Chapter 3 Bryan
THREE
brYAN
It was an elderly woman who used to work in the garden, her gray hair flowing in the beach breeze from underneath a sun hat.
I remember one summer, when our hotel room overlooked the back of the Lavender Sea, seeing her out there every morning, lovingly tending to rose mallow hibiscus and eastern purple coneflower along with a dozen other plants in the intricately designed space.
I spent part of that beach week researching every flower I could see, sketching the garden and labeling each plant as I looked down on it from our hotel window.
I was already a budding amateur botanist during those tween years, and I wanted to find an excuse to visit that garden. I would walk past it often during our summer visits but I never found a reason to enter.
That sketch had remained pinned to a bulletin board in my room for years.
I didn’t imagine there would be many guests at an oceanfront B&B in the Mid-Atlantic in February, but I was very surprised when not only was it a guy about my age who welcomed me, and not a spry elderly woman, but when he said that it was only the two of us in the establishment.
When I had booked, I’d noticed they were running a Valentine's Day special, and I had been nervous that the place might be sold out.
I’d finally made it to the Lavender Sea after years of wanting to visit, and more recently, after hours spent driving at a snail's pace in the treacherous snow, hoping to find my first gardening friend, a woman I’d never met.
Instead, it was just me and the guy who acted like he owned the place.
The guy who kept bopping in and out of the room like a nervous bumblebee circling a flower, offering food he wasn’t obligated to provide and obsessing over drinks and candy.
He’d flung the door open when I arrived, the snow swirling past me and into the foyer.
He was a slight, unassuming man in khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt as if it really was summer at the beach and not the worst winter storm the region had seen in years.
He was shorter than me, his hair shapely even though it was straight and brown, with some length in the front.
The shade, replete with copper highlights, brought out the amber hues of his light-brown eyes.
He was pale and looked first shocked, then nervous before he plastered on a smile that lit him up so much it felt like it could melt the snow surrounding us.
I couldn’t stand to look at him in his shorts, no matter how petite and adorable he looked, freezing as I was.
It wasn’t until I was standing in front of his fireplace, still dripping all over the place and denuding myself right there in the B&B’s common space, that I realized he hadn’t even asked me my name.
He’d let me in anyway, a stranded traveler, providing towels and clothes and the promise of a warm meal.
He really should be more circumspect. I could have been anyone!
When he returned a second time, I hadn’t heard him approach.
I turned, and he got an eyeful of naked man.
Well, mostly naked. I was sporting the absolutely ridiculous socks he had insisted I put on.
I had no intention of letting him know how warm they were and how quickly I was losing my chill by the fire in his cozy living room.
I most certainly wasn’t going to compliment the dimly lit and very quiet B&B while my host somehow managed to take in my whole body—while purposefully and clearly avoiding one part of it.
I would have smiled at his obvious attempts to avoid staring at me if I hadn’t been naked, wet, and cold in front of a stranger.
I almost did smile when a pink flush began traveling down his cheeks and neck, the pink even brushing that part of his chest that I could see peeking out from the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.
He was adorably flustered as he shook a box of candy in his hand and left me to dress, yelling something about drinks. I chuckled as I listened to him retreat further down the hall.
The wind sent a swoosh down the chimney. I quickly pulled on the clothes he’d offered after that. They fit just right, much too big for my host. He’d said we were alone. I wondered whose sweatsuit I was wearing.
I worked my way back to the ocean-side door to grab my bag, bringing one of the towels with me to wipe down the hardwood floor around the entrance. It was worn and devoid of sheen, an indicator of years of guests finding their way back from the ocean to the little house between the high-rises.
I remembered my battle down the boardwalk, wind whipping at me so strongly, snow up to my knees in places. I’d been caked in it, covered head to toe except for my stinging eyes. I must have looked a fright. Yet the guy had just smiled and welcomed me in.
On my way back to the room with the fireplace, I noticed another living room, all accented in lavender.
One full wall held inlaid shelves, laden with books and games, photos, and other mementos.
I’d used my phone’s flashlight to check it all out.
A large dining room was on the other side of the hall.
I’d imagined the Lavendar Sea for years.
What it would look like inside, what it would be like to stay there, and how my teenage self would find the nerve to ask the old woman to teach me about her garden.
I imagined meeting other guests and making lifelong friends.
Truth be told, I may have even let my imagination run wild when I’d finally booked a room for my sister’s wedding.
Maybe there’d be another single guest across the table at breakfast, someone who would be just as interested in the garden out back, someone else who wanted to stay in the little beach cottage and not in some large chain hotel.
“This is just your house,” I said out loud, thinking of the gardener I’d spied on all those years ago and the man in shorts, hiding from me down the hall.
I imagined having happy, vacationing guests in my apartment and scoffed.
I hadn’t even had a hookup there since before the holidays.
My lonely little apartment wasn’t inviting at all.
I returned to the room with the fireplace, settling in one of the chairs positioned near the fire, finally on my way to getting warm.
I added the towel to the steaming pile of clothes that lay stacked on the stone edge of the fireplace.
The other towel was around my neck, catching any stray drips still coming from my hair.
I finally powered up the phone I’d been ignoring, finding messages from my mother and my sister as well as from Oliver, asking me if I was on my way to the Lavendar Sea.
I thought about ignoring the series of texts in our family group chat and the individual ones from Mother and Elise, but decided it wasn’t fair to my sister to ignore hers, and that it was only decent to assure my mother that I had made it safely. I texted the family group chat.
Made it to the B&B. Storm’s too treacherous for me to venture out for dinner. I’ll see everyone tomorrow.
