Second Chance at Sunflower Ranch

by Carolyn Brown

  Besides that, everything she’d worn to work that day was hung over the back of kitchen chairs, including her bra and underpants. She’d taken them off in a hurry and changed into what she called her work clothes—an old bra, a shirt she could tie up under her breasts, and a pair of cutoff jeans. She couldn’t bring a good-looking man like Bryce into her house to a sight like that, much less to sit down at the table with him for a glass of sweet tea with mud caked in her hair.

  “Some days you win,” she muttered as she picked up a basket of okra and piled a few more pods on the top. “Most days you lose.” She added half a dozen more tomatoes to that basket.

  The phone rang as she was walking out the back door, but she ignored it. If anyone found out that she hadn’t answered her phone, the news would probably make the Bloom Weekly News under the HEARD column on the front page. She could see the little article already:

  Cricket Lawson did not answer her phone. The whole town is wondering if she is sick, and several church ladies are preparing casseroles to take to her.

  Everyone in Bloom knew that Cricket liked gossip too well not to answer a call if she was within hearing distance of the ring. Why on earth she’d forgotten to tuck her phone in her hip pocket was a mystery.

  “Nice garden you’ve got here.” Bryce had walked down to the end of the plot and was on his way back toward the house. “How do you work full-time and take care of this, too?”

  “My brother Rick does most of the work, but he and his family are on a two-week vacation, so I’m doing double time while he’s gone.” She set the okra and tomatoes on the porch. “At least, it rained a lot this week, so I didn’t have to water.”

  Bryce made it to the porch and pulled out his wallet. “I’m surprised that you’ve still got a crop as hot as it’s been. How much do I owe you?”

  “Consider those two baskets your welcome to Bloom present,” she said.

  “Well, then thank you very much. I plan to make a skillet full of fried okra tonight to go with my pork chops.” Bryce picked up the vegetables. “What time do you close the bookstore, so I’ll know next time I want fresh produce to get on over there and buy it?”

  “We’re open until six Monday through Friday and from nine to noon on Saturday, but you are always welcome to come out here and get veggies,” she answered.

  Was he lingering? she wondered.

  Of course he is, that pesky voice in her head told her. He’s just moved to town. He doesn’t know anyone, and he’s going home to eat alone tonight.

  “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow when you come in for a limeade.” Bryce started for his vehicle that was parked next to her car in the driveway. “The ladies at the store told me you like limeades. I’m not psychic!”

  “I’ll be there,” she called out.

  He got into his SUV and stuck his hand out the window and waved.

  She hurried into the house and grabbed her phone from the table. There were ten messages from Lettie and five missed calls from Nadine. She plopped down into a chair and scrolled through her contacts until she found Nadine Betterton and called her first.

  Nadine answered on the first ring, but instead of saying hello, she started fussing. “Where have you been? I was about to get in the car and drive out there. You’re never without your phone.”

  “You haven’t been allowed to drive in years, and I was in such a hurry to get to the garden that I forgot to take my phone with me,” Cricket told her.

  “We’ve got the phone on speaker. You’ve got me, too, and I was worried about you, girl,” Lettie yelled.

  Cricket had repeatedly told them that they should just talk in a normal voice, but they both thought they had to raise their voices when they had it on speaker.

  “Did Bryce Walton come out there for okra and tomatoes? Is he still there?” Nadine asked.

  “What did you think of him?” Lettie butted in before Nadine had finished the last word.

  “He seemed nice enough,” Cricket answered.

  “We’re inviting him to Nadine’s birthday party Thursday night,” Lettie said. “After all, he lives in our apartment building, and, that way, he can meet some folks. Did you know that he loves books?”

  “He mentioned that he likes to read,” Cricket said, and then went on to tell them about falling in the mud.

  “He must think you are beautiful if he asked if you were making a video for television,” Nadine said.

  “Or he was being sarcastic,” Cricket told them.

  “If he was and I find out about it, he won’t be invited to my party.” Nadine’s voice rose even higher.

