Page 108 of Save the Date
Cara gave a grim smile. “I really don’t think you want to find that out, Ricky.”
***
Apprentice floral-designer needed. Owner-operated floral design studio in downtown historic area seeks assistant/apprentice with artistic flair, design skills, working knowledge of flowers helpful, but not mandatory. Ideal candidate must be responsible, reliable, self-starter. Duties also include some clerical work and flower delivery. Must have valid driver’s license and immediate availability.
Cara looked down at the Craigslist help-wanted ad and thought for a moment before rapidly typing the most important addition to the ad:
Whiners, sulkers, and self-involved slackers need not apply.
She added her contact information and hit the Send button. It was nearly four o’clock. She’d loaded the van with the afternoon’s deliveries, and taken Poppy on a brief walk. But she had one pressing piece of business to attend to before anything else.
***
Cullen Kane Floral Design Studio was located in a former Piggly Wiggly grocery store on Habersham Street in midtown Savannah. As far as Cara knew, nearly everything in Savannah was located in a building that used to be something else, and everybody knew what that something was. In her case, she only knew it because she’d spent ten minutes staring at Kane’s website, which trumpeted that his studio was located “in a sensitively upcycled circa-1946 Piggly Wiggly.”
The old red-brick building had been painted charcoal gray, and now sported crisp red-and-white-striped awnings over the plate-glass windows. Huge terra-cotta pots on either side of the front door had palm trees underplanted with white lobelia and asparagus ferns, and the front door itself was painted a gloss red, with wrought-iron inserts featuring the intertwined CK logo, which was also painted in four-foot-high letters on the side of the building.
She parked the van in the lot beside his shop, trying to ignore the stabbing envy in her gut. Kane had at least sixteen spaces in his own dedicated lot, where more palm trees were planted in oversized wooden tubs. A gleaming black Mercedes box truck emblazoned with the CK logo was parked near the door. If a truck could look chic, this one did.
Cara took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The air inside the shop was lightly perfumed and deliciously cooled. The ceiling was open to exposed wooden roof rafters, and dropped ceiling fans whirred soundlessly overhead. A reception area had been screened off from the rest of the building with a red latticework partition, and in front of it, at a black midcentury modern desk, sat a familiar figure—Bert Rosen, dressed in an unfamiliar tight-fitting black T-shirt with the scrolling CK logo.
He was talking on the phone and tapping notes into the laptop computer on the desk and didn’t notice her at first, which allowed Cara time to feel the full extent of the rage and jealousy boiling up from her gut.
Suddenly, it all fell into place. The no-shows, the long weekends, the long lunch hours and mystery text messages. Her assistant’s phantom boyfriend had finally been unmasked.
Bert clicked off the phone, but kept typing. Without looking up he parroted the greeting, which he’d already mastered. “Welcome to Cullen Kane Design. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“I can wait.”
That got his attention.
“Cara?” His pale face bloomed a bright shade of red that exactly matched the screen behind his desk.
“Bert.” She gestured around the shop. “You seem to have had a pretty busy lunch hour.”
“You fired me,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Go on welfare?”
“I fired you four hours ago. You seem to have had a remarkably fast recovery. Or were you already working here—and I’m the last to know?”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Your boss,” Cara said. “I need to see him. Right now.”
“I’ll call back to the workroom and see if he’s available. What’s this in reference to?”
Cara reached over and grabbed the neckline of Bert’s black T-shirt, in the process knocking over a heavy crystal vase holding an arrangement of bamboo leaves and spiky red bird-of-paradise blooms. “This is in reference to him sabotaging my life, buying my building out from under me, and seducing a formerly valuable employee.”
“Owww.” Bert slapped ineffectively at Cara’s hand. “Cut it out.”
She abruptly released the shirt and he snapped backward like a limp rubber band.
A stream of water flowed across the desk and into his lap. “Look what you did!”
“Never mind calling. I’ll find him myself.”
