Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 5

Tasing my next-door neighbor had done nothing to change my commitment to the Jenkinses garden. The email from Velma had come two days too late. It informed me that they’d taken on a tenant who would stay through mid-December. Either way, she would appreciate me keeping care of her flowers and shrubs.

The Jenkinses were good neighbors. They helped me with things most folks counted on family to do, like driving me to outpatient procedures and doing my shopping when I was sick. Knowing I was alone, they’d taken me in, making me feel like I had people. Tending their garden was the least I could do.

“You’re looking better, Blue.”

Blue was my name for Velma’s Nikko hydrangea. And, yes, I talked to all my plants. Plants liked when you talked to them, and they liked it when you listened. Velma’s backyard was a tasteful hodgepodge of lilies and roses and gladiolus that she’d given her own brand of tender loving care. The trouble was, not everything Velma had planted grew well in the South.

Now that her garden was under my care, I’d found my own relief in turning things around. Daily surface watering wasn’t good for a bush like this. I’d adopted a deep watering routine using twelve-inch drip irrigators to strengthen its roots. Setting down my kneeling pad, I tapped on a playlist, slid on my gloves, and got to work.

Gardening had always been the one thing that made me lose track of time. Nothing restored me like earth and air. With the fruits of my own thriving garden, I made beauty treatments from scratch: toners out of rose water and scalp rinse out of mint, and summer soap that pulled double-duty, helping against mosquitoes while evening and moisturizing my skin.

No matter what kind of day I’d had, working with the fruits of my garden left me joyful, the energy from my harvest bringing me to life. Cutting, and pruning, and admiring, and tasting pleased all my senses. An hour digging and watering gave me more energy than an espresso shot.

By the time I finished with the bushes along the fence line, I’d lost a good bit of light. Determined to prune down the bougainvillea before nightfall, I stood and turned toward the trellis. Having done this for months now, I expected nothing eventful. What my eye caught through the window stopped me in my tracks.

Damn.

Against the backdrop of the darkening sky, Buck was hard not to see. Exactly one room in the long ranch house was lit. The bedroom had sliding glass doors that opened out to a long deck. Buck stood with his back to me in said bedroom, stretching and flexing his arms and his back, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs.

Turn around! Turn around!

It was hard to tell whether the voice in my head was talking to him or to me. Any decent person would turn their back, but I wasn’t a decent person. Stepping behind a pergola post so I could simultaneously hide and keep looking was sufficient proof of that.

My God, is he tall.

And built just right. The man was all long, hard muscle, his physique chiseled without too much bulk or beef. The boxer briefs he wore hugged his backside so well, I longed to see how they hugged his front.

It was hard to tell what he was doing, just standing there in his skivvies. He didn’t move toward the ensuite. He stood at the foot of the bed, intermittently stretching and bouncing on his toes. Not that I was complaining. I was quite enjoying the view exactly as it was.

My heart sank a little as he strode toward the bedroom door, as if to leave the room. Unless he opened the blinds and turned the lights on in the next room he entered, this would be the end of the show. He crossed the threshold and I thought to get back to my own business, as I should have done seconds ago. Him turning around, raising his arms, and lifting up on a chin-up bar knocked the wind out of me before I could.

There was no way of knowing which of my reactions caused me to drop my trowel. Had my hands slackened at the sight of his rippling abs? Had my motor function failed seeing the ease with which he lifted his chin above the bar? Maybe it was the way those boxer briefs hugged him in the front. I was too busy ogling every inch of him to think about gardening equipment—ogling and rejoicing that this fine specimen of virile masculinity had moved in next door.

Shit.

An alert chimed on my phone, the unexpected sound nearly causing me to trip over my feet. I steadied myself with one hand, then fished in my back pocket for the phone to quickly mute the sound.

Double shit.

The memo on my phone screen reminded me why I’d set an alarm. I’d forgotten. I had a date.

Percival Garcetta had passedthe light version of my background check: no criminal record, no pending litigation, and no points with the DMV. No marriage license on file in any of the tri-states. According to property records, he’d lived in Tennessee for at least twenty years, owned his home, and appeared to have good credit.

Recon had been easy given his unusual name. I’d once turned down a date with a Bob Smith based on the diligence burden alone. Clarine, wanting the practice, had done the check on my behalf. She’d pointed out that, if the two of us were ever to marry, Loretta Garcetta would be my name.

