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“You make it easy for them,” he said, pulling to a stop in front of Lily’s house. “Wow. This is an impressive piece of property.”
“This house was Carl’s. Lily’s first husband. She’s done a lot of work to it and has added more greenhouses as they’ve grown. Zane has taken over the barn for his business and tools. It’s a good thing they’ve got a lot of land to keep growing if they want to.”
“Those girls sure know what they are doing with their business.”
“They’ve been frugal most of their lives. They’ve had to be. Carl was too. Nothing gets wasted in their business. The greenhouses now supply more flowers for the lotions, candles and soaps rather than the flower shop though it's for there too.”
“Are you giving a history lesson on the business?” Lily asked when she opened the door.
“I’m impressed with your property,” he said. “She was explaining some of it.”
“I was thinking that maybe Zara might want to do a field trip with the older kids one day here,” Lily said.
“I’d love that,” she said.
“Then we can work it out. But yes, the flowers here supply more to my business and not as much to the flower shop. Some things just don’t thrive in this area even in a greenhouse. Those flowers have to be ordered. Though Jasmine would love to be out and play the scientist. Between her and Heather, I’m afraid I’m going to have more lab space I’ll have to create.”
“Lab space?” he asked.
“Oh boy,” Zane said. “Is Lily talking about work again? Poppy, come get your sister.”
“I’m so sorry. Let me make the introductions. You know Zara’s parents and my husband. I’m Lily. You’ve met Thomas and Rose, so this is Poppy and her fiancé, Reese McGill.”
He shook hands with everyone that he hadn’t met. Willow came running down the stairs with a bag in her hand. “I’ve got toys for Max. I want to meet Max.”
“Ren, this is my niece, Willow. Everyone, this is Max. Willow,” Zara said, “Max is a little shy. He likes other kids, but he might need some time to warm up.”
“Hi, Max,” Willow said, reaching a hand out to touch Max’s foot. He didn’t shy away, but he wasn’t reaching either. “Does he walk? He’s big.”
“No,” she said. “He does crawl though. How about we go sit down in the living room and Max can get a feel for everyone before we put him on the floor?”
“I know this isn’t the place,” Lily said. “But Zara told us what you do for a living. Heather is my scientist. Her job is to work on scents and formula for a new line of herbal mixtures. More healing properties. I’ve always mixed scents for lotions and candles and soaps. But we are branching out. That being said, she’s tracking all her data in notebooks.”
“Urgh,” he said.
Zara laughed. “Do you know you just made a face that most would have if they had a plate of liver put in front of them?”
“Sorry,” he said.
“She doesn’t mind the notebooks,” Lily said. “Then she inputs the data into spreadsheets.”
“Not much better,” he said.
“She asked if I could find out if you have any tips for her on her data. We aren’t looking for a program, but more for things she can access or store. Analyze and so on. Something faster than what she’s doing in a spreadsheet.”
“I could do that easy enough,” he said. “If you want to find a time we can meet I’ll see what she is doing and looking for. I could probably write a quick program that will allow her to continue with her spreadsheet information and pull from that to give her other reports.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” Lily said.
“You didn’t ask, I offered. It’d be fun. I like doing those things. I offered to do things for my mother for years, but my father didn’t want to be bothered.”
Zara looked at Ren and felt bad he was thinking of that on a holiday. That he tried over the years to still help and had it rejected. As bad as things had been she was starting to realize that he offered olive branches only to have them broken in two.
“She’d love it,” Lily said. “So would I. I’d pay you for your time.”
“Don’t even think of it,” he said.
“Business talk is done,” Zane said. “I’m hungry.”
