The Weekday Brides 04 - Single by Saturday (19 page)

Zach glanced over and noticed Nolan lugging an armload of two-by-fours. “I can see that. What we need to see is if he has the ability to learn.”

“I paired him with Sean. We’ll figure out how he is with framing.”

Zach nodded. “Good idea. Let me know if there are any problems. He still has hours he has to work at my dad’s, so see if we can keep him going here part-time.”

Zach checked the invoice order numbers against the pallets of kitchen hardware.

“How is it with your brother in town?” Buck asked.

Zach tried to separate his brother and Karen in his head in order to answer the question.

“I’m looking forward to getting him away from his adoring fans in town.” And he was, he decided.

“Gotta get him off his own personal float first. I hear the mayor has the road sign ready to unveil tomorrow morning.”

He’d forgotten all about that. All across the country, small-town America celebrated its stars with freeway signs that boasted things like H
ILTON
, U
TAH
, H
OME OF
M
ICHAEL
W
OLFE
, hoping to draw in tourist dollars. Hilton was taking the opportunity to bestow such a sign on Mike.

“His ego can handle it.” At least Zach hoped it could.

Buck pushed into another pallet to check his set of numbers. “I hear his wife is hot.”

Did he have to mention Karen?

“She is beautiful.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

Buck cut through the cellophane that kept the boxes on the crate together with a grunt. “You know…when he started doing those plays in high school several of us laid bets that he was gay.”

Zach froze.

“Guess we were wrong about that.” Buck ripped the packing slip away with a curse. “Dammit, I ripped off the number. What do you have?”

Zach shook his head, looked on his invoice, and repeated the numbers Buck asked for.

“Close enough.”

Zach scratched his head, lost in his thoughts. “Yeah, close enough.”

Chapter Fourteen

The flowers started arriving shortly after Karen stepped from the shower. She’d arrived back at the Gardner home to find Michael gone. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but with his family eyeing her every move…all of them no doubt wondering what had transpired between them to warrant a night on the couch, she felt a little abandoned. The brat.

“Karen?” Judy yelled from downstairs.

She was just about to switch on the hair dryer when she heard her name called.

“You have a delivery.”

She set the hair dryer aside and walked downstairs with the hairbrush in her hand. “Delivery?”

Judy stood beside a kid in his early twenties wearing a goofy smile and holding a bouquet of two dozen long-stemmed white roses. “Are you Karen?”

Flowers? Really Michael?
“I am.”

He offered a shy smile in Judy’s direction and handed the roses to Karen.

“Oh, wow!” Hannah ran down the stairs.

If Michael thought a couple of dozen roses would sway her, he hadn’t been paying attention. “You like ’em?” Karen asked Hannah while she plucked the small envelope from the stems to read later.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that many roses in one vase.”

The delivery boy turned to leave.

“Let me get a tip.”

He waved her off. “It’s all taken care of.”

“Thank you,” she said to the kid.

Before the door could close behind him, Karen turned to Hannah and thrust the roses into the teenager’s hands. “For you.”

Hannah gasped.

Judy said, “Whoa.”

The delivery boy managed, “I haven’t seen that before.”

Karen skipped up the stairs and continued her morning routine.

Thirty minutes later the same delivery boy arrived again, this time with pink roses…again two dozen. Karen plucked the card, shoved the flowers in Judy’s hands, and returned to her room.

When the doorbell rang a third time, Karen called to Janice, who was in the kitchen cooking food to last the family for a week. “Janice? You have a delivery.” White lilies made a wonderful display on Janice’s table.

By noon, Judy was on a first-name basis with Myles, the delivery boy who was apparently driving three towns over to the florist where he worked part-time in the summer. The house smelled like the floral house at the LA County Fair.

“Ms. Karen?” Myles said as he handed her his eleventh delivery that day.

“Yes, Myles?”

“I was kinda hoping to hook up with my friends tonight. But my instructions are to keep delivering flowers until
you
accept them.” He shuffled his feet. “And I’m running out of gas.”

Karen hid a laugh behind her hand. She glanced at the orchid bouquet she held and buried her nose in them for a sniff. “Well Myles, you can tell your boss that the orchids worked.”

He sighed with relief. “Thank you.”

Three sets of eyes watched her set the orchids next to Sawyer’s chair. She pulled one stem from the bouquet and grinned.

“I think Mike is sorry for whatever he did,” Hannah said.

Janice watched her with narrowed eyes.

“You’re not going to keep any of them, are you?” Judy asked. “You just said that to Myles so he didn’t have to keep coming back.”

Karen pointed the flower in Judy’s direction. “You’re right.”

Hannah puffed out her lower lip. “But why? I think if a boy sent me one bouquet I’d press each flower into a book forever.”

“They’re just flowers, Hannah.”

“Thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers,” Judy pointed out.

Hannah glanced around the room. “Thousands? Really?”

“A dozen roses on their website are a hundred bucks.” Obviously, Judy had used the time between deliveries to look stuff up. “Without delivery.”

It was time to impart some older sister advice to the younger generation. Advice Karen had told more teens than she could count. She dropped into the couch and looked between Judy and Hannah. “Let me tell you how the male brain works. Men think sending flowers to a girl when they’ve done something to make you mad is their
get out of jail free
card. Lots of girls fall for it. So what does that tell the guy?”

