of the rain. If he'd thought the houseplant section seemed exotic, it was nothing compared to this. The place seemed alive with plants in various stages of growth. The humid warmth was almost tropical, and with the rain pattering it seemed he'd walked into some sort of fantasy cave.
The air was pungent with green and brown - plants and soil. Music twined along with the scents. Not classical, he noted. Not quite New Age. Something oddly and appealingly between.
He saw tables and tools, buckets and bags. Shallow black containers holding delicate growing things.
And he saw Roz at the far end, on the side. Her back was to him as she worked.
She had a gorgeous neck. It was an odd thought, and, he admitted, probably a foolish one. But again, facts were facts. She wore her hair short and straight and to his mind, the style showed off that long, lovely neck perfectly.
Then again, all of her was rather long and lovely. Arms, legs, torso. At the moment that intriguing body was camouflaged in baggy pants and a shapeless sweatshirt she'd pushed up at the sleeves. But he remembered, very well, that willowy figure.
Just as he remembered, even before she heard his approach and turned, that her eyes were long as well. Long lidded and in a fascinating shade of deep, deep amber.
"I'm sorry. I'm interrupting."
"That's all right. I didn't expect to see you here."
"I got the paperwork, and thought I'd ride out and let you know it's signed, sealed, and on its way back to your lawyer. Plus, it gave me a chance to see your place. I'm impressed. Even though I don't know squat about gardening, I'm majorly impressed."
"Thank you."
He glanced down at her worktable. There were pots, some empty yet, some filled with soil and small green leaves. "What's going on here?"
"I'm potting up some seedlings. Celosia - cockscomb."
"I have no idea what that is."
"I'm sure you've seen them." She brushed a hand absently over her cheek, transferring a smudge of soil. "In bloom they're like small feather dusters in bold colors. Red's very popular."
"Okay. And you put them in these little pots because?"
"Because they don't like their roots disturbed after they're established. I pot them young, then they'll be blooming for our spring customers, and only have to tolerate that last transplanting. And I don't imagine you're all that interested."
"Didn't think I would be. But this is like a whole new world. What's this here?"
She raised her eyebrows. "All right, then. That's matthiola, also called gillyflower or stock. It's very fragrant. Those there with the yellowish green leaves? They'll be double-flowered cultivars. These will flower for spring. Customers prefer to buy in bloom, so I plan my propagation to give them plenty of blooms to choose from. This section is for annuals. I do perennials back there."
"Is it a gift, or years of study? How do you come to know what to do, how to recognize the . . . cockscomb from the gillyflower at this stage?"
"It's both, and a love of it with considerable hands-on experience thrown in. I've been gardening since I was a child. I remember my grandmother - on the Harper side - putting her hands over mine to show me how to press the soil around a plant. What I remember best about her is in the gardens at Harper House."
"Elizabeth McKinnon Harper, wife to Reginald Harper, Jr."
"You have a good memory."
"I've been skimming over some of the lists. What was she like?"
It made her feel soft, and a little sentimental, to be asked. "Kind, and patient, unless you riled her up. Then she was formidable. She went by Lizzie, or Lizzibeth. She always wore men's pants, and an old blue shirt and an odd straw hat. Southern women of a certain age always wear odd straw hats to garden. It's the code. She smelled of the eucalyptus and pennyroyal she'd make up into a bug repellant. I use her recipe for it still."
She picked up another pot. "I still miss her, and she's been gone nearly thirty years now. Fell asleep in her glider on a hot summer day in July. She'd been deadheading in the garden, and sat down to rest. She never woke up. I think that's a very pleasant way to pass."
"How old was she?"
"Well, she claimed to be seventy-six, but in fact, according to the records she was eighty-four. My daddy was a late baby for her, as I was for him. I broke that Harper family