Chapter 1 #2
“Here you are,” Janice called out happily as they rounded the far end of the house and started into the once-grand kitchen garden. “I’ve brought you a willing sacrifice to the Goddess.”
Ryan wanted to roll his eyes at his mum’s theatrics as they approached the young man toiling in the garden with a shovel. He wanted to, but his libido spiked in a rush as the young man stood and turned to them.
“You remember Graeme Dallen?” Janice asked him as they approached the man. “And Graeme, you remember my son, Ryan, don’t you?”
“Hello,” Graeme said in his soft, mellow voice, nodding politely to Ryan.
Ryan stepped forward, offering his hand. “I remember when Dad and I interviewed you for the job,” he said, smiling. “Your designs were far and away the best we saw.”
“Thank you,” Graeme said, removing one gardening glove, wiping his hands on his work trousers, then taking Ryan’s hand. “It’s a privilege to be able to work on gardens like these.”
“The privilege is ours,” Janice said with a bright smile. “Graeme is an up-and-coming star of the gardening world,” she mentioned to Ryan in a voice filled with teasing awe.
Graeme blushed and glanced down, taking Ryan’s libido to a whole new level.
It had been way too long since he’d indulged in any sort of relief with anyone or thing other than his hand or the toys Rafe had cheekily given him in the family Secret Santa last year.
That had to be the reason for his strong reaction to Graeme.
Or maybe it was the fact that the man was an earthy sort of perfection.
He had golden-blond hair and green eyes.
Despite being a bit on the short side, he was muscular without looking like a gym bro.
His skin had the natural tan of someone who worked outside a lot, and the one time Ryan had interacted with him before, he’d had a sweet sort of vulnerability that made him want to wrap the man in cotton wool…
as he pounded his prostate into next Tuesday.
“When the two of you are done staring at each other,” Janice interrupted, embarrassing Ryan down to the soles of his feet, “Graeme here has been doing a great deal of heavy-lifting all by himself, and I thought he could use some help.”
For a brief moment, Graeme’s face pinched. It was proof that Janice was adept at embarrassing more than just her own children. “It is a lot of work,” he conceded at last. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of help.”
“I don’t mind helping,” Ryan said, embarrassed by how clumsily he’d nearly parroted what Graeme had just said. At least he said it with what he hoped was a comforting smile. “Just explain what you’re doing and how you need me to help and I’m all yours.”
“Perfect,” Janice answered for both of them. “I’ll let the two of you get on with it, then.”
She clapped her hands together and held them to her heart, glanced between the two of them for a moment, then turned and walked away with a spring in her step.
“Sorry about Mum,” Ryan said as soon as she was far enough away not to turn back and give him an earful. “She’s…Mum.”
Graeme grinned, his cheeks pinking even more. “I like her, though,” he said simply. “She’s very different from my mum.” His smile slipped slightly and pain flashed in his eyes.
Ryan’s heart thumped hard against his ribs. He wanted to know what that look was all about, but it would have been incredibly rude to just come out and ask. Even if just coming out and asking was exactly what his mum would have done.
“What do you need help with?” he asked instead, spreading his arms to show he was ready.
Graeme sighed and leaned on his shovel, glancing around.
“Well, I’m at the very beginning of the process,” he said, squinting slightly, as if the end of the process was a long, long way off.
“The Hawthorne House gardens have been neglected for decades. I presented Mr. Hawthorne with designs that incorporate the existing structures of the garden, but now I’m starting to think that the whole thing needs to be dug up and started over. ”
“Wow,” Ryan said, glancing around at the plants and paths that had been part of his life since he was a kid. “That sounds like a colossal amount of work. And you’re doing it all yourself?”
“For now,” Graeme said, glancing back at Ryan. “I’m just a one-man operation at the moment, although I’d like to expand again.”
There was something tight and angsty in Graeme’s eyes that Ryan wanted to uncover and deal with. Again? Had Graeme had a bigger business at one point? What had happened?
Not that it was any of his business. He needed to get a grip.
“It looks like you’re marking things out?” he asked, looking away from Graeme and across the herb garden, which had several stakes planted in some of the old beds and around the perimeter.
“That’s the plan,” Graeme said. “Though I keep running into overgrowth and unexpected structures. That’s why I’ve been digging up some of the beds to see what’s in there.”
“Well, hand me a shovel and I’ll help,” Ryan said with a smile.
Graeme turned back to him from assessing the garden. His gaze swept Ryan from head to toes, making Ryan feel like he was being judged. Possibly in a good way?
But no, it wasn’t anything more than a quick assessment of his capabilities, he was sure. Especially when Graeme said, “You’re dressed awfully nice for gardening.”
Ryan glanced down at his clothes. True, his jeans were designer and his shirt was a button-down instead of a t-shirt. But he shrugged and said, “It’ll be fine.”
