Bloom of love, p.1
Bloom of Love, page 1
Bloom of Love
A Long Valley Western Romance Novel – Book 10
Erin Wright
Wright’s Romance Reads
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Thankful for Love Blurb
Thankful for Love Preview
The Other Half of My Life
A FREE Story For You…
Stampede of Love Blurb
Stampede of Love Preview
The story doesn’t end…
Also by Erin Wright
About Erin Wright
Copyright © 2021 by Erin Wright
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II © 1943 – Oh, What a Beautiful Morning
Carrie Underwood © 2009 – Mama’s Song
Mark Knopfler & Willy DeVille © 1987 – Storybook Love
This one’s for all of my fans who waited patiently (whether they wanted to or not), as the release date of “Bloom of Love” was pushed back again and again.
* * *
I hope it’s worth the wait.
* * *
PS Thank you for your support. Truly, y’all mean the world to me.
Chapter 1
Christian
Quick Note: If you enjoy Bloom of Love, be sure to check out my offer of a FREE Long Valley novella at the end.
With that, enjoy!
As you wish.
~Westley in The Princess Bride
End of May, 2020
“We have to get El Trono, Mamá,” Nieves Palacios said, the whine in her voice grating on her brother’s nerves. “Everyone at school will make fun of me if we book Café Rubio instead. They’re just a bunch of old men. I told all my friends we’re gonna have El Trono. We can’t change it now.”
Christian Palacios flicked through Instagram mindlessly, his irritation growing by the second with his youngest sister.
It was bad enough that she was spoiled rotten. It was even worse that he had to sit through yet another quinceañera planning meeting.
Yesenia, his second youngest sister and the complete opposite of Nieves in every way, caught his eye and grimaced. She was just as unhappy as he was to be there, but yet, there they were. Him, to be ordered around and told what heavy stuff needed to go where. Her…well, because she was single and still lived at home between semesters at college, so she always got sucked into Nieves’ World.
“I’ll talk to them,” Autumn said calmingly, patting Nieves’ arm. “Maybe they can change their bookings around.”
Autumn, friends with yet another sister – Rosa, this time – had somehow been roped into actually planning this party. How that had happened, Christian wasn’t sure. Maybe she was masochistic and loved nothing more than helping a spoiled brat plan a quinceañera that was more extravagant than most weddings.
“Okay,” Mamá said in her heavily accented English. She very rarely spoke that, instead preferring to stick to her native tongue of Spanish, but with Autumn there, she was doing her best. “We do that. El Trono, just for you. Now, we not talk about flowers yet. Joyful Flowers is good.”
The whole room paused for a moment, everyone scrambling to figure out who or what Joyful Flowers was. Autumn beat them all to the punch. “Oh, you mean Happy Petals?” she asked with a sincere smile at Mamá.
Christian had never had much reason to hang around Autumn up to this point in his life, but her tact and lack of snottiness about his mamá’s English was endearing him to her more by the moment. She was gorgeous, to boot. It was too damn bad she was so young. She had to be, what, 26, 27 years old? Compared to him at 38, she seemed like a child.
And then, the full force of what Autumn said actually hit him and his thumb stopped scrolling and his mouth dropped open. “I’ll go!” he practically shouted. “To go pick up the flowers,” he added.
The room stopped.
Every eyeball was pinned on him.
Even Yesenia, who’d also been glued to her phone – no doubt scrolling through Facebook, hoping that the agony of this meeting would actually end someday – was staring at him, mouth agape.
“You guys are busy. With planning the—” he almost said The Party from Hell, which was what he’d been calling it in his mind for weeks now, “the quinceañera. Lots to do and still figure out. Music, and…and stuff. Carla always knows what to do when it comes to flowers, right?”
They still just stared.
He felt the sweat beading on his brow. He shouldn’t have been so eager. So obvious. But the chance to see Carla again…
“Are you sure…?” Autumn asked slowly, the skepticism obvious in her voice. She and Nieves exchanged quick glances. “Flowers aren’t really your specialty.”
“Like you said, Carla always knows best.” Actually, it was him who said that, but he didn’t slow down long enough to let them remember that fact. “I’ll just bring the fabric samples down, show them to her, and let her spin her magic.”
“Right…” Autumn said, her dark green eyes narrowed as she stared at him, clearly trying to figure out what his game plan was. “Carla is good, though,” she said begrudgingly. “Just let her know what the budget is and give her these.” She held out a few fluorescent-colored strips of fabric. “Do you have any flower preferences, Nieves?”
