CHAPTER FIVE
The smell of potting soil, growing green plants, and flowers rolled over me and lifted my mood even more.
There was a huge table filled with colorful geraniums, and I headed straight for it.
For the next half hour, I was completely absorbed in selecting my annuals.
Typically, I went for a mixture of pinks and purples in my containers, but for some reason I was being pulled more towards oranges and reds this year.
Lifting a container of red and yellow calibrachoa to my eye level, I considered it.
“This would be pretty with the reddish-orange petunias and the scarlet geraniums...” I said to myself.
I turned around to eyeball the table of geraniums, mentally debating if I wanted to stick with red geraniums for the containers, and my gaze narrowed on a brilliant coral color.
I moved to pick it up and was so intent on the flowers that I bumped into a child.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, reaching out to steady the girl. “Didn’t see you there.”
The girl couldn’t have been more than four, or maybe five years old. Her hair was a dark blonde and her eyes were a bright blue. She was wearing a pink T-shirt, denim shorts and purple sneakers.
“Hi!” She smiled up at me.
“Hey cutie,” I said, automatically looking for her parents.
While there were several shoppers farther across the annuals area and a few families, no one seemed to be looking for the girl.
“Where’s your Mama and Daddy?” I asked her.
“Dunno.” The girl shrugged and pointed at the geranium table. “I wanted to see the pink flowers.”
The child didn’t seem upset by the fact that she was alone. In fact, she was smiling up at me like we were old friends. “What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Chloe,” she said.
“Hi Chloe, I’m Lorna. What do you say we try and find your parents?”
“Okay.” She held up her arms wanting to be picked up.
I scooped her up and settled her on my hip. “We’ll head over to the checkout counter and ask the Broussards if they know who you belong to.”
“I like your hair,” Chloe told me, tangling her fingers in my long ponytail.
“I like your face,” I told her and she thought that was hilarious.
With my free hand I grabbed the plant cart handle and began to make my way down the main aisle of the annual section. The girl gave a happy bounce and began to laugh.
The garden center was packed with shoppers that day, and it wasn’t easy maneuvering with a child on my hip and pulling a heavy wagon full of annuals. My respect for the mothers I saw shopping with more than one child instantly went up—like tenfold.
By the time I made my way to the checkout area I spotted Hattie Broussard—Hattie Lloyd, I reminded myself. She had gotten married a few months ago.
“Hey Lorna!” Hattie waved at me.
With my hands full I could only nod. “Hey girl. I found this little one all on her own over by the geranium tables. She says her name is Chloe.”
Hattie grinned, completely unfazed with the news. “Gave your Daddy the slip again, did you?” she said, tossing a wink at Chloe.
“Hi, Hattie.” Chloe smiled, and there was a whole lot of mischief there. “Can I have a sucker?”
“Sure you can,” Hattie said to Chloe. “Hang on a second.” Then Hattie reached to her waist, pulled out a walkie and spoke into it. “Attention employees,” she said. “Could someone let Mr. Montgomery know that Chloe is currently at the front checkout counter?”
Montgomery? I thought. Nah…it couldn’t be Charles Montgomery. Montgomery wasn’t an unusual surname. This was simply a coincidence. Surely I would have heard if he had a family.
The reaction to Hattie’s announcement was immediate. Several laughing replies sounded off through the walkie. “That’s less than five minutes,” one woman said, chuckling. “Who found her this time?” another voice asked. “I’m with him,” a new male voice replied. “We’re on our way to the front.”
I tried to set Chloe on her feet, but the child would have no part of that; she clung firmly to my neck. Hattie passed the girl a sucker and Chloe had it unwrapped in a flash and popped into her mouth.
“Yum,” she said to Hattie.
So there I was, stuck in place with a line of customers waiting to check out, my plant cart blocking the counter, and with Chloe in my arms. “Sorry,” I said to a couple that were trying to maneuver around me.
“No worries,” a woman said to me. “Your daughter is adorable.”
“She’s not my—” I stopped myself from trying to explain the situation.
Hattie clipped the walkie back on her belt. “Chloe and her Daddy are regular customers of ours,” she explained. “And this little minx likes to sneak off and hide while she’s here. Drives her Daddy nuts.”
“I’ll bet,” I said,
“Hi Daddy!” Chloe said brightly and began to wave at someone behind me.
Turning around, I discovered that Charles Montgomery was indeed walking toward me. My eyes widened in surprise, partly at the realization that he had a child and partly because I’d never seen him dressed so casually before. He was wearing dark jeans, sneakers, and a casual polo shirt.
