A Rose From the Dead Read Free Page B

gets here?”
    I was about to answer when I spotted something that alarmed me. “Marco, isn’t my booth at the end of this aisle?”
    “Why?”
    “Because something’s happening down there, and it doesn’t look good.”

C HAPTER T HREE
    “A crowd isn’t necessarily a bad thing, right?” I said, dodging poky walkers. “I mean, it could be that my floral arrangements are a big draw, couldn’t it?”
    Then I heard a loud, harsh female voice say, “We have rules at this convention, Mrs. Dove. You were given a copy of those rules before you set up your booth. Now, you’ll have to dismantle your display at once and move everything in by a foot on each side.”
    Dismantle it? After we spent two hours setting it up? Okay, that was bad.
    We wove through a dozen onlookers to find the source of that grating voice—a startlingly attractive, fortysomething woman in a tight, zebra-print, sleeveless wrap dress. The woman was obviously a fitness buff, as was evidenced by her well-toned arms, firm bust (with a major display of cleavage), tiny waist, long, shapely legs, and curvaceous rear end—which every male seemed to be checking out. To her outfit she had added a bloodred rose tucked above one ear into her long sweep of platinum hair. She held a clipboard in one hand and a red marker in the other, and was fixing Delilah with a glare that would make ice shiver.
    It wasn’t fazing Delilah, however, who calmly regarded her from beneath the wide, translucent brim of her pale pink hat. “Sybil,” she said with her easy Southern drawl, “we’ve been coming here long enough to know how to set up a booth. We are well within the limits.”
    Max Dove pushed through the crowd to step up beside his wife, but anyone who knew Delilah knew his support was unnecessary. She might have been a genteel lady with a soft voice, big hairdo, and impeccable manners, but beneath that deceptively innocent heart-shaped face, Delilah was the proverbial steel magnolia.
    Not only was she strong willed, but she was also physically strong, a quality that enabled her to do the heavy lifting often required in her line of work. Yet Delilah was able to hold her own without flexing a muscle, uttering a single swear word, or even raising her voice. It was all in her attitude.
    “If you have any doubts, Sybil,” Delilah continued, reaching into a box of supplies hidden beneath the table skirt, “perhaps you’d be kind enough to see for yourself?” She smiled angelically as she offered Sybil a tape measure.
    The sudden strum of harp strings across the aisle made the crowd chuckle. The young woman I’d noticed earlier was seated at a tall golden harp, running her delicate fingertips up and down the strings, the wide sleeves of her long, flowing black dress falling back to reveal thin, pale arms. Her eyes were closed and her pale face gazed upward as though she were somewhere far away. I doubted she even knew what was happening in front of our booth.
    Sybil maintained her frosty glare for another ten seconds, then swung around to cut a swath through the onlookers, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll be back to measure later, Mrs. Dove. ”
    “We’ll be here,” Delilah sang out.
    Sybil marched past, giving me a glimpse of what could have been a model’s face, except that it was coated with makeup that gave her skin an otherworldly, almost plastic appearance. Her full lips, painted with an iridescent rose red lipstick, were now twisted in annoyance, and her big amber eyes glared from inside a shimmery, smoky circle of eyeshadow. Her long platinum mane slapped her back like a treacherous wave beating against the shoreline, telling the world that Sybil Blount was not a woman to be messed with.
    Then she saw Marco and stopped in midstride, her march becoming a hip-swinging sashay, her hostile expression dissolving into a flirtatious smile. “Well, hello. I haven’t seen you around here before.” She reached for his hand, which he reluctantly let her