Rushing Amy: A Love and Football Novel (7 page)

Matt raised an eyebrow while reminding himself to play it cool. “A Sharks season ticket holder, huh? So, why me?”

“Because I’ll know where to find you if you make her cry.” Brandon pulled the phone out of his pocket again and scrolled rapidly through the wedding photo file. “This is Amy.”

Matt’s memories of Amy, otherwise known as Fifi, were a bit different than the dazzling woman who gazed back at him from the photo. Her hair in the photo was perfect, shining, spun gold. Her amber-brown eyes reflected warmth, and her lips, covered in a barely tinted-pink gloss, curved into an artless smile. The copper silk of her dress gleamed in the sunlight like a shimmering, shiny penny, accentuating the pale satin of her skin. She was flawless. He hated it.

He preferred the sleepy, disheveled Fifi, who argued with him over his preference in tequila, allowed him to pluck hairpins out of her wrecked hairdo, asked him to unbutton her dress, and talked to him about things she had no intention of following up on, like sperm donors.

He’d been friends with Brandon McKenna since Brandon’s rookie year, but he wasn’t about to tell any member of Fifi’s family quite yet that he was already chasing her. He preferred securing a date with her (and he would gently persist until he did) on his own. He also preferred flying under the radar.

Matt took another sip of his drink. “She’s lovely. So, would you have dated her if you hadn’t met Emily first, big guy?”

“There is no good answer to that question.”

“Sure, there is. Yes or no?” Matt watched Brandon’s brows knit.

“Considering the fact I wouldn’t have met Amy if I hadn’t met her sister first, that’s not really a question.”

“So, the answer is yes.” Matt grinned. He finished off his iced tea.

Brandon ignored that. “Emily wants to try that new fish place in Kirkland we’ve heard so much about. How about Saturday night?”

“Thanks for the invite, but Saturday night won’t work.” Matt took a deep breath. “While Amy is a stunning young woman that I’d undoubtedly be lucky to spend any time with at all, there’s someone else on my radar screen right now.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Maybe.” Matt set the pint glass back down on the bar. He saw the execs from PSN walk into the restaurant out of the corner of his eye. When they strolled into the bar, there was the usual backslapping, name-calling and handshakes, but he was a bit distracted.

So, Fifi’s family had no idea the boyfriend was out of the picture. She was full of secrets. It would be fun to figure out why.

“T
HANKS FOR LAST
night. You were great.”?

Amy would show him. She could still be a professional, despite the fact she wanted to use his guts for garters. She couldn’t figure out why he still had such an effect on her, besides the fact he was gorgeous, sexy, and made her laugh. She was also beginning to understand that maybe Matt’s love life wasn’t all it could be. After all, ordering flowers for another woman while asking out the florist—who kept saying
no
—wasn’t exactly the most efficient use of his time.

She pulled a bucketful out of the cooler and got busy on the latest bouquet. The phone rang. She trimmed and cleaned stems while taking another couple of orders. Things had picked up this afternoon, thankfully enough, and Amy lost herself in the scent and beauty of the flowers she worked with. Even if she spent long hours at work, she loved what she did. Her quiet, orderly life of profit-and-loss statements and audits had given way to a riot of color, textures, and scent. She still worried about the shop’s profitability, but this morning’s enjoyment was a welcome respite from the typically constant
bills, bills, bills
refrain inside her head.

More people called. She made an appointment for a wedding consultation. When she wasn’t scrawling orders and taking credit cards, she wondered to herself what on earth was going on. The phone rang again as she was digging under her workbench for her shears, which she’d dropped. Again.

“Crazy Daisy.”

“Hey, Amy,” an unfamiliar male voice said. “Matt Stephens told me that you can get me off my wife’s shit list in short order. I need some help.”

The mystery about where the increased business was coming from was over. She had to smile. He was sending her business, which would warm the heart of any small-business owner.

“I’ll do my best,” she assured the caller. “What would you like to send, and where’s the delivery going?”

