A Small-Town Bride

by Hope Ramsay

  She found a rack of women’s pants but couldn’t find a single pair of khakis in any size. Either the less-well-off were wearing khakis this year and the store had sold out of them or the well-off were not donating their used khakis anymore.

  Come to think of it, Amy had never owned a pair of khakis in her life. They were…beige. And Amy liked black and red and royal blue.

  So she turned toward the men’s department, where she found khakis in abundance, including a pair in a smallish size that would stay up if belted around her waist. She would have to roll up the legs until she had enough money to get them altered. She also found a pair of size six-and-a-half hiking shoes, which almost fit her size six feet. The shoes weren’t exactly work boots, but what choice did she have? She wasn’t going to garden in her six-hundred-dollar sneakers.

  The total price for the boots and pants was fifteen dollars. It might as well have been a million.

  Amy stepped up to the counter, where a tall woman with a boyish haircut was sorting a box of baby clothes. She had a sharp blue gaze that widened in recognition the moment it landed on Amy.

  “Ms. Lyndon, welcome to the Haggle Shop. I’m Cornelia, the owner. It’s nice to meet you.” She held out a bony hand. Amy shook it. The woman had a super-strong grip.

  Cornelia glanced down at the pile of ugly clothes and then back at Amy, a question in her eyes.

  “I’m doing some painting and odd jobs, you know, so I needed some grungy clothes,” Amy explained.

  Cornelia blinked a couple of times and then gave her a fake smile, probably because Cornelia found the idea of Amy painting or doing odd jobs around the house laughable. Yesterday Amy would have agreed with her.

  “Let me see what you’ve got,” Cornelia said as she checked the price tags. “These are all pretty worn. Why don’t we call it ten bucks for the whole lot?”

  Wow. Amy wasn’t used to getting immediate discounts on merchandise. But even at ten dollars, the clothes were beyond her means. She needed to bargain the price down further—another thing she had never done in her life.

  “These clothes are literally ready for the landfill,” she said. “I feel as if you should give them to me in return for word-of-mouth advertising.”

  Cornelia stared with her mouth slightly ajar. “Um, I’m sorry, but I can’t give away my merchandise, especially to a person who can afford the price. Ten dollars is a bargain. If you want a handout, go to the Goodwill in Winchester. Although, to be honest, they only give clothes to the homeless.”

  Was that a snarky tone? Yes, definitely. And she could even understand Cornelia’s attitude. But Amy couldn’t tell this woman she was homeless. That would be a lie. Amy had choices and options that real poor people didn’t have. Amy’s situation was a result of her refusal to exercise those options.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll trade you my sneakers for these shoes and pants.”

  Cornelia appraised her sneakers. “Those aren’t Nikes or New Balance, are they?”

  “No. They’re Isabel Marants.”

  “Is that a brand name? I never heard of it. People want brand names, Ms. Lyndon.”

  And Isabel Marant wasn’t a brand name? What planet did this woman live on? Well, forget it. She loved her Isabel Marant sneakers anyway. “How about this?” Amy opened the edge of her jacket to expose the signature Burberry plaid.

  Cornelia’s eyes lit up. “I guess you wouldn’t be wearing a knockoff, huh?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Amy couldn’t even believe Cornelia had questioned the authenticity of her brand-name jacket.

  “So why would you trade a Burberry coat for that pile of rags? Is this some kind of April Fools’ joke?” Cornelia asked.

  “No, it’s not a joke.”

  “Okay. I’ll take the jacket for the clothes.”

  Cornelia’s response came at Amy so fast that she immediately realized her mistake. If she’d given a little thought to this, she could have gotten a whole wardrobe of hand-me-downs for the jacket.

  Cornelia wiggled her fingers, as if she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the jacket. Amy suddenly didn’t want to give it up—another cold night in the car without a jacket would be miserable. Dangerous even.

