AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Brandon had been the exact opposite of her brother-in-law. Instead of looking to Lynn for what she could do for him, he’d given her everything that he could give. He’d given her Kara. And the chance to go to grad school and get her certified midwife certificate so she could spend her life exactly as she wanted to spend it—giving to others.
It wasn’t his fault that she’d lost her sexual allure where he was concerned….
“Hey! I was beginning to wonder if you’d left the planet!”
Spinning around, her heart beating a rapid tattoo, Lynn faced the man she’d been trying not to think about. She’d been succeeding, too.
Sort of.
“Grant!” she said, waiting for him to catch up to her. “I just saw Darin over at the park. I wondered where you were.” Or rather, had avoided letting herself wonder by focusing on what mattered. Kara. Their good luck. Their lives.
“Just finished my first round of the grounds,” he said, facing her on the sidewalk as he motioned toward the trailer in the grass, barely visible through the island of trees just behind him. “I’ve got to haul that stuff to the dump still tonight, but was waiting for Darin to show up. He went for a walk.”
“He’s over at the park,” she said. “With Maddie and Kara. I can take you there….”
“I know where the park is,” Grant said, grinning at her. “I spent two days this week getting to know it intimately.”
Was that innuendo intentional? “Of course,” she said, choosing to avoid any possible flirtation. “I’m sorry, I… I’ve been busy,” she improvised. Busy avoiding him.
“It’s certainly busy around here,” he said, his gloves in one hand tapping against his leg. “I had no idea.”
“Most people don’t.” Lynn glanced around them, looking for escape.
“If you’ve got a minute, I’d like to tell you about an idea I had for the Garden of Renewal.”
Maddie and Kara were still playing, enjoying themselves, thinking she’d be with her patients a while longer. Even if they went back to the house, Maddie would stay with Kara until Lynn got home. And if it was past her bedtime, she’d call to make sure someone else was with them. Maddie didn’t spend the night unsupervised. Meanwhile, Grant was talking about removing the gazebo from the Garden of Renewal and replacing it with benches interspersed throughout the three-acre haven of beautiful growth.
“That way women can have alone time if they need to find renewal from within, or have more personal one-on-one conversations if they’re there with someone else.”
She stared at him. He’d only been there a week. And he understood.
“I never liked the gazebo,” she said. But it had been donated. And there before she’d arrived.
“I think it would be put to better use in the park area,” he said. “That’s a more public gathering place. Unless I’ve misunderstood. But the garden area, it seems to be more of a place to find peace, quiet. Not to gather socially.”
“That’s right.”
He started toward the area visible across the grassy commons. She walked with him—and noticed the perusal he gave her. Which she then told herself she’d imagined.
She spent the next five minutes listening as he talked about a large rock fountain in the center of the garden in place of the gazebo. About flowering shrubs and blooms that would appear at different times throughout the year, giving the garden a sense of new life year-round. Endings and new beginnings, no matter what time of year it was.
She was trying not to think about a new beginning for herself. With him in the picture somewhere.
“What?” He was smiling at her again, but it was a more personal smile.
“What, what?”
“I don’t know. You just looked like you had something to say.”
They weren’t talking about flowers. And she wasn’t imagining anything.
“I appreciate what you’re doing here,” she said, opting for what she knew to be true, not hoping for what couldn’t be. “You’ve captured the essence of what we’re trying to create and devised a plan that would bring it to life much better than anything we’ve accomplished so far.”
