Fortune Finds Florist

by Arlene James

  Hadn’t she realized that little wrap thing wasn’t conducive to a business meeting? Or was that the point? He could’ve stripped her with just the pull of that string tied at her waist. Didn’t she realize that? Maybe she’d intended to distract him, or maybe she wasn’t as smart as she looked. Just because she was older didn’t mean she knew everything. If she did, she’d know that anything personal between them was never going to happen. Not in his business. Who needed her anyway?

  Unfortunately, he did.

  The sad truth was that Sierra Carlton and her flower farm were still the best opportunity that he had found to get out from under his equipment payment and make some sort of stable future for himself and the girls.

  Mouth thinning into a compressed line, Sam slowed his asphalt-eating strides and blew out an agitated breath. Dismay rose up and threatened to choke him, but his pride still stung so sharply that for a moment he couldn’t let himself feel the other. Then, gradually, the cold air began to clear his head.

  Surely there was room for compromise. She had to know that he’d expect some leeway. She wasn’t an airhead, despite evidence to the contrary from that slinky, formfitting, crisscrossed little top.

  He briefly squeezed his eyes shut. Why couldn’t she have just approached him as an equal? They could’ve hammered out an agreement in no time. It probably wouldn’t have looked a lot different than the one in his hand, but at least it would have been a mutually made agreement. He’d handled negotiations before, after all. He knew how they worked. Mentally reviewing past negotiations, he tried to enumerate the ways in which Sierra had screwed up this one and, therefore, deserved his scorn.

  By the time he reached his heavy-duty truck, he’d worked his way around to a distasteful but honest conclusion. If a man had presented him with that contract he wouldn’t have been nearly as offended. Men always tried to one-up each other in a negotiation. It was expected. Moreover, if it had been grandmotherly Bette Grouper who had presented him with such a proposal, he probably would have signed without a quibble as a matter of respect. But it had been Sierra Carlton who’d drawn up that contract without input from him. Sexy, delicious Sierra Carlton.

  He didn’t like where that conclusion inevitably led him. He wasn’t upset because Sierra hadn’t shown the proper and expected respect for him as a business partner, but because she’d treated him “man to man,” not as a man, and an attractive one to boot.

  Disgusted with himself, he unlocked the door and got into the truck. Unrolling the paper against the steering wheel, he carefully read every word. It wasn’t a bad deal, all told, with one or two exceptions that could be easily fixed. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days to have his attorney look this over and offer a few suggestions. It would mean swallowing his pride, but he’d choked down worse. That’s what a real man would do, and nobody—but nobody—would ever be able to say that Samuel Ray Jayce wasn’t the real deal. Meanwhile, he’d make sure that he got his business sense out of his pants.

  Sierra looked up from her desk a couple days later to find Sam Jayce hanging his elbows in her doorway. The sides of his cattleman’s coat were pulled wide, highlighting the powerful depth of his chest and the slimness of his hips. The cold, breezy weather had reddened his face and brought a sharp clarity to those unusual sage-green eyes. For a moment he said nothing, merely stood there, hipshot, regarding her implacably. Then abruptly he dropped his arms and strolled toward her desk, one hand reaching around behind him.

  Time slowed to a crawl, affording her fanciful mind space to conjure impossible scenarios. He would walk to her desk, skirting it to reach her side, reach down, pull her up out of her chair and slam his mouth down over hers. No. He would skirt her desk, circle behind her chair, tilt it backward with his big hands and slowly lean in for a melting kiss. Or perhaps it would be a combination of the two. He would pull her to her feet, cup her face in his hands and deliver that melting kiss erect.

  Her heart was pounding by the time he slapped a folded packet of papers onto her desk. She jumped, and the spell was broken. Color flamed in her cheeks.

  “S-Sam.”

  “Page three,” he said, pointing at the papers.

  With trembling fingers, she unfolded the papers and peeled back the top two. An addendum had been typewritten in the space between the paragraphs indicating that a special account for expenses would be set up, the sum of which would be determined by an accountant furnished with estimates by Sam himself. Sierra could name the accountant. Scrupulously fair. Relief swam through Sierra as she reached for a pen and scribbled her initials in the space provided.

  “Is this it?”

  “Page four.”

  She lifted the page and scanned the words. He had added four hundred dollars a month to the modest salary she had proposed, the sum of which would be taken from his year-end profits. She had expected him to double it but realized that she couldn’t very well make that proposal herself. He’d think she was patronizing him. She would have to make certain that the expense budget was generous.

  She inscribed her initials again and, without comment, flipped over to the final page to sign her name in the space provided. He produced a second set of papers, and she memorialized those while he made good on the first set. When the second set was fully formalized, he folded the first and slid them into a coat pocket before sinking down onto the corner of her desk.

  “Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, I need some idea from you about what you’re hoping to plant.”

  She leaned back in her chair and tried not to look at those hard thighs on her desk. Inches from her hand. “Annuals tend to provide the showiest single-stem blossoms for flower arranging, but there are a number of perennials useful in arrangements, as well. I’ve put together a list of about a dozen plants.” She opened a drawer and extracted the paper she’d been working on. “I hope you can read my writing.”