“Hopefully,” I spoke out loud as another gust of wind could be felt and heard in the drafty room.
My mother fired off a response almost as soon as I’d hit send.
Mother: This is your sister’s big night!
“This is the precursor to the precursor to my sister’s big day,” I mumbled.
Mother: This is supposed to be a family dinner!
I started to type out that it wasn’t safe but arguing with my mother never ended well, so I tried I’m really sorry instead, thinking about the car I’d left abandoned and the feet of snow I trudged through while my mother was nestled in a hotel she’d been lording over all week.
Mother was only one of my stress factors, the other being a project that I had submitted a perfectly reasonable design for over two weeks ago that somehow still loomed over me.
I ignored my phone in favor of scrolling through equally infuriating emails on my laptop. My head might have been steaming more than the pile of clothes in front of me.
“Why do they bother to hire a professional landscape architect if they don’t want professional advice?”
I liked to think I wasn’t precious about my designs, but I was a trained professional.
Even if flow and aesthetics weren’t important to the corporate bigwigs, I did know about sustainability and ecological suitability.
I’d submitted a plan weeks ago based on their input but coupled with my know-how. That plan had been summarily rejected.
Pulling out my laptop, I opened my work email to yet another list of “friendly suggestions” from the client, not one of which would work in the space.
“Back to the drawing board,” I muttered, staring at a blank copy of the building’s entrance.
Drawing a design usually relaxed me, but between my mother’s lack of concern for her son’s safety and my client's lack of concern for installing plants that wouldn’t immediately fail, my cozy time by the fire in the charming, if slightly tired, B&B I’d been dreaming about for ages was anything but.
“Is there such a thing as temporary blood pressure medicine?” I asked my new friend the fireplace.
Frustrated, I ignored the drawing and grabbed my phone again, answering my own question.
“Weed, a nice glass of wine, a snifter of brandy. A sister who didn’t need her wedding to be a days-long event.
” A guy in a goofy Hawaiian shirt willing to massage every part of my body, preferably with his tongue.
Thank God I hadn’t said that last one out loud, as my host chose that moment to return.
I hoped he would assume that my blush had more to do with adjusting from the cold than with the thoughts that I couldn’t get out of my head: my host, on his knees in front of that fire, his million-watt smile blinding out everything but him … and his tongue.
He’d arrived with a bowl of something that smelled amazing.
My stomach growled as I reread my mother’s texts.
I was unnaturally happy to see a large glass of red wine on the tray as well.
I closed the laptop and made a move to stand, but Oliver had been insistent that I remain by the fire and eat.
I might have let my frustration out by slamming the phone down on the table—maybe if it was broken I wouldn’t have to deal with my mother—and shoving my laptop away.
The man was hesitant and apologetic for interrupting me again.
Smelling the soup, I was about to acknowledge him with a smile and a joke about him walking in on me when I was naked.
Instead, my phone pinged, and even without really knowing who had sent a message, it felt like I was being yelled at by my mother via text all over again.
Oliver might have asked me about the food or the wine, and I might have nodded at the appropriate times, but then he was scurrying out of the room again.
I braved a look at my phone. It’s supposed to be family dinner, she repeated.
I was sorry to disappoint my sister, but couldn’t my mother look out the window and see that the worst storm in years had decided to bear down at the same time members of our family were descending on the area?
They were one town over, a few miles away, which, admittedly, had been my choice and therefore would be considered my fault, but they had to understand there was no way I could join them.
I sent another simple apology that mentioned that my car was stuck in the snow, but that I was safe and sound (not that anyone was asking) at the Lavender Sea.
The newest logs in the fire were finally catching in earnest, causing flames to dance around them. I watched, mesmerized for long moments, leaning forward and soaking in the natural heat.
It was then that Oliver’s words came back to me, about honoring his gran’s memory.
I wondered if she was the gardener from my childhood.
The sleepy little cottage wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
Then again, I’m the one who had decided to visit it in the dead of winter.
I’d hoped to at least get to walk the dormant garden, but the storm would probably not even allow for that little stroll down memory lane.
With a heavy sigh, I decided there was no point in wasting the free evening.
“Go to work,” I muttered to the fire, pulling my laptop out and setting it up on the little table. The fireplace popped in response.
I stared at the area I was meant to populate with plants that, to a one, would not survive the environment, but that the corporate client thought “looked pretty.”
I wanted to toss my laptop in the damn fire.
In truth, what I really wanted to do was tell the very large corporation I was designing for where they could shove their pretty flowers.
Then I wanted to tell my company what I thought of them bending over backward when they knew they were setting me up for failure. Instead, I got to work.
It had been a long day and a longer year, culminating in my sister’s Valentine’s Day wedding.
There was my pulse quickening again.
My host approached once more, calling out before he entered.
“Mr. Concannon?”
I grunted out a “yes,” eventually looking up when he entered.
He smiled. When he wasn’t nervous, it was like his every word was a smile. My focus jumped from the computer to hazel eyes whose gaze conveyed a resolve, giving the smile gravity or importance. Why was it important that this man smile at me?
Ping! my phone screamed, and I really did try to ignore it, looking up at the slight man with the bright smile and brighter shirt, finally ready to thank him for his hospitality.
Only he hightailed it out of the room, again, practically sprinting in the other direction. I was shoving my computer back in the bag when I heard him passing by again.
“Wait!” I hadn’t meant to shout it, but it might have come out louder than I intended. I jumped up and faced the entryway, my back to the fire.
He stopped in the archway of the room, the book he held in one hand swinging up to his chest, where he hugged it close, like a protective vest.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just … wanted to ask about the garden?”