“This is Tom Reed of the Sharks.” Amy’s heart skipped a beat. Tom Reed was the Sharks’ QB. It was going to be all she could do to keep from gushing over him. “Matt says you’re a football fan, so I know you’ll get what I mean when I tell you the wife’s pissed because I’ve been spending more time with my playbook than her.” He let out a sigh. “I want every red rose in your store. If you’ll get her a pound or so of some really good chocolate, too, and deliver the stuff today, I’ll throw in a couple of suite tickets for a game next season for you. It’s going to our house in Bellevue.”

Amy promised Tom she’d have three dozen red roses and a pound of Fran’s sea salt chocolate-covered caramels at his house by five o’clock that afternoon, thanked him for his business, and hung up the phone. She was torn between excitement at the amount of money she’d made and the fact she knew she had to hire the delivery driver she now needed desperately. She could put an ad on Craigslist, just as soon as she had five minutes to do so.

W
HEN
M
ATT WASN’T
stopping by her shop to order flowers he was having his executive assistant order them, and Amy was crafting a dazzling array of arrangements sent to what she imagined was every female Matt had had a relationship with since he hit puberty. A disproportionate number had first names ending with “i” as well. The messages on the enclosure cards were getting progressively more ridiculous. Matt must have had a full-time ghostwriter on retainer. When he wasn’t devising new and more ambiguous enclosure cards for elaborate floral arrangements going to a small army of women, he was still asking her out for coffee.

“Come on, Amy. It’s twenty minutes out of your life.”

“No, thank you.”

“I think you really want to go,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice over the phone, too.

He was right, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to give him the pleasure of admitting it quite yet. Even more, he sounded like he was getting a cold. That wasn’t good. Despite the fact she pretended indifference, she didn’t want him to be sick.

“I can’t figure out when you’d fit me in. After all, if you’re dating all these women you keep sending flowers to, you must be exhausted,” she blurted out.

She heard raspy laughter.

“I’ll
make
time.” He let that one sink in for a minute or so. Amy slumped against the front counter. She closed her eyes and sighed. His voice dropped to an intimate rumble. “I’ll ask again tomorrow, Amy.”

“Whatever makes you happy, Matt,” she said. He let out a snort.

“Tomorrow.” He hung up.

A
MY’S NEW DESIGN
assistant Estelle started at the shop the next morning. Amy told her to answer the telephone.

“If Matt Stephens calls, please tell him I’m dead.”

“Matt Stephens, the football player? He’s a hunk,” Estelle shouted back.

Estelle was somewhat loud when she didn’t have her hearing aid turned up, but Amy liked having her around. She was already reducing Amy’s workload. Even more than that, it was nice to have someone to chat with when the shop was slow. The phone rang, Estelle grabbed it, and Amy could tell from the blushing and laughter exactly who it was.

“Oh, Matt, you are such a flirt,” Estelle trilled. “I wish I could have coffee with you, but Mr. Estelle would have a problem with that. He doesn’t like it when I date.”

Amy tried to pretend like she wasn’t listening.

“Well, I’ll make sure we get that order out right away. A dozen pink roses to Mary Margaret, and a card reading, “We’ll always have Paris.” Amy will put the charges on your statement. Thanks for thinking of us. It’s such a thrill to talk to you.” More giggles and blushing ensued.

Amy resisted the impulse to lean over the garbage can in her workroom and barf. Estelle hung the phone up with a bang. “He’s charming, isn’t he?” She fanned herself with one hand.

“He’s a lower life form.” Amy snipped off some greenery in a savage fashion and pictured doing the same to Matt’s neck. She realized with a shock that she was jealous. Maybe she should have answered the phone herself.

“If I didn’t have a husband and some grandkids at home,” Estelle sang out, “I would have taken him up on it. I’ve seen him on
NFL Today
. Norm thinks I’m watching the game, but I’m looking at the men. Wait till he hears he has a rival for my affections.
Matt Stephens?
My girlfriends won’t believe this.” She pushed her reading glasses up her nose and moved away to grab another bunch of daisies out of the bucket for the latest delivery order.

Mary Margaret. Who the hell was
she
?

Chapter Six

A
MY SLUMPED OVER
her worktable the next morning from sheer exhaustion. She’d delivered Matt’s latest bouquet on her way home from work the afternoon before. It turned out that Mary Margaret was actually
Sister
Mary Margaret, one of Matt’s teachers in the parochial school he’d attended. She’d taught him French. Allegedly.

