Chapter One #3
Birdie, who had not gone nearly far enough away, said, “Honey, if you’re talking to the weeds, don’t let them negotiate.”
I nearly dropped my trowel.
“I’m motivating myself.”
“Sure.”
I glanced at her.
Birdie’s smile was kind, which somehow made it worse. “First day’s always the hardest.”
“Because of the work?”
“Because you’re still trying to look like you meant to be here.”
My hand tightened around the weed I’d been loosening.
For a second, I couldn’t find a joke fast enough.
Birdie didn’t push. She just tied twine around a sagging tomato branch and kept her voice easy. “By the end of the week, you’ll stop caring if your knees are dirty.”
“I’m not sure my knees have that emotional range.”
“They’ll learn.”
I looked down at my cropped navy pants.
At least I hadn’t chosen a skirt. I’d thought the pants looked practical, but now they were streaked with soil at both knees, and one cuff had a smear of something green that might’ve been plant matter and might’ve been the garden marking its territory.
“I usually work in an office,” I said.
Birdie tied another loop. “That explains the shoes.”
“I’m never escaping the shoes.”
“Not today, you’re not.”
A laugh came out of me, small but real. “I process documents, schedule meetings, keep files moving, and stay very good with color-coded tabs.”
“Tabs won’t save you from zucchini.”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
“Zane will keep you alive.”
I found him before I could stop myself.
He stood with Tyler near a crooked row, one hand on his hip, the other pointing at the ground while Tyler nodded with the grave focus of a man receiving instructions from a very muscular judge.
Sun hit Zane’s hair and the ink on his arms. He looked stern, capable, and not remotely like a man anyone should fantasize about while holding a weed bucket.
It was already too late.
Birdie’s voice softened. “He looks tough, but he’s fair.”
I pulled another weed. “I wasn’t worried.”
“No?”
“No.” I dropped the weed into the bucket. “I’m mostly concerned about the mulch.”
“Smart girl.”
The next hour proved that the mulch deserved concern.
Zane brought over a wheelbarrow heaped with shredded bark and handed me a rake that was taller than my car’s monthly payment. He showed me how to spread the mulch around the base of the plants without smothering them.
“Thin layer,” he said. “Even coverage. Keep it off the stems.”
“Thin, even, no stem-smothering. Got it.”
“Don’t bury the carrots.”
“Was that on the table?”
“You tell me.”
I looked at the bed, then at the rake, then at the wheelbarrow. “No promises.”
His mouth twitched. “I’ll be over there.”
“Leaving me unsupervised with mulch feels reckless.”
“Then don’t make me regret trusting you with a rake.”
The words should have been about the rake and nothing else.
I knew he meant the rake, the mulch, and the basic expectation that I could follow instructions for more than ten minutes without committing a vegetable crime.
Still, heat crawled up my neck.
“I’ll take the work seriously,” I said.
“I know.” His voice went quieter. “You have been.”
For a second, I couldn’t answer.
Zane held my eyes, not mocking and not cruel, just careful.
I wanted to tell him enough to wipe that measured caution off his face. Not the whole ugly, stupid, mortifying story. Just enough that he’d stop seeing paperwork first.
The words formed at the back of my throat and stayed there, hot and humiliating.
Because there was no way to explain any of it without sounding like exactly the kind of woman I was trying not to be.
I was the kind who snapped.
I was the kind who got caught.
I was the kind whose ex had somehow managed to cheat and still walk away with the moral high ground and the power to make me explain myself to strangers.
I swallowed. “Good.”
Zane watched me for another second. Then he nodded once.
He stepped back.
Relief should’ve come with the space.
Instead, I felt it like a handprint.
Mulch, as it turned out, wasn’t friendly. It clung to everything, hid in my shoes, and flew up when I used the rake too fast, sitting there smugly on my blouse like brown confetti from the world’s least festive parade.
By late morning, my hair had slipped from its neat twist, and damp strands stuck to my neck. My eyes stung from sweat and sunscreen. My arms ached. My thighs had begun a private protest.
The P-Patch kept going around me.
Birdie moved through the beds with clippers, pausing beside Tyler long enough to say, “That tomato is called a mortgage lifter, which means you should treat it better than you treated the compost.”
Tyler shaded his eyes with one dirty hand. “The compost and I are in a growth period.”
“You’re in something,” Gus said.
Zane pointed at Tyler’s shovel. “Turn the pile, not your feelings.”
Tyler sighed and went back to work.
And Zane was everywhere.