Judy spoke first. “Means he can do whatever he wants and send flowers later and everything is good.”

“Exactly. Apologies are only words until they are backed up with actions.”

“But the flowers are nice,” Hannah argued.

“I don’t care if he sent diamonds. Though let’s face it, diamonds don’t die. It’s still only words until time proves that Michael doesn’t screw up again.”

Karen caught Janice’s smile from the doorway.

“What are you going to do with all the flowers if you don’t keep them?”

A slow smile crept over her face. “Ever heard of the Rose Parade?”

Karen held no guilt sitting on Millie’s bench while licking an ice cream cone. Especially when she realized while on approach to said bench, it already had an occupant.

She made a quick sweep of the area around the bench to see if there was a bag big enough for a change of clothes. Confident that wasn’t the case, Karen tucked in beside Becky with a smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” she said, lowering her eyes to the grass at her feet.

“It’s Becky, right?”

The smile on Becky’s face said she was pleased that Karen remembered.

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name.”

Karen licked her ice cream to keep it from dripping in the hot Utah sun. “Karen. Though everyone in this town calls me Michael’s wife. It’s like I don’t exist without him.” Years of experience at getting kids to talk told her to open up with something personal to make the teen feel like he or she was special.

“Well, everyone here knows about Michael.”

“Honey, I have news for you…everyone everywhere knows about Michael.”

Becky released a small laugh, but the smile on her face didn’t last long.

“It must be hard being married to someone so famous.”

Karen pointed her ice cream in Becky’s direction. “You know what? You’re the first person in Hilton that’s said that. Everyone
keeps telling me how lucky I am, or how cool it must be. But you know what? It
is
hard. We can’t go anywhere without someone taking pictures or poking into our personal life.” Karen offered a not-so-fake laugh. “It’s kinda like being in a small town where everyone knows what’s going on with everyone. But you don’t want every secret out there, so you try really hard to hide them. Eventually all the secrets come out.”

“Some secrets stay hidden.”

Karen thought about Michael. “I guess that’s true. I guess that’s why it’s so important to have close friends…or maybe just one person you can tell your secrets to. Otherwise all those hidden facts clog up inside of you until they burst out in one big ugly mess.”

Becky looked lost in her own thoughts.

“Just yesterday I told Michael something I hadn’t told one other person my whole life. And you know what?” She didn’t wait for Becky to answer. “It felt good.”

“What if your secrets affect other people?”

Karen held her dripping ice cream away from both of them and gave up trying to eat it.

“Well, I guess it depends on the secret. I think if your BFF tells you she likes some guy, or she’s kissing on him or…other things, then it might be a good idea if you kept that secret. But if you knew the BFF’s kissing partner is really bad news, then keeping that secret might not be the best thing to do.”

“But if you tell someone, then that BFF might not be your friend anymore.”

Karen nodded. “That’s the chance you take. But if she was a BFF in the first place, eventually she’ll come around.”

Karen wasn’t sure how they’d gotten sidetracked on a conversation about keeping a best friend’s secrets, but it seemed that Becky was thinking really hard and didn’t look quite as depressed.

“Is there someone you can tell your secrets to?” Karen asked her.

Becky really was a pretty girl when she smiled. “Nolan. He listens to everything.”

“That’s nice.” It made Karen feel better that the boy she was obviously in love with didn’t elicit a flash of pain when Becky talked about him. “Where’s Nolan now?”

“Oh, he’s working. He got an extra job working for your brother-in-law…I mean Zach Gardner.”

Oh, damn…he actually did it. How sweet was that? She needed to remember to thank Zach when she saw him.

“That’s great.”

“Yeah.” Becky picked herself off Millie’s bench and offered a smile. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Karen.”

“You, too, Becky.”

After the teenager walked away, Karen dropped her forgotten cone into the trash and ducked into Petra’s salon.

“Mind if I wash my hands?”

Petra was sweeping hair from the floor. “Not at all.”

Karen soaped up her hands and ran them under the faucet in the bathroom.

“How do you like Hilton?” Petra asked.

Karen stepped from the bathroom with a paper towel. “It’s a little maddening, to tell the truth. I can’t get over how small it is or how everyone knows everybody.”

“That does take some time getting used to.” Using a dustpan, Petra swept the hair up and into the trash. “I saw you talking with Becky.”

“She’s a sweet girl.” Karen remembered Judy’s observation about Petra not gossiping. That didn’t mean the local hairdresser didn’t know exactly what was going on. “Do you know her parents?”

“Her mom comes in a couple times a year. The father keeps to himself. Sees a barber in Monroe.”

Just the facts.

Time to address what they’d both observed. “I wonder how she got those welts.”

Instead of dismissing Karen’s words, she said, “I asked her outright the first time I noticed them. She said she fell. Then she didn’t come in for six months.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Two years ago.”

Long before Nolan.

Karen crossed to Petra’s appointment book and grabbed the pen that was sitting there. “I have a feeling that Becky is going to need a couple of older and wiser women looking out for her very soon. If you see anything, please call me.” She tapped on her phone number. “Day or night.”

“You’re planning on staying in Hilton for a while?”