Radiant joy, she thought. Smells like sunshine, weddings, and… She cast a look to that flower, thinking it would be perfect for her bright yellow Radiant Joy candle. The one she hadn’t developed yet.
“Theo,” Sorrell said. “You’ve shown more patience than any man I’ve ever met. I love you, and I’m grateful for you. I know we’ll have an amazing life together, no matter what comes our way.”
Olli couldn’t help smiling as the pastor pronounced them man and wife, and Theo leaned down to kiss his new wife. She’d been to plenty of weddings in Kentucky, with plenty of cowboys, but the whooping and heehawing that erupted from this group was enough to startle her pulse into overdrive.
“My goodness,” she said, looking at Ginny. They burst out laughing together, and Ginny leaned toward her.
She had to practically yell, “Texas cowboys are different than Kentucky cowboys, I guess,” for Olli to hear her.
Olli looked around, thinking that they might be louder, but to her, the cowboys here looked and smelled and acted a lot like the ones she knew back home.
She was fine being friends with them. She just didn’t want one coming into her life and trying to take over her business—or her heart—again.
* * *
“What do you mean?”she asked a few days later. “The grant didn’t say anything about being married.”
“You don’t need to be married, Miss Hudson,” the man on the other end of the line said, his tone somewhat rounded and clipped at the same time. He definitely wasn’t from the South, and Olli wished her accent wasn’t quite so thick. “Mister Renlund simply wants to make sure his investment is going to a family company.”
Olli didn’t know what to say. She’d missed that requirement in the grant application.
“He very much likes your proposal,” Benjamin said, continuing despite the tailspin Olli’s thoughts had gone into. “He found it so different from what we usually get. You’re on the list of his top five, and he comes around and visits everyone and their businesses before he decides on the grant money.”
“You’re kidding,” Olli said, looking around. Her perfumery sat in a state of chaos at the moment, with vials and bottles all over the place. She’d learned the flower in Texas was called a gladiolus, and she’d already ordered several varieties to be delivered in the next week or so.
“I am not kidding, Miss Hudson,” Benjamin said. “We’re looking at being there in about two weeks. Does that work for you?”
Olli reached for her desk calendar, clearing away a couple of pieces of unopened mail, a pile of rubber bands, and a stack of unmade boxes for her sample bottles of perfumes. “Uh, two weeks?” That would put them in the third week of May. “How long will Mister Renlund want to be here?”
Would she have to house him? Show him around Lexington? Her mind raced with the possibilities, and she reminded herself that she was very personable. She’d worked as a tour guide on two horse farms in the area before achieving her dream of opening and operating her own perfumery.
“Only a few days, ma’am. I’ll send you his itinerary. He’d love to meet your husband or boyfriend.”
Olli sat back, her frustration morphing into anger. “What if I don’t have a husband or boyfriend?”
“That’s why I call in advance,” Benjamin said. “If I were you, Miss Hudson, I’d get one, even for a few days. In two weeks’ time.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but she blanked.
“Good day,” Benjamin said, and the call ended. Olli scoffed as she took the phone from her ear and checked to make sure he’d hung up.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered to herself. “That guy lives in the eighteen hundreds.” Didn’t he know women could—and did—run their own businesses these days?
No man needed.
Olli stared out the window across the room from her desk, trying to think of a single man she could somehow convince to be her boyfriend for a few days.
She’d grown up here in the Lexington area, and she knew a lot of people, but the only men who came to her mind were the Chappell brothers.
They owned Bluegrass Ranch, which happened to be located right next door to Olli’s place. She saw at least five of them ride by her window on any given day of the week.
She stood up and went to the window, looking left and right as if one of them would happen upon her and offer her a diamond ring. One didn’t.
Her stomach writhed, but no one else had called about any of the other grants. Two of them had rejected her on the same day yesterday, in fact.
Desperation clogged in her throat, and it wasn’t pleasant. She squared her shoulders and started for the door. She could go next door and see what was happening with the Chappells. In the back of her mind, she thought she’d heard that a couple of them had started dating someone recently.
There were eight to choose from. It couldn’t be that hard to get one of the boys next door to be her arm candy for a few days.