Out of the Blue Bouquet (Crossroads Collection) Read online

  He turned to look directly at her. “Glad you had a small enough car that it was easy to move. What brings you to Dixon this morning Ms…?”

  She stammered a reply, “Vaughn. Calla. Calla Vaughn.” Realizing Ian didn’t even know her name made it even worse. Did he think she was married? “It’s, uh, Miss. Not Mrs.” Had she really just said that? “Not Miss, either. Don’t call me Miss Vaughn. It’s just that I hate that Ms. nonsense and I’m not married. So I’m not Mrs. Vaughn. But don’t call me Miss Vaughn. I mean…” She closed her eyes one heartbeat after she shut her mouth. She took a breath, exhaled through her nose, raised her head, smiled, and said, “Call me Calla. And I, uh, file.”

  The dimple had reappeared. Throughout her entire babbling introduction, he hadn’t so much as moved. He cleared his throat and nodded. “You file?”

  “Here. I file here. At Dixon. I, uh, work in the file room.”

  “Ah.” He nodded as the elevator stopped on her floor. When she just stood there, he held the elevator door open with his left hand and gestured with his right hand. “I believe the files are that-a-way.”

  She glanced through the open doors and saw the oversized glass doorway that provided access to the rows and rows of filing cabinets surrounding the cluster of cubicles. “Right,” she said, stepping off the elevator. “Thanks. Uh, thanks for everything.”

  He extended his right hand toward her and said, “My name is…” but when she placed her fingers lightly into his right palm he stopped speaking.

  “I know who you are, sir,” Calla whispered, trying not to think about how nice his fingers felt beneath hers, though staring at his dimple didn’t distract her from that thought very much. She jerked her hand back and stepped further out of the way of the elevator doors. “I see your name all the time.”

  “Right.” He acknowledged. “Well, you’re welcome. No problem at all.” He gave her a single wave goodbye just as the doors slid shut.

  After the doors slid closed, Calla took a final deep breath. In with the good and out with the bad. After she slowly released it, she reluctantly headed to her little cubicle and put her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk. Next to her desk, a large cart from the architectural division sat, piled with papers, plans, and files. Knowing that would take up the rest of the afternoon, she slipped earbuds into her ears, maneuvered through the broken screen on her phone to access her favorite radio station’s app, and started sorting files.

  Samuel Ian Jones thought about Miss Calla Vaughn and her big brown eyes the entire trip from where she left him on the second floor all the way up to the seventh floor. As he walked off the elevator, he tried to rid his mind of the worry and stress he saw in her eyes and focus instead on the amount of work he had to do in the next three hours before his four o’clock meeting. He crossed through the empty conference room that took up the center of the floor then maneuvered through the cubicles used by the interns and assistants. He went straight to his office on the far side from the elevators. He left the door open, knowing his assistant Penny would arrive bare seconds behind him.

  Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Ian set it on the wireless charger, then used the remote control sitting next to the charger to turn on his favorite classical radio station. Only then did he allow himself to go to his coffee maker, choosing an English tea over a coffee pod. After confirming that he had no messages waiting in either office voice mail form or email form, he grabbed his fresh brewed tea and sat on the stool at his drafting table. Before he even picked up his pencil, Penny slipped inside and shut the door behind her.

  “Your four o’clock canceled. The incoming storm has them closing down the site early.”

  “Do I need to go now?” he asked, thinking of the twenty-story building in the heart of downtown. The weekly job site meeting was a vital part of the construction process at this point in the schedule.

  “No. They want to try to arrange a phone meeting with you and the architect first thing tomorrow morning. The full job meeting stays at the regular time next week.”

  “So just fast-tracking this week? Good.” He felt an immediate release of stress over what he needed to accomplish since he’d just added two extra hours of useful work time to his schedule.

  She gestured at him. “You have something black on your shirt.”

  He looked down at the white golf shirt he’d worn to work and saw the streak of oily black dirt. “Hmph. Must have been the Storm.”

