Picking Up the Pieces (7 page)

“He works for the
county
. Ask Joe how much
he’s
makin’ now.”

“Mason used to work for the DA’s office in Little Rock. Joe told me he had to be makin’ good money there. He was just as surprised as I was that Mason didn’t step forward.”

“And I’m sure he was more than happy to volunteer that information,” I said sarcastically. “But that’s not the point. The point is you got us into a terrible financial situation and didn’t tell me about it until it was too late. Then you coerced my old boyfriend into helping us. We were supposed to be partners, Violet, but there’s nothing going on here that suggests a partnership. In fact, you applied for that small business grant and never once told me you’d done so until I found out Joe’s campaign stop was one of the strings attached.”

“What do you mean we
were
supposed to be partners?”

“We might have saved the nursery, but I meant it when I said I quit.”

Her eyes widened. “Rose, be reasonable.”

I stood and began to pace. “I decided to split the business apart even before I found out about Joe.”

She jumped to her feet. “You
what
?”

“I love you, Violet, but working together isn’t going well. You have to know that.”

“You’re being utterly ridiculous.”

“There you go again.” I turned to face her. “Belittling me! Just because my opinion differs from yours, doesn’t make it ridiculous.”

Violet moved toward me cautiously, eyeing me like I was a rabid dog. “Okay, Rose. Calm down and we’ll discuss your feelings.”

I took a step backward. “We’re not discussing my
feelings
. We’re talking about the future of the Gardner Sisters Nursery.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, but you’re being irrational.”

I took a deep breath. “If you want to discuss irrational behavior, how about we talk about Brody MacIntosh’s wife vandalizing the store?”

Violet had the decency to look embarrassed.

“What is going on with you, Violet? A married man? I thought you were trying to work it out with Mike.”

“You don’t know anything about my life, Rose. Don’t you stand there and judge me!”

“But he went back to his wife, and you’re
still
sleeping with him!”

“I love him, Rose.” She sat down on the sofa, tears streaming down her face. “I love him.”

My heart softened, and I sat next to her, lowering my voice. “How did this happen?”

She shrugged, wiping her face. “How does any affair happen? The people involved usually feel unloved and unneeded by their spouse.”

“But Mike—”

“Mike hasn’t really loved me for a very long time.”

“Are you sure?”

She released a tiny laugh, looking down the hall. “I think I’d know.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was. I couldn’t imagine being married to someone who didn’t love me.

“Yeah.” The corners of her mouth lifted. “Me too.” She turned to look at me. “I have nothing, Rose. You have Mason now, but I lost Brody. Especially after his wife…” Her voice trailed off. “I was desperate. That’s why I turned to Joe. I need the nursery. You have to know that I would never purposely hurt you.”

I used to think that. Now I wasn’t so sure. “You still should have asked.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She was so quick to apologize that I couldn’t help but wonder if she was following the philosophy that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. “We still have to decide what to do with the business.”

“There’s nothing
to
do. Our problems are solved.”

I shook my head. “It’s far from fixed. I’m still planning to split the store from the landscaping business, but now I’m not sure what to do about Joe.” I turned to her. “Did he really pay off the entire loan?”

“All one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars of it.”

I leaned back into the cushions and closed my eyes. “I’ll never be able to repay that.”

“Rose, he doesn’t want you to. He wants to be part owner.”

Opening my eyes, I shook my head. “That’s never gonna work, Violet. Besides, his priorities are bound to change now that Hilary is here…and pregnant.”

“He’s not leaving Henryetta, whether he’s with you or not, Rose. In fact, he’s looking for a house to buy. Outside of the city limits.”

I was neither surprised to hear that he was looking nor that Violet knew his plans. He was probably looking for something closer to me. “That was before Hilary showed up.”

“He’s not going to marry her.”

“Whether he marries her or not is none of my concern now.” Only it felt like it was. Thinking of Joe married to Hilary sent a fire of anger through my blood. But maybe Violet was right. Joe kept running back to her like a bad habit, but he didn’t love her. And a baby wasn’t a good enough reason to marry someone. Still, Hilary had a hold on Joe that defied logic.

