“I changed my mind about my order. I want a double-meat burger, no cheese, fries, and the biggest cup of sweet tea they make,” Anna Rose said and gave Taryn a dirty look. “Looks like Clinton is the boss now, not you, Taryn.”
Taryn picked up a peace lily in one hand and a wreath in the other. “I gave the job to him willingly. I’m tired of it. If he doesn’t want it, y’all can duel it out behind the shop. I’ll call Nana Irene if there’s blood or broken bones. She said that she took her pistol home, but there’s always florist knives and a hammer or two in the storage room.”
Jorja raised her chin a notch. “That’s an ugly attitude. I really will pray for your spirit.”
“I need all the prayers I can get,” Taryn said with a shrug. She wasn’t just being glib with her cousin, even though Jorja was acting a little self-righteous. She did need prayers, if she was going to survive the next few weeks in the shop with Anna Rose and Jorja constantly bickering.
When Clinton brought out the last two bud vases and put them in the special holders on the walls of the van, Taryn was already in the passenger’s seat. Her younger cousins had been fussing about her being the favorite and always getting special privileges as she’d carried out the last wreath. Putting the two of them together had always been like adding gasoline to a bonfire, so it surprised her to see them join forces against her.
“Oh, well,” she muttered. “I’ll take the heat if they’ll get along. It’s only for a few weeks, and then I’m leaving. I probably won’t see them again until Christmas, if I even come back here then. Siberia is beginning to look better by the minute.”
“Ruby and Irene were sure right about all y’all.” Clinton chuckled as he got into the van and started the engine. “So, you joined the air force right out of high school?”
“Yep,” Taryn said.
He drove out to the street and turned left. “How did Irene take that?”
“Just fine,” Taryn answered, “but my mother was so angry that she didn’t speak to me for three months. Daddy was proud because he was still serving out the last of his twenty-year career and thought that all of us should do at least one stint. He said that it would have done Jorja and Anna Rose both good to do four years, but they had college on their minds. I only stayed for one enlistment, then got out and went to a two-year business school.”
“How did all three of you manage to take six weeks’ vacation time to come to Shamrock?” he asked as he braked for a stop sign.
“I work from home and have built up enough vacation time to do this. Jorja is a teacher at a religious private school, so she has the summer free. Anna Rose is a freelance photographer with a couple of books already doing very well on the market, so she’s flexible,” Taryn answered. “I just don’t understand why Nana Irene had to bring all three of us here. She and Ruby have run the place all alone for years until she hired you to help with deliveries. You and I could have taken care of things without having to listen to all the bickering.”
“Neither Irene nor Ruby are in good health.” Clinton waited until a couple of cars went by and then drove ahead. “You already know that Ruby slipped at work and broke her hip. Irene has two bad knees and won’t get them fixed because”—he shrugged—“who would run the shop? I do what I can, but they’re independent old gals. These next few weeks will be good for both of them. Ruby just needs someone to cook or get her meals and take her to therapy. Irene needs to get off her legs for a while. They hired me because they couldn’t lift the big pots or get all the flowers set up for weddings, and they each did the work of three people—so believe me when I say it will take all of you to keep up.”
“Speaking of that, I understand that we’ve got six weddings on the calendar in June and three for July,” Taryn said. “That’s more than one a week this next month.”
“Yep. First one is the first day of June, so we’ll start making pew bows this week. Thank goodness the bride wants all silk flowers instead of fresh ones. We can make them ahead of time instead of waiting for the last couple of days,” Clinton said with a nod as he parked the van in front of the funeral home door. “And who knows how many funerals will pop up in the next six weeks? Folks can’t plan a death like they can a wedding, so they just come out of nowhere. No more thousand-piece puzzles for us to work on.”
“Puzzles?” Taryn asked.
“When we aren’t busy, we clean off the worktable and put puzzles together. Irene and Ruby love doing them, and I get to hear all the town gossip while we work on them,” he said with a wide grin.
By the time he’d reached the van door and slid it open, Taryn was right beside him. “Guys like you listen to gossip?”
“What do you mean, like me?” Clinton asked. “Because I’m a vet or because I’m tall and brawny?” He winked.
Taryn stared at his sand-colored military boots and let her eyes travel all the way up to his brown eyes. “The vets I’ve worked with are all macho alpha males. What makes you think you’re brawny?”
“Well, I’m dang sure not scrawny,” Clinton protested, the humor fading from his face.
“You didn’t answer my question about gossip,” Taryn countered as she picked up two wreaths and started for the door.
“I call it ‘getting to know my neighbors,’ not gossip,” he said. “If I listened to rumors, you’d be in trouble.”
Taryn blushed. “I guess I would. So even after more than a decade, folks are still talking about me?”
“Yep, they are, and Anna Rose and Jorja—all three of you. When there’s nothing else to feed the rumor mill, someone remembers the time when Jorja held a prayer vigil for the football team in the pouring-down rain,” he answered with a chuckle.
“And no one showed up but her, and we lost the ball game. I told her that God had better things to do than referee a state playoff game.” Taryn laughed.
“Then there was the time that you stole a trunkload of watermelons from some farmer’s field,” he went on.
“Would you believe me if I told you that there were two other girls—not related to me—who were in on that thievery?” she asked. “I didn’t rat them out, so I had to do community work for a month to pay for the watermelons, and they got off free.”
“Why would you do that?” Clinton asked.
“Two reasons.” She held up one finger. “Because I’m not a tattletale.” She pointed another one up. “Because I thought at the time that they were my friends and wouldn’t let me take all the blame when it came down to the wire. I was wrong about that.”
