Epilogue
EIGHT MONTHS LATER.
THADDEUS
Ziggy turned to look over my shoulder just seconds before two arms slid around my waist, and I was pulled back against a hot, hard body.
“Mmm, you smell so good.” Ryder’s lips ran over the back of my neck, sending a shiver racing down my spine.
They travelled north through my hair, and by the time his teeth were nibbling on my earlobe, I was jelly in his arms. Eight months of living together, and it was the same every damn time.
The man may as well have had Thaddeus’s catnip tattooed on his forehead.
We had lube stashed from the machinery shed to the pump house, to the chicken coop—don’t ask—and everywhere in between, but they were especially necessary in the glasshouses.
One in each. Other than our bedroom, those were Ryder’s happy places, which meant if I was anywhere remotely within reach, things were likely to go down.
Not that I had any complaints. Sex with Ryder remained one of life’s absolute highlights, as far as I was concerned. I suspected the hens, our two new piglets, Boris the eel, and Ziggy, of course, had an entirely different opinion on the matter, but nobody was asking them.
Ryder’s hand was working its way toward my dick, spurred on by the fact I was only wearing a T-shirt and briefs beneath my overalls.
It was an unlikely combination for a wintery September Saturday morning, but the glasshouse was warm, and my jeans and sweatshirt were still in a pile on the stack of propagation trays next to the glass Ryder had spread me against while he’d fucked me senseless just an hour before.
Which meant—
I cracked open an eyelid and slapped the back of his hand with my trowel before it reached my half-eaten cinnamon doughnut.
“Ow! Goddammit.” He sprang backwards, shaking his hand. “You weren’t even eating it. It’s been sitting there for ten minutes, unloved and untouched.”
“I’ve been busy,” I protested. “The girls needed some attention.”
Ryder cast a look over my tomato seedlings and sighed. “How do you know they’re girls?”
“Because they wear red dresses when they grow up, of course.” I rolled my eyes. “And you call yourself a gardener.”
He groaned and made another lurch for my doughnut, but I got there first. I put my back to the workbench and took a large bite accompanied by a series of suitably filthy groans of appreciation.
Ryder folded his arms and grumbled, “Now you’re just being mean.”
I sashayed over and lifted the doughnut to his mouth. “Never say I don’t give you anything.”
He took a big bite, then pulled me into his arms, crushing our cinnamon-sugared lips together in a messy kiss and making sure to rub it through both our moustaches.
I shoved him away, discarded the remaining doughnut onto the bench, and wiped my sticky face, grumbling at Ryder’s lack of decorum.
Ryder rugby tackled me to the ground for another protracted kiss leaving us both laughing in the dirt.
“I’m living with a Neanderthal,” I grumbled, scrambling to my feet and offering him a hand.
“And you love it.” He pulled himself up and walked me back against the glass where he kissed me, long and slow, making my toes curl in my gumboots and my dick do a little happy dance.
“I do love it,” I agreed when Ryder was finally done with me. “Because I love you.”
He kissed me on the nose. “I love you too.” Then he spun and grabbed the last piece of doughnut and shoved it in his mouth.
“This isn’t finished,” I warned, which only earned me a laugh.
Opting for a change in subject while I plotted my revenge for later, I directed Ryder’s attention to my tray of tomato seedlings.
“Can you believe I only planted those seeds a week ago? They’re so cute.
We’ll have tomatoes before JB does, for sure.
” I had a standing bet with JB and Lily around who would produce the largest beefsteak tomato of the season.
Ryder grinned and joined me at my side. “Not that you’re competitive or anything.” His smile turned indulgent. “But they’re pretty cool, all right.”
Ryder always got a kick out of my newly discovered interest in plants.
He listened to my endless novice ramblings and questions as if they were the most interesting things in the world.
I secretly thought of those conversations as foreplay since Ryder always seemed primed to ravish me in some form afterwards.
It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it, right?
I was, admittedly, still a neophyte when it came to growing anything, and I’d been culpable for a fair amount of horticultural homicide, or was that vegecide, over the last eight months, but I was making an effort to learn, and I was improving, at least I thought I was.