His youngest sister shook her head, staring just as hard at him as Autumn was. “I only care about the colors. No pastels.”
“Well,” Autumn said with a forced cheerfulness, “we have the music maybe figured out and the flowers for sure figured out. Let’s talk food.”
Christian pocketed the strips of fabric, trying to hide the ridiculously giddy smile threatening to spread across his face. Yesenia caught his eye and cocked one eyebrow.
He shrugged nonchalantly and began flicking through his Instagram feed again. Yesenia may be his favorite sister, but that didn’t mean he was gonna say a word to her about Carla.
Carla.
He was gonna see her again.
He only barely kept himself from whistling.
Chapter 2
Carla
Isn’t that a wonderful beginning?
~Grandfather in The Princess Bride
Start of June, 2020
“Oh, what a beautiful morning,” Carla Grahame sang from one of her favorite Roger & Hammerstein movies, Oklahoma, as she threw together a quick rose bouquet. Perfect for those times when a guy really shoved his boot into his mouth. “Oh, what a beautiful day.”
It was her Monday – Tuesday to the rest of the world – and although she hadn’t had much of a weekend, what with Mr. Ziebarth’s funeral and all, she was still happy to be at work. Who wouldn’t be happy, surrounded by beauty all day long like she was?
A thorn sliced through the hard callous on her thumb and with a moan of pain, Carla popped her thumb into her mouth, automatically turning to pull out her ever-present box of bandaids. She really should just wear gloves while she worked like every other florist out there with two brain cells to rub together, but she never seemed to remember to put them on—
The doorbell jangled and Carla looked up automatically, her professional smile sliding into place even as she quickly pulled her thumb out of her mouth.
Whoa.
Christian Palacios. She hadn’t seen him in ages. He was standing by the glass front door, the bright sunshine streaming in around him, making it hard to see his face, especially under the brim of his baseball cap. But she’d recognize him anywhere.
A guy like Christian Palacios didn’t just walk into a store without a girl noticing. That simply didn’t happen.
She quickly wrapped up her still-bleeding thumb in the bandaid, throwing away the wrapper even as she rounded the counter. “Hello!” she said warmly. “How are you today?”
He moved a little further into the shop, edging in like he was afraid he was going to somehow breathe wrong and destroy the whole place.
This was the way guys always felt in her shop. More than one guy had told her that he felt like a bull in a china shop. She figured that it was just nerves. They didn’t know what they were looking for, and they were nervous they were going to pick the wrong thing.
Which was why she was there. She’d never lead anyone astray.
He shot he
And thus began the game that she always played when a nervous guy came into the store – the “What Did He Screw Up?” game.
He cheated on his wife. Oh. Never mind. No ring. So, maybe his girlfriend. Or! He forgot her birthday. Maybe their anniversary. Poor woman.
He’d moved on and was now looking at the most expensive bouquets in the store.
Oh my God, he called her the wrong name during sex!
Now that she’d hit upon it, she was sure that was it. Funny – she couldn’t remember ever hearing that he’d gotten married, but maybe it happened while she was gone to college, or while she was working at the Toadstool Flower Shop in Boise. She certainly hadn’t done the flowers for his wedding. Somehow, she was just sure that with the bouquet sizes he was eyeballing, it had to be for a wife. Girlfriends didn’t merit bouquets that big.
Poor woman. I can only imagine how hard she’s taking this. I wonder if she kicked him out. I would kick him out.
She admired the long, sleek muscles of his arms as he picked up and put down some of the figurines in the window display.
Huh. It’d have to be really obvious he’d called me the wrong name, though. Not just a grunt that could be misunderstood or something.
How long had it been since she’d had arms like that wrapped around her in bed?
She let out a long sigh. If she could have arms wrapped around her like those, she might just put up with him singing another woman’s name during sex.
“I’m here to order the flowers for my youngest sister’s quinceañera,” Christian rumbled suddenly, breaking the silence of the store, and her wandering thoughts.
Her mouth gaped open for the barest of moments – quinceañera? The last time a guy was sent in to pick out flowers for that was…oh that’s right, NEVER – and then she regained her composure. “How nice of you to help out,” she said with her warmest smile, immediately flipping the script in her head. No wife in bed, eh? Maybe…
Maybe their parents died in a car wreck, and that’s why his mother isn’t in here, ordering the flowers for the party. And his sister was in the car too, and now she’s paralyzed, and this is a big party to commemorate her parents’ passing, combined with her 15th birthday party.
