*****
Craig eased his pickup into the lot at Grover's Grove. The place wasn't busy; only a few parking spaces were occupied. He passed through the storefront and out the back, where potted flowers lined his path until they gave way to a hundred varieties of roses, followed by a wide assortment of shrubs. He continued on past the shrubs to trees stationed like pillars in long rows, their roots bound in burlap and tucked into beds of soft mulch.
He sought birches, and they were easy to locate; their white bark gave them away. Angling down their row, he examined each specimen, gauging their ages and vigor, assessing the arrangement of their limbs for both aesthetic value and strength.
A nursery worker approached from the other end of the row—a woman in her mid-thirties, slender and strong, auburn hair tied back in a ponytail, maneuvering an eight-foot-tall maple in his direction. Facing the row behind Craig, she settled her tree in an open slot among the other maples and kicked some mulch around the balled-up roots.
"Can I help you find something?" she asked, inspecting the maple briefly before looking over her shoulder at Craig.
Craig motioned toward the trees he was examining. "I need a birch. Which one would you recommend?"
She moved to stand beside him shoulder to shoulder—rather close, actually. "Where are you going to put it?"
"We're landscaping around a restaurant. Plenty of vertical space, needs a tree without too much canopy spread…" She didn't move away. Her shoulder actually bumped his for a moment.
"I'd say this one might work well for you, then," she said, indicating the tree he had been studying. "It has all the basics. A good, strong trunk; thin is flimsy—you want firm, strong, round."
She was facing the tree as she spoke the words, but Craig caught her peeking out the corner of her eye at his chest and torso. He cocked an eyebrow at her.
"And then," she continued, "it needs to have sturdy limbs…" She ran two fingers along one of the lower, thicker branches, but her eyes were back on him, measuring his biceps. "Good leafage is important, too," she said. She fingered a leaf, but spied his hair as it shifted lightly in the breeze. "Of course, that depends on the season. Eventually, the leaves fall out—er, off."
Craig frowned; his hair hadn't thinned that much, not yet.
"And never ignore the roots. If you and your tree are going to be spending a long time together, you want to make sure he has plenty of stability."
"You mean, 'make sure it has stability'..." He raised both eyebrows at her too-innocent expression, then turned his attention back to the tree. "So this one has it all, huh? I guess I'll take it. If you could just carry it to my pickup for me…"
She backhanded him in the gut, making him grunt. "Carry it yourself, bozo! I give advice. I don't carry trees for big, strong men who can do it themselves." She spoke with a grin that was downright flirtatious. "What else are you looking for?"
"Uh, a blue spruce. But I didn't see any as I came in."
"They're back that way," she told him, nodding behind him. "You walked right past them. I'll give you a hint—they're blue."
He returned her sarcastic smile.
"What else?"
"Vine leaf maple? Four of them?"
"We can do that."
"Will you pick out the best ones for me?"
She thrust fists onto her hips. "If you can't do it yourself."
He chuckled. "And if you could carry that blue spruce to the pickup, too…"
She scowled at him. "You're trying to get hit again, aren't you?"
"I just like it when you touch me."
"You're a scoundrel. What would your wife do if she could see you now, flirting with some woman from the nursery?"
Craig turned to face the worker directly. She was still very close to him. "She would murder me. She's terribly mean, my wife. Violent, even. Hit me just today."
"Did she now? I bet you deserved it." The woman placed one hand and then the other around Craig's waist, her hazel eyes peering into his brown ones as she pulled him close.
A motorized cart rattled by at the near end of the row, towing a wagon filled with flowering shrubs. The aged driver, hands gnarled like old tree knots, yelled down the row at them in a gravelly voice as he drove by. "No kissing the customers, Kara! We're not that kind of establishment!"
In his view, Kara kissed Craig anyway. It brought a grin from both Craig and the old fellow as the cart and wagon rolled away.
"Did you get Ben's message?" she asked.
Craig stepped back and lifted the birch they had selected. "I did. We dropped by the house a few minutes ago and got him some tools."
They turned and walked together to the end of the row, the tree in tow. "You are a scoundrel, you know, distracting me from my work like this."
"You like it when I distract you," he quipped in reply.
She rolled her eyes playfully and trotted ahead to the blue spruces a few rows away while he took the birch to his pickup. By the time Craig returned, she had picked one out for him. "You find the vine leaf maples, I'll go ring up the order," she said. "And I'm not carrying them to the pickup for you, you scoundrel." With that, she turned and made her way back to the storefront.
"Put it on the business account!" Craig called after her.
"I know!" she called back.
Craig shook his head. She was so attractive when she was playful. Something came alive in her eyes so that they laughed at him. He gripped the blue spruce and carried it out to the Mazda.
A few trips later, the pickup bed now stocked with a foursome of vine leaf maples alongside the trees, Craig returned to the storefront. From behind the counter, Kara handed him an invoice. "So, you want to get together for dinner tonight?" she asked.
"Sure," he replied. "My place or yours?"
"Whichever. What time is the game?"
"Seven."
"Okay. I'll have dinner ready by 5:30, then."
"I'll be there."
They exchanged a quick, parting kiss, and Craig headed for the storefront's open double doors. The aged man from the cart walked in past him just in time to growl at Kara, "If you keep kissing the customers, we'll get mobbed with people wanting equal treatment, and they'll trample my plants!"
"If she quits kissing this customer, Grover, I'm finding another place to shop!" Craig returned over his shoulder as he strode out into the cloud-filtered sunlight.
"Oh, yeah?" the old man bellowed behind him. "When I was your age, customers came to the nursery to buy plants!"
With glance back and a chuckle at Grover's good-natured scoff, Craig continued on to the pickup, climbed in, and drove away.
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 4