  Puzzled, Penny asked, “I beg your pardon? The storm’s miles away. Where did you eat lunch, exactly?”

  “No, not that storm.” Unbidden, his thoughts once again returned to Calla Vaughn. She’d come across as utterly hopeless, which was silly considering they got the car moved within seconds of it breaking down. Maybe she just didn’t know what to do next. The Mister-Fix-It inside of him thought about looking her up in the company directory and calling her, making sure she could handle the arrangements. Maybe he could give her a ride home. Maybe they could stop for a bite on the way. He quickly talked himself out of it. That would ruin his self-imposed moratorium on helping any people under the age of sixty. Well, unless said people happened to have a broken-down car blocking the path to his parking spot. “Never mind. Anything else?”

  “Yes. You received a phone call from someone who claimed it was important but addressed you as Sam. Since only your grandmother ever calls you anything but Ian, I figured it was a vendor. I took the number, anyway.” She held out a slip of paper.

  As he took the note from her, he chuckled. One nice thing about going by his middle name, he always knew when someone actually knew him or when they looked at his name in some directory and tried to pretend. “Thanks, Penny.”

  “Sure. Let me know if you need anything. I’m leaving at two, today, don’t forget. And I’ll be out all day tomorrow.”

  “Right. Long weekend at the beach with the potential husband. I remember.” His own moral compass never entered his relationship with Penny, who happened to be a fantastic secretary despite her personal lack of faith and resoundingly secular worldview.

  As Penny shut the door behind her, he looked down at the dark streak on his shirt one more time then shook his head, reminding…no, telling… telling himself to stay out of it. Instead, he unrolled a set of plans onto his drafting table and focused on the mechanical engineering for the shopping mall Dixon Brothers had contracted to convert into a megachurch.

  By the time three o’clock arrived, the sky outside Calla’s cubicle window had darkened, and it looked more like nighttime than afternoon. She could see the branches of the trees across the street bending and bowing in the wind. Her phone had alerted her twice about thunderstorm warnings, and she thought about the wet walk from the metro station to her apartment she faced this evening. Resigned, she punched holes in the papers in her hand and fastened them to the prongs of the file folder in front of her. Inevitably, she would get soaking wet tonight. She tried to remember if she had an umbrella somewhere in her apartment; not that it would do her any good tonight. Still, since she had to ride the train for a while, she should probably have one on hand.

  Even through the love song playing in her ears, she could hear the rain pelting against the windows. She began praying that the storm would move quickly through the area and completely dissipate before she had to go home. Maybe she could put in some overtime work. She certainly had enough work to do, and she really could use the extra hours.

  Before she could go to her supervisor Francine and ask, her desk phone chirped. She slipped the earbud out of her ear as she answered the phone. “File room, Calla Vaughn,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Hey, girl,” Sami said. “I’m driving you home tonight, but first we’re going to get loaded on nachos and pollo enchiladas,” she announced, accentuating the word pollo. “My treat. No arguing. See you at five.”

  Before Calla could reply, Sami hung up. Relief at not having to walk in the weather warred with the desire not to take Sami up on what was clearly a
charity offering.

  Wait, silly, she thought to herself. This is Sami. It’s not charity. It’s a friend acting like a friend. You’d do the same thing.

  Just as those thoughts left her, the DJ on the radio announced, “Next week is Thanksgiving. Crossroads Florists has teamed up with us here at Q103 to let you send someone special in your life a beautiful fall bouquet. Caller number ten will be our winner this hour. Four-oh-four, five-five-five, Q-one-oh-three. Caller ten.”

  Phone still in hand, she dialed the number. Her heart leaped when she heard it ring. “Q103, you’re caller four. Good luck next time!”

  They hung up without another word. Calla hit redial. To her surprise, she could hear the phone ring again. “Q103. You’re caller ten! Congratulations! Who do we have on the line?”

