“They should. No one bakes like Sarah Goodwin. Except you,” Debra added with a quick smile. She took a sip of her tea, closed her eyes, and sighed. “It feels good to take the day off.”
“You’ve been going awfully hard,” Millie said.
Debra set down her mug and looked around mournfully. “I hate my job.”
“Maybe you should look for a new one,” suggested Millie.
Debra looked at her like she’d suggested her daughter run away to Tahiti. “Mom, I can’t just quit. I’ve got bills.”
“Well, I know, but . . .”
“It’s not like it was for you. I can’t just say, ‘Oh, I want to stay home and play in the garden.’ ”
She didn’t have a garden, so if you asked Millie, that was a moot point. And Millie wasn’t sure she liked the implication that her life as a wife and mother had been one long garden party. Gardening was very satisfying, but it was still work.
“Life is all about choices, Debra,” she said firmly. “If you don’t like your life, make it different.”
Debra blinked in surprise. Then her features soured. “I didn’t choose to be divorced, Mom.”
“Yes, you did,” Millie said with a sigh. “You probably made a million little choices that brought you to this point. But that’s water under the bridge. If you want to go somewhere better, you’re going to have to start picking some new paths.”
Millie realized she should have given her daughter this kind of a tough-love pep talk years ago. She and Duncan had treated their baby like a hot house flower. They hadn’t done that with the boys and, even though Millie tried not to see it, the difference showed.
Whenever Debra got in trouble at school, Millie and Duncan took her part, something they’d never done with the boys. When she overspent her allowance in college, they bailed her out. And when her wedding had gone several thousand dollars over what they’d budgeted, they hadn’t reined her in. Instead they’d emptied their savings. When Debra and her husband fought, Millie always took Debra’s side. If she’d been able to be as impartial as she’d been when giving advice to Amber, would Debra still be married? Who knew? But it hadn’t helped that she’d never built in her daughter the endurance for weathering hard times. What a painful thing to have to admit!
“Well,” Millie said as their waitress approached. “Let’s make today the first day of the beginning of some new choices, shall we? Let’s have fun and not dwell on the things in life that are unpleasant.”
Debra wasn’t saying much of anything, so to get her started, Millie picked up the tab for lunch. Old habits died hard.
But Millie began to take hope that maybe her pep talk had done Debra some good. On Sunday, she announced she was going to check out line dancing at the Grange. “You don’t need a partner to dance,” she told Millie. “They have a beginner class at five. You don’t mind feeding the kids, do you?”
“They don’t want to go with you?” Millie asked. She’d actually planned to go out with Altheus.
“They wouldn’t be interested. Anyway, I need to get out on my own.”
“I’ll make something,” Millie promised. She also promised herself that next time she had plans with Altheus, she wouldn’t cancel them.
So, when Debra called on Tuesday asking if Millie could run Eric to his five thirty dental appointment, Millie informed her she’d have to work late some other day.
“Come on, Mom, help me out here,” Debra begged.
“I’d love to, dear, but I have plans,” Millie said.
“With Altheus?” Debra made it sound like plans with Altheus couldn’t compare with the importance of chauffeuring a grandson to a dental appointment. How far they had come from Debra not wanting her mother to even drive, let alone have a car.
“Yes,” Millie said, determinedly pleasant.
Debra gave a disgusted snort. “I thought you moved out here to help me.”
“I did,” Millie said, her voice less pleasant. She could feel her blood pressure rising, right along with her ire. “I also moved out here so we could enjoy spending more time together, something which we’ve done very little of. I didn’t move out here to become your au pair. Things like dental appointments and Little League games are your department, Debra, and I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the satisfaction of being able to do those motherly duties. If you leave work now, you should get home just in time.”
Debra was still sputtering when she hung up, and that made Millie feel a little guilty. But not guilty enough to break her plans with Altheus. Debra wasn’t the only one who needed to choose her way to a new life.
TWENTY-SIX
JUNE HAD FOLLOWED a soppy Memorial Day weekend. Other than meeting for coffee, Bobbi hadn’t seen much of Jason. She could have. Her note had worked wonders and he was securely in her back pocket now. So securely that he’d invited her to go camping over the weekend. She’d invented a big wedding and claimed she couldn’t possibly leave Hope to fill the order single-handed, so Jason had gone off alone to shiver in the cold and wet and pretend he was having fun. Except he hadn’t gone alone. His brother went with him to eastern Washington, where the sun had shone and everything was beautiful.
There were still spiders, though, she was sure. And snakes. And bees. Much as she would like to have started meeting his family, she didn’t regret her decision one bit. Anyway, she wanted them to see her at her best. It would be hard to be her best with no bathtub and no way to do her hair.
And now he was back, it was Friday, and they were going dancing. Everything was going according to plan.
Until someone new wandered into the flower shop: Mr. Not Perfect, all dressed up in jeans and a biker’s black leather jacket. Bobbi stared at Duke and swallowed hard in a feeble attempt to water her dry mouth. Hope was in the back room working on an arrangement for a bridal shower, so here was Bobbi, all by herself, unprotected with Mr. Bad Boy.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted.
