Sidewalk Flower
Authors: Carlene Love Flores
Evernight Publishing
Copyright© 2013 Carlene Love Flores
ISBN:
978-1-77130-243-2
Cover
Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor:
JS Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal.
No part of this book may be
used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For my dad, whose voice I still hear singing me to
sleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt
thanks to: Anna and Kathleen—my precious first readers, my critique partner,
Lynne, for her input and advice, the fantastic women writers of the Waterworld
Mermaids, and to my beautiful family for their unconditional love.
SIDEWALK
FLOWER
A Sin Pointe Novel, 1
Carlene
Love Flores
Copyright
© 2013
Chapter
One
“Trista Jeane, you’ve got a telephone
call.”
Trista glanced over her shoulder,
expecting to find the fluffy, beauty shop curls of at least one of her gramma’s
neighbors peeking through their lace curtains, just wondering what scandalous
thing
Grace’s granddaughter
had to settle over the
phone now.
She knew that was what they all thought
of her.
It didn’t matter how many hours
she spent knee deep in dirt and green bean plants helping Gramma out, she’d
always be known as the girl who’d brought that wild
Australian
boy with the neck tattoo and his wallet on a dog chain
to the senior park, at Easter no less.
What they didn’t know and she didn’t care to share with the Ferns and
Dollys, Eds and Franks down at the clubhouse was that she was so pissed at
Jaxon,
he wouldn’t dare call her right now.
The neighborhood was safe.
Tattoo, wallet chain, and
Aussie-free.
But if it wasn’t
Jaxon, there was only one other person she was expecting, not looking forward
to, but expecting, a call from.
“Coming, Gramma.”
Through the screen, Trista could hear
loud flowing water and a pounding piano intro as she moseyed up the stairs and
then fumbled with the handle.
She
entered the front door of Gramma’s trailer protecting a fresh handful of green
beans.
A few small clumps of moist soil
clinging to her bare knees wiped off easily against the doorframe.
She dared not let any of it fall on the
freshly scrubbed floor inside.
A pair of
skeptical, wide eyes greeted her as the ringtone continued to sound.
Her hi-tech world must seem pretty strange to
Gramma who still baked her own bread, darned her socks and hung clothes to dry.
“Hurry up, dear. Here, give me
those.”
Trista quickly unloaded her harvest into
the sink.
She splashed ice cold faucet
water over her dirty hands and then patted
them
on
the powder blue kitchen towel
hanging from the oven handle.
Her voice
hurried, she picked up the phone just as the Phantom’s
Overture
began its last chant.
“Hello?”
“Yes, ma’am.
May I speak with Trista Hart?”
“This is her,” she said in her best
I’m doing this because I’m a good friend
voice.
She was 99.9 percent sure the polite drawl on
the other end belonged to Jaxon’s cousin.
“Are you Lucky?”
He laughed.
And then seemed to recover
enough to keep up the respectable formalities of their conversation.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.”
He didn’t sound like a kid.
The one Jaxon had guilted her into giving a
ride back to California when she left Gramma’s.
She could continue on in this funny chase
of one-liners surrounding his name but the reason they were to meet up crept
back into her thoughts.
How could Jaxon
have asked her to host his tag-along stranger cousin on her return road trip?
He knew how serious her plans were but had
still saddled her with this cousin because didn’t she always drop everything to
help him out?
Yep.
Her best friend’s timing on this one
stunk.
Like a “skunk oil mixed with
tomato juice mixed with vinegar” kind of stinky.
Why had she agreed to this again?
She huffed.
She was about to ask when and where they
should meet up when a female’s giggle sounded in the background.
Playful, taunting words echoed through the
line, something like “Come get it if you want it.”
Surprisingly, she was curious to hear Lucky’s
response.
Would he be the typical guy
and tell Trista he had to go?
He was
related to Jaxon, after all.
But the
phone made a thudding sound followed by another and then the call disconnected
before she had the chance to find out.
She sat, amused, matching stares with
Gramma who finally gave her own huff and then went back to snapping tips from
beans.
Maybe he wouldn’t call back and
she’d be off the hook.
No such luck.
She answered her phone with a sigh.
“Hi.
Sorry about that.
So, Jaxon said
I could catch a ride out to his place with you.”
Well he sure got to the point, didn’t
he?
“Yes, that’s apparently the
plan.”
She glared up toward the ceiling,
questioning the hateful powers that be.
“So, when do you plan on heading out?”
“This Sunday.”
“Jaxon said you’re staying just outside
of Nashville?”
The young man pried her
for details while she remained determined not to give them.
“Yes,” she said, picturing Jaxon’s face
and wondering if Lucky resembled him at all.
That’d be her luck, stuck with a clone of her selfish best friend when
all she really wanted was to get the next leg of her trip done and over with,
alone, and then head back to work in Cali.
“Okay, well a buddy of mine is heading up
there tonight.
I can get a room
somewhere in town and you can pick me up Sunday, if that works for you.”
She pondered a second more.
His maturity level had her worried at this
point but he seemed harmless enough.
Plus, Jaxon would hear of any misbehavior on the young gun’s part.
Oh, what the hell?
She made him an offer then, hating her
bleeding heart.
“Lucky, how about I just come get you
tonight?”
“Okay.”
He paused.
“Yes,
ma’am.
That sounds good
but...”
The
words
trickled out, as if he was afraid to accept her invitation but was
trying to be real polite about it.
Had
she allowed too much venom to froth her voice?
Why did she care?
Holy hell, she
was such a sucker.
This was why Jaxon
walked all over her back home.
Because she let him.
Annoying as he might be, his antics really were harmless. There was no
friendship contract they’d signed in blood saying she’d be the doormat in the
relationship because she could handle the most crap but it had sure worked out
that way.
“Listen, you can stay with me and my
gramma for the weekend.”
She smeared an
innocent clump of leftover soil into her palm until it was just a stain.
“Just tell me where I can meet you and when.”
“Um, yes ma’am.
If you’re sure…”
“I am.”
“Okay,” he said.
Was that a crack in his voice she’d just
heard him try to cover up with a cough?
This must be what he would say whenever
he didn’t believe her.
She expected to
hear lots of “Okay…cough, coughs” the next few days since she had no intention
of making the trip easy on him.
Jaxon
was the one who deserved this treatment, she knew that.
But her best friend was too busy being
absent, so Lucky would be taking the heat for him.