  Mouth dry, heart pounding in excitement, she said, “Calla.”

  “Well, Calla, you’ve won a bouquet of fall flowers from Crossroads florists. Who do you think you’ll send them to?”

  Calla smiled. “Actually, I know exactly who deserves a bouquet.”

  Ian listened to his desk phone ring but ignored it while he typed details about the limitations of the customer requested heating system into the project’s specifications. He had a two o’clock meeting about this project and didn’t have time to do Penny’s job. As he had pulled in this morning, he felt somehow unexplainably disappointed that Mr. Dixon’s parking space sat empty. He had sort of hoped to catch a glimpse of a faded yellow Geo Storm parked there, which made no sense and had him wondering exactly where that thought even came from.

  He had made it all the way up to the seventh floor today before remembering that Penny had the day off. The morning hours jumped from one crisis to another. For some reason, everything always erupted on Friday morning, as if everyone had sudden onset panic attacks over the prospect of no one working for the next two days. With Penny out, it made everything outside his office door feel like chaos.

  As he finished typing, he didn’t even look up at the sound of a tap on his door. “Come,” he called, sending the print order for the specifications he’d just written to the print department before closing the lid of his laptop. He expected an intern or even his friend Al. When a large bouquet of flowers in the colors of fall came through his door, he raised an eyebrow, confident the person belonging to the legs he could see under the arrangement had come to the wrong office.

  “May I help you?”

  “Delivery for Sam Jones,” a squeaky teenage boy’s voice said.

  Curious, he got up from his desk and removed the mammoth bouquet from the boy’s arms. “Okay. Well, thank you,” he said absently.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” the young man said as he ducked out of the office.

  Who would send him flowers? More importantly, who would send flowers for him addressed to Sam? His grandmother? Definitely not her style, but maybe her assistant did it without guidance? She usually wouldn’t send such an elaborate bouquet full of sunflowers, mums, chrysanthemums, roses, dahlias, and gerbera daisies. He dug through the stems until he found the envelope that contained the card clutched in the prongs of a transparent plastic fork. The scent of the roses filled his senses as he opened the envelope and read the typed note.

  Can’t thank you enough for yesterday. You were a lifesaver. Dinner at my place. Six tomorrow night. Won’t take no for an answer. Want to thank you properly. Calla

  Ian cleared his throat, a little embarrassed and uncomfortable at what he had just read. The last time a girl had so boldly asked him out was for high school homecoming dance senior year. How did he even respond? Should he respond? Should he just not show up?

  Then again, maybe he should show up. Admittedly, he had thought of her more than once since their encounter and elevator ride yesterday afternoon. He had fleetingly entertained the notion of asking to give Calla a ride home and maybe treating her to dinner last night. Still, this seemed very forward on her part, much more forward than he would have expected based on their brief conversation. Highly unexpected, surprising, and a little bit unsettling.

  What did one do with something like this?

  Should he just ignore it all together? That felt rude. Should he return the flowers? Even more rude. She didn’t deserve rude. Maybe just shoot her a short email, or give her a quick call down in filing. Just let her know that he had appreciated the offer, but that the flowers and the gratitude they expressed were thanks enough. No. She had sent him flowers. His response had to be equal to that gesture and an email or even a phone call would seem too impersonal, really.

  Besides, did he really want to decline? He found Calla very attractive. Also, and of equal importance in his mind, he assessed her as a genuinely nice person. What would be the harm in accepting her invitation? Even if things didn’t work out, it might get Al off his back for a while. That would be nice. Of course, she worked for the same employer as he did, and that could spell trouble in the future. Interoffice romances always came with extra challenges. He really didn’t have the time to deal with interoffice drama, much less any inclination.

  Deciding he would have to speak to her in person, he glanced at his watch. He had a few minutes before his meeting began. He would stop by the file room on his way to the print department and politely respond to her invitation.

