by Laila Kelly
A Brilliant Arrangement
A Sweet Billionaire Love Story
Laila Kelly
LAILA KELLY
Copyright © 2019 by Laila Kelly
All rights reserved.
Cover Designed by Tash Drake Outlined with Love Designs
Editing by Bettina C. Edits
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
A Brilliant Arrangement
A Sweet Billionaire Romance
By Laila Kelly
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2019 by Laila Kelly
Chapter One: Joleigh
Chapter Two: Graham
Chapter Three: Joleigh
Chapter Four: Graham
Chapter Five: Joleigh
Chapter Six: Graham
Chapter Seven: Joleigh
Chapter Eight: Graham
Chapter Nine: Joleigh
Chapter Ten: Graham
Chapter Eleven: Joleigh
Chapter Twelve: Graham
Chapter Thirteen: Joleigh
Chapter Fourteen: Graham
Chapter Fifteen: Joleigh
Chapter Sixteen: Graham
Chapter Seventeen: Joleigh
Epilogue: Joleigh (2.5k words)
Epilogue: Graham (2.5k words)
Acknowledgment
Chapter One: Joleigh
“I just need two more roses to finish off this arrangement,” Joleigh thought to herself. Last-minute orders were always greatly appreciated in any business but beating the clock and getting it delivered on the same day was always the hardest part. She turned around and picked up two more peach-colored roses from the pile behind her and spun the arrangement around on the wheel once more. Finding the perfect place to put flowers in any arrangement took a lot more time and patience than most people could imagine. It’s never been about just putting flowers anywhere and sending them off to people. It’s about putting together a live masterpiece that can’t ever be done the same way twice. The thought of creating something beautiful for people to admire and appreciate made Joleigh smile.
She spun the wheel around looking at the placement of the petals and how they looked together, making sure that she captured in person the vision that she had created in her head while looking at the order. She picked one flower up and placed it in the middle of the arrangement and stood back. Putting together bouquets, wreaths and other arrangements brought a sense of peace to Joleigh, one that she couldn’t explain but certainly one that she needed. Humming and spinning the wheel around, Joleigh thought about who this arrangement was for. Sam, her assistant, told her that the person who placed the order wasn’t in the system and that it would be delivered to an address that they hadn’t been to before. She peaked at the address and saw that it was to one of the newly developed houses in town.
She looked up at the window to the office and reminisced back to when her mother would stand in the office and smile at her through the window when she came into the shop after school. Every day after school, Joleigh would hop off the school bus and run into Tony’s Grocery store to pick up a soda and a bag of chips before heading next door to her parent’s shop. She allowed her mind drifted back to her childhood and watching her parents waking up early to finish the first morning's delivery arrangements that carried over from the last night. Growing up in a house full of florists made it easy to learn how to get up early, not that the ability to do so ever got any easier as time went along. Not that she really had much of a choice either.
Her parents would always tell her that getting to the market as early as possible meant that you would always get the best flowers before they sold out making, it easier to have better arrangements for the day. This would be one of the first lessons that she had to learn when she began working at the flower shop full time. She sighed quietly and a wave of sadness brought her back to reality, knowing that those days would never come back, and the people that she loved the most ceased to exist in the same way ever again.
Spinning the arrangement around on the wheel one more time, she saw that she could place some more flowers in the empty spaces at the bottom. She walked back to the refrigerated section of the back room and pulled out five ivory roses, and three more peach-colored roses. It was coming together quite nicely, but she could see that it needed a little something. She put her hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side. Putting beautiful arrangements together was her favorite part of the day. All of the other business processes that the flower shop required were the least of her concerns, but still needed to be done nonetheless, they just got pushed off until she had done all of the orders for the day. She looked back at the order and tried to read the name that was on the order. It was a name that she didn’t recognize, which was rare. She knew everyone in Flowery Branch. In fact, everyone knew everyone in Flowery Branch. This order was from somewhere in Texas that she had never heard of. Not that she knew much about Texas other than Dallas, Austin, and Houston. She made a mental note of looking up the city tonight when she got home. She never got orders from outside of Georgia. Flower’s Flowers was a small family-owned shop that everyone in Flowery Branch, Georgia knew of, but she never thought that she garnered attention from outside of the area, let alone from the Lone Star State.
Getting new business excited Joleigh, as she had worried that things wouldn’t work out after she had to take over the family business. Some people in town doubted that she would be able to maintain the flower shop because she was so young, let alone grow it to where it is currently. She smiled as the thoughts of doing better than she anticipated filled her up. Now that she knew that someone from states over knew about her small shop filled her with pride and she stuck her chest out, knowing that she made the right decision to keep the shop’s doors opened.
