Tall, Dark And Difficult. Patricia Coughlin

shrugged. “British, French, Cro-Magnon.”

      “Easy to see why he prefers Griff.”

      “I suppose.” She climbed onto the stool behind the counter and took a sip of the iced chai tea Maryann had brought. “Mmm.”

      Iced chai was part of their Thursday ritual.

      On Thursdays the shop was open until nine, and Maryann’s husband, Ted, worked late at his law office in Providence. Maryann and Lisa stopped by during the early evening lull, and while the baby napped, the two women caught up with whatever was going on in each other’s lives. During the busy summer months, the shop was Rose’s life, and it was Maryann who usually had the more interesting tales to tell. Not so today. Rose had been stewing over her run-in with Griffin for two days and was happy to be able to grouse about it to someone who would understand.

      “I’d still like to know what he’s going to do with my beautiful hydrangeas.”

      “His beautiful hydrangeas,” Maryann corrected with a characteristically realistic expression.

      “I fished them out of the Dumpster. I wiped the gravy off them—one delicate petal at a time, I might add. And I was the one who spent hours searching for exactly the right shade of ribbon to embellish them.”

      “But he’s the one who coughed up more than two hundred and sixty bucks. You do the math.”

      “I have,” Rose informed her triumphantly. She produced a legal pad on which she’d scrawled column after column of figures. “If you look at all the time I spent—in the Dumpster, cleaning and drying the flowers, and assembling the garland—and then calculate an hourly wage based on average past receipts—” she glanced up “—in season, of course. And add it all up, I didn’t even come close to breaking even.”

      Maryann spoke softly. “Rose, sweetie, get a grip. I know you’re riled, but try not to wake Lisa. Also, I’m not sure you can expect to be compensated for the weeks the flowers spent just hanging around drying.”

      Rose’s eyes flashed. “I’d like to know why not. Firemen get paid for the time they spend sitting around waiting for a fire. The crew on a fishing boat—”

      “All right, all right, I get the idea. So what’s your point?”

      “That Griffin stole the garland, that’s my point. I figure he owes me two thousand, one hundred and seven dollars and thirty-six cents. Plus tax. I’m willing to round it to two thousand even.”

      “And just how do you plan to collect?”

      “I don’t.” She sighed and tossed the pad aside. “I admit that legally I probably don’t have a leg to stand on.”

      “I’m no expert,” Maryann admitted, “but I do watch my share of Judge Judy, and I am married to a third-generation attorney, and that would be my take on the situation, too. Look at it this way—in spite of the fact that you lost two grand on the deal, it was still nearly one-hundred-percent profit. How many businesses can pull that off?”

      “I suppose.” Rose leaned on the counter and propped her chin on her hand. “I’d still like to figure out some way to collect. I also wish I hadn’t offered to throw a party for him.”

      Maryann’s eyes widened with fresh interest. “Do tell? What’s this guy like, anyway?”

      Rose shrugged. “Tall.”

      “Tall? That’s the best you can do? I seem to recall Edie Blanchard saying Devora’s nephew is a dead ringer for Pierce Brosnan.”

      “When did Edie Blanchard see him?” she asked, more interested than she cared to be, a fact that would not be lost on Maryann.

      “At Devora’s memorial service. That was the week we were in Baltimore for Ted’s old roommate’s wedding,” she reminded Rose. “Edie told me all about it when I got back, and I remember how she went on and on about him being the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan. I would have mentioned it to you at the time, but it seemed…trivial, considering the situation and how hard you took the loss.”

      Rose nodded. “Well, trust me, Edie was wrong. He’s no Pierce Brosnan.” She paused and tilted her head to the side, thinking it over before grudgingly adding, “Pierce Brosnan’s bigger, tougher, less charming and not nearly as well-dressed brother…maybe.”

      “Hey, that’s still not chopped liver.”

      “Stop,” Rose ordered, as a familiar gleam appeared in her friend’s dark eyes.

      “Stop what?” Maryann’s lashes fluttered with what might be taken for innocence by someone who didn’t know her so well and hadn’t spent countless evenings on the receiving end of her self-acclaimed gift for matchmaking.

      “We had an agreement, remember?”

      “Oh, that.” Maryann waved off the reminder. “I agreed not to arrange any blind dates for you during your busy season. I never agreed to pretend men don’t exist, or that I do not find them—individually and as a species—a source of great interest, potential and amusement.”

      “Maryann, I don’t want to put a damper on your enthusiasm—”

      “Much,” her friend interjected.

      “But I feel I should point out that you are married.”

      “Married, not dead. And, at the risk of putting some heat on that wet blanket you insist on hiding under, I would like to point out that you are neither…married or dead, that is.”

      “And happily so.”

      “Ha. You just think you’re happy.” Maryann hoisted herself onto the counter as gracefully as she did everything in life, and zeroed in on Rose with the zeal and determination of a used car salesman on the last day of the month. “You are as textbook a case as the person who insists he does not like calamari when he has never even tasted it.”

      “Squid,” Rose corrected. “Call it what it is, Maryann—fried squid.”

      “My point exactly,” Maryann crowed. “Why doesn’t this otherwise sensible man taste it before ruling out any possibility of liking it? Because even though the menu says, calamari, he’s thinking, squid. Even though everyone else at the table is chomping away and telling him how great it is, telling him, ‘Try it, you’ll like it,’ he’s got squid on the brain. Squid, squid, squid. And, I might add, these fellow diners are not strangers.

      “Oh, no,” she continued, having warmed to the point where her Ivy League education and marriage into a family of hardcore WASPs inevitably gave way to the unbridled animation of her deep Italian roots. She waved her expensively manicured hands, shrugged her shoulders, tossed her head. A one-woman show. “These are the very people he chooses to break bread with, people he knows and trusts. His best friend in the whole, entire world is sitting right next to him, holding out his fork, saying, ‘Just a bite, one little bite. Trust me.’”

      “All right, Maryann, you win,” Rose said. “You’ve convinced me.”

      Maryann’s beautiful face glowed with amazement. “I have?”

      “One hundred percent. The very next time we have dinner together, I swear I will eat the calamari right off your plate.”

      “Very funny.” She slid from the counter, straightened her white shorts and replaced the pacifier in Lisa’s mouth, just as the baby began to stir.

      “As you are well aware,” she said to Rose, “the calamari was merely an illustration, a device, a metaphor for happy marriage. And just as the man was afraid to try the calamari because he couldn’t stop thinking, squid, squid, squid, you are afraid to give the whole men-love-marriage thing a chance.”

      “With one small, but critical difference.” Rose’s tone became emphatic. “I have tried marriage.”

      “Right. To a squid,” Maryann