bw280 by Unknown Page A

pastures.  It was just close enough to Portsmouth to make that town’s more citified accoutrements readily available, if one was willing to drive a bit, but not close enough, she thought, that her potential clientele would decide to go there for their floral needs.
     
    Three years later, bearing the name that she’d always eschewed because it sounded so pompous. But Contessa’s Flowers was, she had to admit, a modest success.  While she hadn’t been greeted with open arms – no small New England town was going to do that, she already knew – she had become a fixture in Thompson Bend.   Tessa opened earlier and closed later than one might have expected of a one-woman shop.  She always went that extra mile for her customers - whether that meant hand-delivering funeral sprays or doing a cross promotion event with the candy shop across the street.  Tessa did her best to remember every customer by name, and their spouses’ and kids’ names, too, as well as the dates of their anniversaries and birthdays and she quickly built a loyal customer base because of it.  She became involved in the town’s celebrations, often donating her own time and floral displays which garnered great word-of-mouth advertising.
     
    But even three years after settling here, Tessa was still adjusting to some of the more annoying aspects of living in a small town, and this morning was no different.
     
    She was renting a small house that she truly loved near the coast, because – although it wasn’t the dream house on the beach she intended to own one day – it did have a nice view of a tributary where she could walk and collect shells and sea glass when she was of a mood.  It wasn’t the prettiest of views, but it and the house itself suited her just fine except for the trip to and from the shop.  Tessa felt certain that it was going to drive her over the edge.  In the spring, summer, and most of autumn, it was the tourists dawdling their way into town. In the off-season, it was the natives who collectively decided they had to drive five miles below the posted fifty mile-per-hour speed limit.
     
    That was exactly the situation she found herself in – yet again - this morning.  She was going to be late to open the store if this damned hillbilly in the ginormous blue truck didn’t wake up and find the accelerator with both friggin’ feet.
     
    There was one – count it, one – two-lane road into Portsmouth that didn’t take you out and around and through the wilderness.  She’d spent months in vain searching for a more efficient route to work.  Route four was the most direct way, and, since this was late fall/early winter, it was rife with natives slow-poking their way into Thompson Bend.
     
    The idiot in front of her was the worst.  Not only was he going so slow Tess was surprised they weren’t rolling backwards, but his truck was so damned wide she couldn’t see around him to pass. They did this exact dance almost every morning; he seemed to have the same schedule as she did.
     
    Well, no guts, no glory.  Tess decided she wasn’t going to dawdle along behind this idiot any longer than she had to.  So, after peeping out around him as best she could and determining that there wasn’t anyone barreling at her from the other lane, she downshifted into fourth and floored it, making the engine of her geriatric little Miata strain loudly with the effort.
     
    Being in a hurry and having no patience at all, Tess hadn’t judged things as well as she might have, and there was another car coming towards her as she moved into the oncoming lane.  She barely made it past the huge truck and back to safety before the other car whooshed by, but as far as she was concerned, he was the one at fault; he was the one who had caused her to take her life in her own hands to pass him.  She let him know it, too, giving him the old one-fingered salute in her rearview mirror as she sped well ahead.  Tess barely made it to the shop in time