My interest was born less from wanting to share in Ryder’s world, although maybe that had been the starting point, and more from the sense of peace that came from working on something earthy but still creative and light years away from my beloved coding.
I’d been surprised to find that instead of begrudging the time I spent in the glasshouse, or the garden which I was occasionally permitted to work in under strict supervision, it was something I planned and looked forward to.
I’d discovered I was more productive in my own work if I took short breaks in the greenhouse, with or without Ryder.
Somehow, the two activities fed into each other.
Gardening rested my coding brain without taking me off the boil, and when I returned to my screens, the code simply flowed.
I’d landed the contract with the green hydrogen research lab and was loving the work.
It didn’t pay a bunch and I needed to take on other short-term contracts from time to time, but that was fine.
I worked mostly from home, other than flying to Auckland monthly to spend a few nights in a hotel.
Aside from meeting with clients over that time, I also met up with gaming and coding friends, which gave me enough of a city and nerd injection to keep that side of me adequately fed and watered.
When I was done, I was always glad to get back to the cottage. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else or with anyone else. This was my home. Our home. Ryder and me and Ziggy. It was our nurturing nest from which everything else flowed, even if it had been a nail-biting process getting there.
Following the council meeting, there had been a huge community pushback on the proposed Elosand development.
With council elections looming within the year, uncertainty began to creep through the council members, and the project was delayed pending further research.
That being the case, Ryder’s lawyers pushed for an extension on his lease.
The council reluctantly agreed. First by three months, then six months, and finally five years, when the results of the additional research were found to make little difference in public opinion.
The community had become entrenched in their opposition, thanks to Delia’s regular public commentary on the subject and the wealth of compelling data made available through the D. Cumberland Advocacy website, namely me.
But a five-year lease was a guarantee of nothing.
We couldn’t sink any money into the property or even be sure we would still be calling it home for the long term.
It took Delia, once again, along with Ryder’s lawyer, to go public and call out the council’s petty manoeuvrings and blatant effort to punish Ryder and me for our opposition to the Elosand project.
Shamed into action and with those elections snapping at their heels, the council had recently offered a freehold sale proposition that was surprisingly fair.
Ryder had signed it immediately before anyone changed their minds.
Two weeks later, I invested a ton of money to ensure fibre would be laid all the way up the road within the following six months.
I suddenly became the toast of every property on Crighton Road, and we’d been invited to more dinners than you could poke a stick at.
Best of all, my internet connection was finally secure, and Heligan Inc. was incorporated as my new company.
Ryder’s smile couldn’t have been broader.
“Knock, knock. Warning, warning. Mother about to enter.” My mother poked her head through the open door and cautiously scanned the interior.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Ryder and me standing there fully dressed.
That was all that needed to be said about a certain experience during our early days of living together—a mortifying incident that is never to be mentioned again.
Ever. “You really need to hang a sign outside,” she grumbled.
“I take my life in my hands every time I come down here.”
“We’ll get right on that,” I lied, elbowing Ryder in the stomach to stop him from laughing.
My mother grunted in the way that said she knew I was lying and made her way over.
“You both need a shower, and preferably separately.” She cast a lingering look at my discarded jeans on the stack of seedling trays and made a point of silently crossing herself.
“I don’t know where you boys get the energy. ”
“It’s all that food you keep putting in our freezer,” Ryder complained with a twinkle in his eye. “We have to burn the calories somehow.”
“Go for a run,” my mother deadpanned. “Buy some weights. Join a reformer Pilates gym. Or get a ring on that man of yours and get yourselves pregnant. A baby will run the fat off you in no time.”
I groaned, but Ryder flashed me a wicked grin as he replied, “Now there’s an idea. I vote we try for that before we have a shower, babe. Are you in?”
My mother’s eyebrows shot into her hairline, and she covered Ziggy’s ears with her hands. “That was rather naughty of you, Ryder. You’ll traumatise the poor dog.”
Ryder bowed his head. “Forgive me, Majka.”