  “Wouldn’t Jennie Sue and Rick be happy if they came home to find you in a relationship?” Lettie sighed.

  “Hey, they’re only going to be gone a couple of weeks,” Cricket said. “I just met the guy tonight, and he could be engaged or already in a relationship.”

  “Nope, he’s not. I asked him if his girlfriend would be coming to see him or maybe moving to Bloom, and he said he didn’t have a girlfriend,” Lettie informed her.

  Cricket’s heart threw in an extra beat, but she scolded herself. “Bryce Walton is way out of my league, Miz Lettie. He’s educated, downright handsome, and he’s a pharmacist for cryin’ out loud.”

  “Bull crap,” Lettie argued.

  “Well, let me tell you…” Nadine lowered her voice to her gossip tone. “Mary Lou Cramer has already let it be known that her daughter, Anna Grace, will be married to Bryce by Christmas. She even sent an ivy plant to the drugstore today as a welcoming gift from the Cramer Oil Company, and then a peace lily arrived from the Sweetwater Belles. It would be a feather in Mary Lou’s cap to have a pharmacist in the family. Why, Anna Grace might even get elected to be the president of the Sweetwater Belles Club if she could snag Bryce. Sugar Denton is grooming her daughter, Laura Lee, to step into the president’s place of their fancy little elite club, but she’s only married to the CEO of her daddy’s construction firm.”

  Anna Grace, like most of the daughters of the charter members of the Belles, had been a cheerleader in high school, but she had risen even further on the social ladder because she had been elected homecoming queen and still got to ride in the parade every year. She had gone on to college, joined a sorority, and then come home to work in her daddy’s oil business. She was thirty-one now, and her mother, Mary Lou, made no bones about the fact that it was time for Anna Grace to settle down. What Mary Lou wanted, she got—plain and simple.

  “Think a pharmacist is good enough for Anna Grace?” Cricket asked. “A couple of weeks ago, I heard her telling Jennie Sue at the café that she had been dating a dentist, but she really wanted to marry a doctor.”

  “Her mama seems to think that a pharmacist would be just fine. I heard through the grapevine that she was already looking at wedding venues,” Lettie whispered.

  “Good Lord!” Cricket gasped. “Bryce just took over the pharmacy today!”

  “Yep, but when a good-lookin’ bachelor comes to town, you can expect Mary Lou to try to snag him for her daughter. She would like to have grandkids before she’s ninety,” Lettie said.

  “So would we,” Nadine sighed.

  “You’ve got Jennie Sue and Rick’s two daughters,” Cricket reminded them.

  Even though neither Lettie nor Nadine had ever married or had children, they had been surrogate grandmothers to Cricket’s two nieces. They had taken Jennie Sue under their wing when she came back to town six years ago, and Cricket couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t her friends.

  “But we want a grandson,” Lettie said. “And your biological clock is ticking, girl.”

  “Then you’d better adopt Anna Grace,” Cricket said.

  “We’ll do without before we do that,” Lettie declared. “She looks down her nose at me and Nadine like we’re aliens.”

  “We ain’t Sweetwater Belles.” Cricket steered Lettie away from the alien subject. Aliens got the blame for everything in her life. If she lost her car keys, then the al
iens stole them. If she burned a pan of biscuits, then the aliens had abducted her for a few minutes, and it was their fault. “If you ain’t a Belle, then Anna Grace doesn’t waste her breath speaking to you.”

  “That’s the truth,” Nadine agreed. “I’m so glad that Jennie Sue told them to go to hell after her mama and daddy died.”

  Cricket giggled. “I’m not sure she said it just like that, but they sure knew what she meant. I was there when the Belles all came to the house after Charlotte and Dill died in the plane crash. I’d always thought I wanted to be in that crowd, but good glory! I learned real quick that I’d rather be pickin’ beans as puttin’ up with those women. That reminds me. I’ve got a bushel of beans and a bucket of tomatoes that I need to bring in and wash, and I’m still covered with mud.”

  “Go on then,” Nadine said. “We’ll be in town tomorrow, so we’ll stop by the bookstore. I’ve still got a chapter of The Great Gatsby to read before we come to the book club meeting next Monday.”

