“No. I’m thinking of the look on the Colonel’s face when he opens the envelope with his check,” Cara corrected.
“Exactly,” he said, nodding. “Just hold your nose and smile pretty.”
The phone kept ringing.
“Brides!” Cara muttered. “If I ever even entertain the idea of getting married again, Bert, you are authorized to smack me upside the head and have me committed.”
“Never say never,” Bert warned.
“I’m serious,” Cara said. She looked across the workroom. “Here Poppy,” she called.
The curly-haired goldendoodle puppy raced over to her side and propped her front paws on Cara’s knees. Cara bent down to let the puppy lick her chin. “Puppy love. That’s all I need. No more men, and definitely no more weddings.”
Bert pointed at the phone, which was still ringing. “Really. Don’t you think you’d better get that?”
“I’m not answering,” Cara said defiantly. She got up from her stool and stretched. “And I am not stuffing any more flowers in this centerpiece. The wedding is in less than five hours. We’ve got to get these arrangements loaded in the van and get them out to Isle of Hope before three. Whatever Lillian wants, it’ll just have to…”
Before she could finish the sentence, they heard the tinkling of bells coming from the front of the shop. Poppy pricked up her ears and started toward the sound.
“Close the door!” Cara hollered. “Don’t let the dog get…”
But it was too late. Sensing an opening, the seven-month-old goldendoodle, Poppy, streaked toward daylight.
“Grab her,” Cara called to the startled stranger who’s just entered Bloom. He paused for only a split second, pivoted, and lunged toward Poppy, managing to grab on to her collar. But Poppy, an obedience-school dropout who was as determined as she was undisciplined, easily wriggled out of the collar and was out the door in a flash, joyously running full-tilt down West Jones Street.
“Shit!” Cara cried.
“Not again,” Bert echoed. “Not today.”
“Sorry,” the stranger said, turning from Cara to Bert, still holding the collar in his right hand. “I wanted to get some flowers sent to my sister in the hospital…”
“Can you help him?” Cara gave Bert a pleading look. “I’ll go after Poppy. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, start loading the van without me.”
Cara sprinted out of Bloom without looking back.
***
“Poppy!” she called, cupping her hands over her mouth as a makeshift megaphone. “Poppy, come back!”
She passed the restored nineteenth-century town houses and elegant storefronts in her block, and dashed across Barnard Street, dodging cars as she ran.
Three tourists with cameras strung around their necks and unfolded street maps stood on the corner, arguing loudly about where to have lunch.
“No more barbecue,” snapped a twenty-something girl in a tie-dyed shirt and white shorts.
“Did you see a dog run past just now?” Cara interrupted. “Curly white hair, maybe thirty pounds?”
“That way.” The girl’s middle-aged father pointed east. “She sure can run.”
Cara continued east down Jones. She paused by the line of people still queued up for lunch outside Mrs. Wilkes’ boardinghouse. “Did you see a dog run past here?” she asked breathlessly.
“Thataway,” volunteered a bespectacled senior citizen with a plastic tour-company lanyard around her neck.
Cara ran on, crossing Whitaker, Bull, Drayton, and Abercorn. Her thin-soled sandals flapped against the steaming concrete sidewalks. Her face was sheened with sweat, her T-shirt glued to her chest.
“See a dog?” she asked, pausing beside a college kid locking his bike to a utility pole in front of a classroom building on the art-college campus.
“Huh?”