Violet’s eyes narrowed with determination. “Trust me. Joe’s not goin’ anywhere.”

“Okay, let’s say he’s staying. Then the two of you can keep the storefront and Bruce Wayne and I will handle the landscaping portion.”

“Bruce Wayne?” Her chin lowered as her eyes pierced mine. “You mean as your employee, right?”

I took a deep breath, preparing myself for another round of arguing. “No, Vi. Not as my employee. He’ll be my partner.”

“Where’d he get the money to buy in? Is he selling drugs?”

Her comment infuriated me. “He put up the same amount of money
you
did. Nothing.”

She gasped.

“I don’t expect you to understand my decision, nor do I expect you to approve. I’m simply telling you how I’m restructuring.”

“Rose…Let’s talk more about this.”

I lifted my shoulders. “We have a lot of logistics to discuss about splitting the business, but we have nothing to discuss in regard to Bruce Wayne.”

“Have you told Mason?” I heard the accusation in her voice.

“Yes, and he stands behind my decision if for no other reason than because it is
my
business and
my
decision.”

“Rose.” Her voice lowered. “Bruce Wayne’s a stoner with a terrible reputation. What’s that going to do for your business?”

“We haven’t been hurtin’ for jobs yet, and it’s almost December. Not exactly peak planting time.”

“But that was with him as an employee, not a co-owner. And how’s it going to look if you jump into a business arrangement with a known criminal?”

If only she knew about my latest mess with Skeeter. “I don’t care what the people in this town think.”

She frowned her disapproval. “You should. You need them to like you or they’ll never give you business.”

“Again, we haven’t been hurting.”

“That’s because I’m the face of the business.”

My eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that after the mayor’s wife is arrested for vandalism.”

A sheepish grimace lifted the corner of her mouth. “I’m not going to press charges.”

“What?”

She put her hand on my arm. “Calm down, Rose. The insurance will still pay, so what good would it do? She’s sorry.”

“You’ve
talked
to her?”

“No, but Joe did.”

“And he approves of this?”

She nodded, tears brimming her eyes. “The town’s still gonna talk, but things will die down sooner now.”

I hated to admit that I saw the wisdom in that. What Brody’s wife did was dead wrong, but pressing charges wasn’t going to solve anything. “So what’s gonna happen with you and Brody?”

“If Brody left her now, it would be more than scandalous. If he stays for a while, things will eventually blow over. The timing will be better.”

I could tell how devastated she was. It was obvious that she really loved him. “Any chance she’ll get back together with the Walmart manager from Lafayette County?”

She shook her head, looking more pathetic than I’d ever seen her. “He got transferred to Jonesboro. He ended it.”

I sighed. What a mess. “I’m still splitting the business, Vi.”

She grasped her hands on her lap. “I can’t buy you out, Rose. You know that.”

“I know, and despite calling you an employee earlier, I have no intention of taking the store from you.” I looked at her. “I’m not sure how this is going to work exactly. I still need the nursery for the plants and trees. You’ve got all the accounts set up already, so it doesn’t make sense to duplicate them. Maybe all the money will be dealt with under one big business, which will be under my control, and then you’ll run the nursery and I’ll run the landscaping portion.”

She shook her head. “How’s that any different than it is now?”

“You’re losing financial control. You’ll run the nursery and deal with the expansion, but anything involving budgeting needs my approval.” I took a breath. “And I’m gonna have an accountant run the books.”

“What?”

“I don’t trust you, Violet, plain and simple. And I don’t want to deal with it.”

“That’s too expensive. We couldn’t make the loan payments.”

“We don’t need to worry about the loan payments anymore, do we? You sure took care of that.” I gave her a wry smile. “We’ll use the money that was supposed to go to the loan payments to pay the accountant.”

“We’ll have to get Joe’s approval.”

I shook my head. “Joe’s not a partner. He has no say.”

“Rose.” Her eyes widened in frustration. “Joe bailed us out. He paid off the loan and paid for a few other things besides. You said yourself that you can’t pay him back, and you’ve admitted on multiple occasions that we couldn’t have gotten the nursery going without his help. Face it. He was a partial owner before we even opened.”