  “I’ll bring the cookies to club that night,” Lettie offered. “I know you’re super busy since Jennie Sue and Rick are off on their vacation.”

  “Thank you,” Cricket said. “That will help a lot. See y’all tomorrow.”

  “Bye, now,” Lettie and Nadine said at the same time.

  Cricket laid the phone back on the table and headed back outside. She brought in the beans and tomatoes, took care of them, and put them in small baskets to take to the bookstore with her in the morning.

  “Poor Bryce,” she muttered as she rinsed the mud from the beans and laid them out on paper towels to dry. “He’d better be fast if he hopes to outrun Anna Grace.”

  Chapter Two

  Bryce was grateful that the two employees who had worked for the previous owner had agreed to stay on when he bought the drugstore. Ilene, a gray-haired lady who had worked there for thirty years, managed the soda fountain and helped stock shelves. Tandy, a middle-aged pharmacy technician, helped him but wasn’t too proud to stock shelves, manage the register, or do whatever needed done. They had made sure the transition was an easy one when he took over the store, and on Wednesday, his second day at work, they were waiting at the back door when he arrived.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said as he slid out of his SUV and headed across the small parking area to unlock the door.

  “You might be singing a different tune by noon,” Ilene told him.

  “I thought you’d have more time, but it looks like the vultures are circling,” Tandy laughed.

  He turned the key in the door but didn’t open it. Instead he looked up at the blue sky without a cloud anywhere in sight. “Vultures? What are y’all talking about?”

  “You’ve been earmarked to be married by Christmas to one of the town’s most elite women, Anna Grace Cramer. Her daddy owns Cramer Oil Company, and her mother is one of the Sweetwater Belles.”

  He opened the door and stood to the side to let them enter before him. Ilene flipped on the lights and reset the thermostat, then went to open the front door.

  “What’s a Sweetwater Belle?” Bryce asked and wondered why the upper crust of Bloom would want their daughter married to him when they didn’t even know anything about him.

  “A group of women formed a club about thirty years ago here in town. They call themselves the Sweetwater Belles, and they’ve got their fingers in everything, including the holiday and homecoming parades.”

  When two women came in right away, Lettie rolled her eyes toward Tandy and Bryce. Tandy patted him on the back. “The older one is Mary Lou. The tall, blond, younger version of her is Anna Grace. You better think fast because you are about to have to sink or swim.”

  Bryce finished putting on his white lab coat and glanced toward the front of the store to see two well-dressed women slide onto the bar stools in front of the soda fountain. The older one was wearing black slacks, a white silk blouse, and her diamond earrings sparkled under the fluorescent lights. If rich was a perfume, she would have reeked of it. The younger of the two was wearing a tight red skirt that showed half her thighs, and high-heeled shoes that matched her skirt. She had that competent air about her, but she didn’t come across as royalty like her mother did.

  “Sink or swim!” Tandy said out of the side of her mouth.

  “You’re joking, right?” Bryce asked.

  “Not in the least.” Tandy patted him on the back. “Mary Lou wanted her daughter to marry a doctor, but she’s decided that a pharmacist will do since Anna Grace has passed the thirty mark.”

  Bryce wiped sweat from his brow. “But I only just got here yesterday. You’re pranking me.”

  “I wish I was.” Tandy removed her glasses and cleaned them on the tail of her blue scrub top. “I can never locate my glasses in the morning, and when my kids do find them, they leave smudges on the lenses. Someday I’m going to get contacts.”

  Bryce wasn’t interested in Tandy’s smudged glasses or her four kids right then. He wanted her to tell him that she was hazing him. “Prank? Yes?”

  “Prank. No.” Tandy twisted her brown hair up and secured it with a long clip. “Lettie Betterton called me last night and told me to warn you.”

  “But…how…what…” Bryce stammered.

