Flower Power Read online

  Flower Power

  A Lesbian Romance Novel

  Nicolette Dane

  Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Sign Up For Nico’s Mailing List!

  One

  Two

  Three

  Epilogue

  Get 3 Free Stories!

  Lady Pilot

  Hidden Treasures

  Chief Executive

  A Way With Words

  An Act Of Love

  Field Day

  An Excerpt: Lady Pilot

  Thank You

  Copyright © 2019 Nicolette Dane

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved.

  About the Author

  Nicolette Dane landed in Chicago after studying writing in New York City. Flitting in and out of various jobs without finding her place, Nico decided to choose herself and commit to writing full-time. Her stories are contemporary scenarios of blossoming lesbian romance and voyeuristic tales meant to give you a peep show into the lives of sensual and complicated women. If you're a fan of uplifting and steamy lesbian passion, you've found your new favorite author.

  www.nicolettedane.com

  Sign Up For Nico’s Mailing List!

  If you’d like to be notified of all new releases from Nicolette Dane and receive a FREE story, point your web browser to https://readni.co and sign up for Nico’s mailing list right now!

  One

  Taryn Donaghy sat at her desk on the fourth floor in a building located right downtown in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She had a long desk, with two wide monitors on it, and a third monitor off to one side that was playing a financial news television channel, albeit muted in volume. The keyboard in front of her had a strange look to it if you were unfamiliar with her job. It was much like a normal keyboard, but it had a few extra rows of colored keycaps. Taryn stared deeply into one of her monitors as it flashed tickers of numbers and symbols and prices. To an outsider, it was Greek. To Taryn, it all made perfect sense.

  This setup that Taryn had was a trading terminal. She was an equities trader for a financial services firm, along with two others who sat at similar desks next to her. It was Taryn on the left, Ethan in the middle, and Huang on the right. In front of them was a wide tinted window that looked out into downtown. Behind them was a slew of other desks, all of them configured more simply than the traders’ desks, belonging to the various support staff of the firm.

  It was Taryn’s job to watch the market daily and execute various trading positions that the research team had devised through their algorithms and methods. She had to pay attention to the news, to any odd swings of the market, and to global politics to make sure she could properly adhere to the goals of their longterm positions. The job was often exhausting, as the market was a fickle beast. Not everything that happened with it made sense, but the parts that could be understood were the basis of Taryn’s skills. Picking up a small stress ball shaped like an apple, Taryn pushed back from her desk for a moment and she squeezed it a few times.

  “Did you hear what George Dodd of Standard Motors said about the tariffs?” Ethan asked Taryn in an even voice without looking her way.

  “Yeah,” said Taryn. “I heard.”

  Ethan just pursed his lips and nodded slowly, his eyes focused intently on his screen.

  There was an air of quiet throughout the room. If any of the support staff needed to talk to one another throughout the open layout of the office, they spoke quietly. Although the office was nice and modern and clean, it felt very stifling. It felt like you were walking on egg shells. Well, not necessarily for Taryn. The quiet of the office was for her and her two colleagues. It was so she could concentrate on her job, possibly the most important at the firm. The work never ended. The market never ceased. It was a stressful position.

  “I hear Office Outlet make move on Millhouse Paper,” said Huang in his accent, looking over at his two compatriots and adjusting his small wire frames. “You hear?”

  “Makes sense,” said Ethan, slowly nodding, but still keeping his eyes locked on his screen. It didn’t appear to be news to him.

  “I heard,” Taryn said. “Jens told me this morning. I already knew. Figured you guys did, too.”

  “Yeah, I got a text about it last night from a guy I know in the industry,” said Ethan.

  “Right,” Taryn replied.

  “Okay,” said Huang.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” said Taryn, standing up from her chair. “Need anything?”

  “Nope,” said Ethan.

  “No,” said Huang.

  “All right,” Taryn said. She turned from her desk and began her walk across the office.

  Taryn looked like a very put-together woman. Her brown hair was long and straight, not a single piece out of place or frizzy or flying away. She wore black wool dress slacks that matched a jacket she left on the back of her desk chair, along with a conservative white blouse and black pumps with a low heel. Taryn was pretty and slim, and to a lot of people—especially some of the firm’s staff who were lower on the totem pole—she was intimidating. This was a facade she made sure to keep up. In the financial world, intimidation was power and respect. Although they weren’t on Wall Street, Taryn’s little firm in Ann Arbor still managed a few billion dollars in pension funds for various companies and institutions in Michigan. There was a lot of respect to be had.

  What Taryn did wasn’t as bad as smash-and-grab day trading, but there was still tons of pressure to succeed. You had to keep your eyes on the market and quickly jump on positions before they became saturated with other buyers, or you wouldn’t make as much money. There was a lot of buy and hold for Taryn’s firm, but so too did she need to make high frequency trades to create some short term wins to obscure other losses. It was like a game of hide and go seek that never ended. Even when you found a great buy, there was always another one that you had to suss out.

