Rushing Amy: A Love and Football Novel (18 page)

He understood his daughter was fourteen and tended to blurt out things she hadn’t thought through. He also knew she wouldn’t understand what it was like to believe your child was in danger of any kind. He didn’t support underage drinking by any means, but he didn’t call the police on those kids to be a gigantic prick. He called the cops because of the sheer number of cars in that driveway. The unsupervised teens would decide they wanted to leave sooner or later, and there was nobody home to determine if they were too drunk to drive.

He wasn’t Samantha’s pal. It was his job to protect her from things and people that might hurt her. The thought of one of those boys touching her made him want to flip out. At the same time, she was growing up. It was natural for her to be curious about boys and kissing, but he didn’t have to like it.

He heard the car door open, and a still-sniffling Samantha got out. She waited until he turned to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She shuffled toward him, and threw her arms around his waist.

“I know,” he said. She burrowed against him like she did when she was little. People were probably staring. He didn’t care. “I’m glad you called me, princess.”

“You’re not mad I interrupted your date?”

“No. Amy’s not mad, either. Next time, though, I need you to listen to me. Can we work on that?”

“Yes.” She nodded vigorously.

“Okay, then. The food should be here soon, so why don’t you get back in the car.” He kissed the top of her head. She gave him another squeeze and reached out for the door handle.

A minute or so later, he felt someone touch his upper arm.

“Hey,” Amy said. “Samantha went to the ladies’ room. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” He slid his arm around her waist. “How are you doing?” He felt her body move as she laughed.

“I hope I didn’t step on your toes by trying to help a little with the girls. My dad had to rescue me once upon a time, too. Let’s just say I didn’t have texting capability then.” She let out a sigh. “I was never so grateful to see him in my life.”

“I need to thank you as well.”

“No, you don’t.”

His voice dropped. “Like I knew how to handle Brittany’s situation! It’s not like I carry the necessary supplies around in my back pocket.”

“You would have been fine.”

He let out a chuckle. “Oh, hell, yeah. Ask my daughter about that one.”

They stood quietly for a moment, watching the commotion of cars pulling up, carhops bringing already-ordered food to other customers, and Samantha getting back into his car.

“Listen, Fifi. We’re not going to get a lot of privacy at your front door later.”

“There’s not a lot of privacy
here
.”

“No, there’s not.” He dropped her hand, tipped her chin up, and brushed his lips over hers. She trembled. “Let’s go to Jazz Alley. I will do my best to make sure there’s no flying Italian food, wedding guests, or teenage girls there. What do you say?”

She could hear Samantha’s “Ewww” from where they stood.

“Everyone’s going to start holding up numerical paddles next, Matt,” she said.

“Is that so? Better make it good.” He swept her into his arms, his mouth covered hers, and he kissed her until she was breathless. They heard applause and whistles from the surrounding cars. Amy felt her face superheat in response.

She reached up and took his face in both of her hands. “Matt Stephens, you’ve got yourself a date.”

Chapter Fourteen

A
MY UNLOCKED THE
front door to the shop the next day, and relocked it as she slipped inside. It was already an expensive morning, and it wasn’t even seven o’clock. She’d made a huge dent in the flower wholesaler’s bill before ordering the supplies she needed to construct the wedding order she’d be making next week. But even after paying her delivery driver and Estelle, the bottom line—and her business bank account—looked better than she thought it would. She could almost afford to call the HVAC guy to fix whatever was making the weird noise in her cooler.

She turned from the front door and realized she could hear the proverbial pin drop. The constant hum of the refrigerated unit in her miniscule lobby area was silent. She squeezed her eyes shut.
This could not be happening. Shit!
Maybe the cooler had miraculously repaired itself. Maybe the Flower Shop Fairies had dropped off a new one during the night.

“It could happen,” she muttered.

Maybe she wasn’t going to throw up all over her freshly mopped shop floor.

She opened her eyes, rushed to the cooler, and groaned aloud.

It was dead. It made no noise at all. The glass was warm when Amy laid one palm on it. Even worse, the arrangements ready for delivery this morning were obviously dead, too. They’d have to be remade.
Now
. She could stash the remakes in her other walk-in, but there wasn’t a lot of room in there, and she wasn’t sure she had enough flowers.
Oh, shit.
What was she going to do? And a brand-new unit cost at least five thousand dollars . . . .