Graeme looked doubtful, but he took a quick breath and said, “I’m trying to decide whether to change my design for this herb garden or to keep the basic structure as it exists right now.
If you could help me dig out the weeds from each bed and cart off the refuse to the pile I started just beyond there, I’d be grateful. ”
“I’m here to help,” Ryan said, stepping to the side, where a wheelbarrow and several other gardening implements that he vaguely recognized stood.
It was easy to get into the work. Nothing that needed doing required much skill. It was just digging, pulling, and loading up the wheelbarrow to take brambles and brush out of the herb garden and through an old, brick archway into the slightly more open space beside it.
“Your designs call for transforming this entire lawn into a garden, right?” Ryan asked as they dumped one load and headed back for another.
“Right,” Graeme said. “As far as I could tell from the plans Mr. Hawthorne gave me, there hasn’t been anything in this spot but grass and wildflowers for hundreds of years.”
“That’ll take a while, though,” Ryan said. “I don’t know much about plants, but just grass and wildflowers have deep roots, right?”
Graeme sent him a look over his shoulder as they walked through a brick archway and back into the kitchen garden. “Yeah, but I’ll be here all summer,” he said. “Maybe longer, if I can’t find a crew to help.”
“All summer?” Ryan tried to tamp down his excitement about that. “You don’t have other jobs to manage, do you?”
Graeme sent him another shy smile. “This is my only job at the moment,” he said. “Mr. Hawthorne is paying me well for it.”
“That’s good at least,” Ryan said. “And I’ll be around all summer to help, too.”
Would he? Should he really be making promises to refurbish an entire, vast garden when he needed to be busting his arse to design a fall collection. Not to mention sucking up to the right people to get a spot showing in February’s fashion week.
“I thought you were a fashion designer,” Graeme asked as they picked up their shovels and went to work digging out the next bed. “Shouldn’t you be, er, fashion designing?”
For whatever reason, after months of hiding the truth from his family, Ryan felt compelled to tell at least a portion of the story.
“I lost my job designing for a big fashion house in Milan,” he said, focusing on slamming his shovel into the choked garden bed instead of looking at Graeme.
“Oh. Gosh. I’m sorry,” Graeme said, digging into his own work.
“It was stupid and ignominious,” Ryan hissed, jamming his shovel into some particularly tough roots.
“I had been getting all sorts of acclaim, really making a name for myself. I was one season away from leaving Esposito, that’s the name of my old boss, Giorgio Esposito’s, fashion house and starting my own company.
People were already interested, a few of the designers I’d come up through the ranks with had said they wanted to come with me to start a new house. ”
Ryan paused, his stomach suddenly turning as he remembered the intense frustration of everything falling apart.
“What happened?” Graeme asked. He stopped his digging and stood, leaning on his shovel like he’d done before. He was sweaty from work, and his t-shirt stuck to his impressive body.
Even that couldn’t distract Ryan from his remembered agony.
He stood and mirrored Graeme’s position, gripping his shovel tightly.
“Giorgio didn’t want to let me go, or so he said.
He gave me an ultimatum, three choices, really.
One, I could stay where I was with my reputation intact, but always under his label.
Two, I could suck his dick and make myself available at his beck and call as his fuckboy and he’d let me start my own business.
Three, I could set out on my own without sucking his dick and he’d ruin me. ”
Graeme looked alarmed. Maybe even disgusted. “That’s horrible.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. More horrible was the sudden worry that, despite working for the Hawthornes, Graeme was the sort who thought any kind of homosexuality was horrible and predatory. “Guess which option I chose?” he finished, jamming his shovel into the ground to avoid any potential disappointment.
Graeme didn’t answer right away. He went back to digging, and only after about a minute did he answer, “Three. It always has to be three. But at least you left with your integrity.”
Ryan huffed a humorless laugh. “And a fat lot of good that’s done me,” he sighed, though he immediately felt bad for unloading his career frustrations on an innocent bystander.
That didn’t stop him from going on with, “Don’t tell my family this, but I’m back here at Hawthorne House not by choice, but because, thanks to my sterling integrity, a lot of fashionable doors were slammed in my face.
I’m here because I have to start over, and I’m fresh out of inspiration and fight. ”
“I’m sorry about that,” Graeme said. “Sometimes doing the right thing feels like the wrong decision.”
He didn’t say anything else, but when Ryan glanced up at him, his face was pinched with emotion.
He was clearly struggling with something.
Ryan was good enough at reading people to know there was a story behind the tense, wary look on Graeme’s face as he threw himself into his work.
The man had as much of a story as Ryan did about what had led him to digging out old, dead roots in someone else’s garden.
A hint of a smile touched Ryan’s lips, but he forced himself to flatten it. Maybe if he kept digging, he would find out what had put such a dark expression on an otherwise gentle man’s face? Maybe it would all lead to the inspiration he so desperately needed after all.