“Thousands,” Parker said dryly.
“See? And if they hadn’t convinced you to do miles and twist yourself into unnatural shapes—and look good doing it—you wouldn’t have spent all that money on those cute little outfits. You could’ve donated it to a worthy cause instead.”
“But these yoga pants make my ass look great.”
“They really do. But nobody’s seeing your ass but me, so what’s the point?”
“Personal satisfaction.” Parker slowed, stopped. Hopping off, she plucked out one of the alcohol wipes to wipe down the machine. “What’s wrong, Em?”
“I told you. I hate this room and all it stands for.”
“So you’ve said before. But I know that tone. You’re irritable, and you almost never are.”
“I’m as irritable as anybody.”
“No.” Parker got her towel, mopped her face, then drank from her water bottle. “You’re nearly always cheerful, optimistic, and good-natured, even when you bitch.”
“I am? God, that must be annoying.”
“Hardly ever.” Moving to the Bowflex, Parker began to do some upper body exercise she made look smooth and easy. Emma knew it was neither. When she felt another pop of resentment, she sat up.
“I am irritable. I’m filled with irritable this morning. Last night—”
She broke off when Laurel came in, her hair bundled up, her trim body in a sports bra and bike shorts. “I’m switching off CNN,” she announced, “because I just don’t care.” She snagged the remote, switched from TV to hard, pounding rock.
“Turn it down at least,” Parker ordered. “Emma’s about to tell us why she’s full of irritable this morning.”
“Em’s never full of irritable.” Laurel got a mat, unrolled it onto the floor. “It’s annoying.”
“See?” Since she was already on the floor, Emma decided she might as well stretch. “My best friends, and all these years you’ve let me go around annoying people.”
“It probably only annoys us.” Laurel started a set of crunches. “We’re around you more than anyone else.”
“That’s true. In that case, screw you. God,
God
, do the two of you really do this every day?”
“Parker’s every day, as she’s obsessive. I’m a three-day-a-week girl. Four if I’m feeling frisky. This is usually an off day, but I came up with a design for the crying bride and it motored me up.”
“Have you got something you can show me?” Parker demanded.
“See, obsessive.” Laurel switched to roll-ups. “Later. Now I want to hear about the irritable.”
“How can you do that?” Being full of irritable, Emma snarled. “It’s like somebody’s pulling you up with an invisible rope.”
“Abs of steel, baby.”
“I hate you.”
“Who could blame you? I deduce irritable equals man,” Laurel continued. “So I require all details.”
“Actually—”
“Jeez, what is this? Ladies Day at the Brown Gym?” Mac strolled in, stripping off a hooded sweatshirt.
“I think it’s Snowcones in Hell Day.” Laurel paused. “What are you doing here?”
“I come here sometimes.”
“You look at a picture of here sometimes and consider that a workout.”
“I’ve turned over a new leaf. For my health.”
“Bullshit,” Laurel said, grinning.
“Okay, bullshit. I’m pretty sure I’m going with strapless for the wedding gown. I want amazing arms and shoulders.” Turning to the mirror, Mac flexed. “I have good arms and shoulders, but that’s not enough.” She let out a sigh as she wiggled out of sweat-pants. “And I’m becoming an obsessed, fussy bride. I hate me.”
“But you’ll be an obsessed, fussy bride who looks fabulous in her wedding dress. Here,” Parker said, “see what I’m doing.”
Mac frowned. “I see it, but I don’t think I’ll like it.”
“You just keep it steady and smooth. I’m going to cut back the resistance a bit.”
“Are you intimating I’m a weenie?”
“I’m avoiding all the moaning and crying you’d do tomorrow if you started at my level. I do this three times a week.”
“You do have really good arms and shoulders.”
“Plus I have it on good authority my ass looks great in these pants. Okay, smooth and steady. Fifteen reps, set of three.” Parker gave Mac a pat. “Now, hopefully that’s the last interruption. Emma, you have the floor.”
“She’s already on the floor,” Mac pointed out.
“Shh. Emma’s irritable this morning because . . .”
“I went over to Adam and Vicki’s last night—the MacMillians?—which I hadn’t planned on because yesterday was a full book and today’s another. I’d had a really good day, especially the last consult, and spent time writing up the contracts and notes, decided I’d make a little dinner, have a movie, an early night.”
