Love in Bloom

Her jaw dropped. “Even after the bed came?”

“Sure. I didn’t see the point in...” She found the light switch and flipped it on, illuminating the narrow, enclosed staircase. “Why lock the door on an empty apartment?” he asked as she slipped inside and started climbing the stairs. Tate stepped up and blocked the door open with his shoulder, calling after her, “No one locks their doors around here, not to their houses.” She ignored him and kept climbing.

Tate indicated with a nod that Isabella should go next. Shrugging, she started up after Lily, who quickly reached the small landing at the top and let herself into the apartment. A light came on in the small foyer. Isabella followed. Tate came last into the dark but spacious living and dining area.

“What is this place?” Isabella asked.

“This is my home,” Lily told her, coming out of the dark hallway behind her. Lily quickly moved into the small kitchen and switched on a light there. “Not many overhead lights in here. I’ll need to buy some lamps.”

“You’re going to live in town?” Isabella asked doubtfully.

“Right above my shop,” Lily confirmed, “in the very heart of Main Street.”

“We live in the country. Right, Dad?”

“Yep.”

“On the ranch. Right, Dad?”

“Right.”

“Grandpa, though, he calls it the farm. Don’t he, Daddy?”

“That’s because he’s in charge of the farming end of things.”

“And Daddy, he does the horses and the cows and all the animal stuff. And he helps with the farm, too, and sometimes the tractor stuff. And he and Grandpa do the oil lease stuff together.”

“You talk too much,” he told her, nudging her with the suitcase. He looked to Lily and asked, “So where do you want these?”

She took the box from Isabella, saying, “I’ll put this in the bathroom. You can just leave that there, though.”

Tate nodded. “If you didn’t notice, there’s a coat closet here.”

“That’s convenient.”

“And there’s a walk-in closet in the front bedroom. I had them set up the bed in there. The back room is really small, but you could put a twin bed in there for company.”

She looked around the empty living area and said, “I think I’ll concentrate on a couch first.”

Tate chuckled. “Yeah, or a chair at least.”

She smiled and nodded. “I understood there was a washer and dryer.”

“That closet in the kitchen,” he said. “It’s one of those stacked jobs with the dryer on top.”

“That’s fine.”

“Okay, well...”

Isabella pointed at the trio of bare windows overlooking the vacant, softly lit street. Tilting her curly head, she asked, “Who’s that?”

Tate and Lily both moved toward the window, staring at the wildly waving figure in the window of the building across the street.

“Oh, that,” Tate said with a grin. “That’s Miss Ann Mars. You know her.”

“Sure. Ever’body knows Miss Mars. She’s had her shop in Bygones forever.”

“I guess you didn’t know that she lives downtown above her shop, too.”

“This ’N’ That,” Lily read the sign on the awning across the street. “What sort of shop is it?”

“Um, sundries,” Tate answered. “You know, needles and pins, candles, handkerchiefs, coin purses, hand mirrors, little stuff. That’s in the front. Out back, now that’s—how do I put this?—mostly junk, I guess.”

Lily raised her eyebrows. Her glasses slid down her nose, so she pushed them back up. Tate fought the urge to smile for some reason. Clearing his throat, he turned away from the window at the same time Miss Mars did.

“Miss Ann is on the committee,” he told Lily, pulling a card from his shirt pocket. “If you need something and you can’t reach me, you can always tell Miss Mars.” He pressed the card into Lily’s hand and started for the door.

“I’ll walk you down,” Lily said. “I want to take another look at the shop.”

Shrugging, he turned a sleepy-eyed Isabella toward the stairs. He ushered his daughter out onto the landing then slipped past her and down a few steps before turning and gathering her into his arms. She laid her precious red head on his shoulders. Laying his cheek against those bright curls, he thought of his late wife, Eve, and the old familiar ache of loss filled him. If their daughter could have known Eve for even a little while, she’d give up her matchmaking ways, but the imp had never known her mother.

After carrying his daughter down the stairs, he nodded at Ann Mars, who scampered across the street in her bedroom slippers and housedress, the coil of her long white hair sliding to and fro atop her head. The tiny, bent old woman had to be eighty if she was a day, and as far as Tate knew, she had never married. If she had family, he was unaware of them. Stepping up onto the curb, she crossed the sidewalk to greet Lily.

Tate made the introduction. “Miss Mars, Lily Farnsworth. Lily, Miss Ann Mars, SOS Committee member and your neighbor.”

“So happy to meet you!” Miss Mars exclaimed, bending far backward to get a good look at the newcomer. “You’re aptly named for a florist.”

Lily smiled and pushed her glasses up. “I guess I am, at that.”

Miss Mars stuck her nose to the window of Lily’s shop, asking, “What are in those big boxes in there?”

“Glass shelving.”

“You’ll have to put it together, I expect,” Tate stated, and Lily nodded. “You have the tools for it and everything?”

She blinked behind those round glasses. “Uh, not exactly.”

Not exactly. Tate shook his head. He supposed he’d better show up tomorrow morning prepared to get those shelves together for her.

“I have to get my girl home to bed,” he said, carrying his daughter to the truck.

Lily called out her thanks as he belted Isabella into her seat. Already thinking about what he would need to bring with him in the morning, he shut the truck door, walked around and got in behind the wheel. He’d be more comfortable about the whole thing if Lily Farnsworth looked less like a fetching, ballet-dancing librarian and more like Miss Ann Mars, but Tate was not one to shirk his responsibilities, no matter how much he might want to.

* * *

Looking up from the half-finished shelving unit the next morning, Lily tilted back her head to peer through her glasses and the thick beveled glass insert of her shop door. She’d already hung a little brass bell over the heavy green door, and it tinkled pleasantly, evoking a smile even before she recognized Tate’s tall, muscular figure. He carried a heavy, somewhat battered metal toolbox at his side. Pushing back the bill of his faded red cap, he stared down at her, his frown at odds with the dimples in his cheeks.

“How’d you get that together without tools?”