Page 78 of Where You're Planted

“I what?”

She laughed. “Nothing. It smells amazing,” she said, leaning back into the shrub. “It’s almost familiar.”

“Like gardenia, but spicier.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed.

The bush was only a few feet tall, half its mature height if he kept this one alive long enough to get there, with a wide, intricate branching system and clusters of tubes that each opened into buttery-yellow blooms. It was nearly finished flowering, and he was gratified she was seeing it right now, at its most spectacular.

She gingerly lifted one cluster to inspect it and then blushed and said, “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t touch it?”

“It’s not fragile,” he assured her. “Actually, the branches are flexible, almost like rubber. Supposedly, it used to be given as a wedding gift, and the couple would tie one of its stems into aknot every anniversary as kind of a living record of their time together. Not sure how true that actually was in practice, but you technicallycando it.”

“Your favorite plant,” she mused, turning to meander some more. Then she smiled over her shoulder, and said, “Tell me more, Jack.”

So he did, until her stomach growled, and he offered to make her breakfast. Tansy insisted on helping, and they moved around each other in his kitchen, scrambling eggs and frying bacon and making coffee. They ate at the table he never used, her with one foot on her seat, her knee drawn up casually, and her arm looped around it. Her bare leg competed for his attention with the skin exposed by the deep V of his shirt, which was closed by a single snap below her breasts.

“So I’m going to need a few hours to get some things done,” she was saying, catching him staring distractedly at a faint freckle below her collarbone. She smiled and tipped her face down, into his eyeline.

“What? No, you said I get full access this week,” he said.

“I did,” she conceded, amused, “but I need clean clothes.”

“What do you need clothes for?”

She grinned and blushed. “We have work tomorrow. And with the festival and getting Briar packed for Dallas, I have seriously neglected my own laundry, which means I need to take a trip to the Laundromat.” She sighed, and a deep frown dragged down her mouth.

“Laundromat,” he huffed. “Don’t waste your time there. Do your laundry here.”

She considered the offer, but then shook her head. “Jack, you’ve already fed me, given me a bubble bath, practically single-handedly installed my cabinets—”

“So?”

“So, no. I’m not looking for someone to swoop in and rescue me from two hours at the Laundromat. I will survive.”

“Two hours?Of just sitting there waiting for your clothes?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can finally read a book while I wait.”

“Or you can read a book here, save your money, andnothave to deal with the weirdos who will talk to you or the assholes who monopolize all the dryers.” He interrupted her next complaint. “We both know you’re perfectly capable of doing your laundry at a Laundromat, just like you can obviously feed yourself despite not having a stove or a damn fridge, and you can endure cold fucking showers and sleep on a shitty air mattress with no central air. My God, Tansy. You don’t have to prove to me that you’re a badass. I see it.”

“It’s not about proving it to you.”

“Then who’s it for? Because it’s just you and me here, and I don’t need the lesson.”

“It’s about…” She shook her head, frustrated, fumbling. “It’s about balance. And although, yes, it’s nice to have a hot bath and sleep in a real bed, that’s not going to be my life next week. I don’t want to get—”

“Used to it?” As if a hot bath and a real bed were luxuries rather than a baseline. He wanted to ease her burden becausehe could. And he wanted someone helping her to not be so rare that she mistrusted it.

She didn’t reply, but just bit at her thumbnail, eyeing some spot on the table between them.

“You said you’d give me this week because it’ll be complicated when Briar comes back. And I get that. I respect that. I also get it if you just want a few hours to yourself. That’s fine, Tansy. You can say that, and I’ll back off. But if you don’t needspace, if you’re just holding back because this week is gonna end, then what’s the point? When are you ever gonna put yourself first if not now?”

“Wow, Jack. You make shacking up all week sound practicallynoble.” She laughed. “Besides, isn’t all this, like, way morecomplicatedthan you usually do? You can’t honestly want me around this much. We can’t have sexallthe time.”

His ears burned at that because after their night together and flirting with her this morning and her looking so relaxed and comfortable in his house, he’d kind offorgottenthis week was supposed to be just about sex. But was it so wrong that he enjoyed just being around her? That he wanted to give her pleasure in every possible way, not just in bed? Was it so impossible for her to becared forwithout having to earn it first or pay it back later?

But she’d called itshacking up, so he swallowed these questions and put on a grin that he hoped read as justcasual. “I just think you’re not giving us enough credit for how much sex we can have. And you need tobehere for us to do that.”

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