When Bonnie Lear returned to her Los Angeles Brentwood home from the gym Monday afternoon, there was a note on the door. Bealman Florists, it said. She turned the card over; a delivery man had left a message for her to call. Bonnie dug out her cell phone and dialed the number. The guy said he needed to come by and deliver.
“Flowers?” she asked.
The guy laughed. “You could say that.”
Bonnie looked at her watch. “I’ve got to run a few errands. Why don’t you just leave it on the porch?”
“It’s too big to leave on the porch, ma’am,” he said.
“Too big?”
“This isn’t one order. It’s like, dozens.”
Bonnie paused in trying to fit her key in the door. “Dozens? Dozens of what?”
“Roses. Listen, I’m not too far. If you can just stay put for a half hour, I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” she sighed, and clicked off the phone. She walked into the kitchen, stared out at the backyard pool.
A quarter of an hour later, she heard a vehicle in the drive and walked out onto her front porch. It was not a small van, but a big delivery truck. The man hopped down out of the day cab, walked around to the back. Bonnie joined him there, peering over his shoulder as he reviewed several pages of a bill of lading. Then he unlatched the back and pushed the roll-away door up.
The sickly sweet scent was overpowering, knocking them both back a step. The truck was full of roses. Yellow, white, red, pink . . . dozens and dozens of roses.
“Someone must really be in the doghouse, huh?” the delivery guy remarked with a grin.
Damn him. Damn him! “Is there a card?” Bonnie asked, and the man handed her a stack of them. She opened the first one.
Please forgive me. I love you. Aaron.
She crumpled it in her hand and damn near threw it at the delivery man.
Chapter Nineteen
If we don’t change our direction we’re likely to end up where we’re headed . . .
CHINESE PROVERB
On the Friday after the Tom Masters Charity Bingo Bash, at the same moment Rebecca was suffering through the RV trip from hell, Matt was in his office, staring at the phone instead of getting stuff together for a hearing on the Kiker case.
He had already picked up the phone twice and put it down. This was a really stupid idea. Nothing was different with Rebecca—it was a thank-you kiss that he tried to take a little further than she’d intended. Nothing to get all excited about and certainly nothing to make a fool of himself over. He told himself he should really forget the whole thing and move on. Maybe call Debbie Seaforth. Which was why, then, when he picked up the phone a third time, he dialed Rebecca’s number really fast before he talked himself out of it.
One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Matt was just about to hang up when the answering machine picked up and her silky calm voice was asking him to leave a message. He hadn’t thought about that, and the piercing beep signaling it was time to leave his message rattled him badly. “Ah hey, Mork, you home?” he blurted, wincing, and continued to wince until he had stopped blathering into her machine and had hung up.
Then he pounded his desk with his fist. This was bullshit—he was acting like a kid! Since when was he so unnerved by a woman? Never, which was why he really had to stop letting his balls do all his important thinking.
He got up, started going through the files, but was interrupted by the buzz of his interoffice speaker. “It’s your mother, Mr. Parrish,” Harold said over the intercom.
Oh no. Matt loved his mom, but the lady could talk. “Tell her I’ll call her later,” he said, clicked off, and walked across the room to a file cabinet.
The buzzer rang again.
With a sigh, Matt walked back, punched the button. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but your mother is very insistent.”
Harold would never know what an understatement that was. “Okay, put her through,” he said, and picked up the handset. “Mom? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter, Matthew. But I was not in the mood to wait to find out who this lovely young woman is!”
“What woman, Mom?” Matt asked absently as he thumbed through some files.
“The one standing beside you,” she said, all chipper. “In the paper.”
It worked; she definitely got Matt’s attention. “The paper?”
“The Statesman, silly,” Mom giggled. “This morning I open it up and there you are, big as life smack dab in the middle of the Life section, standing behind that friend of yours who is running for office. But you’re not looking at him. You’re looking at her. And what an interesting look it is!”