Read Online A Midnight Clear by Hope Ramsay - Free Book Online Page B

the flower situation covered. She brought flowers home from the store. She grew flowers in her perennial border. She was the treasurer of the Last Chance Flower and Garden Club. Flowers were her thing. Guys knew this and stayed away.
    But Doc Crawford was not like other guys. He wasn’t staying away, was he? She stood there absolutely gob-smacked. Until this moment, she hadn’t even realized what she was missing. All these years making arrangements for other people. Writing out romantic cards. Hell, helping clueless guys come up with romantic cards. And she’d never, ever been on the receiving end.
    She plucked the small card from its plastic holder and opened it. The handwriting was bold, masculine, and just a tiny bit illegible. Betsy Ashworth, the owner of the FTD florist shop in Allenberg, hadn’t written this card. Tom had written it himself.
    Her pulse went erratic, just like it did every noontime when the man strolled down Palmetto Avenue and stopped to glance through the windows of her shop. He’d been doing this for a solid week, and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, that daily moment when Tom walked by Last Chance Bloomers was the best moment of her day.
    She read the card.
    White roses to remind you of angel wings. Meet me at the village green at midnight on Christmas Eve.
    Love,
    Tom
    Love? Goodness, he’d signed the card with the L-word, and it made her heart pirouette in her chest and her mouth go dry.
    Village green? No one in town referred to the town square as the village green. No one except Tom, the Yankee from Boston.
    What was she going to do about this? She wasn’t ready to fall in love with anyone. In her experience, romantic love was highly overrated. Not only had her ex been an idiot, but the guys who bought flowers from her were just as likely to send a dozen red roses to their mistresses as their wives. In fact, more so.
    More important, she wasn’t ready to meet him for an angelic experience. Chances were, a meeting like that would turn into one of Aiden’s epic meltdowns. Not on Christmas Eve in the middle of town. Let Aiden have his annual Christmas meltdown in private this year. Isn’t that what her family had wanted when they uninvited her?
    No, she wasn’t ready for Tom or the angels or the town square at midnight.
    She picked up the flowers, ready to toss them in the trash. But she couldn’t throw them away. They were so beautiful. So utterly thoughtful. And the man who sent them was kind and patient and knew how to kiss.
    “Damn,” she muttered as she set them back down. What was she going to do now?
    *  *  *
    Teri did nothing about the roses, except maybe enjoy them in a clandestine way. And she might have enjoyed them even more if Tom had continued to stroll by the store. But on the following Monday, four days before Christmas, Tom didn’t make his daily noontime trek to the Kountry Kitchen. And he didn’t do it on Tuesday either. And he didn’t call. Or show up unexpectedly. Or anything.
    It was as if he’d disappeared.
    Of course, she didn’t call him to thank him for the flowers. She’d consciously decided not to do anything about them. And by doing nothing, she’d sent her own message to him.
    She wondered if he was still planning to show up at the town square on Christmas Eve, like one of the characters out of that Nora Ephron movie, Sleepless in Seattle , where the hero and heroine agree to meet at the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day.
    Unfortunately life was not like the movies.
    But someone forgot to tell the members of the Christ Church Ladies’ Auxiliary this fact. Those ladies seemed to think that life—especially when it came to romance—was exactly like the movies. And when Betsy Ashworth, the owner of Allenberg Flowers, mentioned the roses and the contents of the card (which she’d read, contrary to ethical business practices) to Millie Polk, it was inevitable that every busybody in town would know about Tom and Teri’s