“Who called and talked you into going out with him?” Mac asked as she frowned her way through the first set.
“Sam.”
“Sam’s the hot computer nerd who defies that oxymoron despite—or maybe because of—the Buddy Holly glasses.”
“No.” Emma shook her head at Laurel. “That’s Ben. Sam’s the ad exec with the great smile.”
“The one you decided not to date anymore,” Parker added.
“Yes. And it wasn’t actually a date. I said no to dinner, no to him picking me up. But . . . okay I caved on the party, and agreed to meet him there. I told him I wasn’t going to sleep with him—full disclosure—two weeks ago. But I don’t think he believes me. But Addison was there—third cousin, I think, my father’s side. She’s great, and just exactly his type. So I got to introduce them, and that was good.”
“We should offer a matchmaking package,” Laurel suggested, and started on leg lifts. “Even if we launched it just with the guys Emma wants to brush off, we could double our business.”
“Brush off has negative connotations. I redirect. Anyway Jack was there.”
“Our Jack?” Parker asked.
“Yeah, which turned out to be lucky for me. I ducked out early, and halfway home, my car conks. Just cough, choke, die. And it’s snowing, and it’s dark, I’m
freezing
, and that stretch of road is deserted, of course.”
As the leg lifts didn’t look horrible, Emma shifted to mirror Laurel’s movements.
“You really need to get OnStar installed,” Parker told her. “I’ll get you the information.”
“Don’t you think that’s kind of creepy?” Mac huffed a little, pumping through the third set. “Having them know exactly where you are. And I think, I really think, they can hear you, even when you don’t push the button. They’re listening. Yes, they are.”
“Because they love hearing people sing off-key with the radio. It must brighten their day. Who did you call?” Parker asked Emma.
“As it turned out, I didn’t have to call anyone. Jack came along before I could. So, he takes a look, and it’s the battery. He jumps it. Oh, and he lent me his jacket, which I forgot to give back. So instead of having a nice quiet evening, I’m dodging Sam’s lips, trying to redirect him, standing in the freezing cold on the side of the road when all I wanted was a big salad and a romantic movie. Now I have to get my car in the shop, and make a trip to Jack’s to return his jacket. And I’m completely swamped today. Just can’t do it. So, irritable because . . .”
She hedged, just a little, as she rolled over to do the other leg. “I didn’t sleep well worrying about getting everything done today and kicking myself for getting talked into going out in the first place.”
She huffed out a breath. “And now that I said all that, it doesn’t seem worth getting upset about.”
“Breakdowns are always a bitch,” Laurel said. “Breakdowns at night, in the snow? Serious pisser. You get a pass on the irritable.”
“Jack had to point out that it was my own fault, and it’s worse because, yes, it was, since I haven’t had the car serviced. Ever. And that was annoying. But he did save the day, plus the jacket. Plus, he followed me home to make sure I got here. Anyway, that’s all done. Now I have to hassle with having somebody check out the car and do whatever it is they do. I’ve got guys in the family who could probably take care of most of it, but I don’t want yet another lecture on how I neglect my car, blah blah. So, Parker, where should I take it?”
“I know, I know!” Mac puffed, then stopped her reps. “You should take it in to that guy who towed my mother’s car for me last winter. The one Del likes? Anybody who can basically tell Linda to stick it when she’s on a rant gets my vote.”
“Agreed,” Parker said. “And he does get the Delaney Brown stamp of approval. Del’s a maniac about who touches his cars. Kavanaugh’s. I’ll get you the number and the address.”
“Malcolm Kavanaugh’s the owner,” Mac added. “Very hot.”
“Really? Well, maybe a faulty battery’s not such a bad thing. I’ll try to get it in next week. Meanwhile, is anyone going into town, anywhere near Jack’s office? I really have to stick here today.”
“Give it back to him Saturday,” Parker suggested. “He’s on the list for the evening event.”
“Oh. Fine.” Emma looked with avid dislike at the elliptical. “Since I’m here, I might as well work up a sweat.”
“How about me?” Mac demanded. “Am I cut yet?”
