Bloom of Love, page 6
He nodded, thinking back. It’d been rough when Nieves was born, and he didn’t often reminisce about it, happy to just forget about the chaos and struggle.
Somehow, though, telling Carla wasn’t the painful experience that he’d expected.
“She was 45 years old, with a newborn baby. The oldest of my sisters had already had kids, so the moment Nieves was born, she was an aunt. Honestly, we’re all just glad Nieves doesn’t have anything wrong with her. Well, at least not anything that couldn’t be fixed with some strict rules.” He chuckled without a dash of humor. “I’d always thought my younger sisters were spoiled compared to me, but when Nieves came along, I realized I’d had no clue what the word ‘spoiled’ meant.”
He paused for just a moment but before Carla could ask any more probing questions, he decided that it was time to turn the tables on her.
“What made you decide to be a florist?”
“Oh!” she said, clearly delighted to be asked about a favorite topic of hers. “That’s easy. May Day!”
He was in the middle of a turn at the end of the field so he had to finish it before he could look at her. “May Day?” he repeated skeptically. “Like, help, help, I’m in trouble?”
“Oh, you’re right! I’d never thought about that before.” She chewed her luscious bottom lip, deep in thought, and he tried to keep his mind out of the gutter and focused on whatever she was about to say. “I wonder why they’re both called the same thing. No, remember back at Cleveland Elementary, how we made baskets and flowers out of paper to give to our moms on the first day of May?”
“Oh. Uh, yeah, of course.”
She shook her head. “You don’t remember it at all,” she said dryly, and before he could defend his honor and come up with a convincing recollection of this event he did not remember in the slightest, she continued on. “Well, I had so much fun putting these baskets together, when I got home, I decided that it’d be even more fun if I use real flowers. Of course!”
She let out that delighted laugh of hers that Christian was sure he could never tire of listening to.
“But, my mom wasn’t much of a gardener, and I quickly stripped our beds clean of any blooming flowers. It was only the start of May, after all. There were still snowdrifts in the shade.”
She breathed in deeply, as if stealing herself for the part that came next, and in spite of himself, Christian held his breath. Whatever Carla was about to confess to, he was sure it couldn’t be terrible – she wasn’t capable of terrible – but that only made it all the more intriguing.
“Weellll,” she drew out slowly, clearly trying to postpone the confession of her sins, “Mrs. Anastos lived next door with her gorgeous flower beds, and I figured she wouldn’t mind if I took just a few so I could deliver flower baskets to every home on the street. How could she not be happy with me spreading cheer and love everywhere, right?”
She groaned, and Christian laughed. Just as he’d expected – Carla’s terrible “sin” was helping herself to some flowers.
“I don’t remember where Mom was at while I was stripping our neighbor of every flower in her garden, but the shit really hit the fan when Mrs. Anastos got home from the weekly shuffleboard game down at the old folks’ home, and saw that her flowers were decimated. There I was, ringing the doorbell on every house on the street, and everyone was so happy to get these little paper baskets of flowers, thanking me for my kindness, and here comes Mom down the street with that look in her eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna live to see the sunset that day.”
She chuckled ruefully, her boobs bouncing delightfully against his arm in the process. “I spent the whole summer doing yard work for Mrs. Anastos. For free. It was my punishment, but all I could think was how much fun it was to hand people flowers. I was hooked. I learned a lot from my neighbor – like how to forgive overeager kids who strip your prized garden of every petal – but also what the names of the flowers were and which season brought which variety. I worked several summers after that for her; luckily, she was kind enough to pay me after that first year! Finally, I was old enough to drive to Franklin and work at the floral shop there, so that became my job during high school.”
She shrugged with a self-deprecating laugh. “But yes. You’re on a date with a flower thief. I probably should’ve told you beforehand.”
A date. He liked the sound of that, even if it was with a confessed flower thief.
“I will restrain my impulse to call Sheriff Connelly and report you,” Christian said dryly.
“Thanks,” she said with an impish grin that sent a bolt of lust straight to his dick. Did she know what she did to him, sitting in the cab of a tractor, so innocent and beautiful?
She couldn’t know how gorgeous she was. Hell, he hadn’t realized it himself until Mother’s Day. Somehow, he’d overlooked her all through high school and beyond.
Not anymore.
“So tell me something about your family,” Carla said, clearly wanting to change the subject back to a topic not related to thievery. “Something you wouldn’t normally tell a girl on a second date.”
His mind froze for a moment as he scrambled for something to say, and then snapped his fingers, rotating the steering wheel with his other hand as they made the turn at the bottom of the field. “Yesenia is going to college,” he said proudly. “The only one in the family to do it. My parents are a little weird about it – if I’d been the one to go, that would’ve been fine with them. Of course, we were too poor back then, and I had to go to work right away out of high school. But for Yesenia to go as a girl…”
He trailed off, not wanting to air dirty laundry about his family with someone else, even if that “someone else” was his date, and even better, Carla Grahame.
