The Boyfriend of the Month Club (21 page)

“So now what? The two of you are, like, friends?” Penny asked.

“Who? Me and Felix, or me and Brandon?” Before Penny could clarify, Grace continued. “Felix and I will never be friends, but yeah, I guess Brandon wants to be friends. Actually, he wants to go out again. Which, believe it or not, I’m considering. So the moral of the story is never say never. He even told me that walking out on our date was the best thing any one has ever done for him.”

She tried to conjure up an image of Brandon at the Wobbly Duck, but strangely enough a vision of Joe and what lay behind that door number three of his popped into her head instead. “Get this. Brandon said I ‘make him want to be a better man
.
’ ” Grace made air quotes with her fingers for the last part.

Penny and Sarah giggled.

Ellen, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet up until now, let out a large gasp. She laid down her fork and reached into her bag to pull out her iPhone.

“I told you Brandon was a nice guy,” Sarah said. “So he’s a follower, not a leader. The fact that he knows he’s screwed up and tried so hard to make it up to you shows a lot of character.”

“And anyone who can quote Jack Nicholson can’t be that bad,” Penny added.

Ellen cleared her throat and began reading from her iPhone screen. “‘I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.’ ”

Grace moaned. “Ellen, are you reading
Pride and Prejudice
to us?”

“‘By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.’ ”

“Ellen, please stop. You’re scaring me,” Grace said.

“You’re scaring all of us,” Penny muttered.

“Grace! Don’t you see?” Ellen cried. “Brandon Farrell is Mr. Darcy! Number one: He’s rich and handsome and seems unattainable. Number two: You have a crush on him from afar and he finally asks you out, but he disses you on the date, and you tell him you wouldn’t go out with him again if he was the last man on earth. Number three: He tries to apologize in the form of flowers and champagne, but you don’t buy it. Finally, and here’s the really good part, he offers to help your family by buying the business and you begin to see him in a different light.” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms in triumph. “If
that
isn’t a classic case of a Mr. Darcy, then what is?”

“I hate to say it, but I think Ellen is on to something,” Penny said.

“No wonder we could never classify him before,” Sarah said. “We didn’t have all the facts. Ellen’s right. He’s your Mr. Darcy!”

“Brandon’s offer to buy Florida Charlie’s isn’t some altruistic gesture,” Grace pointed out. “He plans to make money off it.”

“Yeah, but it’s a genuine solution to the problem,” Ellen said. “And by helping out the store, he’s helping you out. Right?”

“Okay, I admit it, at first I was really into Brandon, but that was before our date. Now, I think he’s probably potential good friend material. Honestly, I’m not interested in anyone right now.”

“Women have been making speeches like that for centuries and then
bam
! They end up married to the guy they said they only liked as a friend. As far as I’m concerned,
he’s
your Mr. Darcy and I’ll never be convinced otherwise,” Ellen said.

18

The Way to a Woman’s Heart Is Through Her Stuffed Alligator

“What do you think, Gator Claus, is Brandon Farrell my Mr. Darcy?”

Grace watched carefully for any change of expression on the alligator’s face. The idea of Brandon being her Mr. Darcy was so ludicrous Grace wanted to laugh. But it hadn’t just been Ellen who’d thought it. Penny and Sarah were on board too, which made Grace wonder if maybe, just maybe, as ridiculous as it all sounded, Ellen might be on to something.

“One day, you’re going to answer me. I can wait. I’m pretty patient, although—”

“Grace?”

She stiffened. There was that voice again. Had he heard her talking to the alligator? God, she hoped not, because she really wasn’t sure how to explain that one. She turned around. Joe wore a set of dark blue scrubs with a U of F sweatshirt over the top.

“Aren’t you supposed to be drilling into people’s mouths or something else equally sadistic?”

“You really have a problem with the drill, don’t you?”

“Who doesn’t? Well, except maybe people who are into
that
, but I’m not one of them.”

“Too bad.”

“Poor Dr. Joe. All fun and no work.”

“Call me Dr. Joe again and I’ll think you were serious about being just friends.”