He frowned. “I came to order some flowers.”
“You’ve got a girlfriend,” she accused. She should have known.
“No, they’re just for someone I wish was my girlfriend.”
Ouch. After all that chemistry when they were dancing at Slugfest, this felt about as good as a sticker in the butt. What did she care, though? She wasn’t interested. She didn’t want Duke. She wanted perfect, stable, sweet, boring Jason. Boring? Where had that come from? Jason wasn’t boring. He was smart. And he liked to read and hike and camp and, oh, dear, she was listing all the wrong things. He was gorgeous and he was a good kisser and he was responsible. There. Perfect.
“What kind of flowers do you want?” Bobbi asked.
He sauntered over and leaned on the counter. He smelled like leather and man. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s a little hard to help you if you don’t know what you want.”
“Oh, I know what I want.”
The way he was looking at her was not good. Neither was the way she was feeling. Well, actually, it was very good. Every happy hormone in her body was now on red alert. But this wasn’t supposed to be happening with Duke.
Bobbi bit her lip. “I’m dating Jason.”
“Lame.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?”
“I had the morning off. Tooth cleaning.” He flashed her a smile, showing off his newly cleaned pearly whites, and leaned in close. “You can still taste the cleaning stuff. Know what flavor they used?”
Bobbi stood staring at his lips like a deer caught in the headlights of a Mack truck. “No.”
“Chocolate.”
“Ummm.”
He leaned closer. “So, Jace tells me you guys know what flowers mean. Secret messages and stuff like that. What flower says you belong with me?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out as a squeak.
“Well, find out and then send yourself some. And let my boy off the hook. You guys don’t belong together.”
“Yes, we do,” she called as Duk
e left the shop, giving her a mouth-watering view of his hind end. “Yes, we do,” she whimpered.
JASON RETURNED FROM a mess on the new house they were building on the lake to discover one of his workers at the downtown project was in the process of demoing the wrong wall. “Borg, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
His new hire, covered in drywall dust, let his maul drop and turned to stare at Jason. “Whaddya mean?”
“You’re demoing the wrong damned wall, dickhead. That’s a weight-bearing wall. You want to bring the whole side of the building down?”
“Damn,” growled Borg.
“Damn is right,” Jason growled back. “Get your head out of your ass, shore that up, and be glad I don’t saw you in half.”
The whole day went downhill from there. Why did he ever go into construction, anyway? He should have listened to his mom and his old man and gotten a teaching degree. Except then he’d have had to try to educate guys like Borg who had no brains and less ambition. And, if he’d threatened to saw them in half, he’d have gotten fired. No, much as this job made him nuts sometimes, this was where he belonged. Construction was the last frontier in the work field, the one place where a man could still be a man.
But being a man could be tiring. By the time he’d put out half a dozen more small fires, Jason was fried. He was seeing Bobbi that night, and he’d promised he’d take her dancing in the city. All he wanted to do was crash in front of the TV. Would Bobbi want to crash?
He called her on his cell as he drove home to shower.
“Hi, Jason,” she said, chipper as always. No, not as always. Today she seemed even more manic.
He felt even more tired. “Hey, do you mind if we just watch the tube or something to night?”
“I thought we were going dancing,” she said. The disappointment wasn’t exactly hiding in her voice.
“I’ve had a hell of a day. Could we postpone the dancing?”
“Okay,” she said. He could almost hear the gears grinding as she reluctantly shifted from Plan A to Plan B. “Come on over and I’ll order a pizza.”
He didn’t even want to drive. “How about you come over here and I’ll order the pizza?” The privacy would do them good.
“Okay,” she agreed. Her enthusiasm was underwhelming.
Even though he was shot, he did a quick detour by the Safeway to pick up some Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, her favorite. Hopefully, the chocolate offering would appease her.
But she was only mildly appeased when she arrived at his place at seven and he showed her what he’d gotten her. “What happened at work?” she asked, dumping her purse on his kitchen counter. “Did somebody drop a hammer on your foot?”
“Somebody damn near dropped a whole building on my head. And that was just for starters.” He pulled her to him and said, “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I just needed some peace and quiet to get centered again.” So, what he probably should have done was canceled the whole night. Bobbi went with peace and quiet about as well as oil mixed with water. Never mind, he told himself. She liked movies. They’d put in a DVD, flop on the couch, and eat pizza and ice cream.
She did settle in and enjoyed the action flick he’d rented. And she really enjoyed the ice cream. Watching her lick her spoon, Jason realized he wasn’t so pooped anymore. “Come here,” he murmured, and pulled her in close for a kiss. And another, and another. And . . .
Then, suddenly, she was pulling away. “I know we’ve been dating awhile now.”
“Yeah?” he prompted. What was she getting at, and why was she getting at it now? He put an arm around her and leaned in to nibble on her neck, but she slipped out of his embrace and left the couch, saying, “This is wrong. I can’t do this.” She snatched her purse from his kitchen counter and started for the door.
“What? Where are you going?” he protested.
“I have to go home and think.”
He was off the couch now, and following her. “What?” What the hell was going on? He felt like the only player on the team who didn’t know the playbook.
