“I just like doing a good job,” I said instead, dropping my gaze as I put my phone back into the front of my coveralls. His silence told me that he didn’t quite believe me, but before he could push it I asked, “Is there a way to get to the greenhouse?”
His eyebrows jerked up. “Now?”
I nodded. “Please?”
“The path was walled up years ago,” he replied thoughtfully, “but I used to sneak in over by the roses. We might still be able to?”
“Show me?”
He hesitated.
“Or I can just scale the wall,” I went on. “You know I have no qualms doing that—”
“Fine, I’ll show you, but on one condition.”
I eyed him. “What?”
“You, and me,” he said, pointing to us both in turn. “Dinner.”
I began to make up an excuse, but the words caught in my throat because … Iwantedto have dinner with him, as strange as that felt. I wanted to go back into his car, and I wanted to try that scene again where he stared at my mouth and instead of running away, I leaned into him. I wanted to know how that scene played out.
And I was very scared that I did.
Sophie Drear didn’t take chances. She didn’t agree to dinners with gorgeous men whoalsohappened to be her employer’s nephew. It was a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
He should know that, too.
And yet—
“You have a deal,” I said, and the grin that curled across his mouth was wickedly charming.
“Perfect,” he said in a voice that was very much a rumble in his chest. A thrill shivered down my spine. Then he flourished his hands toward the Rose Court and led the way. Roses had overtaken much of the garden, climbing across trellises and lattice, and so when he motioned to a portion of the outer wall, I was a bit surprised he knew exactly where to look.
“Through here,” he said, getting down on his knees, and motioned beneath. “There’s a hole in the wall, and you have to crawl through. See?” he said, and when I knelt, too, Ididsee a glimmer of sunlight on the other side. I had a feeling this was how Damnit seemed to spring on us unawares. She cut through the Hedges back there, and then to the Rose Court. “Though I think I might be a bit too big now.”
Hemight have been, but I wasn’t. So on my hands and knees, I went through the tunnellike opening to the other side.
“Wait!” he called. “What about me?”
“You said you were too big!”
He gave a frustrated grunt and then followed after me. Hewasa little too big for the hole, but with a bit of wiggling, and after snagging himself on a few thorns, I helped pull himthrough the other side. He hissed in pain as he inspected a cut on his arm.
“I think I shall die,” he announced.
“Okay, but I’m not pulling your body back through the hole,” I replied, and he wilted.
“You’re mean.”
“Oh yes,” I deadpanned, “very.”
Because I was the poster child for a bleeding heart. I saved dying plants from roadside trash, and fed possums in parking lots, and decided to help a thundercloud of a man escape a secret garden.
If anything, I was gullible and naive.
But I admitted to myself that I was also, in this case, smart. Because as it turned out, I had done geometry correctly and Eula’s updated map was indeed wrong.
Verywrong.