Her thoughts wandered off to thinking about Texas, and what it was like out there. Even though she knew that she would never get the chance to move outside of Flowery Branch, the knowledge of knowing that there was an entire world out there waiting to be discovered gave her hope and promise. To live in Flowery Branch her entire life wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but the repetitiveness of the town always made her wonder about other places and what they were like. Aside from her brief stint in college, Joleigh had only ever lived in the same city in Georgia.
She let out a sigh of accomplishment as she finished the arrangement of roses, pepper berry and drooping Star of Bethlehem. It sure was beautiful, and she knew that the person on the receiving end of these flowers would love them. “Just pure perfection”, she whispered to herself. Her first and last arrangements
of the day were usually always her best ones. She smiled at her finished Joleigh picked up the vase and took it over to her ribbon stand and looked for a nice, thick piece of ivory lace to wrap around the vase. Joleigh grabbed the small bag of goodies that go alongside all of the orders that she delivered and placed them by the door. She made sure to grab another business card to go along with the bag. Promoting her business was always a good idea with a new client, not that it was hard to remember the name of the shop, Flower’s Flowers. Cheesy, catchy, and quirky, exactly what her parents wanted in a business name, the result of her father’s charming comedy.
With the last order complete, it was time for her to lock up the shop and deliver it to the customer on her way home. As usual, the longest part of locking up the shop is finding where she put her phone down the last time. Once she found it, she placed the floral arrangement in the backseat of her car and locked the shop’s doors. Two other shops in the area closed at the same time as her shop, and just like every day, they lock their doors at the same time and wave to one another as they all walk to their cars. She stopped for a minute and looked.
The sun had cast a beautiful mirage of warm colors across the sky, and the coolness of fall breeze whipped across her face. Her hair that begins its day in a bun and ends it with strands falling all out of place, gets tucked behind her ear. The house that this arrangement was being delivered to was on the way to her house, but she’d never stopped into the neighborhood before. It was a new construction and from what the town gossip mill had to say, it was soon going to be filled with people who were well to do and new to the city, bringing notoriety and new businesses along with them. The distance from her shop to the house wasn’t that far from one another and she got there in less than five minutes.
When she arrived at the neighborhood it had a huge stone sign with the name Fayetteville Grove in cursive. She drove through the open gate to find there were huge Mediterranean-styled mansions lined up on either side of the cobblestoned street. The courtyards filled with beautiful trees and flowers that were visible from the streets. The mailboxes in front of the houses were just miniature versions of the homes themselves. Joleigh slowed down, wondering who was behind building this neighborhood, and how does one have cobbled stone streets in Flowery Branch, Georgia. She thought those only existed in Shakespearean plays, or in large parts of California, but definitely not in her small home town.
She shrugged it off and continued to drive down the winding street, feeling each bump in the road, literally. She looked at the receipt for the street address and saw that she was two houses down from where she needed to be. When she arrived, she pulled up to one of the largest in the neighborhood. The houses around it were significantly smaller, but still extremely beautiful and large, nonetheless. She double-checked with the receipt and saw that she was at the right house. She parked her car on the side of the street close to the mailbox. The red roof tiles were bright and looked specially crafted for the home itself. The arched doorway had a gate in front of it that opened up into a courtyard with a stoned fountain centerpiece and beautiful brown front door. Before she could reach the door, she saw a small gate in front of the door with a bell on it and she rang it.
After a few moments a small voice came through the speaker on the side of the doorbell, “Who is it?” and a screen popped up with a beautiful woman’s face on it peering back at her. She looked extremely young, and she tucked her hair behind her ears and pulled on her clothes. Startled, Joleigh stepped back and held up the floral arrangement, “Um, my name is Joleigh Everett with Flower’s Flowers and I’m here to deliver this to this to a Tamara Boulevardez?” she stammered. Out of all of the home deliveries she’s ever fulfilled, she’d never been to a house this big, nor with this high-tech of a doorbell system. She’d never even been to a house that had any type of screen outside of their house. Joleigh wondered what the woman would’ve done if she wasn’t dressed properly. If the doorbell is hooked up to a camera, Joleigh would pray that she never got visitors.
The woman leaned closer to the screen to see the flowers. “Who are they from?” the woman looked at the flowers and smiled. Joleigh looked at the e-card and saw no name, just “The Greatest Gift” in the spot where the name usually went. “Um, from ‘The Greatest Gift’?” The woman looked puzzled and a loud buzzing sound erupted, and the black gate swung open. “Come through the gate,” the woman motioned, and Joleigh walked through the gate and past the fountain through the brown door and through another door that looked like it was made of a thousand mirrors. She was surprised that the woman invited her through the gate instead of just coming out to take the flowers and showing her on her way out.