  He glanced at the sheet, nodded and said, “I’ll manage.” Folding the paper, he stowed it with the partnership agreement. “I’ll need to do some more research and get back to you.”

  “When would you like to meet next?”

  “Saturday work for you?”

  “I don’t usually work on Saturdays, but the shop is open, so it’s no problem.”

  He shook his head. “Not here. Out at the farm. I need to get a close look at the fields.”

  “Of course. All right. Just come on up to the house whenever you like.”

  “It’ll be early,” Sam warned. “There’s lots to do.”

  “Really? At this time of year? I thought the real work wouldn’t begin until early spring.”

  He stood. “You thought wrong. It’ll take pretty much every daylight minute between now and planting time to get the planning done and those fields ready.”

  Surprised, Sierra nodded. “I see. Um, how early?”

  “Daylight,” Sam said cheerily. She didn’t quite manage to keep the dismay off her face, and he chuckled. “Okay, eight.”

  “Not much better,” she muttered.

  He moved toward the door, tossing a wry smile over his shoulder on the way. “You’re the one who wanted to be a farmer. Of course, daylight comes a lot earlier in spring and summer, which is when the real work is done.”

  Completely willing to humiliate herself in order to foster the easygoing banter, she made an exaggerated face of distaste.

  Laughing, Sam reached into his coat pocket, extracted the agreement and saluted her with it. “See you Saturday. Partner.”

  Partner. It sounded even better than she’d imagined.

  Sam gazed around the high-ceilinged, octagonal foyer without expression. Sierra watched him take in the little artistic setbacks displaying vases of fresh flowers, naturally, and the open, sweeping staircase before he looked pointedly at the mug in her hands.

  “Coffee smells good.”

  Sierra tried not to show her surprise, though why she should be surprised by the fact that Sam enjoyed a cup of coffee early of a morning
she didn’t know. Coffee was “in” with the younger generation these days. Funny, the longer she knew him, the older Sam seemed.

  “Come on in, and I’ll get you a cup,” she said, turning down the central hall.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she caught him looking from room to room as they passed, but her smile of pride died when she saw the frown he was wearing. So, he didn’t approve of her house, either. For Pete’s sake, it wasn’t as if she’d built a replica of the Taj Mahal. A quarter-million dollars happened to buy a lot in their corner of Texas, but not that much. The house was only 3,500 square feet, with three bedrooms and a study upstairs, where Tyree and Bette’s teenage daughter, Chelsea, now slept, and the living areas all downstairs.

  The house looked elegant and expensive, much like the house in which she’d grown up, but with contrast-colored picture-framing on the walls and lots of arches and display niches and plenty of ceramic tile and lush carpeting on the floors. She’d put her money into the infrastructure, believing that it was best to build to last, and cut some corners on the fixtures, going for unique rather than expensive, but still she’d caught major flak from her father and bankers for spending too much.

  She led Sam into the bright, white-tile-and-natural-woods kitchen with its cheery yellow-and-orange accents, took a cup from the cabinet and filled it with the best freshly brewed coffee that money could buy. “Take anything in it?”

  “No, thanks.” He gestured toward the breakfast nook, pulling papers from his coat pocket. “Why don’t we sit and take a look at what I’ve come up with?”

  “Sure.”

  While he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of a chair at the table, she placed his mug in front of him and sat down on his right. He sat, unfolded the papers and reached for his cup.

  “Mmm, excellent. Now these are planting guides for the dozen blooms you stipulated and about ten more that lend themselves easily to our climate.” He shifted a specific paper toward her and added, “These are the bestselling exotics, but we’ll get into those later.”

  “How many acres do you propose we plant?”

  “I’ll know better when I get a look at the fields, but I suspect we’ll only want to put about a third of our—that is, your—acreage into cultivation.”

  Sierra frowned. She’d envisioned the whole 160 acres ablaze in summer blooms. “Why is that?”

  “It’s just good land management. Flowers and vegetables take lots of soil preparation. They require lots of nutrients. By rotating our fields, we can protect the viability of the soil and the quality of our crops. We’ll plant some cover crops and plow those under in order to feed the soil, but a third of the fields will simply lie fallow year to year. Fortunately, flowers are a high-yield, high-return product, so our acreage is more than sufficient. In fact, it’s quite abundant.”

  “You’ve really done your research,” she observed.

  He nodded, drank from his cup and went on. “We’ll need help initially. Flower farming, like vegetable farming, is a labor-intensive operation. Bear that in mind when you look over the cost estimates. Overall, the amount of soil preparation needed this first year will dictate how much initial profit we make, but I think a conservative estimate is twenty to twenty-five thousand.”

  Sierra tried not to gasp in dismay. “That’s all?”

  “Per acre.”

  “Oh.” What she really meant was “Wow!”

