Painted Petals

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A handful of minutes later Clara ducked into the welcoming warmth of The Range, an appropriately themed café with food to die for and every item on the menu sourced locally. Miss Maggie grabbed a table near the front, providing them with a view of Main Street. As Clara sat she couldn’t help marveling at how quickly things changed. It seemed like yesterday that the light poles had been entwined with evergreen and lights, every shop with a Christmas display in their front windows.

Those decorations were gone, replaced with items of pink and red and white, and there were hearts everywhere. On virtually every surface. Even the postman had decked out his truck with a huge magnetic heart, the traditional cupid’s arrow through it. There was a special quaintness to small-town living, one Clara always found charming. Everyone, like a big happy family, got involved in the festivities.

Let’s see how green this town gets for St Patrick’s Day.

The waitress swung by to get their order. Clara was unable to resist the soup, and Miss Maggie chose a ham chowder. Their drinks arrived rather quickly. Clara wrapped her hands around the mug, breathing in the sweet scent.

“I hope you never move somewhere without proper winters,” said Miss Maggie. “Or I fear you’ll miss your friend there.” She indicated the mug. Clara laughed, which made her friend smile. “Ah, there we go, I was wondering what happened to that joyful light.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you’ve been moping around the clinic all week.”

Clara arched an eyebrow in silent question. Had she been? “Oh?”

“So, out with it. What are you troubling over?”

There was no point in denying her, Clara knew. Miss Maggie always got to the bottom of everything.

“It’s the festivities, I’m afraid.”

“Are things not going well between you and Asher? You two seemed very happy at dinner the other night.”

The fact that Miss Maggie had seen them didn’t bother Clara. It was a small town. “Things are good, smashing, in fact.” She smiled wistfully, gazing out at the snow. Cars passed down the slushy street, people navigating the sidewalks. “I couldn’t be happier. Asher is amazing. Everything I want in a guy and more.”

“But?”

“What am I supposed to do about Valentine’s Day?”

“Ah, that’s what you’ve been agonizing over. Usually it’s the guy doing that.”

The conversation halted as the waitress brought their food. Steam curled up from the yellowish-white soup. It smelled heavenly. Clara’s stomach growled and her mouth watered. How she lived so long without knowing such a fabulous dish existed was beyond her. All she had to do now was avoid overindulgence or her pants wouldn’t fit anymore. Always a curvy woman, she had shed a few pounds since she started dating Asher. Was she more aware of what she ate or was it because dating a cowboy had her on the go? Hard to say.

“Yes, I suppose so.” She swirled her spoon around the bowl. “Is it too early, you know, to mark the day?”

“Is that what this is about?”

Clara shrugged. “The relationship is barely two months old. I wouldn’t call us official or anything along those lines.”

Miss Maggie dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “Are you exclusive, seeing only each other?”

“As far as I know,” she said, her face scrunched up in thought. “Suppose we should discuss that, huh?”

“I know Asher, he’s a one-woman kind of man. Besides, with everything else he has to tend to, I can’t imagine him having time for more than one special lady. So as long as he’s your only one…”

Was Miss Maggie fishing, questioning her intentions? “Of course.”

Her ex-boyfriend thought he had free rein to do as he pleased, seeing her as just one of his special ladies. Finding out that he was cheating left her shattered, unable to trust, and perhaps that was the real root of her problem. She was still gun-shy, afraid to give her heart away completely. It remained in a fragile state. What happened if she gave of herself entirely, heart and soul to Asher and wound up once again broken, tossed aside? Clara hated to think of Asher that way, but in the end nobody really knew how a relationship was going to play out. They were still in the blissful embrace of discovering each other. What if she turned up something she didn’t care for or Asher discovered a trait he just couldn’t live with?

Clara sat back with a sigh, her gaze once again focused out the window. An elderly couple strolled along at a casual pace, hand in hand, and instantly tears burned the back of Clara’s eyes. Would she ever be that woman, growing old with the love of her life, happy in the knowledge that theirs was a life fulfilled?

“Oh dear,” Miss Maggie whispered. She reached across the table and took Clara’s hand in her own. ”Clara, if there’s one thing I know it’s that that man adores you. If you believe in love at first sight, consider his heart yours from the moment he crossed that threshold with Sarsaparilla. He was yours before you even spoke.”

Heat crept across Clara’s cheeks. What Miss Maggie said sounded like the stuff of movies and novels, definitely not the sort of thing that ever happened to her. She liked to consider herself a confident, successful woman with her head screwed on right. But when it came to men and relationships all that went right out the window. One bad relationship, one heart left shattered, was all it took for self-doubt to find its way in. So far she’d managed to keep it under control, refusing to blame Asher or make him pay for the mistakes of another. Loving him came easy, perhaps too much so, and it scared her, the depth of her feelings at such an early stage of their relationship. Falling too hard way too quickly just screamed there would be an impending disaster.

Yet, the way he made her feel, the skill he possessed in making her blush and feel like a young girl…Asher sent butterflies fluttering in her stomach. The touch of his lips against hers, his hand on the small of her back; a shiver passed through Clara. With the briefest of caresses he stoked a long simmering fire waiting to rage into flames, and to think, they hadn’t even slept together yet. Not to say she hadn’t entertained her fair share of fantasies, the mighty fine cowboy laying her down on his bed, tracing the lines of her curves…

“I’m beginning to think you might need to step outside,” quipped Miss Maggie, an all too knowing twinkle in her eye.

By now Clara was used to the heat that spread across her cheeks. She was a young woman with needs, desires, and it was tempting to give in, especially when she cuddled up close to Asher. But the lingering doubts, the pain caused by another, kept her from taking that step.

Clara sucked in her bottom lip.

“Don’t worry,” Miss Maggie said, patting her hand. “What will be will be and there’s nothing we can do about it. Besides, you two were meant for each other, I just know it.”

“I wish I had your confidence.”

“Just let nature take its course, and as clichéd as it sounds, follow your heart. It’ll never steer you wrong. Sometimes we merely forgot how to listen to it.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are one wise woman?”

From there the conversation turned to Miss Maggie’s grandchildren. Clara did her best to participate, but her mind kept wandering back over the things her friend said, specifically the idea of following her heart. Hadn’t she done that with the last guy and look where it got her. Then her mind focused on the first time she spied Asher and the shot of electricity that seemed to shoot through her body. How she managed to conduct herself without falling into a tongue-tripping mess still amazed her, then again, at that point in her life she’d made the decision to forget about love. Just brushed aside such silliness as she deemed it and started making plans for a spinster lifestyle. Then she saw Asher.

From the waiting room of her clinic to her dreams that night, in one quick whirlwind, the very blink of an eye, the girlhood wish for a fairytale love blossomed anew. Asher became her Prince Charming. And she began to wonder if the broken pieces of her heart could mend.