Knoxville was only thirty minutes from Green Valley and my preferred location to meet a date. You could tell a lot about a man from the venue he chose. Green Valley didn’t have enough selection to read too far into it. The bar at the Brazilian steak house he invited me to in Knoxville was so swank that I might conclude Percy was either well-heeled or trying too hard. I would soon find out which.

“Percy?”

I could only presume that the man who stood up on my approach to the bar was the man I was slated to meet. He didn’t bear much resemblance to his picture. He was four inches short of his purported six feet, his hair had more salt than pepper, and his fashion choice was bolder than anything his profile had shown. His long-sleeved shirt depicted a photorealistic lion in black and white with color cut only across its eyes and down the line of its nose. It made the sign of the cross.

I’d met Percy on a Christian dating app, figuring a man of faith couldn’t hurt. Though I’d grown up in the church, I was more spiritual than religious. Wanting to raise children—which I desperately did—meant I needed a partner with family values. I’d given myself a deadline to find either a partner or a sperm donor by the end of the year.

“Loretta? You look exactly like your picture.”

Percy seemed surprised, likely due to his own profile picture’s loose relationship with the truth. Instead of mentioning that such resemblance was a natural outcome of posting a photo that had been taken this decade, I smiled my best first-date smile and extended my hand.

Once we were seated at the bar, the expected small talk ensued. I owned a high-end botanical beauty products company, so far as he knew. What he didn’t know was that said business was the front for my infidelity investigation business. Sniffing Around had a gorgeous working website where clients could go to pay for my services under the guise of purchasing loftily priced subscription boxes full of handcrafted candles, soaps, and oils.

“So you said you liked live music?” I gave the cocktail menu a glance. On first dates, I never committed to more. Sure, I was open to letting drinks turn into dinner if the chemistry reacted. More often than not, they ended with me making my excuses and heading to Knoxville’s finest taco truck.

“Sure do.” He lit up. “Gospel, mostly.”

“Nothin’ wrong with a little Gospel,” I affirmed. “Though I’m mostly a bluegrass girl. The Friday night jam sessions are one of the things I love about living in Green Valley.”

“I don’t listen to secular music,” he said a bit stoically. “Friday nights, I go to church.”

Before I could ask what unholy activities he enjoyed, the bartender came over to take our order. “What can I get you?”

“I’ll take an Arnold Palmer.” Percy pushed the cocktail menu back toward the bartender. He hadn’t even picked it up.

I smiled at the bartender. “I’ll take the Comanche Moon.” When I turned back to Percy, he was busy noticing how I looked in my dress, a conservative one compared to what I’d worn in the past. I’d spent three years in my flirtatious phase. Floyd cheating on me with a nineteen-year-old had done a real job on my confidence. Proving I still had it had been kind of my thing.

My flirtatious phase had involved a whole lot more than dressing sexy. I’d had quite a few rolls in the hay, dated a lot of men with hot bodies and pretty faces. But I’d had my fun. Sown my oats. Now it was time to put brains and beliefs over brawn and beauty. Floyd had been pretty and he’d damn-near ruined my life.

“God gave me a good feeling about you,” Percy informed me, his eyes still on my covered breasts. “He told me we would have a real connection.”

Then maybe you ought to connect your eyes to my face.

“It sounds like your faith is strong,” I said instead.

“Those who walk with God always reach their destination.” He smiled.

I chuckled. “Amen.”

A few minutes later, Percy had managed to keep his eyes on mine as we made bland conversation. I was relieved when the bartender put down our drinks. I thanked him and picked up my glass, poised to toast.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Percy asked.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Am I?”

“The blessing.” He proceeded to pluck the frosty rocks glass out of my hand and set it back in front of me.

“You want us to bless our . . . drinks?”

He held his hands out to me expectantly. I was too flabbergasted to do anything other than hold out mine. He took them and bowed his head.

“Let us pray.” He took a deep breath, calming himself into focus. “Dear Lord, thank you for blessing us with these refreshments, for the leaves that made this tea and the fruit that went into this lemonade. Thank you for blessing us with the juniper used to make this gin and the trees on which these limes grew. May you bathe us in the blood of Christ, and may Loretta have the ability to hold her liquor. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

May I have the ability to hold my liquor?

He didn’t seem to notice my frown. He only picked up his drink, took a long sip, and let out a satisfied sigh. I considered leaving right then. Even the bartender seemed to be motioning for me to cut bait. Tonight was going to be another taco night.