“The improvement’s astounding. Biceps curls,” Parker ordered. “I’ll show you.”
B
Y NINE, EMMA WAS SHOWERED, DRESSED, AND WHERE SHE wanted to be. At her work counter, surrounded by flowers.
To celebrate their parents’ fiftieth anniversary, the clients wanted Emma to re-create the couple’s wedding and backyard garden reception. Then kick it up a notch.
She had copies of snapshots from the wedding album pinned to a board, had added some concept sketches and diagrams, a list of flowers, receptacles, accessories. On another board she’d pinned Laurel’s sketch of the elegantly simple three-tiered wedding cake ringed with bright yellow daffodils and pale pink tulips. Beside it was a photograph of the cake topper the family had commissioned, replicating the couple on their wedding day, down to the lace hemming the bell of the bride’s tea-length skirt.
Fifty years together, she thought as she studied the photos. All those days and nights, birthdays and Christmases. The births, the deaths, the arguments, the laughter.
It was, to her, more romantic than windswept moors and fairy castles.
She’d give them their garden. A world of gardens.
She started with daffodils, potting them in long, moss-lined troughs, mixing in tulips and hyacinths, narcissus. Here and there she added trails of periwinkle. A half dozen times she filled a rolling cart, wheeled it back to her cooler.
She mixed gallons of flower food and water, filling tall glass cylinders. She stripped stems, cut them under running water and began arranging larkspur, stock, snapdragons, airy clouds of baby’s breath, lacy asparagus fern. Soft colors and bold, she’d mass them at various heights to create the illusion of a spring garden.
Time ticked away.
She paused long enough to roll her shoulders, circle her neck, flex her fingers.
Using the foam holder she’d soaked, she circled it with lemon leaf to create a base she glossed with leaf shine.
She gathered roses for her holding bucket, stripped stems, barely bothered to curse when she nicked herself, cutting the stems to length to make the first of fifty reproductions of the bouquet the bride had carried a half century before.
She worked from the center out, painstakingly locking each stem in the form with adhesive. Stripping, cutting, adding—and appreciating the bride’s choice of multicolored roses.
Pretty, Emma thought, happy. And when she tucked the holder in the squat glass vase, she thought: lovely.
“Only forty-nine to go.”
She decided she’d start on that forty-nine after she took a break.
After carting bags of floral debris out to her composters, she scrubbed the green off her fingers and from under her nails at her work sink.
To reward herself for the morning’s work, she took a Diet Coke and a plate of pasta salad out on her side patio. Her gardens couldn’t compete—yet—with the one she was creating. But her happy couple had been married in southern Virginia. Give me a few weeks, she mused, pleased to see the green spears of spring bulbs, the freshening foliage of perennials.
Last night’s snow was just a memory under blue skies and almost balmy temperatures.
She spotted Parker with a group of people—one of the day’s potential clients doing the tour—crossing one of the terraces at the main house. Parker gestured toward the pergola, the rose arbor. The clients would have to imagine the abundance of white roses, the lushness of wisteria, but Emma knew the urns she’d planted with pansies and trailing vinca showed off very well. At the pond dotted with lily pads, the willows were just beginning to green.
She wondered if the prospective bride and groom would one day have a busy florist creating fifty bouquets to commemorate their marriage. Would they have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren who loved them enough to want to give them that celebration?
With a small groan for muscles aching from the morning’s exercise and the morning’s work, she propped her feet on the chair across from her, lifted her face to the sun, and shut her eyes.
She smelled earth, the tang of mulch, heard a bird chittering its pleasure in the day.
“You’ve got to stop slaving away like this.”
She jerked up—had she fallen asleep?—and blinked at Jack. Mind blank, she watched him pluck a curl of pasta from her plate, pop it into his mouth. “Good. Got any more?”
“What? Oh God!” Panicked, she looked at her watch, then breathed a sigh of relief. “I must’ve dozed off, but only for a couple minutes. I have forty nine bouquets left to make.”
His brows drew together over smoky eyes. “You’re having a wedding with forty-nine brides?”
“Hmm. No.” She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. “Fiftieth anniversary, and a re-creation of the bridal bouquet for every year. What are you doing here?”
“I need my jacket.”