SWEET ANTICIPATION (23 page)

“Oh, did your mother talk you into taking her to Jones Hall?”

“No, I’m going to a rock concert at the Toyota Center … with a date,” he added, keeping his expression completely blank.

“Oh,” Lauren repeated flatly. It had never occurred to her that Jordan would be seeing other women so soon after what she had considered was an evening of rare intimacy and passion. Her pride was wounded that he could rebound so quickly and, apparently, without remorse. “Well, I’d better hurry or Ho-Ho will be late getting to the hospital.” she murmured, all the while backing toward her bedroom.

Easing the door shut behind her, for several long seconds she leaned her back against it, her hand still gripping the knob as she tried to sort through her thoughts. So Jordan had given up on her. If she weren’t willing to move forward with him, then he would move forward without her. Her refusal to consider change had lost her a chance for future happiness. She had won the battle but lost the war.

She dressed hurriedly, pulling on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved knit top over her underwear, and tied her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, anxious to escape from the house and to stay away until Jordan left. He was in the nursery when she fled through the kitchen and across the yard to the shop. There was a painful tightness in her chest and a growing emptiness that she didn’t want to think about right now. Later, after Jordan had left on his date and she and Rita had closed the shop, Lauren would let go of all the self-pity and self-doubts she was holding bottled inside her.

The ceiling of the shop was dotted with brilliantly colored balloons. Strings hung down like vines from a Tarzan movie, while in one corner a man wearing baggy patched overalls, a flaming-orange curly wig and white greasepaint covering his face was fastening the clips to the balloons that Rita was blowing up at the helium tank.

“Okay, whose fingers are the most tired?” Lauren asked with a smile.

“Mine,” Rita answered immediately. “Besides, I’ve got to finish that arrangement for Mrs. Grissom. I thought I would deliver it on the way home this evening.”

Lauren looked at her watch and saw that it was almost five o’clock. “Go ahead and leave as soon as you finish with it. Melanie and I can manage the shop until six. And I’ll work on the bouquets and corsages for the Smythe wedding tonight at home. If we wait until Friday morning to add the flowers, they will still be fresh for the ceremony that evening.”

For the next half hour, she and the clown worked together, with occasional interruptions when customers walked in. Their reactions were always the same as they stared at the rainbow-colored clouds of balloons. Regardless of what they had intended to buy, they each decided to add a few balloons to their purchase.

“This is one way to improve my balloon-selling business,” she told the clown with a laugh. “Some Saturday I’ll have to hire you to stand outside the shop with a bunch of balloons. You’d probably attract more customers than an ad in
The Houston Chronicle.”

“You name the Saturday and I’ll do it for free,” he answered, his scarlet-painted mouth stretching even wider. “I owe you one for helping me with all these.”

Lauren slipped the rubber neck of a kelly-green balloon over the pointed valve and watched as the colorless gas rushed into it, expanding it to a glossy ball. “This is the last one. I’ll help you load them into your van.”

They each captured handfuls of strings and tied them into several large bunches. Loading the balloons in the back of the van was tricky because they had to be careful that none of the bunches escaped and that the strings didn’t get tangled, but finally Ho-Ho hopped into the driver’s seat of his polka-dot vehicle and drove away.

It was only a few minutes after she had returned to her shop that Jordan appeared, carrying Melanie.

“I went ahead and fed her a little early because I knew you’d be busy,” he said, settling the baby in the small crib. “Oh, and I wanted to buy a bouquet of flowers to take to…well, to take with me. Do you have any extras in your cooler?”

Lauren tried not to let her irritation show as she helped him pick out a pretty bouquet of white daisies and red roses. She added a few fern leaves and a couple of sprigs of baby’s breath, then wrapped the stems in a piece of green tissue paper. “That’ll be twenty dollars and eighty-nine cents,” she said in a crisp, businesslike voice, after writing it down on a ticket. She would never have charged him if these flowers had been for his mother or grandmother, but there was no way she would absorb the cost for his
date.

Jordan seemed amused as he pulled out his wallet and handed her a twenty-one dollars. She opened the cash register and gave him the correct change, but couldn’t find anything that was both polite and sincere to say to him as he left. It would be hypocritical to tell him to have a good time or that she hoped he would enjoy the concert when she didn’t. She hoped he would have the worst evening of his life, because she knew she would.

After six, Lauren transferred the supplies she would need to her house and while Melanie napped, she looped and twisted white satin ribbons, arranging them with sprays of simulated pearls, finely meshed net and artificial white leaves until she had fashioned a large, elaborate bridal bouquet. All that was left was to insert the white roses and orchids in the proper places. She had planned on working next on the bridesmaids’ lavender-and-pink bouquets, but her attention remained fixed on the delicate white creation in front of her.

For some reason it reminded her of her own wedding. It had been a large, fancy affair. Since she was her parents’ only child, they had spared no expense on the details. Her gown had been featured in an advertisement in
Bride’s
magazine and her mother had instructed the florist to fill the church with flowers. Since this had been before her mother owned her own floral shop, it cost a great deal and Lauren remembered how beautiful it had looked. She glanced down at the bouquet on the table, imagining what it would look like when the flowers were in place. Without intending to, she had patterned it after her own bridal bouquet.

Her wedding day seemed so long ago. A lot had happened in the last twelve years. Soon she would be celebrating her thirtieth birthday. Back then she had been an innocent, inexperienced eighteen-year-old, convinced that it would be so romantic to settle down and play house. Things had not been easy for her and Johnny. Without a college degree, he had had trouble finding a job that would support them. He had gone to night school for four years, until he got his associate’s degree, and then another year until he got his insurance license.

