Elly in Love (The Elly Series) by Colleen Oakes

Author:Colleen Oakes [Oakes, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: SparkPress (a BookSparks Imprint)
Published: 2014-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Two hours later, Elly was staring at what couldn’t be a real invoice. It couldn’t be. She looked up at Snarky Teenager with total disbelief. “You ordered koi fish?”

Snarky Teenager gave a dismissive flick of her hair. “Yeah, and it’s going to be amazing.”

Elly pointed at the order. “We have a limited budget, and you bought koi fish?”

Snarky Teenager gazed down from the ladder, dangling two cream three-tiered Yoko lanterns from her outstretched arms. “They’re for the fountain.”

“What fountain?”

Snarky Teenager shook her head as she continued to climb up the ladder. “Trust me, it’s going to be beautiful. We need to create an atmosphere of beauty and Zen.”

“Well, I am not feeling very Zen right now as I look at an invoice for five-hundred-dollar koi fish,” growled Elly.

Kim scampered past Elly, swooping Hadley up in the air near her face. “Look at the lights!” she cooed. “Don’t freak out, Elly,” she warned, looking backwards. “You promised a fun day of pizza and Japanese-style decorating.”

“We’re having pizza?” replied Snarky Teenager. “So many calories.”

Elly walked over to the new desk that Keith had brought in for them this morning and picked up her clipboard, letting out a moan as she gazed at her to-do list. It was still about eighteen items long. Glancing around the store, Elly couldn’t believe the transformation that had already taken place. Under Snarky Teenager’s talented direction, the store was radically different than the starkly barren space it had been before. The sterile white walls had been painted over with a vibrant lime-green paint, accented by one plum and gray accent wall. Light bamboo shelves lined one entire wall, and in the corner, a huge kentia palm stretched its leafy arms toward the ceiling. A round mahogany desk sat in the very center of the room, which made the entire store center around its clean lines and impressive shape. Elly admired the desk from a distance. It was lovely—rich and cherry colored, with tiny striations in the wood. She had had her eye on this desk for months for Posies, but once she had decided to open this store, she knew it was a much better fit here than it was in her cute little antique-y shop. She was still admiring it when Snarky Teenager placed a giant gold Buddha on it.

Elly paused. “Um, what the heck is that?”

Snarky Teenager looked at it. “It’s a Buddha.”

“I know what, or who, it is. Why is it in this store? Or better yet, why is it on my new desk?”

“Because it looks great there, that’s why. This adds to the atmosphere.”

Elly looked over at Kim, who curled her lip and quickly shook her head before placing a wet raspberry on Hadley’s soft cheek. He screamed in delight. Elly turned back to her upstart employee. “That’s ostentatious. No. It’s not going there. Besides, no one in this room is Buddhist.”

“I’m pan-religious,” declared Snarky Teenager.

“Well I’m mono-Baptist,” replied Elly, “and I’m pretty sure that it’s insulting to real Buddhists that we are using their deity for decor.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.