But he’d seen her getting out of her vehicle in that dress.
Soft flowers, delicate material.
Long flowing hair past her shoulders, the wind flickering fingers through it.
High-maintenance women were the bane of his existence.
He loved how they looked, hated how they acted.
Immediately he thought he’d be employing one and they’d butt heads.
Instead, he just hired his sister’s klutzy friend that he’d lost count of the number of times he’d saved as a child and twice yesterday.
If you can count killing a fly once. Maybe half of one.
So one and a half times yesterday.
“Why?” Gale asked. “Were you a dick? This isn’t one of your military buddies.”
“I was me.”
“Which means you were a dick,” Gale said, laughing.
“Whatever,” he said. “I hired her. Looks like she’s got a lot of ideas. She came with enough of them.”
He’d flipped through quickly. He wasn’t looking for details, but a feel.
He saw the vision she tried to create, the overall flow. Nothing stood out as haphazard or stiff.
It wasn’t as if he had to like the person doing the work, only the clients did. Or at least until they were done with their wedding.
“She’s always been creative. Very happy. She loves her job.”
“Yet she wants to do this?”
“It’s not a sustainable career in this area and she’s very family oriented. She’d never leave,” Gale said.
“Those are her choices. As long as she can manage them both, how she does it, is up to her.”
“That’s right. She has summers off when it’d be the busiest for weddings anyway. It gives her the best of both worlds.”
“It’s done now and one less thing for you to squeeze in there unless you want to help her out.”
“I might,” Gale said. “But I’m swamped. You know how to reach me if you need a hand.”
“I do,” he said. He disconnected the call after that, then opened his fridge door to look for dinner.
Leftover pizza, sandwich meat, and a container of lasagna his mother gave him yesterday.
He wasn’t fussy and didn’t care if he ate the same meal three days in a row. Food was food and anything was better than when he was in the military.
And that meant more than the grub he was served.
5
FOND MEMORIES
Meredith heard her phone ringing and lifted papers and binders out of the way on the kitchen table. Finally locating it under her laptop, she saw Gale was calling.
