“Eden?” His voice was low, but still heard in the surrounding quiet.
“Doctor.” She appeared in the back room’s archway. In her hand she held a thin-stemmed flower, its large petals furled back, unafraid to reveal its secrets.
“Come in.” The flower pointed the way. “I’m just finishing an arrangement for the front windows.”
Brady smiled. Eden’s lush window displays were legendary. Tomorrow passersby would stop and stare like children in front of a pastry shop.
He followed her. The dark apron that covered her had been left undone in the back, its ties hanging loosely. The shift she wore beneath it was shapeless, a long column moving down her body, unbroken except for the push of small, rounded hips. The apron’s ties swung, and he saw her body’s curves come, change with a single sway, then disappear beneath the pale print. He looked up, realizing the feminine form he’d been ogling was Eden. His interest became unease. He looked away only to see more color, shape, proportion in the tubs, watering cans and jugs of flowers and greens. Spring had just begun in southern Wisconsin, but here, it reigned endless. He breathed in, gathering the composure that had made him one of the most trusted surgeons at Tyler General.
Eden had seen the frown appear on Brady’s face as he’d looked away. She dropped her gaze to the flowers on the table, envying them their beauty. “So another order?” She broke the silence. “Who’s the unsuspecting recipient this time?”
He looked at her. Her face was without makeup, her dark-brown hair pulled tight into a ponytail that stressed the shapes of her features—broad, almost flat cheeks, a colorless mouth. It was an ordinary face on an ordinary woman. She was average in height, only she seemed smaller, swallowed by the apron hanging loose, the formless dress that stretched to the jut of her thin ankles. There mint-green socks wrinkled above dull black loafers, the kind with the wide fit and the puckered seams worn by many of his elderly female patients.
His gaze moved to her hands, pale against the perfection of the flowers. Her wrists were thin. There was a vulnerability about her that made her appear much younger than her years. There was a quiet to her that made her seem much older. Both discouraged ogling. Still he had an urge to kneel and pull up those socks until they climbed smooth up her calves, ending just below her knees that had to be endearingly knobby. His unease crept in again.
She concentrated on the table before her, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed as if she were listening to the flowers. She taped leafy greens to a thin, pointed stick, angled it in among the others, adjusted a slender yellow-and-white bloom. She lifted her gaze back to him. He saw those eyes—large, round and made even more remarkable when compared to the surrounding ordinary features. These eyes didn’t just see, they fascinated, they divined, they reminded one that miracles did exist—all through an undefinable color. Its base was purple, but darker than the frail shade of an iris, lighter than the red-purple of a grape. It wasn’t the purplish-blue of periwinkle or the pale shadow of lilac nor the strong purple prized by royalty. It was a shade that belonged only to Eden.
She smiled, the shape of her face gentling. “Or has the Flower Phantom decided to reveal his identity?”
The Flower Phantom. The name had been coined in Gina Eber’s column in the Tyler Citizen about the recent secret flower deliveries around town. There’d been other anonymous gifts—the motorized toy jeeps to take the children cancer patients to chemotherapy; the DVD players with a complete collection of Jerry Lewis films for long-term care. But it was the flowers everyone remembered the most.
Eden unrolled some wire and clipped it. “Gina’s a good friend of mine, you know. In fact, she’s been stopping by the shop even more frequently.” She met Brady’s gaze.
“You don’t think she knows, do you?”
“She brought up the subject once or twice.” Eden looped a length of ribbon back and forth. “I told her that was privileged information between a florist and her client.”
He heard the unexpected jest in her soft voice. He remembered the push of her hips as she walked, the hint of curves and rounds. He couldn’t look away.
For a moment neither did she. When she finally did, he followed her gaze to the flowers waiting for her. There he saw blooms of purple. He searched for the shade of her eyes. He was a man who liked things defined.
“What color are your eyes?”
Her cheeks flushed, the deep-red seeming to alter her eye color. He hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable by blurting out the question.
“People tell me it’s violet.” She looked down again, busying herself with the flowers. Only her blush was left exposed.
“Violet.” To most, it was a color. But he knew it as a woman’s name, a name he’d been forbidden to say since the age of eleven.
“Violet.” He said it again defiantly. Once there would’ve been no response inside him. Lately that hadn’t been the case.
He focused on the silent girl in front of him. Seeing the blush still on her cheeks, he chose his words carefully. “Your eyes…they’re unusual.”
She raised her head, not sure if she’d been complimented or diagnosed. She knew she wasn’t beautiful. Beautiful would have been divine. Nor was she ugly. Ugly would have been, at least, interesting. She was plain. Bland as unbuttered macaroni. Except for her eyes. But they were so at odds with the rest of her physical appearance that instead of rescuing her, they only served to confirm that even the gods sometimes made mistakes.
She knew all this before Brady fixed his gaze on her and offered a compliment in the same tone he might use to note the discovery of a rare disease. She also knew how ridiculous she was, imagining his presence here was for any reason other than that she had the most beautiful flowers in Tyler and several miles beyond.
“So what kind of an arrangement would you like to send?” Eden moved the conversation back to business, where it belonged.
He looked at the buckets of eucalyptus and narcissus, the stiff stalks of delphiniums, the clusters of daffodils curving beneath the weight of closed buds. “I want something exotic.” He waved the hands that healed. “Something exciting.”
She didn’t realize she’d sighed aloud until he glanced at her. She covered with a bright smile and a light voice that teased, “Don’t we all?”
His expression went from curious to uncertain. “I suppose.” He moved to inspect the aluminum shelves of vases and foam-filled containers lining the far wall.
His back was to her, yet she didn’t turn to take him in. She didn’t have to. She knew without sight his back’s strong width, his shoulders’ proud slope, the faint pink where the barber had shaved the nape of his neck. She’d had a crush on him since she was eight. She’d been crossing to the park and tripped on the curb. Instead of laughing at her like the other older boys hanging out in the square had done, he’d come and helped her up, asked her if she was all right, his face serious and already adult as he examined her knees. From that moment her heart had been his, even though her head knew her fantasies were futile.
Then he had come into her flower shop late one night over a month ago.
She heard him move. The temptation became too great, and she turned and looked at him. She’d been born without beauty, but every day she created it, surrounded herself with it, gave it to others. Most of all she knew when it was before her.
It was before her now. She looked at him and, for a moment, was adrift.
She looked away before he caught her. As well as she knew beauty, she also knew what she created often fell short of reality, what she craved could never be completely hers.
He asked about a vase. She walked to where he stood.