Marriage had not been as much fun as she had expected when she was still in high school. But most people are selective, conveniently cherishing the good times and forgetting the bad ones. And there had been plenty of those. She and Johnny had disagreed over whether or not she should work to supplement their income. He hadn’t wanted to buy a house until they could afford a large, impressive one while she had been desperate to get out of their cramped apartment. She had discovered that Johnny’s frugality on their dates, which had seemed sweet when she thought he was saving for their marriage, had turned out to be an irritatingly ingrained trait. She thought back to the day they had bought her engagement ring and how upset Johnny had been about the price of even so small a diamond. Somehow that memory had been buried beneath the excitement of the wedding itself. Now that she thought about it, she and Johnny had even had an argument over the cost of it.

And then there had been the lack of imagination and excitement in their lovemaking. Of course, Lauren hadn’t had any experience by which to compare it, but she had suspected that there should be more pleasure than she was feeling. Perhaps it was the fact that Johnny was not any more experienced than she, or maybe it was that he organized his time so precisely that he actually scheduled their moments of passion. But to be absolutely fair, Johnny had been driven to succeed so he could provide her and their future children with all the finer things in life, and his long hours made him tired and grumpy.

Granted, none of those problems was major. Basically, Johnny had been a good, hardworking man, but perhaps not as perfect as she remembered.

As difficult as it was for her to admit, their relationship had been better when it was based on their friendship rather than on romance. And it had been their friendship that had held the marriage together. But would that have been enough to keep her happy for the rest of their lives? That was something she would never know.

She was no longer a moonstruck teenager, but a grown woman with a child of her own to raise. She had found a true and wonderful passion with a new man, but she had been too cautious to let him into her life. Or maybe she had been afraid that, like before, a man would not live up to her expectations. She had been disappointed once, and it was very likely that subconsciously she had been wary of trying again. It was easier to hold on to all the pleasant memories of her past, ignoring the unpleasant ones, than to step forward and take a new chance.

Pensively, she held her hand out in front of her and watched the light sparkle on the small diamond. These rings had been her protection from the real world. While she had been pregnant, they had kept unwelcome questions and suspicions away from her. Then, after the baby had arrived, they had given her an excuse to hold back from admitting her true emotions to Jordan.

Her fingers fidgeted with her rings until they slipped over her knuckle and lay forlornly in the palm of her hand. “Goodbye, Johnny,” she whispered, her eyes strangely dry. “I’m sorry that you’re gone, but I must keep on living. I’m sure you understand. You were my best friend and you would have been the first to wish me well with my new love as I would for you had the circumstances been different. I’m just sorry that you wasted your last years with me instead of with a wife who could bring you the happiness and ecstasy that Jordan has brought me.”

She now was ready to accept the fact that she truly did love Jordan. Of course she realized that there were no guarantees they would live happily ever after, either, but she could visualize herself growing old with him while she had never thought of herself and Johnny as anything other than high-school sweethearts.

Naturally, she would feel much more hopeful about the future if she knew whether or not Jordan loved her. But she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to invest more in their relationship without her full commitment. She certainly hadn’t given him any encouragement lately.

Lauren breathed a wistful sigh. It might already be too late for her and Jordan. The woman he was with at this very moment might well be someone he could fall madly in love with and marry. If Lauren hadn’t been so cautious, she could have become Mrs. Jordan Daniels.

Instead of working on the remaining bouquets, Lauren emptied the ribbons and supplies out of the box she had brought with her from the shop. She walked carefully through the house, taking down all of Johnny’s pictures, diplomas and certificates, as well as his debating trophies and photo albums, and stored them inside the box. Folding the flaps over it, she taped it shut with strapping tape and put the box in the far corner on the top shelf of the hall closet.

And now if only she could think of some way to let Jordan know her change of heart without being too obvious. She didn’t want him to feel obligated to resume their relationship if that wasn’t what he really wanted. If only she suspected that he loved her, even a little, she would feel more confident that things might work out between them. Maybe once he noticed that all the pictures were gone and she was no longer wearing her rings, he would make the first move.

She was very hopeful the next day when he came by to see Melanie after work. While Lauren was busy with a customer, Jordan took the baby to her house and fixed her a bottle. Lauren tried to hide her impatience as the customer wavered between two almost identical potted plants, wasting valuable minutes of the time she could be spending with Jordan. After finally ringing up the sale and locking the door after the man, she removed the cash from the register, flipped off the lights and locked the back door of her shop before almost running along the sidewalk to her house.

As she walked into the kitchen, she met Jordan in the middle of the room, apparently getting ready to leave. For several seconds, they looked at each other, Lauren searching his eyes for any sign that he had noticed the changes.

“Melanie’s in her crib. I was just coming to get you,” he stated in the same distant tone he had been using with her for the past few weeks, causing her heart to plummet into her stomach. Either he hadn’t noticed the changes, or he had but didn’t care.

“Are you in a hurry again?”

“Yes, I’ve got to be someplace else in about—” he paused as he glanced up at the petal hands of her daisy clock before finishing “—thirty minutes.”

“So how was the concert last night?” she asked. She would rather not hear anything about it, but she was anxious to keep him long enough to find out for sure if he had seen the blank wallspace where the frames used to be. Casually, she rested her hands on the top of one of the chairs, hoping he would notice her bare finger.