  She glanced at a rack of clothes to the left of the checkout. “Okay, you can have the Burberry in trade for the pants and the boots and that jacket right over there.” She pointed to an ugly camouflage coat with a bright orange fleece lining. The coat would undoubtedly swallow Amy whole, but its gigantic size would make it perfect as a combination coat/blanket.

  Cornelia glanced at the camo coat and then back at Amy. No doubt about it, Cornelia had put two and two together and come up with a nice, round, desperate number.

  Thank God Cornelia didn’t ask any more embarrassing questions. She merely held out her hand and said, “All right, it’s a deal. Hand over the Burberry.”

  * * *

  Dusty had hoped that Amy Lyndon would get the message and not come back. But she returned an hour later wearing her oversized golf shirt, baggy pants with turned-up cuffs, and a pair of worn-out hiking shoes. What the hell? Had she gone Dumpster diving to find her uniform?

  She was a hot mess. And he would have sent her home again, but he needed her help because Mario Hernandez, his chief porter, had come down with some kind of stomach flu, but only after he’d hauled the chairs for this evening’s wedding reception from the barn and neatly stacked them at the side of the room awaiting their placement at the tables, which meant he’d touched every single one of them.

  Eagle Hill Manor didn’t need a member of the crew giving the wedding guests a rotavirus. So he’d sent Mario home, and now he had the perfect job for little ol’ Amy—setting up the folding chairs and wiping every single one of them down with a sanitizing cleaner.

  A kid without a brain could do this job.

  He pointed to the white resin folding chairs. “I need you to haul those chairs into position, ten to a table round. And then you need to wipe them down with this cleaner.” He gestured toward the cleaning supplies. “You got gloves?”

  She shook her head.

  Crap. He’d forgotten to tell her to get gloves. “Look, Amy, you have tomorrow off, so do us all a favor and get yourself some pants that fit and some good-quality work gloves. You’ll need them.”

  Her big brown eyes widened, but she nodded, her ponytail dancing. Damn, but she was a little-bitty thing.

  “All right, go put on those gloves.” He pointed to the rubber gloves that had been left with the cleaning supplies. “They’ll protect you from any germs Mario might have left behind before he started hurling.”

  She grabbed the gloves, but like the rest of her outfit, they were too large.

  “We’re behind on the setup for this reception, so this job has to be finished in no more than an hour. Courtney needs to make the place look pretty. Carry the chairs two at a time, under your arms. They’re stacked in rows so you can get them distributed quickly. Got it?”

  She bobbed her head again, and the ponytail continued to swing back and forth.

  “All right, let’s see you do it.”

  The itty-bitty woman took off toward the line of chairs, grabbed one, and tucked it under her arm. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite fit because she was very short, and her oversized gloves made it hard for her to hold on. As she reached for a second chair, the first one slipped from her fingers and got caught in the rolled-up hem of her pants. When she tried to catch the wayward chair, it decided to unfold itself and knocked her sideways, causing the second chair to trip her forward, right into the neatly stacked rows of folding chairs.

  She fell on her face, and the stacked chairs toppled like dominoes, leaving Amy sprawled on the floor with a dozen chairs on top of her.

  “Dusty, what the hell is going on?” Courtney Wallace, the head of special events, yelled as she rushed into the room carrying a lopsided flower arrangement that looked as if it had had an unfortunate run-in with the Tasmanian
Devil. She took one look at the heap of overturned chairs and started cussing like a sailor.

  When Courtney started using four-letter words, Dusty stayed the hell away from her and tried his very best to remain calm and carry on. Courtney had a stressful job dealing with temperamental brides and their mothers. Small snafus could escalate into gigantic drama, and judging by the broken stems in the centerpiece she carried, today’s flower problems were anything but a small snafu.

  “No worries. We’ve got everything under control,” he lied. Right now, he needed someone competent to take care of the chairs. He had issues up at the chapel and on the terrace for the early wedding that required his immediate attention. He had no time to babysit his summer intern.

  He started pulling chairs off Amy, praying that she hadn’t seriously hurt herself. “Are you okay?” he asked when he finally uncovered her.