  “That’ll rise after we get over the hump of initial investment and figure out exactly what our soil will best support,” he went on. “The worst areas should probably go into lavender. It’s hardy, practically grows itself and is useful for sachets, perfumes, dried flowers and filler. Sunflowers are another hardy pick with multiple uses. The showier blooms are the more profitable, of course, so our best fields will go to those. We’ll be planting strips of rye and wheat around the perimeters of those fields to protect the blooms from the wind and get those nice, straight stems that you floral designers are so crazy about.”

  “I never even thought of that,” she admitted.

  He just shrugged and went on, his enthusiasm positively infectious. “We may have to do some irrigating, but I actually own a few sections of aboveground irrigation equipment that I took in trade for some work I did last year, and we have our own well here, so that’s not a major concern.”

  Sierra sat back and regarded him frankly. “I have to say, I’m impressed.”

  “Good,” he said. “That means you’ll listen while I make this next proposal.”

  She would’ve listened to him read the weather report, but then realized that was very likely to happen, considering the business they were now in. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Greenhouses. They’ll add to the initial outlay, but not as much as you may think. We’ll need two for start. One we’ll use to germinate seedlings. The other will allow us to grow the more exotic blooms that our general climate prohibits. I can design and build them myself. They’re very simple structures, actually, but I won’t lie to you. They could be expensive to operate. We’ll have to keep the lights on sixteen hours a day, control the climate 24/7 and do lots of watering. But the returns can be very substantial.”

  Sierra bit her lip, excited but leery. One thing she’d learned the hard way was that money spent fast. “Let’s take a look at the cost estimates.”

  They put their heads together over the numbers, and Sierra found herself dismayed. “Sam, that’s nearly all of my capital.”

  “Surely you weren’t thinking of pouring cash into this,” he said.

  “Why take out loans when you have cash?” she demanded.

  “Because it’s smarter,” he explained. “Look. If you take out a loan and the proposition fails, you’re going to lose some property and some money, but you’ll also have money left. Once money’s spent, though, it’s gone. Yours should be tied up in long-term investment.”

  “Most of it is.”

  “It should stay that way.”

  “But you pay interest on borrowed money.”

  “And you make interest on invested money, which you use as a kind of collateral to secure your loans.”

  “Tell that to the bankers,” Sierra retorted. “They won’t loan me money.”

  “Well, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  She glanced around her uneasily and admitted, “It’s this house.”

  He hooked an elbow over the back of his chair and looked around. “It’s quite a house, but I don’t see the problem unless you owe more against it than it’s worth.”

  “That’s the thing,” she said warily. “I don’t owe anything against this house, and I absolutely refuse to use it as collateral.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “You actually paid cash for this house?”

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “Yes. A quarter of a million dollars. And I’d do it again.”

  He just shook his head. “Women!”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Don’t get your shorts in a twist, er, panties.” He waved that away, too. “What I mean is that women seem to have a peculiar anxiety about the security of their homes. My mom was the same way.”

  At the mention of his mother, his voice became wistful. It completely destroyed whatever resentment his earlier exclamation had dealt Sierra.

  “What happened to your mother was a truly awful thing, Sam.”

  His light green eyes met hers. “She stayed married to him because she was afraid to be without a home and, I guess, because he convinced her that she deserved what he dished out.” He looked away, and a muscle flexed in the hollow of his jaw. “Nothing I could say or do seemed to make any difference.”

  She reached out instinctively and curled her fingers around his. “I’m so sorry, Sam. That’s such a tough thing you and your sisters have had to go through.”

  He gripped her hand and smiled thinly. “The only good thing my father ever did in his whole miserable life was give us those girls.” His grin broadened, and the light o
f genuine affection and pride lit his eyes with a warmth she hadn’t seen before. “Seeing them happy, it makes up for so much.”

  Sierra thought of Tyree and said, “I know what you mean.” The problem was that Tyree didn’t seem happy anymore.

  “I see so much of Mom in them,” Sam was saying, “and no matter how screwed up her head was about Jonah, she protected them with her very life.”

  “Oh, Sam,” Sierra heard herself saying even as she watched her hand rise and settle gently against the curve of his jaw. Their eyes met again. And held. Awareness flared in those fascinating green eyes, like miniature sunbursts, and Sierra realized with jolting certainty that this was no boy sitting here next to her. This was a man, very much a man, and a rare one at that.

  As amazing at it seemed, she may have picked the right man at the right time. For once.

  Chapter Three

  Sam sat back, aware that he’d nearly made a very bad mistake. He’d actually thought about kissing her. Even in the best of circumstances, Sierra Carlton was not the sort of woman with whom he could afford to fool around. She was his business partner. Business and romance never mixed well. The repercussions could be fatal, at least to the enterprise. Only a fool would jeopardize a financial setup this good, even if she hadn’t been so smart with her money in the past.

  Quickly retreating to the safety of business, Sam said, “We’re burning daylight here. I’d better get out and take a good look at those fields.”

  Sierra set down her coffee cup as she rose from her chair. “Finish your coffee while I grab my coat, and we’ll take off.”

  He gulped. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Oh, I want to. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  He tried not to sound panicked when he asked, “What about your daughter?”