Page 5 of A Future in Blossom

His beautiful eyes brimmed with humor as he waved his hand over his abdomen in a large arc. “A bairn is due soon.”

Abairn. A baby? “Oh my goodness. This truly is an opposite wedding.”

“That’s it! That’s what we’ll call it. The Opposite Wedding.” Liam chuckled, then slid into full laughter, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Y’ nailed it, lass.”

Oh, how she had missed his laugh. It was contagious. He’d always had a knack for making light of difficult situations, just the way he was doing now, and somehow things became manageable.

Slowly, he sobered up. “So will y’ help me, Jaime? You’re just the one I need. You know this area. You know the bride’s mother. If you just keep in mind that it’s an opposite wedding, we’ll have a happy bride.” He couldn’t have looked any more pleased.

And Jaime couldn’t be any more crushed. She could’ve cried.Liam hadn’t come to Sunrise for her. He was here to give another bride her perfect wedding day. It’s what he did, what he was known for.

“There’s one aspect to this wedding that isn’t the opposite. No budget. Truly. The bride’s father is o’er the moon that his daughter will be made an honest woman before the bairn arrives. He’s gone around his wife to let me know that we’re to do whatever the bride wants to do and send the bills to him.”

Jaime heard Claire arrive for the day and abruptly rose from the stool. “I’ll see what I can come up with and get back to you soon.” She tried to sound utterly professional as she concluded a client meeting. Calm, cool, and collected. The truth was, she wanted Liam to leave the store before she lost the composure she was barely clinging to. Despite her best efforts, she could feel a hot flush creeping up her chest. Soon it would reach her face, turning it a telltale, double-crossing bright red.

A look of confusion flicked over his face, but then he heard the sounds of Claire in the front of the shop. He rose from the stool and paused, as if he had more to say, but then changed his mind. “Sounds like your workday has started. I’ll be off, then.” He stopped at the door that led to the front of the shop and turned to Jaime. “Thank you.”

Without even looking him in the eye, she said, “Don’t thank me yet. I really have no idea what kind of venue would work to satisfy an earth mama.”

“I have confidence in you, lass. I’m heading to Atlanta to meet a client, but I’ll be back in a few days.”

See? Her feelings dipped even lower. If she needed any more evidence that he hadn’t come to Sunrise for Jaime’s sake, hadn’t missed her or thought about her, he’d just handed it to her on a silver platter. Liam was just passing through on his way to Atlanta. She picked up a broom to start cleaning up the floor of discarded, wilted blooms and stems. Staying busy was the only way she could avoid blurting out what was on the tip of her tongue:“Go! Begone! Go back to New York City and take yourphony-baloney Scottish accent with you.”

An accent she adored hearing. And right behind that was the realization that she wasn’t sure she could ever make herself stop loving him.

three

A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to.

—Marianne Williamson

CLAIRE MURPHY

After three months, any normal person would’ve sat her best friend down and had a heart-to-heart talk about the fact that they hadn’t spoken in over seven years. Any normal person would’ve tried to clear the air and patch things up.

Did Claire? Nope. She just walked into Rose’s Flower Shop like she’d never left, tied an apron on, and got to work.

Jaime Harper, the best friend in question, had looked at Claire like she was seeing a ghost. Jaime, gentle Jaime, wouldn’t try to bridge the gap between them if Claire didn’t make the first effort. And Claire wasn’t going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. She was afraid that if she said a single word, she’d say too much, or the wrong way, or in a harsher tone than she meant, and just make everything worse. She had a habit of doing that kind of thing.

To be fair, when Claire first arrived in Sunrise a few months ago, after getting settled in an Airbnb room-for-rent that Chris had found for her, she had gone straight to Rose’s house, prepared to get things out in the open. She’d found Rose out back in the garden. It was a familiar sight to Claire—Rose wearing a big hat and thick gloves, kneeling on the grass, digging or pruning or some such garden task. Foraging, mostly, to add to the shop’s stock. Seven years ago, Claire had lived with Rose after her own grandparents’ home had been sold. If Rose wasn’t at the flower shop, she knew to look for her in her backyard garden.

On that summer day when Claire returned to Sunrise and went to find Rose, she paused at the garden gate. Chris had suggested that she say a prayer before talking to Rose. He pointed out that prayer was meant to be two ways. Talkingandlistening. He felt she had a tendency to overtalk and she didn’t disagree. If she was nervous, Claire’s yakyakyak switch flipped on. This was going to be an important talk, perhaps the most important talk in Claire’s life, so she took his advice and whispered a prayer: “Lord, remind me to shut up.”

Then she opened the garden gate and walked over to Rose. As she did, the tears started streaming. Rose seemed to sense Claire’s presence before she saw her. She set down her trowel and took off her gloves and sat back on her heels. She looked at Claire with that tender but firm look that only Rose could have, lifted a hand in the air, and said, “Wait. Let’s wait until Tessa comes back. Then we’ll have a good long talk about everything.”

End of discussion before it even began. Rose had a way of putting a period on things.

“Do you understand me, Claire, honey? Not a word.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”

Carefully, gingerly, Rose got to her feet and wrapped her arms around Claire the way she used to—that amazing, engulfing Rose-hug. And in that hug, Claire knew she’d made the right decisionto come back. Maybe things weren’t entirely resolved, but Rose had forgiven her. That’s all that mattered.

Well, that, plus knowing Rose had a plan to bring everything into the light. As Claire left Rose’s, with instructions to take a huge bucket of just-cut scented geranium stems to the shop for Jaime to use, it occurred to her that God had answered her prayer. She’d hardly said a word.

So Claire decided to leave the big ugly mess from the night of the fire in Rose’s hands and she would focus on her flower work. After Jaime’s shock at seeing her, they picked up where they left off, working side by side, ignoring the gigantic chasm of unspoken thoughts and feelings that lay between them.

And boy o’ boy did they work.

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