Page 11 of Oops I Fell For The Billionaire Next Door

Seven mornings, seven nights, and every hour between.

Tuesday she hands me a shovel and says "Dig."

A trench for the irrigation line connecting her new beds to the main water supply. Eighteen inches deep, forty feet long, following the grade she's marked with stakes and twine. She explains the slope calculation while I stand there holding a shovel I've never used for anything beyond scraping ice off a sidewalk.

"One percent grade. That means the trench drops one inch for every eight feet. Too shallow and the water pools. Too steep and it erodes the base."

"What if I just dig a straight line?"

She looks at me the way she looks at her stove when it clicks four times instead of three.

"Then you flood my lavender bed and I bury you in it."

So I dig. Badly. My first section is too deep on the left and too shallow on the right, which she points out by standing at the far end with her level and shaking her head slowly without speaking. My blisters form by the third hour. She notices but doesn't comment until lunch, when she takes my hands, turns them palm up, examines the raw pink skin at the base of each finger.

"Gloves."

"I'm fine."

"You're bleeding."

"Slightly."

She disappears into the cabin. Comes back with a first aid kit and a pair of leather work gloves that are too small for my hands but better than nothing. Sits on the edge of the trench and cleans the blisters with antiseptic while I try not to flinch, because flinching in front of Desireen Laurent feels like conceding a point in an argument I didn't know we were having.

"You could hire someone for this."

"You could've hired someone for your porch railing."

"My porch railing is my property."

"And right now I'm standing in your trench. So this is where I am."

Her fingers pause on my palm. She looks up at me, kneeling in the dirt, hands in hers. Something crosses her face. Soft, unguarded, gone before I can name it. Then she puts the bandages on, hands me the gloves, and walks back to her end of the trench to check the grade again.

The trench takes two days. My back is destroyed. My hands look like they belong to someone who's actually worked a day in his life. Desi runs the irrigation line herself, connecting the fittings with the quiet efficiency of a woman who's done this a hundred times. But she lets me backfill. Lets me pack the soil. Lets me stand at the end when the water test runs clean through every emitter and hear her say "Not bad, Rhodes."

Not bad. From Desi, that's a standing ovation.

Wednesday we drive into Crimson Hollow for groceries. Her hand on my thigh while I take the switchbacks because her pickup needs new brake pads she hasn't had time to install. The grocery store is small, one of those places where the cashier knows everyone's name. The woman at the register calls Desi "sweetheart" and looks at me with open curiosity.

"New neighbour," Desi says.

"Mmhm." The cashier doesn't buy it for a second.

In the produce section, the argument happens. Butternut squash. She picks one up, examines it, puts it in the cart.

"That's not a soup vegetable."

Her head turns slowly. "Excuse me?"

"Butternut squash. It's a roasting vegetable. You roast it in halves with brown sugar and butter."

"Beckett. I'm Haitian. My mother put squash in soup before you knew what a vegetable was. Soup joumou. National dish. You're telling me how to use squash?"

"I'm saying structurally, from a density standpoint, it holds up better roasted."

"Structurally." She puts a hand on her hip. "You're applying engineering principles to my soup."