Kara nodded at her friend, then lifted a hand to her face as she suddenly felt tears springing up in her eyes.
“Oh, honey.” Courtney reached across the table and covered Kara’s hand with her own. “Try not to worry too much about it. There’s no real wrong answer here. Either way, you and Maeve are going to be just fine.”
“You’re right,” Kara said, taking a deep, shuddering breath and wiping her napkin across her eyes. “If anything, we should be celebrating. It’s not every day that someone comes into my life and offers me more money than I could ever dream of.”
Courtney lifted her water glass and tipped it forward to tap the top against Kara’s. “You’re right. So here’s to, uh, money! Oodles and oodles of money.”
Kara’s lips wavered for a moment before settling into a smile. Picking up her glass, she tapped the top of Courtney’s glass back. “And to friends,” Kara added. “Let’s not forget to toast the most important thing in life.”
“Yes, of course—to friends,” Courtney echoed with a big smile, then settled back into her seat to enjoy the rest of their lunch.
Chapter Eleven
Scott smiled as the movers carried the last of his furniture into his new apartment. When everything was finally set in place, he shook each man’s hand, tipped them lavishly, and, after thanking them all for their help, sent them on their way.
Falling into his familiar down-filled leather sofa, he stretched out. “It’s so nice to have my own place again, finally,” he moaned.
I missed this sofa.
Rolling over, he sighed and drifted off, knowing that the boxes stacked around him could wait. It just didn’t matter right this minute that there was still a lot of work to do to get the place comfortable. He'd earned a nap.
An hour later, Scott glared at the contents of the packing box he had just torn open. He was looking at the pots and pans and wondering where he should put everything when his stomach growled.
He placed a hand on his midsection. It wasn’t surprising that he was hungry and still tired. He’d missed lunch when a meeting with a new client that morning had overlapped with discussions Courtney had set up with Larkin Bay’s town council. Scott had rushed from one consultation to the next and even had to cut the second meeting short so he could get home in time to let the movers in. He’d been on the go since seven that morning, and it was now well past nine at night. He yawned and tried to find the energy to at least put clean sheets on his bed.
Food would help, Scott decided, looking longingly at the unassembled TV components in front of him as he remembered the televised early-season baseball games he was missing. Leaving the apartment, he locked the door behind him, and after jogging down his apartment stairs, was soon headed toward Sullivan’s Place. If he was lucky, he could get some hot food and the baseball updates on the TV there. If he were really lucky, he’d also be able to see Kara and the thought had him quickening his pace.
Kara dug her hands into the warm earth and transferred it carefully to the containers in front of her. As the vermiculite tickled her nose, she looked up at the sun in a futile attempt to stop herself from sneezing. The muffled noise she made delighted Maeve, who was playing in her own pile of soil beside Kara, and the little girl clapped her hands.
“You’re funny, Mama,” she exclaimed.
“I sure am. Mommy has always been hilarious,” Kara replied with a smile. She blew a kiss in her daughter’s direction, which the little girl pretended to catch and place on her rosy cheek. Her chubby, mud-covered hand left a streak of dirt.
Kara grinned at her daughter, delighted with what Maeve had said and how fast her vocabulary was growing. Before she knew it, Maeve would be in school full-time and then she’d be asking for dance lessons and soccer cleats and piano books, and after that, her college tuition would need to be paid. The years looming ahead promised to be very expensive.
And this, Kara sighed as she went back to her work, was the crux of her dilemma. She wrinkled her nose. If she sold the garden center’s land, she would be able to afford all those things. She might even be able to afford to buy another smaller parcel of land near town and build a new garden center that would have buildings with roofs that wouldn’t leak in the spring and water pipes that didn’t clog every six months and require costly repairs. She’d also probably even have enough money left over to buy the small house she and Maeve were renting and still provide for her daughter’s college education. Logically, selling this place and moving the garden center to a new location seemed the sensible thing to do.
A ballyhoo from the front of the store interrupted her musings.
“Hi, Mary,” she called, “we’re out back.”
When her friend appeared in the doorway, Maeve squealed with delight and clambered to her feet.
“Oh no, you don’t,” cried Kara and quickly grabbed the little girl by the arm to stop her from hurtling herself at Mary’s skirt in welcome. “Gram Mary’s in her church clothes, and she doesn’t need muddy handprints all over them!”
“She's fine,” the older woman replied. “Everything I’m wearing is going in the wash when I get home today anyway. Come here, little one, why don’t we wash you up a little and then we’ll see what Mary brought you and your mama in this pretty blue striped box I’ve got.”
“Cookies!” cried Maeve joyfully as she recognized the Jaycee’s Bakery blue logo on the box in Mary’s hands.
Kara finished creating the planter she had been working on and carefully cleaned the tools and put them away, all the while wondering why Mary had shown up unexpectedly.
When Kara finally joined Maeve and Mary in the garden center office, she found a freshly scrubbed Maeve sitting at her small table, happily munching on a cookie and drinking lemonade from a plastic cup. Mary was busy at the small sink in the corner of the room, filling a battered old electric kettle with water.
“We’re having tea?” asked Kara, raising an eyebrow. “You’re here for a serious talk, then.”
Mary laughed, but Kara noticed she didn’t disagree as she continued filling the kettle from the office tap.
Kara sat down in the chair across from Maeve and watched her little girl. The blood tests they had run to determine her average blood sugar level over the past few months hadn’t seemed to faze Maeve in the slightest. She was her usual sunshiny self, but Kara was still having a difficult time quieting the niggling voices in her head that were worrying about how high her glycated hemoglobin levels might be.
“How were things at church?” she finally asked Mary. She turned in her seat and narrowed her eyes as she studied her friend. It was very unusual to have Mary show up here on a Sunday afternoon unannounced, especially when the garden center wasn’t even open for business.
“Things were fine. But when you go to worship in this town—you sometimes hear the most surprising things.”
“Like what?” asked Kara curiously.
“That Jamie’s back in town and you’re running off with him and selling the garden center to developers who are going to put high-rise condominiums here.”
Kara stared at Mary in stunned disbelief for a second before bursting out laughing. “Well, that’s all news to me,” she exclaimed.
Mary chuckled as she placed tea bags in the purple-and-gold mugs that were embellished with the garden center’s logo.
“Mark just told me two days ago that Jamie might be moving back to town. I haven’t even talked to him in the past week. So unless he’s planning on clubbing me over the head and dragging me off by my ponytail, I don’t think I’m going to be running away with him anytime soon.”
Kara’s expression changed from one of mirth to somberness. “And with regards to the other rumor, I’ve got something to share with you.”
Kara then proceeded to tell Mary about the offer for the garden center. When she mentioned the amount of money she was being offered, Mary looked at her in shocked silence for a long moment before she spoke. “Oh, dear, Kara darling, think about what you could do with all that money! You and Maeve would be set up for life. You have to take it,” she said, setting the cup of tea she’d made for Kara down in front of her so hard that some of the brew sloshed onto the table.
