Page 37 of Trusting His Heart

Until Geoffrey snapped her back into the real world and made her want to smile and laugh and live again.

Damn him, damn him for making her love him only to abandon her when he faced the dragon. Why didn’t he trust her then?

She rolled over and smothered her face with her pillow to cry out her frustration without the neighbors calling the police. There, she relaxed, the frustration lessoned, but the pain remained.

Predictable, she could almost set her alarm to the florist delivery. She opened the door to an armful of pink roses. “I think this guy is serious,” the delivery boy smiled as she signed for them, “We all have bets going on when you will say, ‘yes’.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” she laughed, “And what do you think?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“What if I do?”

He looked at her, this had gone past normal delivery person banter. “Do you really want to know?” he asked earnestly.

“Sure,” is this what she had come to – taking advice from randoms? “Give it a go. Do you want some coffee while you think about it?”

He came inside and she turned the machine on. Things could be worse than getting a stranger’s perspective on her non-existent relationship.

“Milk and sugar?”

“Both, white with two please. Thanks.” They sipped in silence as he stirred his cup.

“Okay, you’ve delivered over 30 bunches of flowers, I assume you have talked to him when he has ordered them, what’s your take?”

“Oh, I have never talked to him. No one has. His secretary calls with very precise instructions.”

Bec held her face as blankly as she could manage. Geoffrey set up a daily order with his secretary. No additional thought or care on his behalf other than a credit card bill. She was a game to him, not someone he thought about every day, wondering what flowers she would like.

“I see.”

“No, no, nothing like that. She has precise instructions because he doesn’t know how to tell us what he wants.”

“Go on.”

“The potted African Violets had to have the same blue grey as your eyes – and she sent us a photo for us to color match. We had to send her sample photos, so he could then pick the right ones.”

Bec looked over at the kitchen window sill where the pot found a home next to the ones from their first date. The flowers did match her eyes.

“The orchids needed to be the right shade of cream, the same as your hair. He insisted the natives be long lasting – guaranteed not to die for weeks, and the arrangement was to be topped up with fresh natives every week.”

“I see. And these pink roses?”

He shifted uncomfortably, “They needed to be the same shade as the softest lips.”

“Oh,” she sipped her coffee. The instructions sounded too personal and precise to be from a secretary. As lovely as Layla appeared, she couldn’t know how much Bec loved the natives which held their form and color. He was right – they were not dying. She hated the short lifespan, the futility of flowers given in a moment of love and dead before you could fully appreciate them.

“So, you were going to tell me when I was going to say ‘yes’.”

“If you don’t mind me saying,” again the uncomfortable shift, “You are playing a dangerous game and you aren’t going to win. He is spending a fortune trying to get your attention, clearly he has it or you would have thrown them out, given them away or refused to answer the door. At some point, he is going to give up and the flowers will stop. Then you will want to reach out to him, to thank him or to make things right but by then it will be too late. The flowers will stop, you’ll be alone and so will he.”

“You have thought a lot about this.”

“I’ve seen it before, a woman will ring with some excuse about going out of town and if we were planning on making any deliveries to her, she could give us an alternative address. She usually rings a week after the flowers stop. Then we have to tell her the order has been cancelled.”

“Oh,” she tried to hide the panic in her voice. “When does Geoffrey, I mean his assistant, place the order each day.”

“It came through yesterday for today and tomorrow.”