  Amy looked up at him out of her adorable puppy-dog eyes and ignited a warm, lusty flame right in his core. Whoa. His gonads needed to get back in line. She was his employee, at least for the moment. Not that he expected the charmingly cute, accident-prone debutante to last more than a couple of hours.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I may have bruised my hip, but I’ll live.”

  Dusty extended a helping hand as she started to get up. She rejected it with enough of a flourish that he reestimated her staying power. Maybe she’d make it through a day before she quit.

  He gave her his best drill-instructor look. “Those pants are a danger to you and everyone else who works here. On Monday you need to be wearing pants that fit.”

  “I’m sorry. But these were the only pants I could get on short notice. You told me I only had an hour.” Her chin firmed, and a defiant spark fired up in her deep, dark eyes.

  “How long does it take to get a pair of khakis? It ain’t like shopping for clothes at Bloomingdale’s.”

  She put her hands on her tiny hips. “And where would you expect me to find khakis in a size four petite with an hour’s notice?”

  “She’s got a point,” Courtney said in her I’m-really-ticked-off voice.

  Dusty turned toward the director of special events, who’d just brought in another centerpiece with a bunch of broken yellow roses. “What the hell happened to that?”

  “The florist’s delivery van was T-boned by a truck. No one got hurt, much, except the centerpieces. Half of them ended up broken like this. Honestly, I’m starting to think this wedding is cursed.” Courtney put the flowers down on one of the tables and retreated into the workroom at the back of the Carriage House.

  Dusty turned back toward Amy. “As you can see, Courtney’s got a disaster on her hands. And the bride has already had about three dozen hissy fits this morning. We all need you to step up, okay? If you want to keep this job, you’ll get your ass in gear and get these chairs around these tables and then sanitize every single one of them.”

  A muscle pulsed in Amy’s jaw. “Yes, sir, Mister McNeil.”

  * * *

  Amy got to work hauling chairs, but she didn’t try to carry them two at a time. She worked fast, carrying and wiping them down with disinfectant. All the while, Courtney fussed and fretted over the centerpieces, removing the broken roses. By the time Amy had placed and cleaned all the chairs, dozens of roses littered the floor, and Courtney had gone into bitchy wedding planner mode, screaming at some poor florist on her cell phone. From the one-sided conversation, Amy surmised that there wasn’t a yellow rose to be found in all of Northern Virginia.

  The poor bride. She’d probably spent months planning her big day down to the smallest detail, and a fender bender had messed it up. Life could be so random sometimes.

  Courtney ended her phone call and assessed the room. Amy braced herself for another volley of profanity and prepared to be bawled out. But instead, Courtney gave her a little smile and said, “Wow, you did that fast. Thanks. You can go get lunch now.”

  Lunch would have been nice if Amy had any money to buy it. But since she didn’t, she escaped to the gazebo on the western lawn, where she stretched out on one of the benches. The bright April sunshine slanted through the building’s latticework, creating a warm, cozy spot to relax…and doze off.

  Her nap didn’t last that long because Dusty—Mr. McNeil—discovered her and awakened her with a jab to the shoulder. Her eyes flew open just as he said, “I can see you’re doing your best to impress me by sleeping on the job.”

  Damn. What did she have to do to get him to lose that tone of voice? She shaded her eyes and looked up at him. The sunshine turned his blond hair golden. “No, I’m enjoying my lunch break.”

  “Lunch break ended fifteen minutes ago. Where were you?”

  “I was right here.”

  His hands met his hips in an annoyed-male stance. “Lunch for staff is served in the dining room. It’s the only perk that comes with the job.”

  Damn. She could have had a free meal? Her stomach rumbled as if it were also bawling her out.

  “I need you to weed the flower bed around the pool house,” Mr. McNeil said. “I’ve brought down a wheelbarrow with some garden tools.” He pointed over his shoulder to the footpath by the gazebo, where a heavy-looking wheelbarrow sat loaded with rakes, hoes, clippers, and other assorted tools.

