Page 12 of Where You're Planted

“Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Mind if we go first?”

He gestured for her to go ahead, thinking she’d return to her group, but she remained planted directly in front of him, her backside mere inches from his front. For all that these time-consuming social niceties mattered to her, personal space apparently didnot.

“Yo, I’m Kai,” said the commando librarian with a salute. “They/them. Teen services.” Now Jack understood Tansy’s ferocity about the pronoun thing. He wanted to say she’d misunderstood him, but as soon as he leaned in near her ear, he bumped flush against the curve of her ass. She glared over her shoulder.

The other two librarians followed suit, followed by his interns. Turned out, both the college girls were named Madison, and the boys were Caden (Mullet) and Aidan (Red Bull), so he wasn’t banking on keeping them any straighter after this refresher. Only Hugger, the empty-nester whose real name was Beverly, had a chance of sticking.

After the final maintenance staff intro, Jack cut back in, moving them along. “Grounds boundaries. All the outer and back trails are off-limits. It’s a safety issue. It’s also a liability issue because we’re not cleared to resume work on the expansion.” Plus, Jack retreated to the back property when he needed a breather from his staff and the visitors. “I’ve put up cones and tape where I can, but stick within the inner loop, and we won’t have any problems. Next—”

“Hold on. I have some questions about that,” Tansy said, pulling a folded piece of paper fromthe waistband of her skirtand smoothing it open. “As you know,weare situated beyond the inner loop, past conesandcaution tape, so I’d love to get an idea of when exactly the path to our building will be fixed.”

He wanted to know if her list held warmth from where it had been tucked against her skin. And then he was imagining that little dip beside her hip bone, how soft that lower curve of her belly might be. Because the thing was, although she was truly obnoxious and distracting in every way, some of her distracting ways were ones that, historically,workedfor him. Under the loud siren of her colorful clothes, her body lookedcurvy and soft in all the places he liked best. She was self-possessed and confident, unafraid to say what she wanted. She had a full, pretty mouth and long hair that would fall down around him if she were on—

“We can discuss that after the meeting,” he said tightly.

She shifted her weight to one foot and blew a puff of air at the long bangs falling into her eyes. “Why not now? Isn’t that what this meeting is for?”

“This meeting,” he snapped, hands clenching at his sides, “is towelcomeyou.” He took a bracing breath and said more calmly, “And to address anysimplelogistic questions without derailing everyone’s workday.” If he’d known she was going to come with a laundry list of complaints, he would have…hell, he didn’t know, sent an intern to write down all their problems and report back.

“You’re sure nailing the welcoming part,” she said under her breath.

Ian raised his hand, glancing timidly from Jack to Tansy to the other librarians. “I could replace those pavers this afternoon. It’s no trouble.”

Jack had already planned to have Ian help him with the path today or tomorrow, assuming they got everything else done. The irony was, the longer this meeting went on, the less likely that was to happen. But now it would look like she’d forced him into it. “I need you in the back with me today,” he said curtly.

Ian’s cheeks flared pink. He slid lower in his chair with another shy glance at the librarians.

“While we’re on the subject,” Tansy said, “we’ll need a gathering space for programs. Maybe like this, with a roof overhead for rainy weather.” She pointed above at the ceiling.“But something fenced in to help contain the children would be better.”

“Children?” he parroted. “What children?”

“The ones who attend story times. I saw a garden near the back with a wrought iron gate and a rock wall all the way around it. That would be—”

“No.”

“No?”

“That garden is in the restricted area. It’s off-limits.”

“Then,” she said with a huff, “where do you suggest we hold story times?”

All they’d been promised was a building. Now, they wanted one of his gardens? And not just any garden. The rare and native species area had been Jack’s most prized accomplishment before the hurricane. He’d cultivated a collection of species, a few of which existed in just double digits in the entire world, let alone in a public park. Rather than recovering that space, the commissioner wanted to convert it into a Japanese friendship garden. A bunch of rocks with bridges and water features, basically. An inexpensive “photo opportunity.” The guy was full of ideas like this one, which prioritized theappearanceof the park over its actual health.

Tansy was waiting for an answer about where to host her story times.

“Aren’t kids in school?” he asked.

“Not babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Not to mention the after-school programs we do for elementary-, middle-school-, and high-school-aged patrons.”

He winced at the thought of all those loud, wandering kids, ignoring signs, trampling plants, and disrupting the peace and quiet he’d cultivated here. She had just mentioned at leastsix different ages of children—basicallyallthe children. Exactly how much programming was she planning to run?

“Oh,” she said with an unamused laugh. “How surprising. You don’t like kids?”

“I don’t—” His head filled with static again. All her interjections, paired with her persistent, suffocating proximity, caught him flat-footed. He looked down at his list, as if the three words scribbled there might provide an escape strategy.

Just then, the metal staircase he was still standing on shook. He turned to find Greta at the top, eyebrows raised in question and maybe a little admonishment about how he was handling this simple meeting. How much had she heard? He hadn’t planned for this whole thing to be sointeractive. To Tansy, he muttered, “Kids are loud, they trample things, and they can’t read signs.”

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