He lifted a cracked planter, repositioned a hose so it didn’t kink, showed Tyler how deep to dig, took a call near the shed in a low voice I couldn’t hear, and came back with his jaw tight and his attention locked on work.
I noticed him every time he passed.
I noticed his boots on the path, his hand closing around a shovel, and the flex of his tattooed forearm when he lifted the wheelbarrow handles. When he called, “Gus, I’ll grab more screws from the shed,” the scrape in his voice went right through me.
The man was a public safety hazard.
At noon, Birdie brought out a small cooler. “Anyone who pretends not to need lunch will be judged.”
I sat on a bench under the pines with my water bottle, a granola bar from the bottom of my tote, and the dawning realization that my shoulders might never forgive me.
Tyler dropped onto the grass several feet away. “I thought community service would be, like, picking up trash with one of those stick things.”
Gus lowered himself onto an overturned bucket. “You wanted a poking stick?”
“I wanted distance from the consequences.”
I choked on my water.
Zane, leaning against the shed with his own bottle, looked at Tyler. “You’re here because you painted a parking meter.”
“It was a very tasteful lightning bolt.”
“It was city property.”
“It looked faster after.”
Gus nodded. “Kid’s got a point.”
Zane looked at him.
Gus took a bite of his sandwich and said nothing else.
Birdie handed me a napkin even though I wasn’t eating anything that required one. “You doing okay, Daphne?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“First day in July is a rough start.”
“I’m learning that my office chair has been carrying this relationship.”
“What kind of office?” Tyler asked.
My hand paused on the granola bar wrapper.
Zane’s gaze shifted to me.
He didn’t look intense or suspicious. He was just present.
I kept my voice light. “Administrative work. Lots of files, calendars, emails, and the glamorous stuff.”
“Sounds better than compost,” Tyler said.
“Most things do.”
“Depends on the email,” Gus said.
That startled another laugh out of me. “That’s fair.”
Zane took a drink. “You work in town?”
“Yes.”
I waited for the follow-up.
He didn’t ask it.
Relief loosened my shoulders by half an inch.
That was one thing I could give him, then. He didn’t pry or force me to lay myself out for inspection in front of the crew. He had questions. I could feel them sitting behind his eyes, but he kept them there.
After lunch, Zane checked the hours sheet. “Gus, take the south fence. Tyler, go back to compost. Birdie, can you take the herb bed?” Then he looked at me.
“I’ve got one more job for you.”
“Is it less emotionally complex than mulch?”
“It’s hose work.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That sounded neutral, which makes me suspicious.”
“You’ll water the new starts along the east row. Slow soak, low pressure. Don’t blast the soil out from under them.”
“I would never.”
He checked my shoes.
“Not intentionally,” I amended.
He led me to a green hose coiled near the spigot. The east row sat in full sun, small plants tucked into dark soil under little white labels. The leaves looked tender and doomed under my care.
Zane turned the spigot and handed me the nozzle. “This adjusts here.”
His hand closed over mine to show me.
It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t even necessary for more than two seconds. But his palm covered the back of my gloved hand, and his chest was behind my shoulder, and his voice dropped near my ear.
“Gentle pressure,” he said. “Let the water settle in. Don’t rush it.”
My pulse kicked hard.
The hose sputtered.
Water shot sideways and hit Zane directly across the front of his shirt.
For one frozen second, neither of us moved.
Then Tyler made a strangled sound from the compost pile.
Birdie said, “Oh, my.”
Gus said, “Direct hit.”
I stared at the wet streak across Zane’s black shirt. The fabric clung to his stomach and chest, outlining muscle I had no business noticing.
My face went up in flames.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. The nozzle betrayed me.”
Zane looked down at himself, then at the hose, then at me.
Water dripped from the hem of his shirt.
His expression should’ve been irritated.
Instead, his eyes were bright with restrained laughter. “You always blame the equipment?”
“When the equipment is guilty.”
“The nozzle was in your hand.”
“Under duress.”
“From water?”
“From supervision.”
That did it.
Zane laughed.
He didn’t give me a polite huff or the almost-smile. He gave me a real laugh, low and rough, rolling out of him in a way that made Birdie grin and Tyler look relieved to still be alive.
The sound hit me straight in the chest, and I tightened my grip on the hose.
“Turn it down,” Zane said, still amused.
“I’m afraid to touch it.”
“You’re already holding it.”
“I know. That’s part of the fear.”
He stepped beside me instead of behind me this time and adjusted the nozzle with two fingers. Water softened from a threat to a gentle shower.