“Oh, my stars and garters, did you have something to do with him changing his mind?”
Her grin spread. “I may have suggested it wasn’t his decision to make.” I stared at her in disbelief and her eyes twinkled. “Not all my meddling is bad.”
She had a point. “He asked me if I wanted to go to a fundraiser dinner in Little Rock on Saturday night.”
“What did you tell him?” she asked as she inched closer to the asparagus ferns.
“I told him yes, but Dena’s makin’ me have second thoughts.”
She rested one hand on the table and the other on her hip. “What on earth for?”
“Well, she reminded me that I don’t have a dress to wear.” I lowered my voice. “I don’t have money to get a new car. I sure as Pete can’t afford to be wastin’ money on a fancy dress.”
“I have a closet full of fancy dresses,” Violet said. “And shoes too. Just come over to my house and pick one out.”
“I can’t do that, Violet.”
“Why on earth not? I won’t be wearin’ them anytime soon. Bring Rose with you and we’ll make a party out of it.”
I flushed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“See? Problem solved.”
“Not entirely,” I said. “Dena also pointed out that I don’t know anything about eatin’ at formal dinners.
“So you learn,” she said. “Joe may have been born with a silver spoon, but he didn’t know if it was a soup spoon or a dessert spoon. He learned at cotillion.”
“Rivers kids didn’t go to cotillion.”
Her mouth twisted to the side. “No, but a Rivers woman can still learn.” Then, without saying another word to me, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and placed a call.
What was she doing?
“Mary Ellen, it’s Violet… I’m fine, but I’m not calling about me. Do you still have those etiquette classes?”
My mouth dropped open.
“Tonight?” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I found myself nodding. “Surely you can make an exception for me. Just this once.” Violet grinned. “Reserve two spots. No, not for me. They’re for Neely Kate Rivers and my sister Rose.”
Rose?
“Seven o’clock and I hear you. They won’t be late. Thank you, Mary Ellen.” She hung up the phone and tucked it back into her pocket. “I think our lesson in the greenhouse is done for today. You and Rose need to be there promptly at seven, so I suggest you plan on getting to Mary Ellen’s house five minutes early. She gives a series of four classes and you’ve missed two, but tonight’s lesson is about tea and dinner etiquette, so the timing is serendipitous. She doesn’t usually let people in midcourse, so I need you two to be on your best behavior.”
“Why Rose?”
“This is a best friend kind of thing. You two’ll have fun.”
I was pretty sure that Rose already had plans for tonight, and it didn’t involve how to use spoons.
Chapter 3
“You and Rose can come over tomorrow afternoon to look at dresses while Mikey’s takin’ a nap,” Violet said. “Ashley will love every minute of it.”
“Okay.” I gave her a gentle hug. “You have no idea how much I appreciate this, Vi.”
“It’s truly my pleasure, Neely Kate. I’m lookin’ forward to hearin’ all about the dinner.” She stood up straight. “Now you get back to doin’ whatever you were doin’ before I called.”
I headed out to the car and pulled out my phone to see if I’d missed any messages. There was one from Jed and a voice mail from the number I hadn’t recognized.
Jed’s text said: Are you free Friday night?
He didn’t usually ask so formally. The whole thing felt off and made me even more anxious. Was he breaking up with me? I switched to my voice mail, and the blood rushed from my head as I listened to the message.
“Ms. Rivers, I need to discuss an important matter with you. It’s in your best interest to call me back.”
I stared at my phone in horror, my imagination instantly racing back to Ardmore and the man I’d killed. When I’d gone back to Oklahoma in July, Miss Zelda—the woman who’d taken me in and cared for me years ago—had told me and Jed that a man in a suit had shown up looking for me.
I quickly looked up the 469 area code and swallowed hard when I saw it was from Dallas.
The high-profile business man I’d killed was from Dallas.
I started to hyperventilate, and my fingers fumbled with my phone as I called Jed.
“Hey,” he said in a sexy voice when he answered, not even trying to sound that way on purpose.
“Jed.” My voice broke and I gave myself a mental shake. It wouldn’t help either of us if I lost control.
He immediately went into no-nonsense mode. “Neely Kate, what’s wrong? Where are you?”
“At the nursery,” I said, sounding far too breathy. “I got a call.”
“A call from who?”
“I think they found me.”
He was quiet for half a second. “Are you okay to drive or do you want me to come get you?”
Part of me wanted him to come get me. I was scared witless, but the more helpless I acted around him, the more I’d worry Jed was only hanging around because he thought I couldn’t handle this situation on my own.
I took a deep breath. “I can drive. The number—”
“Tell me in person. Where’s Rose?”
“Uh… she spent the night with Skeeter and is going straight to her two morning appointments.”
“Meet me at the landscaping office,” he said. Then he hung up. I didn’t have to ask him how he’d get in. We’d given him a key to the back door months ago.
Maeve was staring out the nursery windows at me, probably wondering why I was still there. I forced a smile and waved my phone at her.
She grinned back, but her watchful gaze told me that she didn’t quite believe my story. I wasn’t surprised. Maeve was sharp as a tack.
I took slow deep breaths as I drove back downtown, telling myself I was overreacting and this was nothing to worry about. I’d almost made myself believe it by the time I unlocked the office door and found Jed sitting at the client table in the back. A folding screen concealed it from passersby on the sidewalk.
“Sorry to have called you in a panic,” I said as I dumped my large purse on my desk. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Why would you say that?”
“We don’t know that it means anything. It might be a stupid telemarketer.”
“Let me be the judge of that. Play the message.”
I sat at the table next to him and played the message again, trying not to let him see my terror. Listening to it again had erased my hope that it might be meaningless. There was a bite to the man’s tone, something that would keep a person from getting hired at a phone bank.
“Maybe I should call him back,” I said when the message finished.
“No,” Jed said in a dark tone. “Let me do some digging first.”
“This has to do with him,” I said. “The man I…”
“We don’t know that.”
“It’s a Dallas area code, Jed.” My hand started shaking on the table, but before I could pull it back, he covered it with his own.
“Neely Kate.”
I looked into his face, trying to get a grip. Jed was such a handsome man, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed sooner than last winter. He was tall with closely cropped brown hair, but long enough for me to run my fingers through.
His dark eyes studied me in concern. “I need you to trust me to handle this.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It depends on what I find. What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”
“I have a landscaping appointment I’m about to be late to, lunch with Rose, and then I have a thing tonight.”
He caught my eye. “A thing?”
“An etiquette class. It’s important.”
I’d expected him to ask questions, but he glossed over it like I’d announced I needed to pick up bread from the store. Then again, he was used to me saying and doing all kinds of zany things. He’d told me he liked that I wasn’t like everyone else. But the little self-doubting voice inside of me that never knew when to shut up whispered, Maybe he’s over it. Maybe he wishes you’d just be normal.