Whatever. I was basically a skinnier Gimli to his slightly beefier Legolas.
“Oh, I appreciate your help,” he said, shifting me into a side hug as he directed us to the back of the house.
We walked like that, side by side and with his arm around me, to the low deck that overlooked the shimmering pool, turquoise in the new morning light. There on the table—whose wood matched the sturdy lounge chairs—was a massive spread of food.
“Who are you expecting?” I asked, breathless as he skimmed his lips over my temple before letting me go. “I’ve got an appetite, but this is a bit much.”
He tugged at his lower lip, sheepish. “I guess it is a lot. But you said that Stevie would be joining us, right?”
“Yeah. But she eats like a teenager, Kess. Not, like, an army of teenagers.”
“I might’ve gotten a little carried away.”
I grabbed one of the rustic stoneware plates and a linen napkin, then selected a fork from the bouquet of heavy silverware in a pint glass.
“This is a fancy brunch,” I said, leaning against his side.
Kess stilled for a moment, then his heavy hand landed on my shoulder. “I like fancy. And who doesn’t love brunch?”
I looked up at the exact second he looked down. With the way the sun had bleached out his hair, I’d somehow missed the gray at his temples. It was a reminder of our age difference, and yet...God, was there anything sexier than a man with a little silver in his hair?
“Rowdy, I?—”
His words were cut off by the sound of galloping hoofbeats. “Sorry I’m late!” Stevie said, rounding the corner on her pretty bay, Gertie.
I found myself grateful for the interruption, even if I missed the heat of Kess’s body when he stepped away. Refocusing on Stevie, I watched as she dismounted her horse, easy as anything.
When I’d first met Stevie, she was a little tween girl who’d loved spinny skirts and sparkly boots. She’d grown several inches in the intervening years and was now a coltish thirteen-year-old who recently announced that she preferred T-shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots like her Papa.
Unlike Woody’s penchant for sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s, however, Stevie had a thing for Japanese animation and currently wore her favorite Studio Ghibli fit featuring the dragon from Spirited Away. She hadn’t lost all of her sparkly tendencies, though, having traced iridescent puff paint over the dragon’s scales, and she wore an impressive stack of handmade friendship bracelets.
God, she was growing so fast.
“Hey, Uncle Rowdy,” she said, putting her arms around me.
She’d started calling me Uncle Rowdy at the same time she started calling Woody Papa, and, just like Woody, I teared up the first time she did it.
“How is it you’re almost as tall as I am?”
She raised an unconcerned shoulder. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” she said, quoting our favorite Coreys movie.
Kess chuckled. “Oh no, there’s two of you.”
Not taking him seriously for a second, Stevie laughed, turning to give him a hug as well. “What can I say, Uncle Kess. I learned from the best.”
His eyes cut to mine. “Yes, you did.”
I brushed off the nervy sensation in my fingertips, still lingering from the moment we’d shared before Stevie joined us. We had plants to get into the ground, and I didn’t have time for flights of fancy.
Stevie led Gertie to a tree near a delicious bit of grass and tied her up. After that, we surrounded the pallets of planting things like a war council.
“What if we go in height order?” Stevie asked. “Lavender in the back, then sage, then some of this low creeping vine.”
“I see where you’re going with that, but...I saw something on Pinterest the other day where it was kind of mixed.”
I reached for my phone and Stevie looked on as I pulled up the Pinterest board I’d created. She smiled and pointed out the garden with the variable heights.
“That is cool, but I think the lantana mixed with the other three is going to be a lot.”