The mirrored door opened and the woman from the screen appeared. She was short and had long blonde hair that tumbled over her shoulders in loose waves. The woman stood off to the side of the door and placed her hands on her white linen pants. She fixed the wine-colored pashmina that she had wrapped around her as if Joleigh was a house guest, rather than a delivery person and gave her a bright and inviting smile. The woman was very young looking and the camera certainly did her beauty no justice. She was breathtakingly beautiful; her face was so symmetrical that she wondered if she was an actress. Joleigh didn’t watch much television and she wouldn’t have been able to recognize a movie star even if she was one.
She looked up at Joleigh, something that Joleigh wasn’t used to at all because she was barely five foot tall herself. “Would you like to come in for a moment?” the woman stood off to the side. Joleigh looked around the house and was eager to go inside to see what a house that was so beautiful on the outside looked like on the inside. Besides, she was pretty sure if she handed over the flowers to the small woman that she would topple over from the weight of them. Joleigh held the flowers off to the side of her and nodded towards the woman. She opened the door wider and motioned for Joleigh to enter the house. “Watch your step,” she said quietly and walked towards the kitchen.
The inside of this house was even more beautiful than the outside of it, and Joleigh had to work hard to keep her mouth from falling onto the floor. The ornate tile that led the way towards the kitchen and off down the different hallways reminded Joleigh of one of her favorite international house hunter episodes. “Can you put it on the island, please?” the woman whisper spoke again. Her voice was soft and gentle like she worked with children all day. Joleigh placed the flowers on the island that looked like more of a continent than an island, and the woman walked over and examined them. “They’re very beautiful,” she whispered with a smile, “I love these roses,” she leaned into the flowers and took a deep breath. Joleigh smiled at the woman, happy to see that she enjoyed her work, and even happier to see that she enjoyed the beauty of the individual flowers themselves. She reached out and stroked the petals of the roses.
The woman turned the vase around and looked for the card that was gently tucked between two peach roses. She plucked it out and read it slowly. “Flower’s Flowers,” she paused “Aren’t you located in the Pavilion downtown?” Joleigh smiled, happy that neighbors of the newest subdivision in town noticed her small flower shop. “Yes ma’am, that’s where we are.” The woman turned around to face her, her face was soft like a baby rose petal. Of course, with a home this large, this woman must spend a fortune on being able to remain looking as young as she does. “My name’s Tamara, by the way,” she held out her hand. For such a small woman, she sure did shake Joleigh’s hand with a stern firmness. Joleigh returned the same strength. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Tamara,” Joleigh smiled, “Oh please, just call me Tamara. No need for the Ms.,” she blushed. Joleigh nodded and placed her hands in her pocket. “These flowers are from my son’s mother,” Tamara whispered softly as she stroked the other petals on one of the flowers. Joleigh looked around and didn’t see any pictures on the walls of anything, or anywhere else for that matter.
She must have seen the puzzled look on Joleigh’s face, because she quickly responded, “When I was a te
enager, I had a baby boy and he was put up for adoption. Every few weeks since then, his adopted mother would send me flowers. I didn’t think that I would get them anymore since I moved out here to Georgia a few weeks ago, but I see she’s found me again,” She smiled. Joleigh nodded with understanding and before she could catch the words before they came out of her mouth, “How old is your son?” Tamara looked up, “If you don’t mind me asking,” Joleigh blushed, the million questions she tended to ask always left her prying too much into people’s personal lives, and most of the time it either got her into trouble or made other people nervous. The woman looked much too young to have older children, and Joleigh figured that he would be no more than fifteen years old. “Oh, you’re fine, I don’t mind. He’s going to be thirty-three in a few weeks.” Joleigh smiled, “That’s beautiful that she still sends you flowers after all of these years.” Tamara sighed, “Yes, it is, it certainly is.” Joleigh could sense a bit of sadness in her voice but decided against asking any more questions that might leave her upset.
Joleigh wondered what it must have been like for Tamara to have put up her son for adoption, or to still have some sort of communication with his new family even after thirty-two years. She couldn’t imagine and decided against asking anything about it. It would just have to be one of those things that Joleigh wouldn’t be able to ever understand. Tamara walked around to the cabinet and pulled out two glasses, walked to the refrigerator and put ice in them, and filled them up with water. “Would you like a glass of water?” Joleigh shook her head and took the glass from Tamara. She didn’t want to be rude, especially knowing that Tamara had only been in Flowery Branch for only a few weeks. Flowery Branch had a history of being one of the most hospitable places around and she wanted Tamara to see that. Joleigh drank the water and placed it back onto the island. Tamara was still looking at the flowers and turning the vase around to admire it from all sides. There was a comfortable quietness that fell over the room and Joleigh watched as she took in the flowers.