“That’s what happens when you move into someone else’s house for free. Anyway, she put me in charge of it.”
Lucy backed up and sat down on the stool. She hated to admit it, but it was fun sparring with him since he was two thousand miles away and couldn’t touch her.
“I want you to give me that gong in your living room. I need it.”
“I am not giving you my gong. Now answer me. When are you coming back?”
“When I’m done.”
“Which will be?”
“About a week. Give or take. Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Why don’t you come where I am? We could pick out some curtains and kiss some more. Plus, these people are not fun.”
“I am not coming there. We are not going to kiss. And the correct phrase is window treatments. Or draperies.”
“I’m not saying that. A man starts saying window treatments, and the next thing you know he’ll be figure skating and painting ceramics.”
“I am going to hang up now,” Lucy said.
“I called you fourteen times yesterday and sent you twenty-three text messages.”
“I am aware. I deleted them without reading them. If you have anything to say about what you want your surroundings to look like, you’d better tell me right now because I am not talking to you again.”
He sighed. “Okay. I want my workout equipment in that room downstairs where Tolly had her bedroom.”
“A home gym. Miss Caroline is going to love that.”
“Spring it on her before I get back, if you please. Plus, I don’t need a bedspread. I went to a store and told the woman there I liked a comfortable bed and she hooked me up with some stuff. It cost enough to feed a third world country for a year. I’m going to have to use it for the rest of my life, and after. I’m going to have my coffin lined with it. Who knew sheets and stuff cost so much?”
“Me. I knew. Most people know.”
The conversation continued in a similar vein, and Lucy had hung up before she realized she had not properly addressed that he was trying to make people think they were a couple.
She was considering calling him back when the front door opened and in walked Sandy from the bakeshop with a chocolate cake.
“Lucy!” she said as she rushed to the counter. “Look what Brantley Kincaid sent you! He is so precious. What a precious thing to do. It is perfectly fresh too. I don’t know why I let him talk me into putting everything else off and making your cake immediately. But I did. I guess I am just an old soft romantic. And he says it isn’t your birthday, even. You are a lucky girl!” Sandy looked at her cell phone. “Oops, gotta go! My pecan pies are nearly done, and I can’t trust anyone else not to let them burn. Enjoy!”
And Sandy was gone without ever having given Lucy a chance to speak. She looked at the enemy cake, with its creamy piled-high swirled frosting. She should take it straight to the dumpster—but what a waste. On her way home she would take it to the carriage house for the painters. For now, she would exile it to the top of the filing cabinet in her office. Out of sight, out of mind, not on her thighs.
She couldn’t help but glance at the front door. What next? Or maybe that was the end of it.
Marcia Tate, owner of the Blossom Shop, was what was next—with gifts and painful memories.
She breezed in carrying a bouquet of pink sweetheart roses and a carved Jack-O-Lantern.
“Delivery for you, Lucy!” Lucy liked Marcia but she was the nosiest person in the downtown merchant association. And she didn’t have to sound so surprised, never mind that Lucy had never gotten flowers before.
Lucy sniffed the roses and tried to ignore the Jack-O-Lantern. “I didn’t know you made deliveries yourself, Marcia.”
“I don’t.” She placed her burdens on the counter. “These were special circumstances.” She looked pointedly at the Jack-O-Lantern. “I’m to tell you that I carve Jack-O-Lanterns all the time—that they’re my biggest seller in October. I pointed out that this is November but he wanted it anyway.” She shrugged her shoulders.
There was no point in pretending to be coy about who he was. “Have you ever carved a Jack-O-Lantern?” Lucy asked. “Apart from that one?”
“Of course. I have kids. I was a kid.”
“I mean for a customer?”
“No. Do you want to tell me the story behind it?”
“No.” Lucy laughed.
“Will you?” Marcia coaxed.
“No.”
“Can’t blame me for being curious. When I asked what he wanted on the card, he said he didn’t need a card, that you’d know who was sending you presents.” She pointed to the roses. “He wanted tulips. I had to remind him that tulips are not in season and this isn’t Nashville or San Francisco.”
“I’m sure you did a fine job of that, Marcia. I’m sure he’ll keep his flower seasons straight from here on out.”
“So . . .” Marcia leaned on the counter. “That Brantley. He’s a charmer. Always was. Didn’t the two of you date some back in the day?”
Lucy frowned and shook her head as if puzzled, but she knew exactly what Marcia was referring to. “What day would that be, Marcia?”
“I seem to remember him taking you to one of those summer dancing school cotillions at the country club. I was a little older than you, but I was there. Maybe the last time I went.”
Lucy frowned some more as if she was trying to puzzle it out and then let a light dawn on her face. “Oh!” She brushed her hand in the air as if she were clearing away a spider web. “It was summer cotillion. My first summer here. Aunt Annelle had sent me to cotillion class, and I didn’t have anyone to invite. I asked Brantley to go with me as a friend. I’d been palling around with him and Missy all summer.”
Annelle would not have allowed fifteen-year-old Lucy to go to the dance with just any eighteen-year-old, but this was Brantley Kincaid: quarterback, acolyte, and professional charmer. It hadn’t hurt that he was the son of Eva and Charles Kincaid and grandson of Caroline and Judge Alden Brantley.
It hadn’t been a real date, though she had wanted so desperately for it to be. She would have never had the nerve to invite Brantley if Missy hadn’t prompted her, no matter how much she had wanted to. Missy had no idea of Lucy’s feelings for Brantley. She only wanted Lucy to go to the dance and had pointed out that Brantley wasn’t dating anyone. Once she had resolved to invite him, Lucy decided she was just going to ask, with no caveats or disclaimers. She would simply ask him to the dance the same way dozens of other girls were asking dozens of other boys. And Brantley would simply say yes or no. End of story. If he said no, she would not die. Her parents would return to the country and take her away in less than a month and he would be leaving for Vandy soon thereafter. She would not have to live with the humiliation for long.
But all her resolve melted away when the moment came to invite him. She had stammered and led with saying that Missy had suggested it, that she knew it wasn’t a real date, but since they were friends, it might be fun, and on and on and on until he laughed that sweet caramel laugh, laid an index finger on her cheek, and told her of course he would take her.
She’d been ecstatic. It had been so easy to forget how she’d issued the invitation. Annelle had taken her to Birmingham to shop for a dress for her pudgy little body and it had turned out, for once, to be a dress that made her feel pretty. She spent days daydreaming about how he would see her in a whole different light and end the night with sweet kisses and proclamations.
And truly, the night had started off like her fantasies. If at eighteen Brantley had been gorgeous in his khaki shorts and golf shirts, he was dazzling in a tuxedo. And he’d brought a nosegay instead of a wrist corsage like most of the other girls had. With her white dress and bouquet of orchids and calla lilies, she’d felt like a bride. He was attentive, funny, and seemed to be happy to be there.