She should have called the HVAC guy last night when the sound had gotten worse, but having an HVAC guy on retainer rivaled the cost of hiring U2 to play at a backyard barbecue. The last time she’d spoken to him, he told her she’d have to “nurse that baby” when she opened her doors, and she’d tried, but it hadn’t been enough. She should have bought a new cooler when she opened, and before she had hired two employees.

Amy hugged herself. “Just take a deep breath,” she said. “Just breathe.” She wanted to scream, cry, and run around in little circles, but hey, the only thing that would get her was stared at by people passing her storefront on Broadway. Maybe it was a stroke of marketing genius: She could change her name to the Crazy Florist, send dead flowers to people who had made her customers mad, and hey, she wouldn’t need a cooler at all.

She moved into her workroom, fired up her laptop, and looked up the HVAC guy’s number. She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t going to be all bad, but somehow the lump in her stomach got bigger with every passing second. She had to get those balls back up in the air.

T
WO HOURS LATER,
the HVAC guy emerged from the cooler. “Well, Amy, do you want the good news or the bad news?”

Amy was up to her ass in alligators, otherwise known as madly assembling replacement arrangements. The flower wholesaler had been nice enough to drop off another order after a semi-frantic phone call. He was offloading the delivery in the alley outside her store as she tried to do four things at once. Estelle and Scott the driver would not be here for another half-hour. She rubbed her hands over her face. If she could just live through the next thirty minutes without screaming or crying, the day was bound to get better.

She wondered how much chocolate she’d have to eat before none of this bothered her anymore.

“How about the bad news? I like living dangerously,” she told him.

“It’s dead, honey. You’ll need a new one. The compressor’s fried. It’s cheaper to replace the entire unit than to install another compressor.”

She swallowed hard.

“What’s the good news?”

“Just think how great the new cooler will look in your shop.”

Oh, yeah. One of those half-full guys.
“Well, that’s something to think about.”

He packed up his tools, picked up his toolbox, and touched the brim of his baseball cap. “Good to see you again, Amy. I hope everything else is going well. The office will send your bill next week.” He was out of the shop in less than thirty seconds.

Another bill. On top of the existing bill. On top of the bill she was going to have for another delivery of the same flowers she’d picked up yesterday. She flattened both palms on her worktable, leaned over it, and tried to remember why she’d thought this all was a good idea.

The guy she bought the cooler from in the first place was retiring. He wasn’t a bad guy. She knew he’d taken excellent care of his equipment. If she didn’t want these problems, she should have just bought a new unit, but she knew his family needed the cash they could raise from selling off their fixtures, and she was a sucker, and again, she had nobody to blame for this but herself.

Where was she going to get five thousand dollars?

“Amy, are you okay?” The wholesaler was a somewhat gruff older guy, but he gave her a tentative pat on the back. “Cooler’s dead, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It is.” She tried for a laugh. “Services are pending.”

“Those sons-a-bitches die when you least expect it. I lost eight grand in orchids once. Let’s just say I was afraid my wife and I were going to have to give the HVAC guy our firstborn to pay off the bill, too.” He nodded at her walk-in. “I put everything in there while he gave you the good news.”

“Thank you.” Amy stuck out her hand.

He brushed it aside and held out his arms. “How about a hug? You look like you need one.” He gave Amy another clumsy pat on the back and stepped away from her. “Listen. You pay your bills on time, and you remind me of my daughter. Just for today, there’s a discount. I’ll send you a bill, but let’s just say a few things will get left off.”

Amy just stared at him.

“Now, don’t let it get around. People will think I’m a nice guy, and we can’t have that.” He turned to leave and raised one hand. “See you later.”

“Thank you so much—”

Amy’s words were cut off by the back door’s slam. Tears rose in her eyes. A few seconds later, she heard his voice again. “You need to lock this back door now, you hear?” It slammed again, and there was silence.

E
STELLE BREEZED INTO
the shop twenty minutes later. “Hey, Amy, I’m here,” she called out. “What’s wrong with the cooler?”