  Stepping up to the cappuccino machine in the small kitchen, Taryn placed a paper cup underneath its spigot and she pushed a button. The machine began to do its thing, rattling and making noise, a trail of steam coming out from it. She stood back from it for a moment and watched, her eyes going out of focus before she blinked a few times quickly and could see again.

  Taryn was tired. She had been working for the firm since her late twenties, when the firm was much smaller. But in her almost ten years working here, Taryn had seen the company grow tremendously, take on new and bigger clients, and vastly increase the amount of money they managed in the market. And that growth brought with it more work and more stress than Taryn had ever thought possible. On the outside, she appeared fine. The office was quiet all around her. Things seemed normal. But on the inside, Taryn was freaking out.

  Her brain just wouldn’t shut down. She could hardly sleep. Dark thoughts clouded her judgment. It all felt like too much for her to handle.

  “Taryn,” said an accented voice, sounding like it was coming out of the ether. Taryn turned her head and looked toward the kitchen entryway. It was Jens Berglund, one of the company’s founders and Taryn’s boss. Jens was tall, blonde, in his fifties and although he had been in the United States for some time, he still hung to his Swedish accent.

  “Hey Jens,” said Taryn. She picked up her coffee from the machine and took a small drink to test its heat. She winced. Too hot. She blew on it.

  “The developers have a new application based on my algorithm that we will be putting on your machines this evening,” said Jens. “It is called Jensapp 2. You will see a little icon that is a J
character, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Taryn. “All right.” She tried her coffee once more.

  “IT will come around after trading today to see if you’re ready,” said Jens. “You give them what they need to install. Tomorrow, we will demonstrate Jensapp 2.”

  “Okay, Jens,” Taryn said. Outside she was keeping cool, looking unflappable. But inside Taryn could feel the anxiety grow. And Jens, despite his sometimes passionless sounding inflection, sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

  “Good,” Jens said simply. He offered her a smile that seemed forced, and Taryn returned the forced smile. Jens then got serious once again. “You heard Standard Motors announcement about the tariffs?”

  “I did,” said Taryn with a single nod. “Thank you.”

  “Okay,” said Jens. He put his palm up and waved one time, and then Jens was gone.

  Taryn stood there in the small kitchen, alone once more, taking another sip of coffee and trying to maintain her composure. There was always something new happening. Always something Jens or the developers were trying to add, giving even more complexity to Taryn’s already complex job. These little applications Jens built, they always had quirks. They would output incorrect data to the spreadsheet, or just simply crash, and then IT would have to come back around and install the updated version. There must be a better way of doing it, but the firm was constantly evolving and there was no time for standardization. This was just how Jens worked, and you couldn’t fight him on it. It was his company, after all.

  It had been too long since Taryn had a vacation. She could barely remember the last time she had gone away. While others in the company had jobs that could easily be covered, Taryn could only rely on Ethan and Huang if she wanted to take some time off. And they had just as big of a work load as she had. Her life consisted of working seven to five—sometimes six—daily, going to the gym, and then going home to a house that was far too big for just one woman, eating a light dinner with a glass of wine, and then crashing into bed. Then she’d do it all again the next day.

  It was beginning to drive her crazy.

  It was Monday morning, another new week beginning, and Taryn sauntered bleary-eyed from the elevator to the large glass door leading into the office. She was dressed in her finely tailored suit, a leather satchel slung over her shoulder, her heels clacking on the tile floor underneath her as she walked. The weekend had gone fast, as it so often did, and here she was back at work, doing the whole thing over again. All Taryn could think about was getting to her desk, having a coffee, and popping a pill to try to curb her anxiety.

  Pushing the glass door open, Taryn entered into the familiar confines. The entryway to the office had a couple of leather couches and a glass table. There was no reception desk, as it wasn’t needed. Rarely were there unexpected guests to the office. If a client came, they would be diligently met by their assigned representative. If someone happened to come by trying to sell something, a staffer from client services would shoo them away.

  To one side of the entryway, there was a recessed part of the wall with a glass table in it. And on that table often sat a beautiful floral feature. It was usually quite spectacular and alluring, and the design of it changed with the season. In the winter it would be necessarily designed with pine cones and fir tree needles. But in the spring and summer, when everything was in bloom, it was a blast of color sporting roses, tulips, dahlias and the like. And today, kneeling down in front of this area, adjusting the new arrangement for the week, was a dark-haired woman with her back to Taryn.

  As though she could feel herself being watched, the woman turned her head and looked up to Taryn. She smiled brightly. She was as beautiful as the flower arrangement in front of her.

  “Hi,” the woman said simply. She was glowing.

  The woman was dressed in denim overalls, though they obviously were not the ones she did any real work in. Underneath she had on a floral print button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up her forearms. Her dark hair was back in a thick braid, and revealed her pretty tanned face, olive skin with brown eyes, full lips. Taryn forgot about work for a moment when she saw this women, reveling in her beauty, and she smiled in return.

  “Hi,” said Taryn. “So you do the floral arrangement?”