  Amy stood up, her sore muscles screaming. She would not let Mister Dusty McNeil show her up. You didn’t have to be a brainiac to garden, although she was beginning to realize just how out of shape she’d become in the last few months.

  “You need to pull out the dandelions and chickweed,” Mr. McNeil said. “You know what a dandelion is, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “Of course I do.”

  “Yeah. And chickweed?”

  She nodded again, even though she had no clue. But figuring out chickweed couldn’t be that hard. It would be ugly because it was a weed. Besides, she didn’t want to admit her ignorance and have to listen to him smugly explain things to her. His whole approach to chair-carrying hadn’t exactly worked for her, had it?

  “Good. I’m glad you know something,” he snarled. “Get to work.” He left her and headed off toward the barn with a cocky stride. Amy paused a moment to admire his tight, well-formed butt. He was a looker for sure. But not a very nice man, all things considered.

  She stretched her aching muscles and dragged herself off to the wheelbarrow, which was exactly as heavy and unwieldy as it appeared. It took her almost five minutes to push it to the pool house.

  When she finally reached her destination, she was out of breath and took a moment to inspect the bed. There were, like, three dandelions growing along the edge near the footpath, but otherwise, the flower bed seemed pretty weed-free to Amy. What the hell? Had Mr. McNeil made her push the wheelbarrow just to exhaust her?

  What a douche.

  She ripped out the dandelions and stood back to admire her work. The flower beds were thick with blooming daffodils in front and flowering shrubs with long arching stems in the back. Some kind of ground cover with tiny white blooms wove its way through the dandelions. In all, it was super pretty.

  And yellow. Even the shrubs in the back had delicate four-petal yellow blossoms that contrasted nicely against the dark brown of their woody stems.

  A wonderful idea sprang to life.

  She could cut the daffodils and a few branches of the yellow shrub, tuck the flowers into the ruined centerpieces, and save the day for Courtney and the bride. No one would notice anything wrong with the flower bed because the white ground cover would hide the missing flowers.

  She went to work, cutting the daffodils and shrubs and loading them into the wheelbarrow. Then, leaving all the tools behind except for the garden shears, she hurried back to the Carriage House.

  She hoped Courtney would still be there, but the room was abandoned. Someone had put white tablecloths on the tables, but the ruined centerpieces still sat on the counters in the back workroom.

  Time was of the essence, so Amy didn’t ask permission before she went to wor
k, tucking the daffodils into the arrangements where the yellow roses had once been and filling some of the voids with branches from the yellow shrub, whose name she didn’t know. She also redistributed the unbroken roses so that every centerpiece—there were twenty of them—had at least a few.

  It took her the better part of an hour, and all the while she anticipated Courtney’s return. Amy was positive she’d improved the flowers, making each centerpiece more dramatic and memorable, and she hoped that fixing this problem might help to convince Courtney that she had some skills as a wedding planner.

  Unfortunately, Courtney never returned. Instead, Mr. McNeil strolled into the Carriage House from the terrace and said, “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve been fixing the flowers,” she said, stepping away from the centerpieces as if she were unveiling a masterpiece. She expected him to be overjoyed with her quick thinking.

  But clearly, she had miscalculated.

  “What have you done?” His blue eyes almost bugged out of his face.

  “I told you. I fixed the—”

  “Did you cut those daffodils from the flower bed by the pool house?”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s okay, because I left the white stuff and I only took a little bit of the yellow shrub.”

  “The yellow shrub is called forsythia.”

  “Oh, okay. I think it looks great in the centerpieces, don’t you?”

  “You weren’t hired to do centerpieces. You were hired to weed the bed.”

  “There weren’t many weeds.”

  “What are you talking about? The bed’s a mess; it’s got chickweed growing everywhere. Leave that. Follow me.”

  It was a command, so she followed, disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to show Courtney what she’d improvised.

  Mr. McNeil marched across the terrace and off to the pool house on his long legs. When he walked fast like that, Amy had to jog in order to keep up. And since she hadn’t been to the gym in, like, forever, she was wheezing by the time they arrived.