Page 10 of A Journey For Jasmine

“I guess,” she said, typing in Mona Wright. “Whoa, no way.”

“What?” Lily asked.

“Hang on, let me see if it’s the same person or someone else.”

She was scanning through more and found a picture. Yep, same person and she whistled.

“Don’t leave me in suspense. You’re worse than Rose.”

“Sorry. No one is as bad as Rose. Mona Wright was one of the top personal injury attorneys in Tampa. So guess we know where she is from.”

“Really?” Lily asked. “That doesn’t make any sense unless she retired, but she doesn’t look that old.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe she got tired of that life. Or it burned her out? Could be she bought her lazy messed-up kid a career.”

Lily laughed at her. “I’m not sure Wesley is lazy. He seemed like he was trying to be twenty places at once and learning everything he could.”

“I was just kidding about the lazy part. The messed-up one too, but what do we know? All I can assume fairly accurately is running a marina isn’t what he’d ever thought he’d do. I get the feeling the same with Mona.”

“You might be right there,” Lily said. “Mona seemed excited and energetic, but we’ve worked a lot of weddings and with wedding planners and she didn’t seem like she had much of a plan. Considering her last job, that is surprising.”

“She did seem surprised when you mentioned getting some contacts of wedding planners. As if it didn’t occur to her to do that.”

“I don’t think it didn’t occur to her as much as if she’s from Tampa as you said, maybe she didn’t think you’d find some around here. But if she is looking for destination-type weddings, she should be reaching out to a lot of the bigger cities that aren’t that far,” Lily said.

“And she was fast to write that all down,” Jasmine said. She did notice that Mona and Wesley were listening and paying attention. Mona was taking notes, Wesley not so much.

But his phone had gone off more than once and each time he’d looked at it and set it back down. She was impressed with that, as not many can be away from their phones for more than ten minutes it seemed.

“I hope she gets a lot of business,” she said. “The more she does, the better for us.”

“As if you need more work,” Lily said. “I often wonder if you need more help.”

She loved that about her boss. They weren’t looking to work their employees to death. They were looking out for everyone.

“I’m good,” she said. “I love what I’m doing.”

“And it shows,” Lily said. “But there are times I wonder if you work more than me.”

“No,” she said.

“You’re at the greenhouses some days before I even leave to come to the office,” Lily said.

All the greenhouses were on Lily’s property just outside of Mystic. It was only ten minutes away, but she liked to start her days there or end there if she could. It was easy since it was sort of on her way to the flower shop.

“You know why I do,” she said. “I want to get there and check on the sprinklers and make sure everything is working. I’ve got to give instructions for the others too. Or on the way home I do it for the next day.”

There were three other staff that worked at the greenhouses. The flowers needed care. Two people did a lot of pruning, planting and shifting around. One other person did most of the collecting to bring out to the manufacturing plant.

Now with Heather working on the property too most days, it was nice because there were times she was getting her hands dirty and learning everything she could working alongside of Jasmine.

She never realized before how much fun it was to teach. Violet loved learning new techniques with flowers and arrangements and Jasmine let her do her thing most times.

Design was what Jasmine always thought she wanted to do, but in the past few years she realized watching her plants bloom and grow was just as rewarding.

“And I appreciate the time you put in. The products show it.”

“Haven’t you said enough times that it all starts with the flowers?”

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