Arlene James - Fortune Finds Florist

The place was fairly busy, the cold Texas wind having driven folks indoors for a hot, fragrant cup and warm roll. Nevertheless, Gwyn quickly deposited the cups and saucers at a table of four men and called her teenage daughter from the back. “Molly!” Gwyn came toward Sierra with her arms open wide. “Looking good there, girlfriend. How’s life treating you?”

“Good. How about you?” Sierra returned the hug. Though known for her cynicism and caustic tongue, Gwyn was a warmer creature than many suspected, and lately she seemed softer, cheerier. She still retained that core of inner toughness that made her Gwyn, however.

“Same old, same old,” Gwyn said lightly as Molly appeared from the kitchen.

“Hi, Sierra.” Blond, pretty Molly had her mom’s same thin, taut, muscular build but with a nubile softness that drew boys like flies to honey. She occasionally baby-sat Sierra’s daughter. “How’s Tyree?”

“Looking forward to her birthday, which isn’t until the very last day of March. And we just passed New Year’s, for pity’s sake.”

“Kids,” Gwyn said. “They live from holiday to holiday.”

“Well, let us know when you put her party together,” Molly said.

“Absolutely,” Sierra promised, then she turned to Gwyn. “Can we talk?”

“Sure thing. Let’s snag a cup and head back into the office.”

Two minutes later, they were seated around the small metal table that Gwyn used as a desk in the cubbyhole behind the kitchen. “So what’s up? Dennis still giving you a hard time?”

“Perpetually, but I’m not here to talk about the magic reappearing ex.”

Dennis had turned up after a three-year absence—just as soon as the news of her inheritance had reached him—and he’d made her life miserable ever since. His influence had turned her formerly sweet, loving eight-year-old into a greedy demanding brat that Sierra sometimes didn’t even recognize.

“What do you know about a young man named Sam Jayce?”

Gwyn’s eyebrows went straight up. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking about going into business with him.”

Gwyn sat back and folded her arms. “You remember that woman who was murdered a few years back?”

Sarah Jayce. No wonder Sam’s name had sounded familiar. “She was that woman beaten to death by her husband.”

Gwyn nodded. “She was also Sam’s mother.”

“Ohmigod.”

“Jonah Jayce was a brutal drunk. He beat her to death because she hid their baby girls from him.”

“Twins,” Sierra remembered.

“That’s right. Sarah was afraid, apparently with good reason, that Jonah would hurt them. Sam himself was long gone by the time they were born. He left home at fourteen, went to foster care at his mother’s insistence. A neighbor boy to the west of me was best friends with Sam. I remember that Sam’s foster mother used to drop him off so the boys could spend time together. He was always very polite, Sam was.”

“He still is,” Sierra murmured.

“Not surprised.” Gwyn shifted forward in her chair. “I heard that Jonah used to get drunk and show up at his foster home spoiling for a fight, and that’s why Sam dropped out of high school at sixteen and disappeared. He was twenty when his mom died. They must’ve been in contact because he showed up, assumed guardianship of his baby sisters and disappeared again. A year later the three of them moved back into the Jayce house about six miles west of town, and somehow that boy convinced old Zeke Ontario down at the bank to take a chance on him and started buying up equipment. Calls himself a ‘custom farmer.’ I hear he’s got a college education and a keen business sense. You could do worse.”

Sierra sat back with an expelled breath. “Wow. Gwyn, if your customers ever knew you retained this much about them… Sounds like life gave Sam lemons and he got busy making lemonade.”

Gwyn nodded. “I’ll tell you something else. He’s utterly devoted to those two little girls. I don’t think he has any sort of social life apart from them, and they’re happy, well-adjusted children, which is surprising, given everything they’ve been through. I know that for a fact because Molly baby-sat them for a couple weeks last summer. She had a killer crush on Sam for a while after.”

“I can imagine,” Sierra muttered, and Gwyn laughed.

“Yeah, he’s the sort to make the girls’ hearts go flitter-flutter, all right, not that he seems to notice.”

Sierra smiled, deliberately ignoring that, and picked up her coffee cup. “Thanks, Gwyn. I knew I could get the straight dope from you. Now tell me how you’ve been doing.”

Gwyn chatted about the recent improvement in her business and her concerns about Avis, who had been keeping mostly to herself. Genuinely interested, Sierra listened and nodded, sipping her excellent coffee. But in the back of her mind, she felt a little “flitter-flutter” of her own. Not because of Sam’s masculine, clean-cut good looks, of course—she wasn’t a teenager—but rather with the possibility that she might have found the means to making her dreams come true.

At least that’s what she told herself.

Sierra glanced at the clock on the wall for the tenth time in as many minutes. She felt ridiculously nervous, and telling herself that she had nothing to be nervous about didn’t help. Her doubts about Sam Jayce as a business partner had been completely put to rest by her attorney, Corbett Johnson, who had confirmed everything that Gwyn had told Sierra about Sam Jayce and then some.

Not only had Sam put himself through college, taken on the responsibility of rearing his little sisters and convinced the notoriously conservative local banker to back him in business, he’d paid off the mortgage on the small house and forty acres that he and his sisters had inherited from their mother. In Corbett’s opinion, it was only a matter of time before Sam turned up a blinding success, fulfilling the expectations of apparently everyone who’d dealt with him. At the attorney’s urging, Sierra had let him draw up the partnership papers, which she intended to present to Sam today as a fait accompli subtly designed to assure her the upper hand. She doubted he’d go for it, but the papers left room for compromise, while still guaranteeing her the majority of control.

By the time Sam arrived—precisely on time and looking even more breathtaking than before in dark, heavily starched jeans, a simple white T-shirt and a fitted black corduroy jacket—Sierra’s heart was flittering and fluttering again. Maintaining a cool facade, she neatened the lay of her sophisticated surplice blouse, greeted him through the door she’d left standing open and waved him on into her office. His gaze flickered over her, and she felt her pulse quicken.

“Thank you for coming, Sam. Please be seated.” Sierra noticed a large gold college ring on his right hand.

He tugged at the sides of his coat and sat. “I guess you’ve thought it over.”

“Yes, I have, and I’ve decided to accept your offer.”

The smile that elicited crinkled his eyes at the corners, cut deep grooves into his dimpled cheeks and flashed an impressive expanse of strong, white teeth. Suddenly her heart wasn’t just flitter-fluttering; it was beating madly inside her chest like a wild thing trying to break free. Alarmed by her own reaction, Sierra forced herself to get down to business, sounding brusquer than she’d intended.

“I took the liberty of having papers drawn up, so if you’ll just sign, we can get on with planning our new venture.” As she spoke, she pushed two sets of stapled papers toward him, placed an ink pen on the desk between them and sat back, aware of his deepening frown.

He began thumbing through one set of papers. “You had papers drawn up? No discussion? No negotiation?”