I groaned. I was sure that Jonah was right and Joe had no legal claim on the business, but it did feel wrong to just take his money. “Maybe he’ll let me set up a payment plan to reimburse him.”

“No, he made it clear to me that he wanted to be a partial owner.”

My anger flared again, but yelling at her wouldn’t help anything. “I need to think about it. What has the insurance company said?”

“They say we can start cleanup next week. Joe walked through the shop and says it’s not as bad as it looks. We have to replace the merchandise and some display shelves, but we shouldn’t have any problems. Joe’s going to front the money so we can get started right away and we’ll use the insurance money to pay him back. We can open by the first of the year. In the meantime, we’ll sell the Christmas trees from the lot.”

I suppressed another groan. More involvement from Joe. “I’ll need to speak to him about that. You’re no longer involved in this discussion. And I’ll need all the contact information for the insurance company so I can deal with them directly.”

She started to protest, then stopped. “Okay.”

My eyebrows lifted in surprise. No argument? “To be clear: we’re doing nothing until I talk to Joe. And I suspect he’ll be preoccupied for a while. In fact, he might be so preoccupied he’ll decide he’s not so eager to be a partner anymore.”

“Or he might want the distraction.”

Great. I suspected she was probably right. “Don’t tell anyone that Joe’s involved in this. At least for now.”

“What are you going to tell Mason?”

What was I going to tell him? I couldn’t imagine it going well.

Chapter Six

Bruce Wayne

I’d done screwed up big time.

The thing is, I knew it even as I was jumping into the middle of it. Kinda like when you’re driving and you see a car about to rear-end you and there’s not a doggone thing you can do to stop it from plowing into you. That’s exactly how it was when Rose was dead-set on talking to Skeeter Malcolm.

In the few short months I’d worked for Rose Gardner, I’d learned one thing: Once she gets an idea in her head, there’s little chance of dissuading her. And seeing how there was no way to talk her out of it, I helped her.

I knew what people were gonna say if word got out. They were gonna accuse me of dragging her into Henryetta’s underbelly. They already thought the worst of me and I was okay with it as long as they didn’t think the worst of her too.

People had always assumed the worst of me, for as long as I could remember. Russell, the man who gave me his last name, hated my guts because of the man who’d gotten my mother pregnant the night of her senior prom. While Russell might have forgiven my mom for giving her virginity to the bad boy in her class, he sure never seemed to have forgotten about it judging from the way he looked at me. To add piss to the pool water, I looked just like Clark Kent Williamson. And if Clark Kent Williamson was nothing but trouble, then the fruit of his loins was bound to be too.

I tried my best to be a good boy, but when you get in trouble for things you haven’t even done, you start figuring if you’re gonna get in trouble anyway, you might as well get a little fun out of it. Russell always complained that I never took responsibility for nothing, and I never denied it.

So nobody was more surprised than me that when Rose offered me partial ownership in the landscape business, I wanted it.

But while I might have been lazy, I wasn’t entirely stupid. When people heard about Rose making me a co-owner, they’d say I’d somehow tricked her.

If anything, she’d tricked me.

I tried to turn down her offer, but she refused to let me help her with Skeeter unless I agreed. So I did. I had to, since I knew she’d seek him out on her own otherwise. Lettin’ her do that would have been like puttin’ a bunny in a cage with a wild dog.

Only it didn’t turn out like I expected.

When Skeeter got angry, wanting to know how Rose knew about the robbers, I panicked and told him about Rose’s visions. I didn’t see any other way to help her at the time, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized my mistake. For one thing, Rose had no idea I’d even figured out her secret. But more importantly,
Skeeter
knew her secret now, and a talent like Rose’s was something he was going to keep in his back pocket.

Which meant that Rose was good and stuck.

But Rose didn’t even seem to see the danger she was in. The very fact she kept back-talking Skeeter was proof enough of that. Sure, he thought it was cute, but it was like when some mouthy toddler didn’t mind his parents. It might be funny at first, but the cuteness would soon wear off and all you were left with was annoyance.