“I’m helping her pay for it,” he plunged on, getting to the important part of the story. This was definitely not something he would’ve mentioned on a second date – or a twentieth – under normal circumstances, but Carla was so damn good at asking great questions, the info was spilling out of him without him quite realizing it. “She’s working and she has a first-generation college scholarship, but it doesn’t cover everything. It’s…not always fun,” he said delicately – understatement of the year, right there, “but she’s the smartest kid in our family. It wouldn’t be right for her not to go to college – to just get married and pop out seven kids of her own. My other sisters have that covered. Yesenia…she’s different.”
Carla pulled his left arm against her generous chest, squeezing it tight. “That is so sweet, Christian,” she said softly. “Not many brothers would do that.”
He shrugged, feeling his bicep slide against her tits, and deciding in that moment that every night that he’d eaten Ramen Noodle or the Yellow Death was worth it.
“Yesenia was born four months before I graduated from Sawyer High School. She was my fifth sister. A new baby girl? Nothing special in our family at that point. Except, she was. From the beginning, there was a bond between us. She’d wrap her tiny fist around my finger and pull it to her mouth, sucking on it. When I left the night of graduation to go sit with my classmates in the auditorium, she put up a huge fuss that I’d dared to leave her behind. My mom eventually had to take her out. I was there when she took her first steps – she was holding onto my fingers. She became my shadow around the farm, following me and asking me a million questions. She can fix a tractor almost as well as I can. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since yet another squalling, red-faced baby girl was born into the Palacios family. She’s…well, she’s Yesenia. She’s different,” he said again, lamely.
“You graduated in 2000, right?” she asked.
“Yup. Best class of the century.” He winked at her.
“I do believe that was the class of 2001,” she said haughtily, and then ruined the effect by laughing. “I always told my mom that she should’ve had me a year earlier,” she said wistfully. “To be the first graduating class of the century…”
“Not many people can say that,” he agreed. They were getting to the end of the field, and he lifted the discs on the hydraulic and then made the slow sweeping turn back towards the barn. “I think I’m ready for some of that breakfast you made us. Are you hungry?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter 10
Carla
Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate. The most pure.
This kiss left them all behind.
~Grandfather in The Princess Bride
After arguing – and losing – that she should be the one to empty out the picnic basket and spread the goodies out on the ground, Carla leaned back on her hands, legs crossed in front of her, and watched Christian with a happy sigh. She could get used to having someone else take care of her.
“Did you hear the latest about the Roberts’ mansion?” she asked lazily, turning her face up to the warmth of the sun.
“No, what’s happening with it now?”
He was nearing the bottom, where she had the cheesecake stashed away for dessert. She had no idea what food he liked to eat, so the whole meal had been a giant stab in the dark, with a heavy emphasis on “giant.” She’d packed food for an army, figuring that if she offered enough variety, she was bound to bring at least a few items that Christian liked to eat.
“I’ve heard a woman is interested in it,” she said, closing her eyes and soaking in the warmth. Nothing was better than early summer weather. She tilted her head towards Christian and cracked one eye open, eager to see his reaction to the news. “She came all the way from back east somewhere to look at it.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then they both burst into laughter.
“Some lady flew all the way here to look at the Roberts’ mansion?” Christian finally got out, and shook his head in dismay. “I hope she brought her hazmat suit with her. I don’t mind mucking out horse or cow shit, but mice and rats’ poop and piss? Hell no.”
Carla shrugged and moved to sit cross-legged. “It…wouldn’t be my cup of tea,” she said tactfully, “but that mansion is beautiful. Four stories? Seventeen bathrooms? I can’t remember how many bedrooms, but yeah. The place is huge. With enough money, someone could turn it into a hotel or something.”
“And every square inch of the place is stuffed to the rafters with shit,” Christian said, passing one of the paper plates in its bamboo holder to her, and then began loading up his own. “I don’t care how pretty the stained glass windows are. There isn’t anything wrong with that place that can’t be cured with a match.”
“Christian, no! You’re one of those who thinks the county should ‘accidentally’ set fire to the joint, aren’t you?” She shook her head in dismay. “Homes of that age and stature aren’t replaceable, you know.”
He paused with his breakfast burrito partway to his mouth, thinking. “I do like older homes with character,” he finally allowed, “but in the case of the Roberts’ mansion, there are mountains of trash between you and that character. There wasn’t a newspaper or receipt or junk mailer that Mrs. Roberts didn’t love. I think if you dug deep enough, you might find the stone tablets from Moses buried in there.”
“Exactly!” Carla said, delighted that he finally understood. “Think of what treasures are buried among the junk. Sure, you have to dig through a lot of empty tin cans and newspaper circulars from fifteen years ago, but I bet there’s some really cool stuff in there.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Let me guess,” he said dryly, “you’re one of those who thinks there are gold bars buried under the trash.”
“Maybe,” she said primly, not sure if she wanted to admit to the fact that the idea had flitted more than once through her mind. “I don’t know. Mrs. Roberts does seem the kind to hoard gold bars.” Christian laughed at that, and she sent him a quick grin. “But whether the famed gold exists or not, I’m interested in her years as an interior decorator. Did you know that she used to have clients who’d sit on a waiting list for a year, just for the privilege of paying her to decorate their homes?”
