himself he wasn’t interested in her as a woman. There had been a couple of times when she’d looked at him and he’d felt his heart skip around. Was she right, had he flirted with her in his office without even knowing he was doing so?
Tonight he would call Trina and insist she venture north for a visit. He was under no illusion that she would find this remote coastline any more invigorating than he did, but if she cared for him, she would surely find time to come brighten his volunteer exile, wouldn’t she?
Back to Lora. What would make her zero in on Victor? She’d never met the man before yesterday, so why him? Was it that friend of hers, the one with the Irish Setter? Had the friend gone on and on about the friendly, kind, rich old vet? But what drove Lora to implement such a plan?
She must need money. He looked around the threadbare shop and suddenly thought he understood. He said, “This is a nice place you have.”
“It belonged to my daughter and her husband until the bum had a midlife crisis and left my Angela holding the bag,” Ella said. She pushed across the form so he could fill in the delivery details. Lowering her voice, she confided, “But Lora assured us everything will be fine, she’ll make sure the shop survives. Lora has a plan.”
“A plan?”
Ella smiled. “A plan. She won’t discuss it, it’s a big secret, but she says if things work out right, everything will be okay.”
There it was, more or less in writing. Lora’s plan to guarantee the survival of her family’s shop was simple: marry Victor.
“So what do you do for a living?” Ella asked.
“I’m a vet.”
“My brother was in the army, fought in Korea. The war didn’t kill him, but a two pack a day habit did.”
“No, I mean a doctor—”
She interrupted him with a squeal. “A doctor? How wonderful.”
“Well, of sorts. Actually—”
She interrupted him again. “How about taking out a contract to have fresh flowers delivered to your office every week? Lots of professionals do it. Flowers make your practice look very affluent.”
“Sure,” he said, surprising himself. Maybe he was tired of trying to get a word in edgewise. Maybe he thought that by taking out this contract, he’d stay connected and could keep his eye on things even after Lora moved out. If Lora moved out.
Hell, maybe he was just nuts.
Once he’d agreed, the wheels of commerce turned amazingly fast, and he left a little bit later having agreed to a year of flowers. He knew he’d have to pay for them out of his own pocket—how could he ask Victor to support such a silly thing?
As he slid into his Porsche, he reviewed what he’d learned about Lora. Some guy named Calvin had jilted her, she’d promised her family she’d take care of them, the shop was foundering.
Why did it feel so hollow to be so right?
That night he offered to do the dishes. Lora had made vegetable lasagna with a béchamel sauce for dinner and Victor was right—she could cook. She’d carted all the food into the den so Victor wouldn’t have to get out of his recliner, set the low coffee table with fresh pink flowers she said she’d found while poking around in Victor’s weed patch and entertained the older man with elaborate stories that all seemed to revolve around her mother, Angela, who was coming to weed the next day.
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