Instead of clueing him in, she shook her head. “I have to go.”
And, just like Cinderella, Miss Right went running off. But she didn’t leave behind a shoe. Instead she left Jason with something much more uncomfortable. He swore and marched off to the bathroom for a cold shower. This relationship was completely screwed up.
WHAT WAS SHE doing? There she’d been, kissing Jason and thinking of Duke. How sick and wrong was that? If she hadn’t remembered Mom’s favorite saying, she’d have really made a mess of things. Mom was right. When in doubt, keep your legs crossed.
Now she didn’t have any doubt at all. She knew for sure she couldn’t keep Jason. They weren’t right for each other. She had to tell him they were through. Right now.
Her inner computer calculated the chances of him being mad when she did. One hundred percent. Then it calculated how messed up both their lives would be if she didn’t. One hundred and fifty percent. She whipped the car around and squealed back down the street. She was going to set this poor man free. It was past time. He needed to go find the woman who really was perfect for him.
In less than four minutes, she was back on his porch, banging on the door. He yanked the door open and greeted her wearing nothing but a towel around his waist and a look of shock on his face.
“Oh.” Dear Lord, but he was gorgeous. Why was she here again?
TWENTY-SEVEN
NEVER MIND THAT this man is gorgeous, Bobbi told herself, he’s not the gorgeous for you. And all she had to do to prove it to herself was remember Duke in the flower shop and the way he’d made her feel even with all his clothes on.
“I can’t see you anymore,” she blurted.
Jason looked at her like she was nuts. “What? Here, come on in.”
“Only if you get dressed,” she said, stepping through the door.
He didn’t say anything, just padded away, the muscles in his back rippling as he went. What did Duke look like in a towel? Suddenly, she was dying to know.
Jason returned wearing jeans and pulling on a T-shirt. He joined her in the living room where she was now on the couch, nervously fiddling with the empty ice cream container. Boy, she could have used some more chocolate right now. She’d broken up with men before, but never Mr. Right. And she’d never had to explain to Mr. Right that he was wrong because she was a fake. Ugh.
“Bobbi, what’s going on? If it’s about not going dancing tonight . . .”
“No.” She put the empty pint carton back on the coffee table next to the half-eaten pizza. “It’s about us not being a fit.”
“What?”
“We don’t have anything in common.”
His brows knit. “We don’t?”
“I think you’d better sit down.”
He sat on the other end of the couch and slung one arm over the back and looked at her expectantly. “Okay.”
“I’m a fake.”
His eyes rolled heavenward as if praying for supernatural help. “I’m not following.”
“I hate hiking. Totally. And I’m not that into books.”
“But all those books,” he protested.
“Belong to my sister. Well, except the Jane Austen one. I like to read magazines and romance novels with lots of action. I don’t like long, boring books or long, boring movies. And I don’t own half the flower shop. I just work there. My sister gave me the job when I got fired.”
“What about the cards, the letters?”
He looked like he wished she could at least offer him that. She couldn’t. She hung her head. “My sister wrote them for me. I just couldn’t think of what to say.”
The silence coming from Jason’s end of the couch was unnerving.
“I know it was wrong,” Bobbi rushed on. “I wanted to impress you. I thought you were the perfect man. But the problem is, you’re not the perfect man for me. And I’m sure not the perfect woman for you.”
“I
can’t believe this.”
She ventured a look at him and then was sorry she did. He was staring at her like half her face had fallen off. “I’m sorry.” The words came out almost as a whisper. “I never meant to hurt you.”
He shook his head. “God, what a dumbass I am. And your sister went along with this?”
“Don’t blame Hope,” Bobbi begged. “I made her do it. Anyway, she only wanted to help me. She wanted me to be happy.”
He gave a disgusted snort that reminded her of a bull about to charge. Okay, it was so time to go. Bobbi stood and managed one more “I’m sorry,” then fled, crying.
She was still crying when she stumbled into the apartment. Hope shot up from the loveseat where she’d been reading a book. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I broke up with Jason,” Bobbi wailed.
Hope looked at her like she’d just confessed to vehicular manslaughter. “No. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m a phony.” She went to the refrigerator and started rooting around in the freezer. “I’m a mess. I need more chocolate.”
She pulled out a pint of the same flavor Ben and Jerry’s she’d devoured at Jason’s, got a spoon, and plopped down at the yellow Formica table and dug in. “He hates me. It was terrible. But I couldn’t keep pretending. I had to get everything off my chest.”
Hope sat down opposite her. “Everything? What do you mean by everything?”
Bobbi spooned a mountain of ice cream into her mouth. “He even knows I don’t own the shop. He even knows about the cards. I told him you wrote them.”
Hope reached over and took Bobbi’s spoon and the ice cream and shoveled herself a big mountain of it. “We’ll never see him again.”
“Like I want to?” Bobbi said.
“Oh, Bobs,” Hope said with a sob. She dropped the spoon and left the table.
“Hope,” Bobbi cried after her, but she shook her head and kept on walking down the hall. She went into her bedroom and shut the door after her.
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