Sister Mary Margaret pulled the card out of the bouquet, peered at it through thick glasses, and let out a soft laugh. “That Matthew Stephens is as naughty as he was in school. Wait until his mother hears about this.”

The sister was also a very persuasive woman. After a long, appreciative sniff of the flowers she’d received, she set down the vase containing Matt’s dozen roses on an occasional table inside the front door of the retirement home she lived in.

“It’s nice to meet you, Amy. I wonder if an old nun could ask you for a favor.” Her faded blue eyes sparkled as she took Amy’s hand in hers. “Do you have plans for the evening?”

“No, no. Not at all,” Amy stammered. The only thing on tonight’s schedule was laundry. “What do you need?”

“It’s almost dinner time, and we’re short one server. If you’ll help us with the dinner service, I’ll introduce you to some more of Matthew Stephens’ former teachers. I’m sure you’ll enjoy their stories.” Sister Mary Margaret was surprisingly strong for an older woman. She slipped her hand through Amy’s arm, pulling her toward what Amy imagined must be the community dining room. “We’ll get you an apron and a hair net. Plus, it’s spaghetti and meatball night, which everyone’s always excited about. It’ll be fun.”

Amy spent the next couple of hours serving dinner and helping to clean up afterward. She forgot her exhaustion after a long day in the shop when she realized how happy those in the facility were to spend even a few minutes chatting and laughing with a younger person. She couldn’t say no when they offered to teach her how to play pinochle, either.

She didn’t make it home until after eleven o’clock that night. She was up at five the next morning to go to the flower wholesaler’s.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Amy was in desperate need of a nap. The wholesaler’s bill was the size of the national debt. It was only ten o’clock, and Estelle wouldn’t be in for another hour. The phone rang again. She was in the midst of cleaning a new shipment of roses, and she clutched the phone between her shoulder and her ear.

“Hello, Crazy Daisy.”

“Hello. My name is Samantha Stephens. I would like to send some flowers to my dad. Would you help me with that?”

“Sure. Let me get my order pad.” Amy barely avoided dropping the cordless receiver into the bucket of water she pulled roses out of. She grabbed the pen and order pad out of her apron with two fingers while juggling her shears. “Who are they going to, and what would you like to send?”

“Well, he likes blue. A lot. It also needs to be something a man would like. He used to play football, so it can’t be pink or frilly,” she explained. “His name is Matt Stephens. He lives in Redmond.”

Stephens. Used to play football. Maybe it was a huge coincidence. Amy took a deep breath.

“What’s the occasion, Samantha?”

“He has a really bad cold. We were supposed to go to the father-daughter dinner at my school, and he’s too sick to go. My mom says that some flowers might cheer him up. I liked the ones that came from your shop.”

So, she was the same Samantha of the eighteen pink roses. In the meantime, Amy attempted to cover her surprise with BS. “Irises are nice. They’re a little more purple than blue, but they have yellowish centers, no scent, and men seem to like them.”

“Okay. What else?”

“How about a few yellow Gerbera daisies to go with them? They’re the larger daisies.”

“Let’s do that.” Samantha paused for a moment. “Please make them really nice. My dad gets me flowers every month on the eighteenth because it’s the day I was born, but I’ve never sent him flowers before.”

“It must be great to look forward to.” Maybe it was better not to tell Samantha Amy knew her dad.

“Yes. I like it a lot.” Amy heard the grin in Samantha’s voice. “I’ll put my mom on the phone. She’s paying for it with her credit card. Thank you for helping me,” she said.

“Thank you, Samantha. I’ll do my best to make an extra-special arrangement for him.”

She heard another “Thanks!” followed by some muffled noise, and then a woman’s voice came over the line.

“Hi. I’m Samantha’s mom, Laura. It must be time to do the paperwork, huh?”

“All I need is your credit card and Samantha’s dad’s exact address.” Amy’s glance fell on the card rounder on the counter. “Actually, that’s not true. I never asked Samantha what she would like on the card.”

“Just a moment,” Laura said and partially covered the mouthpiece of the phone with her hand. “Honey, what would you like written on the card for your dad?”

“Just say ‘I love you’ with some kisses and hugs,” Samantha called out in the background.

Laura and Amy finished their business, Amy thanked her, and they hung up.