“What kind of flower is that? It looks like something that would grow wild.”
He straightened his back and put a big work-roughened hand on his hip. “Echinacea purpurea. Purple coneflower, and it is a wild flower.”
Since when did the businessman have dirt under his fingernails? Had he retired from being CEO of his manufacturing business?
“When I lived here before, this garden wasn’t here.”
He looked down at the shears in his hand. “No, it wasn’t. I never liked flowers, but after you left, Tonja Crow gave me a rosebush and told me to plant it. According to her, as long as I nurtured it and it bloomed, you’d be all right.” He pointed the blades at a deep pink blooming rosebush in the center of the large bed. “It’s over there. I probably would have let it die, if it wasn’t for Tonja being an old Indian medicine woman.” He lowered his hand and shifted his feet, but still he didn’t look at her. “While I cared for the bush, I found myself enjoying taking care of it. That was the beginning, and I haven’t stopped since. She was right, as long as I kept it blooming, you were alive, if not okay.”
He wiped his brow with the back of his free hand. “Thing is, I found working with nature, along with finally opening up your grandma’s Bible, helped me realize I haven’t been very nice. I was a bastard to your momma and to you. I’m sorry, Charli.” He finally looked at her, his blue eyes fierce with an emotion she had never seen before. Was it guilt? Was it regret? Could she possibly hope it was love? “I hope we can start over, but I know I’ll never be able to make up for what has already happened to you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Hank–”
“No.” He cut her off with a slash of his hand, but his voice was so gentle the shell around her heart cracked. “I hope you can forgive me, but I’ll understand if you can’t. Now, come here and help me. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
He held out his clippers and a pair of gloves he’d had tucked in his belt. She was surprised to find they were just her size. She stared up at him. He hadn’t been expecting her to come to the garden, had he?
His smile softened the hard angles of his face. “I’m going to teach you. Not just about the garden, but the ranch. Someday this place will be yours. You should know how to run it.”
That day in the garden with her grandfather had become the beginning of her healing and a beautiful friendship with Hank. And had set her on the path leading her here.
She wiped away a tear as she finished with the rosebush. As she lopped off sucker growth from the large weeping cherry tree at the center of the bed, her mind stayed in the past.
Hank Monroe had changed the last few years of his life. He’d mellowed and become regretful of disowning his daughter, LeAnn, and of not understanding Charli’s grief when she’d first come to live with him.
Damn, but it all didn’t change the way he’d treated her before she’d ran away.
She paused in her pruning and wiped at her damp eyes with the back of her bare arm again, shuddering at the old memory. Why had he treated her so bad? Why had Momma died? The answers didn’t come to her now any easier than they had nine years ago.
The sudden sound of a vehicle in the drive drew her back to the present. She lowered the pruning shears as Dylan Quinn stopped by the gate. He climbed out of the pickup and headed in her direction with a distinctive limp.
Shielding her eyes with a gloved hand, she smiled. “Hi. You’re here. Good.”
He stopped under the cherry tree and took in the entire yard with one sweeping glance. His inspection also included her, and something fluttered in her belly. “My sister told me you wanted to see me.”
“Yes. You’re hired, and I’d like you to start today.” She pointed behind her. “There’s a snake in the lake over there. It couldn’t be too far from the edge. I want you to kill it. Then I’ll show you around.”
His lips twitched in a ghost of a smirk. “It was probably a little blotched or broad-banded water snake. They’re harmless and common.”
“Little? The thing was a good four feet long. And no snake is harmless.” When the meaning of the rest sank in, she shivered as the blood drained out of her face. “Common?”
“Yep.” He pushed back his dark brown Stetson, revealing some of his similarly colored short hair. “Water snakes are very common in this part of Texas. When I was a kid, I’d catch them from here and let them loose over on my granddad’s place to torment his wife.” His eyes twinkled at the memory. “Jock loved to watch me. You sure it was four feet long?”
She glanced at the lake again. “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t that long. Just kill it.”
He shook his head, and his lips twitched further into a genuine lopsided grin. Who cared if he was making fun of her? The guy was gorgeous when he smiled. The hard angles and planes still provided structure, but now small crinkles added life to his silvery eyes, and a small dimple formed in his left cheek. The flutter in her stomach his assessment of her had started just got worse.
“No. Unless it’s a cottonmouth.” He picked up a hoe from where she’d dropped it. “I’ll show you how harmless the water snakes are.”
He went to the edge of the water and prodded around in the overgrowth of cattails by the limestone lip.
She jumped when he pulled the snake out of the water. It twisted around the end of the hoe.
He looked over his shoulder at her. “This little guy’s a blotched water snake. I’m not killing it. Or any of his buddies in here either.”
“It’s a damned snake! Get rid of it. Now!” Dear Lord, was the man nuts?
He chuckled, the sound more than a little rusty as it drifted to her across the yard. “You aren’t really afraid of this fella, are you? This guy’s as harmless as a frog.” He shook the snake off the hoe and probed around in the water for a few feet. Turning, he headed back toward her through the high grass and weeds. For a guy with a limp, he moved fast.
“Maybe it is as harmless as a frog, but I don’t like them much either.” When he stopped at the edge of the garden, she backed up a step, and her feet tangled in the vegetation. With an ompff, she landed on her backside in the middle of a clump of weeds, bluebonnets and, amazingly, yellow daffodils.
He laughed and held his hand out to her, which she ignored. With a shrug, he hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans. “When I was on a mission in the South American jungle, pythons the length of my pickup would come into camp. We didn’t have to worry unless we woke up in the morning with our feet in the mouth of one.”
She widened her eyes. Was he serious?
He snorted and shifted his stance. “Of course that was better than our heads being swallowed first.”
“Oh... Oh!” She struggled to her feet and brushed at her jeans. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll be fired before you even get started. I want that snake and any of his ‘buddies’ removed from my lake.”
“I’m not killing the snake.” He put his hands on his narrow hips, drawing her gaze to the way his jeans fit powerfully built legs. “If it was a cottonmouth, I would, but the water snakes keep down the populations of more unsavory critters like mice and rats.”
“My, my, if this isn’t a scene right out of the Bible.” A smooth voice drawled from the opposite side of the flowerbed by the gate.
They turned to Leon Ferguson standing on the stone walk. She hadn’t heard him drive up the