Page 95 of A Cozy Christmas Blizzard
“They don’t, you know,” he whispered, slipping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her close. She offered him a feeble smile in return. “He might come back.”
She knew differently. “No.” He’d made his choice. His future had been charted and defined as precisely as a road map. Slade Garner was a man of character and strength. He wouldn’t abandon Margaret and all that was important to him for a two-day acquaintance and a few stolen kisses. He’d shared his deepest desires and secrets with her, opened his heart and trusted her. She shouldn’t wish for more. But she did. She wanted Slade.
Christmas Day passed in a blur. Her brothers and their families were there, and somehow she managed to smile and talk and eat, with no one but her father any the wiser about her real feelings. She flew back to San Francisco the following afternoon, still numb, still aching, but holding her head up high and proud.
Her tiny apartment in the Garden District, although colorful and cheerfully decorated, did little to boost her drooping spirits.
Setting her suitcase on the polished hardwood floor, she kicked off her shoes and reached for the phone.
“Hi, Dad. I’m home.” Taking the telephone with her, she sank into the overstuffed chair.
“How was the flight?”
“Went without a hitch.”
“Just the way you like it.” He chuckled, then grew serious. “I don’t suppose...?”
“No, Dad.” She knew what he was asking. He had thought that Slade would be in San Francisco waiting for her. Sheknew better. Slade wouldn’t want to think of her. Already he’d banished any thought of her to the furthest corner of his mind. Perhaps what they’d shared was an embarrassment to him now.
She spoke to her father for a few minutes longer, then claimed exhaustion and said goodbye. After she hung up she sat with the receiver cradled in her lap, staring blindly at the wallpaper.
Starting the next day she worked hard at putting her life back on an even keel. She went to work each day and did her utmost to forget the man who had touched her so profoundly.
Her one resolution for the New Year was simple: Find a man. For the first time since moving to San Francisco, she was lonely. Oh, she had friends and plenty of things to do, but nothing to take away the ache in her soul.
Two days before New Year’s Eve, she stepped off the bus and on impulse bought flowers from a vendor on the street corner, then headed inside her building.
The elderly woman who lived across the hall opened her door as Shelly approached. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Lester,” she said, pulling a red carnation from the bouquet and handing it to her neighbor.
“Now, isn’t that a coincidence.” Mrs. Lester chuckled. “I’ve got flowers for you.”
Shelly’s heart went still.
“The delivery boy asked me to give them to you.” She stepped back inside, then stepped out and handed Shelly a narrow white box. “Roses, I suspect.”
“Roses?” Shelly felt the blood drain from her face. She couldn’t get inside her apartment fast enough. Closing the doorwith her foot, she walked across the room and set the box on a table. Inside she discovered a dozen of the most perfect roses she’d ever imagined. Each bud was identical to the others, their color brilliant.
Although she went through the box twice, she found no card. It was foolish to think Slade had sent them. Surely he wouldn’t be so cruel as to say goodbye, only to invade her life again. Besides, he’d claimed roses were stupidly expensive, and she couldn’t argue with that. They were, especially this time of year.
She was still puzzling over who could have sent them when the doorbell rang. She opened the door, and a deliveryman handed her a second long narrow box, identical to the first.
“Sign here.” He offered her his pen.
Shelly scribbled her name across the bottom of the delivery order, then carried the second box to the kitchen table and opened it. Another dozen red roses, and again there was no card.
No sooner had she arranged all twenty-four flowers in her one and only tall vase when the doorbell chimed again. It was a deliveryman from another flower shop with another dozen roses.
“Are you sure you have the right address?” she asked.
“Shelly Griffin?” He read off her street address and apartment number, and raised expectant eyes to her.
“That’s me,” she conceded.
“Sign here.”
She did. And for a third time discovered—with no surprise whatsoever at this point—that there was no card.
Without another vase to hold them, she emptied her tall jar of dill pickles into a bowl, rinsed out the jar and used that.With the first roses already brightening her living room, she left these to grace the kitchen.