There was a directness in Joe’s gaze that made Grace feel awfully warm despite the cool fifty-degree temperature outside.

“What are you doing here?” Grace asked.

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by for that free T-shirt you promised.”

In the neighborhood?
It seemed highly unlikely he’d be eating lunch in the vicinity of Florida Charlie’s in the middle of a workday. With traffic, it was at least a thirty-minute drive from his office just one way.

“Thanks again for the other night. All that stuff going on with Sarah? It really helped to talk it out.”

“Have you told her yet?”

“No, and I’m not going to. She and Craig are definitely getting a divorce, so it kind of takes me off the hook.”

“Maybe you should tell her anyway.” Was that disapproval she heard in his voice?

“What for? It would only hurt her feelings, and she’s in a bad enough place as it is.” Before he could respond, she opened the front door to the store and waved him inside. “You really want a T-shirt? Come on in and I’ll set you up.”

They had just entered the store when a well-dressed middle-aged woman came up to Grace. “Excuse me, do you work here?”

It always amused Grace that people would ask that question, considering that she had on the Florida Charlie’s uniform, but she always chalked it up to politeness.

“How can I help you?” Grace asked.

“I’ll just wait over here,” Joe said, making tracks for the alligator tooth display.

“I was wondering if you have any Hiawatha dolls?” The woman frowned. “Or maybe I’m not calling them by the right name?”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to,” Grace said. “Can you describe it?”

“It’s an Indian doll, or rather I guess you’d call them Native American now, but the doll was about six or maybe seven inches tall with long braids.” The woman smiled ruefully. “When I was a little girl we used to come down to the beach every summer and we’d stop here at Florida Charlie’s. My mother would let all us kids pick one treat from the store. One summer, I think I was about five, I picked out the Hiawatha doll, but she was too pricey. I spent the rest of that vacation begging my parents to buy me the doll.”

She chuckled, in the way that adults did whenever they remembered something obnoxious they did as kids. “Mother said if I was a good girl, she’d think about it. Well, let me tell you, I was a
very
good girl, so on the way back to Atlanta—that’s where I was raised—we stopped here again and she bought me the doll.”

Grace could sense there was more to the story, so she smiled and waited patiently.

“We weren’t in the car ten minutes before my sister, who was four at the time, decided she wanted to hold the doll. Of course I said no. She’d already picked her treat from Florida Charlie’s, so why should I share my doll with her? We started to tussle in the back seat—that was before you had to wear seat belts—and Daddy started yelling for us to stop because he couldn’t pay attention to the road. But my sister and I kept fighting, and even my brothers were getting into it. So Mother just turned around, plucked that doll out of my hands, and tossed her out the car window onto the highway.”

Grace gasped. “That’s awful,” she said, smiling in sympathy.

“That was my mother,” the woman said affectionately. “She told me if I couldn’t share, then I didn’t deserve the doll. I cried all the way home, but I never fought with my sister in the car again.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “I wish I knew where I could get one of those dolls. I’ve tried eBay but I’ve never seen one. I know it sounds silly. I’m fifty years old, but I swore if I ever saw a doll like that again, I’d buy one.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Grace said. “I think I remember the doll you’re talking about, but we haven’t sold anything like that in a long time.”

The woman looked disappointed but resigned. “Thanks, anyway.” She strolled to the back of the store, to the Hemingway corner. Grace was still thinking about the woman’s story when Joe approached her.

“That alligator tooth is pretty cool.”

She studied him a moment to see if he was being sarcastic. But he wasn’t.

Grace walked him through the T-shirt aisles.“Take your pick. We have the standard Florida Charlie’s T-shirt that features a sketch of the front of the store, complete with Gator—um . . . complete with the alligator up front. That comes in every color you can imagine, including hot pink. But I don’t think that’s your color.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Then, there’s the more artsy fartsy version that features the seagulls in the background. Those we carry in muted pastels.”

“Pass.”

“And then finally, we have my favorite. The montage look. In one corner we have the alligator dressed in his patriotic Yankee Doodle summer outfit, the Florida Charlie’s logo on the opposite side, the store image in another corner, and a mermaid at the bottom. In honor of one of our past bestsellers, the infamous mermaid-watching kit.”

