to what you want to learn,” Tess added. “You’ve learned photography tricks pretty quick from me.”
“That’s just because you were teaching me and not my hairy brother.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss him.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” I teased, heading toward the greenhouse.
“Good luck!” Tess called after me, and I waved, accepting that luck.
I’d need it.
The metal door was cool, but the greenhouse was as warm as summer against the chill of fall. Music played back here too. The Bennets didn’t seem to like the quiet much, and with a house that full of people, I doubted it was ever quiet. Especially now that all the Bennets had come home to help out.
I should have answered Ivy’s plea sooner. I should have helped before now. If I hadn’t been so concerned with my own neck, I would have. But ambition wasn’t forgiving, and being the best left no room for error.
Lately, that mattered less and less. And I had Kash Bennet to blame.
He didn’t see me walking down the wide aisle of the greenhouse, too lost in his work to consider anything beyond his hands or the motion of his body as he cradled small shocks of budding green in his palms, transferring it to the earth where he knelt. Reverent was his care and attention, as if that little plant meant just as much to him as the plants he’d tended for months and years. Or as much as his cat, who sat next to him, flicking his tail, amber eyes locked on me.
I narrowed my eyes at the beast, nose wrinkling as I imagined hissing at him. As if he knew, he stood, arching his back in a long, threatening stretch.
It was then that Kash glanced up, his eyes snapping to me like he’d imagined I’d be there. Thick stubble shaded his jaw, sharpening the line, framing his brilliant smile.
“I thought I told you not to wear white.” He dusted his hands on his jeans and stood, still smiling.
“I thought you knew I didn’t own anything that wasn’t.” I smiled back, taking a long moment to appreciate the sight of him.
His T-shirt was heathery gray, tight across his shoulders, straining to contain his biceps and chest, but somehow, it didn’t look too small. Instead, it appeared that he was just too strong to adhere to clothing construction of mere mortals. Printed on the front in black was the phrase, Weed ‘em and Reap.
“Nice shirt,” I said with a nod at it.
He looked down as if he’d forgotten what it said. “Got fifty more where that came from.”
“Where do you find them?”
“I don’t. Don’t tell anybody, but I don’t even particularly like them. Laney got me one for Christmas one year, and now it’s all anyone ever buys me. Figure they make the best work shirts anyhow.”
“You’re kidding. You don’t even like them?”
“Well, I should note that I don’t dislike them either. It makes them happy to see me in them, and given that I don’t have a real opinion either way …” He shrugged the rest off, that crooked smile on his face.
I couldn’t have told you why it made my heart flutter at the knowledge that he wore those goofy shirts every day for the amusement of his family, but it did.
“Whatcha doin’?” I asked, nodding to the planter box at his feet.
He glanced in the same direction, hooking his hands on his hips. He looked like Paul Bunyan in a novelty T-shirt—all he needed was some buffalo check flannel and a knit cap.
“Planting seedlings. These are black magic cosmos. Planted them, oh … a month ago? Now that they’re ready to move into the ground, we should have blooms in five or six weeks, I figure.”
“For the Baker wedding?” I asked with a wondrous smile.
He nodded, smiling back.
I knelt across from him, looking down at the seedlings, the hopeful bursts of green in dark soil.
“Black magics are delicate,” he said, lowering to his haunches, big hands hanging between his knees. “Its petals are so deep a red, they’re nearly black, but even more interesting—they smell like chocolate. Sometimes vanilla, but I’ve always only smelled chocolate.”
I touched one of the sprouts tenderly. “How strange,” I said half to myself.
“Tess is itching to get her hands on the blooms. We haven’t planted them here in years, not since I was a kid. I remember coming down here and sitting between the aisles because they smelled so good. Tried to eat