“It’s dead,” Amy shouted back. “I’m remaking the arrangements right now.”

Estelle dropped her coat and purse on the loveseat that sat in the corner of Amy’s workroom. It doubled as a break area. “Let me help.” She glanced at two finished arrangements. “Which would you like me to tackle first?”

“How about the one that’s going to the little girl at Children’s Hospital? I was going to send that out first thing, but I had to wait for another wholesaler order.”

Amy was going to have to make a tough phone call later, but right now, making sure everyone got their flowers was much more important. One of her most popular arrangements was a “cupcake” made out of carnations and delivered in an oversized coffee cup with a one-pot package of ground coffee. The worst part of the construction was making sure the stems were the perfect height. She’d had the idea two weeks ago. The people who got them kept calling and re-ordering for co-workers and friends, which was great for her. She stuck two more carnations in the dampened oasis. She glanced up to see Estelle’s brows knit as she regarded Amy.

“Is everything okay?”

Amy waved one hand at her. “Sure. It’s all fine. How are you doing?”

“That had to be kind of a shock.” Estelle nodded toward the cooler.

“It is, but right now I can’t think about it. If you could make the little girl’s arrangement, we can send Scott out with it right away when he gets here. He’s filling the van up before today’s deliveries. The woman that ordered it wants it to be there when the little girl gets back to the room after her surgery.” Amy glanced over the six other order slips lined up on the worktable. “The arrangements for the law firm dinner are going to be the most labor-intensive. I can’t decide if we should start them first, or get the smaller stuff out of the way so they have our undivided—”

The shop phone rang. Amy snatched it up off the base.

“Crazy Daisy.”

“Hello. Is this Amy Hamilton? This is Officer Phillips of the Seattle Police Department.”

There was nothing like a caller identifying themselves as being from the police department to get one’s heart rate up. Amy’s skipped a beat as well. An icy shiver skittered down her spine.

“Y—Yes, this is Amy. May I help you?”

“Ms. Hamilton, your delivery driver’s been in an accident.”

“Oh, my God.” Amy sat down hard on the stool next to her workbench. “Oh, God, no. Is he okay?”

“He’s not badly injured, but he’s being taken to Harborview as a precaution. He was very concerned that we call and let you know.”

“Is he there? Can I talk with him?”

“He’s already enroute to the hospital.” The police officer paused for a moment. “He was making a legal left, and another driver blew through the stoplight. The airbags saved him from a lot more serious injuries.”

“It’s a good thing there were airbags.” If she was having a bad day, Scott’s was worse.

“I’m pretty sure he’ll call you himself when they let him out of the emergency room. He had some cuts and scrapes, he’ll be sore, but he’ll be fine. On the other hand, your delivery van won’t be.” He let out a low chuckle. “You might want to call your insurance company, if you have any preference on where the van should be towed.”

Maybe she was just having a nightmare. She’d wake up from this any minute, everything would be fine, and she would go back to complaining about the little things, like a dead compressor on her refrigeration unit. After all, the compressor could be replaced; Scott the delivery driver couldn’t.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll do that right now.” She tried to sound calm and pulled together. “Thank you so much for calling. I really appreciate it.”

“Thank you, Ms. Hamilton. I hope it all works out.”

“If Scott is fine, it will.”

Amy hung up the phone in a daze. “What’s wrong?” Estelle asked.

“Scott’s just been taken to the hospital. He—” Amy slapped both hands over her mouth.
Breathe
, she told herself. It wasn’t going to help anyone if she passed out. She concentrated on taking in gulps of air, one after the other, until she was reasonably sure she was going to get through the next ten seconds without some kind of medical emergency. “The van’s wrecked. Scott has some cuts and scrapes. We can talk to him when he gets to the hospital.”

The next hour was a blur of phone calls to Scott’s cell and the van’s insurance company; doing anything about the cooler was going to have to wait. The body shop that received the wrecked van was doing an estimate. The guy that Amy talked to, however, wasn’t hopeful. Estelle worked on the arrangements. Amy would take the little girl’s flowers to Children’s herself when she finished with them. The phone rang, and Estelle grabbed it before Amy could.