Lana's Lawman by Karen Leabo Page B

machine.
    â€œNo, nothing special. I just like to surprise my wife now and then. Keeps things interesting, y’know?” He winked, scrawled his signature on the credit slip, grabbed his receipt, and made a hasty exit. A man in a hurry to get home and see his wife.
    Lana gazed after him, her chin propped on herhand; she liked that idea. Certainly Bart had never surprised her with flowers, not after they were married. And he’d never been in a hurry to get home to her. She’d been lucky if he made it home for a late dinner. So often he had to “meet with a client” after hours.
    How nice it must be for Mrs. Sommers to have such an adoring husband. Adoring, not controlling. It had taken Lana a long time to figure out the difference. She’d always gotten plenty of attention from Bart when he was home. But it was the wrong kind.
    â€œBetter alone than to have to put up with that stuff,” she murmured as she filed the charge slip away in the cash register. Still, the quiet Friday night looming ahead of her made her wonder if she’d done the right thing by rebuffing Sloan’s offer. She could have gotten her lawn mowed,
and
she’d have had someone to prepare a meal for, someone to talk with while she ate.
    But, no, stubborn woman that she was, she’d gotten up at the crack of dawn that morning so she could mow her grass. She’d let him shame her into doing it. She’d pulled out the old push mower, grumbling all the while. And nearly dropped from exhaustion after mowing the whole lot.
    At the time she’d thought, Ha-ha, Sloan Bennett, I’ll teach you to think I’m some damsel in distress who can’t perform the simplest of chores. But now her body ached from head to toe. Worse, she’d thrown away the only opportunity she might have to see him again. She knew she was being prideful. But instinctively she alsoknew that if she wanted to rekindle any sparks with a high school flame, she’d better be darned careful. The relationship was absolutely
not
going to be based on her need—whether physical, emotional, or financial—and his willingness to be of service.
    Listen to her. Relationship? Who was to say he had anything like that in mind?
    It was almost closing time, and not a customer was in sight, thank goodness. She sealed up her latest creation, a terrarium very much like the one she’d sent Sloan, and set it on the shelf in her workroom. She worked on them during slow times at the shop, creating miniature desert or mountain or English garden scenes with tiny plants nurtured in the back room under a grow light. She’d gotten the idea last semester from a horticulture class, and her boss, Sue Coldwell, let her set a few out around the floral shop to sell on commission.
    They’d proved pretty popular, and they generated a little extra pocket money. She was even toying with the idea of expanding the business in the future. “Lana’s Landscapes” she would call it. Had a nice ring.
    As soon as the clock hit five, she strode to the front door and flipped the Open sign to Closed, then threw the lock, relieved that no last-minute customers had slipped in. She turned off all the lights, turned on the security system, and let herself out the back door into the alley, where her car was parked.
    It was still daylight outside, but sometimes she felt nervous going out there by herself in the evening. The alley was secluded, and a woman alone would make aneasy mark for a mugger or worse. She thought about the murder of Callie’s father-in-law and shivered, hoping the crime wasn’t a portent of things to come. She liked to think of Destiny as friendly and safe.
    As she inserted her key into the door lock of her Mercedes, she heard the rumble of a motorcycle coming down the alley. She fumbled the keys, dropped them. By the time she’d picked them up again, the rumble was right behind her. Did she dare turn? Or was it smarter to