  “This is a small town,” Tandy said. “Everyone knows what everyone is doing, who they’re doing it with, and where they did it. We only read the paper, which comes out today by the way, to see who got caught. Anna Grace won’t be subtle, and she won’t take no for an answer. Mary Lou has made up her mind, and when she does, it might as well be set in stone. Nobody crosses a Belle, except Lettie, Nadine, and Cricket. Oh, and Cricket’s sister-in-law, Jennie Sue,” Tandy whispered. “They never come in here for coffee in the morning, so you’ve probably got about five minutes to think up a reason not to do whatever she wants you to do. That is, unless you like what you see.”

  Bryce’s neck itched with heat that was fast traveling up from his collar to put a blush on his cheeks. Lord have mercy! He had been a science geek in high school and in college. He’d never been one of those guys that the girls pursued and had no idea how to handle such a thing.

  He’d been in town only a couple of days, and he had been brought up not to lie. What was he going to say if she asked him to dinner or to a party? Would not accepting her invitation ruin his business? He sure wished he had time to call his mother, or even his grandmother, and ask them for advice. Even though Bloom Drug Store was the only pharmacy in town, it wasn’t all that far to Sweetwater where folks would have a choice of several places to fill their prescriptions. What if he lost all kinds of customers because he refused to fall down at Anna Grace’s feet and kiss that big turquoise ring he could see sparkling on her finger? No wonder the previous owner gave him such a good deal on the drugstore—the old guy probably got sick and tired of playing small-town politics.

  Tandy picked up a bottle of spray and a dust rag. “Ilene is taking her sweet time getting their coffee. She’s trying to give you time to get your ducks in a row, so to speak.”

  “Bless her heart and thank you for the warning and for explaining to me about the Belles.” Bryce let out a long breath of air and tried to think of plausible excuses. His mama and daddy had taken him to church every single Sunday from the time he was born until he went to college. Then he went home on weekends that first four years and drove them to church. He sent up a silent prayer asking God to help him out of this big mess.

  Before his prayer ended, Lettie and Nadine pushed through the glass door at the front of the store and headed straight back to one of the little bistro tables with the four chairs around it.

  “Mornin’, Ilene,” Nadine called out. “Me and Lettie will have our usual. Neither of us wanted to cook breakfast this morning.”

  “Two honey buns and two cups of hot chocolate coming right up,” Ilene said.

  Anna Grace slid off her bar stool and started toward the back of the store, where the pharmacy was located. There was something about her pasted-
on smile and the look in her eyes that let Bryce know Tandy and Ilene were not pranking him.

  “Hey, Anna Grace, I heard that you and your dentist boyfriend broke up last week,” Lettie said.

  “Is your poor little heart just plumb broken?” Nadine asked.

  “No, I broke up with him,” Anna Grace answered.

  “Well, honey, if you get down in the dumps, I suggest you watch a good movie. Me and Lettie like all the Home Alone movies when we’re feeling blue. They make us laugh,” Nadine said.

  Anna Grace’s smile faded, and she tilted her chin up a notch. “I’m sure that little movie would appeal to old folks like y’all, but I’m just fine. Like I said, I broke up with him, so my heart is just fine.” She focused her attention on Bryce and pasted her smile back on. Her high heels on the tile floor sounded to him like .22-caliber bullets heading straight for his heart—or maybe for a spot between his eyes. He needed to think fast, come up with a plan, but his mind was totally blank.

  “Hello, I’m Anna Grace Cramer, and I’d like to welcome you to Bloom. We’re having an informal little cocktail party at our house tonight, and we would just love it if you would join us.” Her smile seemed sincere, but it sure didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Hey, Bryce,” Lettie called out, “didn’t you tell Cricket that you would help her gather vegetables tonight? She’s kind of swamped since Jennie Sue and Rick are out of town.”

  Anna Grace whipped around, and Bryce could only imagine the go-to-hell looks she was giving his two elderly landladies.

  “Yes, I did.” Bryce crossed his fingers behind his back like a little boy who had told a lie. “I’m sorry, Miz Anna Grace, but I have plans.”

  “Some other time then. Maybe I can pick you up tomorrow night, and we’ll go for ice cream?” Anna Grace pressed.