“I actually had one of those,” Joe told her.

“A mermaid-watching kit? You’re kidding.”

“I think I was about six or seven at the time. We were on our way to the condo and my dad bought me one. I spent the next two weeks trying to hunt down a real honest to goodness mermaid. The old man loved it. It kept me out of his hair all vacation.”

The correlation between the woman’s story and Joe’s made Grace smile. She was glad Joe’s story had a somewhat happier ending.

“It was my childhood dream to be a mermaid in the show at Weeki Wachee,” Grace confided. “But I couldn’t hold my breath long enough.” She found his size in the montage T-shirt and handed it to him. “Enjoy.”

“Thanks,” he said, tucking the rolled-up T-shirt under his arm. “If you’re not too busy, would you mind showing me around? I’ve always wanted to get an inside look at the famous Florida Charlie’s.”

Why not? Business was usually slow this time of day. She guided him back to the front of the store.

“Like anything else, in order to understand it, you need to start at the beginning. In case you hadn’t noticed, the place is set up like an old-fashioned general store with a sort of
Ripley’s Believe it or Not
feel to it. Grandpa O’Bryan, that’s my pop’s dad, loved that place. We’d stop there whenever we went to St. Augustine. Charlie and I used to wander through the rooms for hours.”

“My favorite was always the mirrors.”

“Me too! Sometimes Sarah would come along with us. She’d stand in front of the mirror that made her look tall and I’d stand in front of the mirror that made me look short and Charlie would make fun of us. We tried to take pictures with our Polaroid but the flash always ruined the effect.”

Marty interrupted them to ask Grace a question about a sunscreen shipment. He threw Joe an uneasy look and Grace introduced them. Joe shook Marty’s hand and asked him about his job at the store and after a few minutes Marty was all smiles.

“Okay, so, to the left here is the citrus shop.” She introduced Joe to Stella, Florida Charlie’s oldest employee. “Stella has been at Florida Charlie’s since our inception fifty years ago.”

“I started working here when I was two,” Stella said.

Joe chuckled appropriately.

“Stella works Monday through Friday, nine to two, and is our number one orange girl.”

“That’s Florida Charlie slang for the person who gets stuck trying to get the tourists to buy oranges,” Stella explained upon seeing the confusion on Joe’s face.

“Besides the hourly wage, the orange girl or guy gets a commission for anything they sell, but it’s not easy work,” Grace said. “All our orange juice is hand squeezed. Pop insists on it. So when you’re not actively selling, you’re squeezing.”

“It’s not so bad unless a tour bus stops. If you’ve been slacking instead of squeezing, then you’ll be in trouble. Not that I ever slack off,” Stella confided. “Everyone who comes in the store gets a free sample. Want one?” She offered Joe a small paper cup filled with orange juice. “Or do you prefer grapefruit?”

“I’ll take the orange juice.” Joe drained it in one swallow. “Thanks, it’s delicious.”

“Then, of course, you have to explain to people why the oranges cost so much when they can get them cheaper at the grocery store. So there’s the spiel on how all the oranges come from local groves and they’re packaged in these great crates, and we can ship them anywhere and what a wonderful gift they make and that there’s a money-back guarantee. That kind of thing,” Stella said. “Would you like to hear it?”

Joe looked at Grace with a smile that asked,
Didn’t I just hear the spiel?
He ended up buying four of the most expensive gift arrangements and when he was bent over the counter, writing in the names and addresses of where he wanted them sent, Stella mouthed “wowza” over his head. Grace wasn’t sure if Stella referred to the pricey sale she’d just made, or to Joe himself. The oranges were a terrific gift but he was doing it to be a nice guy and to impress Grace. And it was working.
Big time
.

They moved on to the hat and flip-flop aisles. Grace was about to show Joe the back section of the store, when he stopped, transfixed like a little kid who’d just entered Disney World for the first time.

“Those aren’t what I think they are, are they?” He pointed to a row of funny-looking machines.