“Oh wow,” Christian said, his chocolate-brown eyes going a little wide at the idea. “I didn’t know. I knew she was into decorating, but I didn’t know she was that much in demand.”
“I bet she had some gorgeous pieces,” Carla said with a wistful sigh as she took a bite into a piece of cantaloupe. “To go from being one of the top interior decorators in three states to…well, how she died…”
She trailed off at that. Mrs. Roberts’ end was rather gory and sad, and not at all what Carla wanted to think about, and definitely not what she wanted to discuss while eating.
“So, did the buyer from back east leave already?” Christian asked, clearly trying to steer the conversation back into less macabre territory.
“No,” Carla said with a light laugh, happy to leave talk of Mrs. Roberts behind. “Last I heard, she’s in negotiations with the county. She wants to buy the property for the back taxes owed on it, and not a penny more. The county commissioners aren’t happy – they’ve had it on their books for a year now, and you know they’d originally put that two-million-dollar price tag on it.”
They both sighed at the insanity of someone paying two million dollars for the kind of headache that the Roberts’ mansion would surely be. No sane person would ever pay that kind of money for a hoarder’s mansion.
“Had you heard they’d dropped it to a half million?” At Christian’s nod, she continued, “Having someone walk in and say she wasn’t going to pay a penny above and beyond the back taxes owed on the place…I wish I’d been a fly on the wall for that county commissioner meeting. Everyone knows it’s a millstone around the commissioners’ necks, and who knows. They just might be desperate enough to say yes.”
“More power to her,” Christian said, raising his glass of orange juice in mock salute. “Whatever she does, she’s gonna have two dozen people telling her that she’s doing it wrong. I hope she has skin of leather. There’s no better way to guarantee that you get plenty of unwanted advice than to pick a project like the Roberts’ mansion.”
Carla opened her mouth to agree wholeheartedly – Sawyerites were many things, but short on opinions wasn’t one of them – when she noticed that Christian was peeling the paper cup off the last blueberry muffin. That part of the breakfast, she’d gotten from Gage at the bakery, of course – she could make a decent batch of muffins herself, but Gage’s were better. No surprise there.
She’d gotten a baker’s dozen so she could have some leftover for breakfast for the next week, but littering Christian’s paper plate were ten discarded paper cups. She looked at the container with the sausage links in it. Empty. She eyed the Tupperware that had been filled with cantaloupe. Gone. She even picked up the thermos that’d been filled to the brim with orange juice before she set out. Not a drop left.
She’d packed enough for an army, and he’d single-handedly – well, with a tiny bit of help from her – inhaled it all.
“How?” she whispered, looking up at Christian wide-eyed. “How do you stay so skinny?” she blurted out, and then clapped her hands over her mouth.
She’d broken the cardinal rule of a fat person – never talk about weight with a skinny person. It always ended with either them proclaiming that they had sooooo much to lose (usually while pinching nonexistent fat to prove their point) or them telling her that she just had to watch what she ate.
Or worst of all, both.
Hold on, are you trying to tell me that I shouldn’t eat a plate of donuts for breakfast and a bag of chips for lunch every day? Golly gee whiz. That’d never occurred to me before. I didn’t know that I couldn’t eat my way through the dessert menu on a daily basis and still stay skinny. Pray tell, enlighten me.
But Christian just looked down at his perfectly flat abs and then over at her, confusion writ large across his face.
“Genes, I guess,” he said, and shrugged. “My sisters all hate me for it. I’ve never understood that. They all want to be super skinny, like a guy should want to bang a woman who looks like she hasn’t even hit puberty yet. I’ve always liked women with meat on their bones. Substantial. I don’t find it sexy to be with a woman who looks like a child. It makes me feel like a pervert.”
Oh.
Maybe Christian could eat more food than two grown men put together and still stay skinny without even trying, but Carla decided on the spot that she’d forgive him for that flaw.
In fact, in that moment, she thought she could forgive him for just about anything. A man who liked meat on a woman’s bones? Who didn’t want someone who could pose for a fashion magazine in their spare time?
Yup, she could forgive him for just about anything at all.
He leaned forward then, pulling her out of her thoughts, his question stamped on his face.
Could he…?
She leaned forward too, meeting him halfway.
This kiss, in the history of kisses, blew all of the rest of the kisses away. She could hardly breathe; she couldn’t think. He turned her inside out, and she enjoyed every moment of it.
They pulled apart and he whispered, “Whoa.”
Her thoughts exactly.
Chapter 11
Christian
Have you any money? ~Inigo
I have a little. ~Fezzik the Giant
I just hope it’s enough money to buy a miracle. ~Inigo
In The Princess Bride
Christian yawned so hard, his jaw cracked as he pulled on his sleep t-shirt. It was only 9:45 at night, but like an old man, he was already heading for bed.
He’d always been an early bird, but even still, it was hard to want to get up at four in the morning to cut hay. Thank God he wasn’t allergic to hay like he was cats.
Cats…
He scratched absentmindedly at his forearm, where he’d had that terrible allergic reaction after stupidly petting Carla’s cat. She’d mentioned her cats a couple of times since then on their dates, and he knew how much they meant to her.