  Even as he walked out of his office, though, he had no idea what he would actually say to Miss Calla Vaughn. As the elevator arrived on his floor, he decided that unless he saw some very compelling reason to join her for dinner, he would smile and politely let her down. Hopefully, she would take it well.

  Calla strode, skipped, and hopped to the beat of the song playing in her ears, holding a file folder in each hand as she hummed, spun, and swayed to the tempo. Her eyes closed as she performed a stage-worthy pirouette then popped open a file drawer with a hum and a low whistle. She expertly inserted a red file folder into the drawer then rhythmically bumped the drawer closed with her hip and a Rockette flourish before dancing further down the aisle.

  Halfway through a turn, she faltered, and stopped moving entirely when she identified Ian Jones standing at the end of the row of filing cabinets. She must have looked even more odd standing there in a frozen vignette pose with just her eyes widening and no other discernable movement, like a New Orleans street mime, maybe. How long had he stood there, watching her? Feeling her face flush with heat, she straightened, yanked the earbuds out of her ears, and cleared her throat. “Uh, sorry. Just, you know, keeping it fun.”

  His right eyebrow sat higher on his forehead than his left, but the left side of his mouth curled into a dimpled half-grin. “Fun, huh?”

  Her voice sounded weak to her own ears. “It’s, uh, kind of quiet and a little cave-like in here. Music makes the day go a little faster.” She shoved the earbuds into the shirt pocket that contained her phone and adjusted her glasses on her face. He just stared at her with that half a smile on his face.

  “I see.”

  She set the file folders on top of the closest cabinet and walked toward him. Thankfully, he hadn’t come three hours ago when papers, hole punchers, and files had covered the floor. “Oh! Can I do something for you? Penny usually comes for files, but I just remembered she’s out today.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “You know Penny?”

  She shrugged. “Well, I know all the assistants. They come here to get files and, you know, there’s just the four of us down here.” She kept a thin pad of paper in her skirt pocket and pulled it out with a pencil. “What can I pull for you?”

  As she reached him, nervousness came over her that made her hand tremble a little around the pencil. Why, oh why, did she become such a bumbling, stuttering, fumbling idiot around this man? Why couldn’t she act poised and calm? Why couldn’t she look three inches taller and twenty pounds thinner? And maybe more classically beautiful. Without the glasses.

  Ugh.

  He just stared at her, with his head slightly tilted. She began to wonder if she had something on her face. F
inally, she said, “Mr. Jones?”

  He cleared his throat. “Ian. Please, just Ian. So, about dinner.”

  She tilted her head slightly toward him, unconsciously mirroring the angle of his gaze, and raised her eyebrows as if trying to hear what he said better. Was he? No. She must not be understanding him. “Dinner?”

  “Yeah, dinner. Tomorrow. Your place. Remember? Flowers? Invite? Won’t take no for an answer dinner?”

  Flowers? Invite? Dinner? “Uh…” Suddenly, she realized.

  Samuel Ian Jones. Sami Jones.

  Oh no! Remembering what she’d put on that card, her whole face flashed with molten heat and she carefully set the pencil down on the counter before she dropped it. Oh no! “I, uh…”

  “I just need your address. Not sure I can make six, but I can do my best to make six-thirty or so if you’re on this side of town.”

  He was accepting an invitation to dinner from her? Not that she had actually invited him to dinner. Well, he thought she had invited him. Still. Why in the world?

  Deciding not to sound like more of an idiot than she already had every time they’d spoken, she mumbled her address and confirmed that six-thirty would be great. He had the grace not to cringe about her wrong side of the tracks address. Out of habit she asked, “Is there anything you won’t eat?”

  Ian’s face lit up in a smile. It made Calla’s heart thump against her chest so hard she thought he might hear it. “That’s really nice of you to ask. How about this? I promise I’ll eat whatever you put on the table. I’m not what you would call a picky eater. But I’ve never really been a huge fan of shellfish.”

  Calla nodded and said, “Okay, so omakase is for sure off the menu.”