Yes, that’s it.
She was quite proud of herself for figuring that one out with only the barest of clues. She only just restrained from physically patting herself on the back, but she made sure to give herself a hearty mental pat. Sherlock Holmes didn’t hold a candle to her and the clients in her shop.
“Did your sister give you any ideas on what she’s wanting?” she continued.
Christian had moved from the figurines back to the flower section again, this time gently stroking the petals of the deep red roses bouquet that she’d been sure just minutes before he was going to be buying for his girlfriend / wife.
But…maybe he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or a wife.
She tried to squelch the excitement just that mere thought flamed up inside of her. Christian Palacios would be interested in her – a big, fat lump of a girl like her – about the same time he’d be interested in stabbing himself in the eyeball with a fork.
“She…uhhhh…didn’t mention which kind of flower she wanted,” he finally said, almost like he was embarrassed to admit that. Carla was busy trying to figure out why that would be embarrassing when he pulled some silky strips of fabric out of his pocket.
“These are her colors,” he said, holding the fluorescent-colored strips out to her. “She said any flower is fine, but no pastels.”
Carla took the strips in hand with a little laugh. Construction orange, bright purple, and eye-popping pink.
No, pastels wouldn’t work at all.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, running her calloused thumb over the fabric mindlessly, the bandaid keeping her from bleeding all over them, “I think I might have just the thing for your sister. Something she’s never seen before. What’s her name?”
“Nieves.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Carla said, attempting to snap her fingers and failing because of the ribbons she was holding. Flushing, she ignored this flub and hoped he’d follow her lead. “And you said she’s the youngest of the family, right?”
“The baby.”
There was a wealth of meaning behind those two words that Carla was both dying to know, and happy she wasn’t a part of. Christian’s tone…there was drama happening in the Palacios family, she was sure of it.
Well, of course there is, Carla! You silly goose. After all, their parents are dead and Nieves is now in a wheelchair. Huh. Funny, I never heard about the car wreck. Poor guy. Doing so much to help his baby sister.
“Well,” she said with a bright smile, “tell her that I’ll make sure she’s taken care of. There’s a form you need to fill out with budget and date of delivery and such on it; you’ll need to answer that while I take some pics of these ribbons. That way, you can have them back.”
He scribbled a few answers on the paper – true to form, since guys were never as detailed and thorough as women – and then pocketed the ribbons once she’d taken a few photos with her phone.
“I can deliver the flowers out to this address,” she murmured, pulling her reading glasses off the top of her head and settling them on her nose as she scanned over the form to make sure that nothing stuck out as needing extra attention. “Everything looks fine,” she said, pulling her glasses back off and settling them back into her hair. “Since the party doesn’t start until the afternoon, I’ll drop the flowers off in the morning so they’ll be as fresh as possible. Does that work?”
“Sure,” he said, and flashed her a quick smile, again so quickly that if she hadn’t been watching him closely, she never would’ve seen it. He was one she really had to pay attention to – just brief glimpses of emotions or thoughts and then it was hidden away again.
Instead of heading for the door, though, he just stood there, shuffling his feet and mindlessly rotating his baseball cap in his hands.
“Is there…something else?” Carla asked politely. Every one of her spidey senses was going off – there was something going on here. Something she hadn’t figured out yet.
The only thing she loved more than a mystery was solving a mystery.
“No, no,” he mumbled, pulling his cap back on his head firmly. “Have a goo – is this your cat?”
Carla blinked twice, completely confused by the change in topic, and then saw him leaning over to pet Leo, and she laughed. “Oh yes, he’s mine. He’s our shop cat. He loves everyone. He’ll let you pet him until the cows come home, and then still complain that you haven’t petted him long enough.”
“Nice kitty,” Christian crooned, and Carla smiled to herself. He sure was a damn nice guy, which squared up with what she remembered about him from high school. He’d been a year ahead of her and they’d never really run in the same circles, but she’d never heard a bad word about him.
He straightened up and pulled on his cap in one swift motion. “Have a good one,” Christian said, pulling on the brim of his cap, and then he was disappearing through the front door, the jingle of the bell co-mingling with Carla’s lusty sigh.
That ass.
