Page 81 of Where You're Planted

The guys turned.

“Where’s her water heater?”

“Like we just told your wife,” the trim kid started.

Tansy’s eyebrows shot up.

Jack didn’t even flinch at the assumption. He did, however, slide closer to her side and settle his palm at her back.

“The system’s down, so we can’t help her.”

“What does that mean?” Jack barked.

“Oh my God,” Tansy groaned. “They don’t know where it is because everything is mixed together, and the map is in the system, which is down, so they can’t look up where it is.”

“Y’all ever consider printing out the map?” Jack asked with a searing glare.

The boys looked at each other and shook their heads.

“All right,” Jack said. Then he turned to leave. “We’ll find it ourselves.”

“There’s a lot of stuff,” the one in the hoodie said. “Could take you all night.”

“Mywifecame for a water heater,” Jack said, throwing Tansy a wink—an honest to Godwink. “So we’re gonna get her damn water heater.”

—

The first building was jam-packedwith small appliances—toasters, kitchen mixers, stereos, standing fans. Bizarrely, there were also poker tables and pallets of birdseed and a section with buckets full of neon golf balls and several dozen rubber-coated putters—an entire mini-golf place’s supply of them, probably. They took a quick tour of the space, but it didn’t look like there were any water heaters.

In the second building, they found an explosion of Christmas decorations and arcade games.

Building three was a smaller, single-wide trailer that heldfiling cabinets and bicycles, and when they left to head to the next, a six-foot-tall inflatable rooster dancing in the evening breeze cock-a-doodle-dooed mechanically at them, startling a swear from Jack that made Tansy laugh.

“Who collects this much crap?” he grumbled.

“Hey,” she said, opening the door to building number four. “One man’s crap is another man’s—” She spun back with a shriek, shoving Jack back outside. “Nope!Immediately, one hundred percent no.”

He chuckled and tried to catch a glimpse before the door closed, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him after her, explaining, “It’salldolls.”

“This guy was a nut.”

They were winding their way through a more promising building that had lots of small and medium appliances—window air-conditioning units, microwaves, bread makers—when Tansy stopped and watched Jack ahead of her, peeking behind tarps and moving heavy objects out of the way. He was so focused on their task, so determined to find her water heater, even though this was beginning to feel like a fool’s errand.

She thought back to their conversation at breakfast on Sunday, the kick of panic she’d felt over what it wouldmeanto do her laundry at his house, to fully immerse herself in the comforts of his place, ofhim. This week was just supposed to scratch their attraction itch—something she already felt skeptical about achieving by Briar’s return on Monday. But she hadn’t expected Jack to be socaringbeyond the physical part of their agreement. He was still bullish and bossy, because of course he was, but he also pushed her to accept rest and care and, yes, pleasure—but not just in bed. He’d taken seriously her claim that she would have read a book at the Laundromatand insisted she find a cozy spot in his house to read between loads. She’d gone straight for that big chair by the window in his room. Although she hadn’t hadtonsof free time before the storm, there had been pockets around caring for Briar when she could squeeze in a chapter here and there. Tansy didn’t realize how much she’d missed something so simple, something just forherself.If you’re holding back now because this week is gonna end, then what’s the point? When are you ever gonna put yourself first if not now?She hadn’t even realized what she was doing. Trying not to get too comfortable, like maybe if she didn’t fully give into thisthingwith Jack, she could limit the sense of loss that surely awaited her at the end of it.

The more time she spent with him, though, the more holding him off felt like a lossright now. And maybe just because they didn’t have a plan past this week didn’t mean they couldn’t figure out how to still…

She didn’t even know how to finish that thought.

The most surprising thing about this week so far with Jack was that, for his claim that he didn’t do relationships, he actually seemed sort ofnaturalat it. The way he’dsoftened. The way that, ever since they’d kissed in the greenhouse, she’d felt his constantconsiderationof her.

Then there was thatwinkhe’d thrown her earlier in the office. Thatmy wife.

“What is running through your mind right now?” Jack asked, returning to her around a set of shelves crammed with printers and French horns.

She turned her shoulders to hide the blush creeping up her face, suddenly very interested in a shelf of silverware. “When I was younger, I thought adulthood was going to involve a lot more dinner parties.”

“Oh yeah?”

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