a couple nights ago and told me she saw you in the same restaurant with a very good-looking young man. She didn't come by your table because she was with her latest beau. And he's not altogether divorced from his second wife. Fact is, he hasn't been altogether divorced for a year and a half now, but that's Lucille for you."
Jolene waved it away. "So, who's the good-looking young man?"
"Logan Kitridge."
"Oh." It came out in three long syllables. "That is a good-looking young man. I thought you didn't like him."
"I didn't not like him, I just found him annoying and difficult to work-with. We're getting along a little better at work, and somehow we seem to be dating. I've been trying to figure out if I want to see him again."
"What's to work out? You do or you don't."
"I do, but... I shouldn't ask you to gossip."
Jolene wiggled closer on the bench. "Honey, if you can't ask me, who can you ask?"
Stella snickered, then glanced toward the reptile house to be sure her boys weren't heading out.
"I wondered, before I get too involved, if he sees a lot of women."
"You want to know if he cats around."
"I guess that's the word for it."
"I'd say a man like that gets lucky when he has a mind to, but you don't hear people saying, "That Logan Kitridge is one randy son of a gun.' Like they do about my sister's boy, Curtis. Most of what you hear about Logan is people - women mostly - wondering how that wife of his let him get loose, or why some other smart woman hasn't scooped him up. You thinking about scooping?"
"No. No, definitely not."
"Maybe he's thinking about scooping you up."
"I'd say we're both just testing the ground." She caught sight of her men. "Here come the Reptile Hunters. Don't say anything about any of this in front of the boys, okay?"
"Lips are sealed."
* * *
In the Garden opened at eight, prepared for its advertised spring opening as for a war. Stella had mustered the troops, supervised with Roz the laying out of supplies. They had backups, seasoned recruits, and the field of combat was - if she said so herself - superbly organized and displayed.
By ten they were swamped, with customers swarming the showrooms, the outside areas, the public greenhouses. Cash registers rang like church bells.
She marched from area to area, diving in where she felt she was most needed at any given time. She answered questions from staff and from customers, restacked wagons and carts when the staff was too overwhelmed to get to them, and personally helped countless people load purchases in their cars, trucks, or SUVs.
She used the two-way on her belt like a general.
"Miss? Do you work here?"
Stella paused and turned to the woman wearing baggy jeans and a ragged sweatshirt. "Yes, ma'am, I do. I'm Stella. How can I help you?"
"I can't find the columbine, or the foxglove or... I can't find half of what's on my list. Everything's changed around."
"We did do some reorganizing. Why don't I help you find what you're looking for?"
"I've got that flat cart there loaded already." She nodded toward it. "I don't want to have to be hauling it all over creation."
"You're going to be busy, aren't you?" Stella said cheerfully. "And what wonderful choices. Steve? Would you take this cart up front and tag it for Mrs ... I'm sorry?"
"Haggerty." She pursed her lips. "That'd be fine. Don't you let anybody snatch stuff off it, though. I spent a good while picking all that out."
"No, ma'am. How are you doing, Mrs. Haggerty?"
"I'm doing fine. How's your mama and your daddy?"
"Doing fine, too," Steve lifted the handle of her cart. "Mrs. Haggerty's got one of the finest gardens in the county," he told Stella.
"I'm putting in some new beds. You mind my cart, Steve, or I'll come after you. Now where the hell's the columbine?"
"It's out this way. Let me get you another cart, Mrs. Haggerty."
Stella grabbed one on the way.
"You that new girl Rosalind hired?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"From up north."
"Guilty."
She pursed her lips, peered around with obvious irritation. "You sure have shuffled things around."
"I know. I hope the new scheme will save the customer time and trouble."
"Hasn't saved me any today. Hold on a minute." She stopped, adjusting the bill of her frayed straw hat against the sun as she studied pots of yarrow.
"That achillea's good and healthy, isn't it? Does so well in the heat and has a nice long blooming season."
"Wouldn't hurt