mail, so she left a message, letting him know that she had hired Sherie. She’d hardly ended the call before Sherie showed up, eager to begin work. Lily liked her enthusiasm.

Of average height and a bit pudgy, with short, curly, light brown hair and lively green eyes, Sherie was the divorced mom of twin boys, ten years of age. She had moved in with her parents and made do with child support and unemployment since the plant had closed, but her good nature and sunny smile had not suffered. She had studied design in college but never finished the degree and expressed a true interest in learning all the elements of flower arranging and corsage making. Of everyone Lily had interviewed, Sherie had expressed the most interest in both the technique and the art of floral design. Plus, she just seemed like a good fit personality-wise.

Lily imagined how pleased Tate would be.

She imagined, too, that he had been just a tiny bit jealous when Dale Eversleigh had held her hand and asked her if she liked to play golf. That was all it was, of course, imagination, nothing more than a dream. That was what Lily had done most of her life, after all, dream of one guy or another, without ever speaking up or taking a single step to draw or fix the interest of anyone who attracted her. She was good at imagining and dreaming. Well, she was done with that. All it had ever done was lead her into dissatisfaction and heartbreak.

For the first time she decided that she ought to ask God how to get good at
doing
. She hadn’t come to Bygones to repeat the mistakes of her past; she had come to start a business, to make a new home and a new life. It was time to dig down deep inside herself and make things happen. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She could be who she was, just as God had made her, and still make new friends and learn a new way of living.

Bygones wasn’t Boston. Things weren’t as easy or convenient here, but this was where God had planted her, and she was determined to grow and blossom. She didn’t need some man for that. All this new life needed was a lot of work, some hope and a little faith on her part. She could manage that. She
would
manage that, and her reward would be a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Resolute, she put Tate Bronson out of mind and concentrated on business. Bookkeeping had to be set up now that she had a couple of regular accounts. Assigning Sherie to watch the shop, she went into the office and did her best to figure out the accounting software. Two hours later she decided that she’d better take a break before she took a hammer to the computer.

“How’s it coming?” Sherie asked.

“It isn’t. I think I have everything entered, but it won’t save. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“You haven’t set up the file,” Sherie said matter-of-factly. “Why don’t you let me set it up for you?”

“Truly? You can set up accounts receivable?” Lily grasped Sherie by both arms and shook her slightly. “Please tell me you can set up accounts receivable.”

Sherie chuckled. “I worked in accounting at Randall’s. I think I can set up the computer books without much trouble.”

Lily turned her face upward and closed her eyes. “Thank You, God.”

“Amen to that,” Sherie said. “Now, I’ll be in the office if you need me.”

“I need you in the office is where I need you,” Lily quipped as the other woman headed down the hall. The bell over the door tinkled merrily, and Lily turned, beaming, to find Tate, frowning, on the other side of her counter, his cap in his hand, the bill folded almost double. She wished her heart would not leap every time she saw him.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

He made a point of watching Sherie until she disappeared into the small office that opened off the short narrow hallway behind Lily. Then his gaze switched to Lily’s face.

“Really?” he hissed quietly. “Sherie Taylor was your choice?”

Stung, Lily drew back. “What’s wrong with Sherie?”

“Nothing’s
wrong
with Sherie, but she has her parents to help her, while Kenneth Wilbur is taking care of a parent, not to mention a teenage son, with no help whatsoever.”

Blinking, Lily matched his frown with one of her own. “What are you getting at?”

“I thought you’d hire Kenneth.”

“You mean, you thought I
should
hire Kenneth.”

“All right. I thought, I
think,
you should hire Kenneth.”

“How was I to know that?” Lily whispered. “You didn’t say so.”

“I thought you’d figure it out when you interviewed him,” Tate said, tight-lipped.

Lily walked around the counter, caught Tate by the arm and drew him into the front corner of the shop.

“All I learned from Kenneth Wilbur’s interview,” she said softly, “was that he has no interest in learning design, prefers not to wait on customers and thinks I should be selling more potted plants than cut flowers. Sherie, on the other hand, understands the elements of design, wants to work with the flowers, likes to interact with customers and is back there setting up my accounts receivable right now.” She folded her arms. “Given that, which one would you choose if you were me?”

Tate slapped his hat against his thigh. “All I know is that Kenneth needs a break.”

“I’m going to be buying herbs and other potted plants from him,” Lily revealed in a normal tone.

“That’s not enough to keep the wolf from the door,” Tate muttered.

Just then the bell jingled again. Lily craned her neck to look around Tate.

“Pastor Garman. Mrs. Garman. How nice to see you. Come in.”

Tate stepped aside, nodding, so Lily could move back behind the counter. Wendy Garman, a little wren of a woman well into her sixties, with gray-brown helmet-hair and enormous eyeglasses, greeted Tate by name then laid a sheet of paper on the counter.

“Hugh and I thought it would be a good idea to make a sign-up chart for altar flowers,” she told Lily.

The pastor, a tall slender man, bald except for a fringe of fading reddish-brown hair, bushy eyebrows and a prodigious mustache, spoke up then. “We hope that our church members will volunteer to provide flower arrangements to decorate the altar and commemorate dates and occasions special to them, such as birthdays and anniversaries. To get the ball rolling, Wendy and I are going to sign up to provide flowers on the Sunday nearest to our own birthdays.”

“What a lovely idea,” Lily said. “We should probably set a dollar limit so no one will feel obligated to spend too much.”

Mrs. Garman seemed relieved by that. Coraline had told Lily that Hugh had been ready to retire when the Randall plant closed, but the church had lost so many members so quickly that they soon could not afford to pay a minister’s salary. Hugh had volunteered to stay on at a quarter of his original pay, take his Social Security and consider himself semiretired. Wendy took over the position of church secretary in return for continued residence in the church parsonage, where the Garmans kept “office hours.” Their teenage grandson, whose widowed father was a missionary in Turkey, lived there with them.

“A dollar limit seems like a good plan,” Wendy agreed. “Perhaps we can take a special collection for flower arrangements at Christmas and Easter.”

“I’m sure we can come up with something special but not too expensive for those occasions,” Lily told her, checking over their calendar.

As she ran her eyes over the chart, she saw that the Garmans had filled in members’ birthdays and anniversaries. When she saw Isabella’s birthday on the next to the last Sunday of the month, she instantly looked to Tate, making what seemed a natural assumption.

“I guess you’ll be wanting to sign up to provide altar flowers for the twenty-first.”

Tate’s face turned to stone. Too late, Lily recalled that Isabella’s birthday was also the anniversary of the death of Tate’s wife.

The pastor and his wife exchanged a glance then went on talking as if Lily had not just committed a terrible faux pas, saying that they would display their copy of the sign-up calendar in the vestibule of the church and check it weekly, then keep Lily apprised of who might be calling her to order. They stiltedly discussed a few more details before the Garmans prepared to take their leave.

“We hope to see you again this coming Sunday.”

“Thank you,” she managed softly. “I’ll be there.”

Smiling and nodding, they moved to leave. Pastor Garman held the door for his wife then started through himself, pausing at the last moment to speak to Tate.

“It was good to see you, Tate. You’ve been missed.”