  “Yeah,” said the woman. She stood up from her kneeling position and approached Taryn. She thrust out her hand. “Alex Maris.”

  “Taryn Donaghy,” replied Taryn. The women shook.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Alex.

  “I always really love seeing the feature,” said Taryn. “They’re always so beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” said Alex with a beaming smile. “I grow and arrange them myself.”

  “You do?” asked Taryn. “You grow them?”

  “Yeah,” said Alex. “I’ve got a farm a bit west of Chelsea, out by the Waterloo Recreation Area. Do you know it out there?”

  “Not really,” said Taryn sheepishly. “I usually stick around Ann Arbor and the east side of the state.”

  “Oh, it’s really not all that far away from Ann Arbor,” said Alex. “Less than an hour, really. But yeah, that’s where my farm is. Well, it’s not just mine but yeah. You get it.”

  “You grow a lot of flowers?” Taryn asked.

  “So many,” said Alex. “We’ve got fields, we’ve got greenhouses. It’s a whole thing. A big enterprise. We do weddings, fancy arrangements for offices like yours, arrangements for small florists that don’t do all their own arranging. We also grow fruits and vegetables, and we’ve got chickens and ducks and quail and all that. You know, for eggs.”

  “Right,” Taryn said, slowly nodding. “That’s really very interesting. I don’t know what I expected when I saw the flowers every week. I just guessed maybe someone here in Ann Arbor delivered them. Not the actual farmer.” Alex laughed.

  “Well, while I do some of the farming, I’m not the head farmer of our collective,” said Alex. “I do arranging, delivery, some of the business stuff.”

  “Is that why your overalls are unsoiled?” Taryn teased. Alex laughed.

  “Yeah,” she said, looking down at her clothes. “I suppose so.”

  “I bet you’ve got a pretty stress-free life, don’t you?” posited Taryn. “You get to work with flowers all day, drive around the city and deliver them, go back home to your farm. Maybe pluck a few eggs from the hen house.” Alex laughed once again.

  “I don’t know,” said Alex. “It is a pretty good life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But I also wouldn’t say it’s stress-free or anything.”

  “I guess not,” said Taryn. “No life is totally stress-free.”

  “No,” agreed Alex.

  “But it’s probably about as perfect as it could be out there on the farm,” Taryn said. “Right?”

  “Of course!” said Alex. “I’m living my dream out there.”

  “This is a weird question,” Taryn began. “But… would you mind if I asked your age?”

  “My age?” repeated Alex. “Sure. I’m thirty-five.”

  “You’re thirty-five,” said Taryn in disbelief. “You don’t look it at all.” Alex laughed and shrugged.

  “Thanks,” said Alex. “I guess you could attribute it to my relaxed lifestyle.”

  “I guess so,” said Taryn. “I’m only a couple years older than you and I feel like I’m really starting to show it. I work a lot of hours here… as you can probably tell with me getting in at seven in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” said Alex, averting her eyes. The conversation had taken a bit of a turn, and Taryn could tell that Alex was feeling slightly uncomfortable about it.

  “I’m sorry,” said Taryn with a reassuring smile. “I shouldn’t have gone there. I’ll leave you be and let you finish up your job. It was nice meeting you, Alex.”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Alex. “Really. I understand how you feel.” Alex’s brown eyes grew very empathetic and, reaching out, she delicately placed her hand atop Taryn’s. Looking down at this gesture,
Taryn’s own eyes widened and her face was overcome with surprise. In a strange way, she felt like she could start crying.

  “Thank you,” Taryn said eventually, overcoming a choked up feeling and trying to obscure it from this woman.

  “You’re welcome, Taryn,” said Alex, her face glowing with positivity and possibility. Whatever this woman had was what Taryn felt like she wanted for herself. There was a coolness to Alex, an easiness, an almost carefree attitude that made her irresistible. Taryn felt a smile moving over her lips.

  “If I have a need for flowers,” said Taryn. “If I’m throwing a party and need some arrangements or something, how can I get in touch with you?”

  Alex smiled and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a small business card and handed it over to Taryn, who took the card and looked down into it.

  “My number is on there,” said Alex. “Just give me a buzz and we could set up a meeting.”

  “Is your farm open to the public?” asked Taryn, still looking into the card.

  “We have a farm stand out front,” said Alex. “But other than that, no. We’re a working farm and we’re not really setup like an attraction.”

  “I got you,” said Taryn. She looked back to Alex and held the card up. “Thanks. I’ll get in touch if I need anything. Hopefully I’ll see you around here at the office again.”

  “Sure thing,” said Alex. “It was nice meeting you, Taryn.”

  “You too,” said Taryn. “Have a good day.” Taryn gave Alex one more smile before she collected herself and traipsed off from the entryway, leaving Alex to finish up her work. At one point, as Taryn walked away, she turned her head back and caught another glimpse of Alex. The woman was absolutely stunning. She must have been Italian or Greek or something with that complexion. Taryn could feel her heart throb in a way that she hadn’t felt for a while.