“Emma?” He tilted his head slightly. “Did you hear me?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I confessed. “I was distracted by how beautiful this rose is.”
“Really?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Yes. Really.” I grinned before pulling the rose toward my nose. “What did you say? Ow!” I dropped the rose and stuck my newly impaled fingertip into my mouth.
“I told you to watch out for the thorns.” He smirked as I pulled the finger out of my mouth to inspect it. It still stung, but it wasn’t bleeding. “I think you’ll be all right. We can give Dr. Westlake a full day before we show up again.”
“Ha. Ha,” I deadpanned. “Tell me how you fell in love with plants?” I said to change the subject and because I really wanted to know.
“Well”—he bent down and picked up my discarded rose before using a pair of gardening snips to clip off the thorns as he spoke—“I was born in Mumbai. When I was five, my parents and I moved to London. My mum was pregnant with Sanjeet, so I was still an only child at the time. I was never the most outgoing bloke, and I had a hard time making friends. I actually don’t mind solitude.” He shrugged before handing me the newly Emma-proofed rose. “Every day for years on my walk home from school, I would pass an old woman working on the plants in her front garden. Even when it was nippy out, she’d be all bundled up, tending to her plants.” He slipped his hand into mine and gently guided me down the rows as he continued his story.
“So one day, I plucked up the courage to ask her what she was doing.” He chuckled a little bit. “She started talking, and I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.”
“Did she not speak English?” I asked.
“Oh, she did.” He nodded, still smiling. “But with a very thick Jamaican accent. Finally, she got frustrated and started yelling, ‘fuhwad, boi!’” Dan said the last two words in a surprisingly good Caribbean accent. “Over and over again, ‘fuhwad, boi!’ I was clueless. After a few moments, I realized that she wanted me to come into the garden. When I did, she handed me a pair of gloves, had me squat beside her, and began teaching me about plants.”
“You just went into some strange old lady’s yard because she told you to?” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Did you ever read ‘Hansel and Gretel’?” He chuckled in response.
“Hey, I learned quickly that when Alice tells you to do something, you listen. Plus, she was a sweet old bird and an amazing cook. For years, I had to eat two dinners because I couldn’t tell my mum that the nice old lady up the road had just fed me jerk chicken.”
“What?” I let out a dramatic gasp. “You had to eat two dinners made by amazing cooks? How did you survive? Does Oprah know about this?” He narrowed his eyes at me and shook his head as I smirked at him.
“Anyway,” he continued, “from about age ten until I went away to university, I’d spend almost every afternoon at Alice’s, learning about plants. As the years went on, I was able to teach her a few things about plants, too, since I was better at using the internet.”
“How did your parents feel about you spending so much time with Alice?”
“They didn’t mind it, but I think they felt a bit better about it when I made some friends my own age.” He let out a sigh and stroked my cheek with the back of his index finger, making my heart flutter.“Plus, my mum loved to tell her friends that her son got top marks at school and volunteered with the elderly.” He smiled.
“So where is Alice now? Still in her garden?”
“No.” He sighed. “Sadly, she passed away about five years ago.”
“Oh no. I’m sorry.”
“She lived a long, full life. She cultivated my love for plants, especially roses. She even lived long enough to have a rose named after her.”
“What?” I stopped. “How?” Dan walked me a few steps and stopped in front of a rosebush with bright yellow blooms.
“This is the Duchess Alice rose. It was my master’s thesis.”
“Brilliant,” I whispered. “So a part of her lives on forever.”
“That was the idea.” He smiled down at me.
“So you actually created a rose? How does that work exactly?”
“You want the SparkNotes version?”
“I’ll take any version you want to give me.”
He paused for a moment before chuckling. “You basically breed different roses together until they develop the traits you desire.”
“Like genetic engineering?”
“Exactly like genetic engineering.” He nodded.
