Blue Dahlia

something,” she called out and kept going.
    Stella blew out a breath and would’ve asked for another basket, but he’d already picked one up, hung it. “You’ve been busy,” she said.
    “Cool, dry weather the last week.”
    “If you’re here to pick up the shrubs for the Pitt job, I can get the paperwork.”
    “My crew’s out loading them. I want to see you again.”
    “Well. You are.”
    He kept his eyes on hers. “You’re not dim.”
    “No, I’m not. I’m not sure—”
    “Neither am I,” he interrupted. “Doesn’t seem to stop me from wanting to see you again. It’s irritating, thinking about you.”
    “Thanks. That really makes me want to sigh and fall into your arms.”
    “I don’t want you to fall into them. If I did, I’d just kick your feet out from under you.”
    She laid a hand on her heart, fluttered her lashes, and did her best woman of the south accent. “My goodness, all this soppy romance is too much for me.”
    Now he grinned. “I like you, Red. Some of the time. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
    “What? Tonight?” Reluctant amusement turned to outright panic in a fingersnap. “I can’t possibly just go out, spur of the moment. I have two kids.”
    “And three adults in the house. Any reason you can think of why any or all of them can’t handle your boys for a few hours tonight?”
    “No. But I haven’t asked , a concept you appear to be unfamiliar with. And—” She shoved irritably at her hair. “I might have plans.”
    “Do you?”
    She angled her head, looked down her nose. “I always have plans.”
    “I bet. So flex them. You take the boys for ribs yet?”
    “Yes, last week after—”
    “Good.”
    “Do you know how often you interrupt me in the middle of a sentence?”
    “No, but I’ll start counting. Hey, Roz.”
    “Logan. Stella, these look great.” She stopped in the center of the aisle, scanning, nodding as she absently slapped her dirty gloves against her already dirt-smeared jeans. “I wasn’t sure displaying so many would work, but it does. Something about the abundance of bloom.”
    She took off her ball cap, stuffed it in the back pocket of her work pants, stuffed the gloves in the other. “Am I interrupting?”
    “No.”
    “Yes,” Logan corrected. “But it’s okay. You up to watching Stella’s boys tonight?”
    “I haven’t said—”
    “Absolutely. It’ll be fun. You two going out?”
    “A little dinner. I’ll leave the invoice on your desk,” he said to Stella. “See you at seven.”
    Tired of standing, Stella sat on the stool and scowled at Roz when Logan sauntered out. “You didn’t help.”
    “I think I did.” Reaching up, she turned one of the baskets to check the symmetry of the plants. “You’ll go out, have a good time. Your boys’ll be fine, and I’ll enjoy spending some time with them. If you didn’t want to go out with Logan, you wouldn’t go. You know how to say no loud enough.”
    “That may be true, but I might’ve liked a little more notice. A little more ... something.”
    “He is what he is.” She patted Stella’s knee. “And the good thing about that is you don’t have to wonder what he’s hiding, or what kind of show he’s putting on. He’s ... I can’t say he’s a nice man, because he can be incredibly difficult. But he’s an honest one. Take it from me, there’s a lot to be said for that.”

eleven

    THIS, STELLA THOUGHT, WAS WHY DATING WAS VERY rarely worth it. In her underwear, she stood in front of her closet, debating, considering, despairing over what to wear.
    She didn’t even know where she was going. She hated not knowing where she was going. How was she supposed to know what to prepare for?
    “Dinner” was not enough information. Was it little-black-dress dinner, or dressy-casual on-sale-designer-suit dinner? Was it jeans and a shirt and jacket dinner, or jeans and a silk blouse dinner?
    Added to that, by picking her up at seven, he’d barely left her enough time to change, much less decide what to change into.
    Dating. How could something that had been so desired, so exciting and so damn much fun in her teens, so easy and natural in her early twenties, have become such a complicated, often irritating chore in her thirties?
    It wasn’t just that marriage had spoiled her, or rusted her dating tools. Adult dating was complex and exhausting because the people involved in the stupid date had almost certainly been through at least one serious relationship, and