Page 71 of Where You're Planted

He nodded slowly, suppressing the part of him that wanted to negotiate, tobegeven. “A week? Do I at least get full access?”

“I mean, not at work. But otherwise, I’m all yours.”

He swallowed. Shewasn’tall his, not like this. But if one week was all she would give him, he wasn’t going to leave it on the table.

Jack smoothed her hair with both hands and kissed her, soft and slow. She immediately deepened it. Her attraction to him, if not something more, was palpable. He saw a flash of their next move—him spinning her around, taking her from behind, up against the frame of one of those empty cabinets. But he wanted what she’d said a moment ago—to cover her body with his own and feel her breasts pushed up against his own bare chest. Better fucking angles. He wanted to look at her. He wanted to take his time.

“Come to my place later,” he said, stepping back.

“Later?” She frowned. “Let’s go now.”

He blew out a tense breath. As badly as he wanted to get her somewhere with more functional surfaces, he couldn’t leave her to deal with these cabinets on her own. “It’ll drive me nuts not to finish this.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly with a strong undertone ofDuh. “Me too.”

“The cabinets, I mean,” he corrected, clearing the lusty rasp from his throat.

She eyed the bulge in his jeans pointedly. “Thecabinetsare what you don’t want to leave unfinished?”

“Tansy.”

“You’re serious,” she said, pressing her lips together in surprise. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

“I wantyou.” He said, a little too honestly. He covered it up by kissing her perfect, pouty mouth again. “AndI want this done for you. Please.”

She softened and then teased, “Is that the first time you’ve used that word? It came out kind of weird.” Then she slipped the folded-up layout sketch from his back pocket, tucked his pencil behind his ear, and sighed, “If you must.”

21

Tansy

The lower cabinets took a lot longer than Tansy had hoped. By the time they were bouncing along a narrow dirt road, cutting through the dark curtain of towering pine trees to Jack’s house, she was as hungry as she was desperate to pick up where he had stopped them earlier.

Before leaving her house, she’d ducked into her room for a quick makeover—something closer to how she’d wanted to look for their date before that half cup of wine had steered her wrong. She’d brushed and loosely braided her hair, which had dried wavy and kinked in weird places from the messy clump she’d piled it into after her shower, and emerged from her room in a casual cotton dress. Jack had licked his lips as he looked her up and down, and in a sudden flare of embarrassment about havingfreshened upfor him, she’d grabbed his toolbox to move them more quickly out the door, only to nearly drop its surprising weight on her good foot.

Ten minutes later, with trees encroaching on either side of the narrow road, branches seeming to miss his truck by mere inches, Tansy said, “This is…rural.”

“Almost there.”

Soon, a small brick home appeared at the end of the lane, and Jack killed the engine under a carport.

She made her way slowly after him to a side door of the house, careful not to step wrong on the patchy lawn. Although she couldn’t see much in the dark, she could tell the exterior of his place was modest and a bit dated, a brick single-story from the seventies or eighties, surrounded by trees and shrubs that she suspected were natural to the property, not planted there or meticulously maintained—wild like the undeveloped back property of the gardens.

Jack removed his boots inside the utility room, and she did the same, stepping out of her flats. Before he opened the next door, a chorus of drawn-out cries met them through it. “What—”

As soon as he led her into the kitchen, three kittens swarmed them—one orange, one gray tabby, and one tortoiseshell.

“You kept them?” Tansy asked, surprised, as the same orange kitten that had climbed up her skirt that day in the gardens stretched up her leg with an impassioned yowl.

“Sorry,” Jack muttered, ducking back into the utility room. “They’re hungry.”

“Youkeptthem,” she repeated, this time almost an accusation. She bent to pet them, but they all darted after Jack at the sound of kibble hitting a ceramic bowl.

He came out rubbing the back of his neck, embarrassed maybe, and God, that sent a shot of bubbly joy through her.

“Marianne might actually let go of her grudge,” she told him.

“Grudge against me? For what?”

---