He didn’t seem like the all-powerful ceremonial magician from the snazzy part of town at the moment. Right then he seemed down-to-earth, approachable and holy cats…he was still handsome as sin.
“Chloe Alexandra Montgomery,” he said, shaking his head and sounding resigned. Then his eyes focused on me. “Well hello, Lorna.”
“Montgomery,” I greeted him politely.
“I got a purple sucker, Daddy!” Chloe announced, bouncing in my arms.
“Young lady.” He sighed. “How many times have we talked about you staying by my side and not running off while we’re here at the nursery?”
“Hide and seek is fun,” Chloe said from around her sucker.
It was everything I had not to laugh.
“Come here,” he said, holding out his arms to his daughter.
Chloe flung herself toward her father and I stepped back. “It was nice to meet you Chloe,” I told the child. “Now if y’all will excuse me, I’m going to finish my shopping.”
“Bye Lorna!” Chloe waved as I maneuvered my plant cart away from the counter.
“Bye,” I said and started back to the geranium tables.
Now while I wasn’t a psychic like my friend Dex, I knew damn good and well that Charles Montgomery would likely follow me.
Call it Witch’s intuition.
I maybe had two minutes alone to consider the geraniums before he and his daughter joined me. He was wisely keeping her in his arms this time.
“Thank you, Lorna for helping with Chloe,” he said. “She thinks it’s hilarious to run off while she’s here and hide under the plant tables.”
“Bet that makes shopping a challenge,” I said, swapping out the scarlet geraniums for the coral color. After placing the new pots in the metal wagon, I lifted my eyes to his. “I wasn’t aware you had a wife and family.”
“It’s only me and Chloe,” he said quietly.
Before I could think best how to respond, Chloe asked a question. “Can I have a pink flower, Daddy?”
“Of course you can,” he said immediately.
I handed the girl a small potted hot pink geranium. “Here ya go.”
Chloe sniffed the flower dramatically and then wrinkled her nose at the sharp smell. “It smells funny. But I like it.”
“It would be pretty on our terrace,” Charles told her. “We’ll have Hattie find us a pot to put it in.”
“Can it be pink?” she asked.
“We’ll see what they have,” he said.
“Okay!” Chloe said, giving her father a hug and a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.
He didn’t wipe his face off; in fact he smiled into her eyes as if they were the only people on the planet. Seeing his obvious devotion to his daughter had my heart fluttering in my chest.
Don’t even go there, I told myself sternly.
He shifted his attention back to me. “We’ve been coming here for the past few years purchasing plants for our terrace.”
“We have flowers and plants at our house,” Chloe informed me.
“I bet that’s pretty,” I said to the girl and selected another coral geranium. “The Broussards do have an amazing selection of house plants. Kate buys them wholesale from them for The Apothecary Shoppe.”
“I’m not surprised by that at all. Kate Weaver has an excellent eye for plants and herbs,” Montgomery said.
“She does,” I replied, caught off guard by his unexpected compliment.
He hitched his daughter higher in his arms. “Chloe and I will let you get back to your shopping. Looks like you plan to do a lot of gardening today.” He looked meaningfully towards my loaded cart.
“Planting up my vegetable garden, containers, and window boxes,” I told him. “It relaxes me.”
“Enjoy your day off,” he said, stepping back with a friendly smile.
That warm smile caught me off guard completely, and I fumbled trying to think of a clever reply but couldn’t. So, I simply settled for a polite nod.
“Bye, Lorna!” Chloe waved at me as they walked away.
Watching the two of them, my mind raced with unanswered questions. Then I caught myself and purposefully steered my thoughts back to my plant selections. I focused on the geraniums before me, determined not to give that man another thought.
Which proved to be damn near impossible.
Because I thought about Charles Montgomery and his adorable daughter for the rest of the afternoon.
***
Working on my back porch, I had a twenty-five-pound bag of potting mix propped up on one of my patio chairs and the half-finished window box on my patio table. My trio of wind chimes sang merrily in the breeze, and I calculated that I had just enough flowers to fill up my final window box.
My back gate swung open and my neighbor Kathleen let herself in. “Hey neighbor!” she called out.
“Hey, Kathleen.”
“Oh wow,” she said, stepping onto the back porch. “You got your vegetables in and look at all those window boxes and containers! You’ve been busy this afternoon.”
“Decided to do something different with my containers this year,” I told her.
“I love the coral geraniums,” she said, tucking her purple sunglasses on top of her hair. “And is this an orange and red petunia? I’ve never seen this kind before. Is it a new variety?”
“I think so. Got them at the Broussard’s nursery.”