“I do love it,” I agreed when Ryder was finally done with me. “Because I loveyou.”
He kissed me on the nose. “I love you too.” Then he spun and grabbed the last piece of doughnut and shoved it in his mouth.
“This isn’t finished,” I warned, which only earned me a laugh. Opting for a change in subject while I plotted my revenge for later, I directed Ryder’s attention to my tray of tomato seedlings. “Can you believe I only planted those seeds a week ago? They’re so cute. We’ll have tomatoes before JB does, for sure.” I had a standing bet with JB and Lily around who would produce the largest beefsteak tomato of the season.
Ryder grinned and joined me at my side. “Not that you’re competitive or anything.” His smile turned indulgent. “But they’re pretty cool, all right.”
Ryder always got a kick out of my newly discovered interest in plants. He listened to my endless novice ramblings and questions as if they were the most interesting things in the world. I secretly thought of those conversations as foreplay since Ryder always seemed primed to ravish me in some form afterwards. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it, right?
I was, admittedly, still a neophyte when it came to growinganything, and I’d been culpable for a fair amount of horticultural homicide, or was that vegecide, over the lasteight months, but I was making an effort to learn, and I was improving, at least I thought I was. My interest was born less from wanting to share in Ryder’s world, although maybe that had been the starting point, and more from the sense of peace that came from working on something earthy but still creative and light years away from my beloved coding.
I’d been surprised to find that instead of begrudging the time I spent in the glasshouse, or the garden which I was occasionally permitted to work in under strict supervision, it was something I planned and looked forward to. I’d discovered I was more productive in my own work if I took short breaks in the greenhouse, with or without Ryder. Somehow, the two activities fed into each other. Gardening rested my coding brain without taking me off the boil, and when I returned to my screens, the code simply flowed.
I’d landed the contract with the green hydrogen research lab and was loving the work. It didn’t pay a bunch and I needed to take on other short-term contracts from time to time, but that was fine. I worked mostly from home, other than flying to Auckland monthly to spend a few nights in a hotel. Aside from meeting with clients over that time, I also met up with gaming and coding friends, which gave me enough of a city and nerd injection to keep that side of me adequately fed and watered.
When I was done, I was always glad to get back to the cottage. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else or with anyone else. This was my home. Our home. Ryder and me and Ziggy. It was our nurturing nest from which everything else flowed, even if it had been a nail-biting process getting there.
Following the council meeting, there had been a huge community pushback on the proposed Elosand development. With council elections looming within the year, uncertainty began to creep through the council members, and the project was delayed pending further research. That being the case,Ryder’s lawyers pushed for an extension on his lease. The council reluctantly agreed. First by three months, then six months, and finally five years, when the results of the additional research were found to make little difference in public opinion. The community had become entrenched in their opposition, thanks to Delia’s regular public commentary on the subject and the wealth of compelling data made available through the D. Cumberland Advocacy website, namely me.
But a five-year lease was a guarantee of nothing. We couldn’t sink any money into the property or even be sure we would still be calling it home for the long term. It took Delia, once again, along with Ryder’s lawyer, to go public and call out the council’s petty manoeuvrings and blatant effort to punish Ryder and me for our opposition to the Elosand project.
Shamed into action and with those elections snapping at their heels, the council had recently offered a freehold sale proposition that was surprisingly fair. Ryder had signed it immediately before anyone changed their minds. Two weeks later, I invested a ton of money to ensure fibre would be laid all the way up the road within the following six months. I suddenly became the toast of every property on Crighton Road, and we’d been invited to more dinners than you could poke a stick at. Best of all, my internet connection was finally secure, and Heligan Inc. was incorporated as my new company.
Ryder’s smile couldn’t have been broader.
“Knock, knock. Warning, warning. Mother about to enter.” My mother poked her head through the open door and cautiously scanned the interior. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Ryder and me standing there fully dressed. That was all that needed to be said about a certain experience during our early days of living together—a mortifying incident that is never to be mentioned again.Ever.“You really need to hang asign outside,” she grumbled. “I take my life in my hands every time I come down here.”
“We’ll get right on that,” I lied, elbowing Ryder in the stomach to stop him from laughing.
My mother grunted in the way that said she knew I was lying and made her way over. “You both need a shower, and preferably separately.” She cast a lingering look at my discarded jeans on the stack of seedling trays and made a point of silently crossing herself. “I don’t know where you boys get the energy.”
“It’s all that food you keep putting in our freezer,” Ryder complained with a twinkle in his eye. “We have to burn the calories somehow.”
“Go for a run,” my mother deadpanned. “Buy some weights. Join a reformer Pilates gym. Or get a ring on that man of yours and get yourselves pregnant. A baby will run the fat off you in no time.”
I groaned, but Ryder flashed me a wicked grin as he replied, “Now there’s an idea. I vote we try for that before we have a shower, babe. Are you in?”
My mother’s eyebrows shot into her hairline, and she covered Ziggy’s ears with her hands. “That was rather naughty of you, Ryder. You’ll traumatise the poor dog.”
Ryder bowed his head. “Forgive me, Majka.”
My mother’s cheeks bloomed, and she visibly melted at the Balkan word for mother, becoming putty in Ryder’s hands, as always. He’d surprised me by using the term only a few months after they’d met. I had no idea he’d even looked it up. But now, whenever he pulled it out, my mother looked at him like he was Archangel Gabriel himself come to earth.
She also took her role extremely seriously. With both Ryder’s parents dead, she saw it as her mission to fill the gap, a mission which had been extended to a bemused Naomi, a rather confused Kris, and a delighted Fiona.
Ryder leaned toward my mother, adding in a whisper, “It’s all right. We’ll wait to make a baby until after everyone’s gone.”
My mother giggled and gave him a gentle shove. “Such a kidder.”
Unseen by my mother, I rolled my eyes at Ryder and marvelled at the way he could read her like a book. She’d loved him from the moment they met, bonding over old-fashioned roses and the problem of whitefly on tomatoes, whatever that was. And to her credit, she’d never once passed comment on his suitability as a boyfriend or on how quickly we’d moved in together.
She was too busy stuffing Balkan delicacies down his throat, pinching his cheeks, and pointing out what wonderful genes he had to make beautiful babies with. His genes, not mine, since I was, apparently, too short. If she only got one grandbaby from us, my mother wanted one of the taller variety. She’d looked it up, and statistically, they earned more money. Go figure. I got to go second, when it didn’t matter. In the meantime, what my mother didn’t know about surrogacy wasn’t worth the effort to find out.
So yes, the whole hands-off, no-interference version of my mother was still a work in progress. The fact that Ryder and I hadn’t even talked about our future in terms that even remotely resembled marriage or children, and likely wouldn’t for a long while, made not the slightest bit of difference to my mother. I was lucky Ryder hadn’t hightailed it for the hills months before. Instead, he simply smiled, kissed her cheek, and let her do her thing.
“Come on.” She clapped her hands and made a shooing motion toward the door. “JB and Lily are already here. Delia is on her way with that new man she met on her island cruise, which means an extra mouth to feed. Naomi and Fiona are bringing the baklava, so I hope they followed my recipe. And Tapcalled to say they’d be ten minutes late because Will refused to be driven in the ute unless Tap vacuumed the potting mix from the passenger seat first.”
I imagined Will standing with his hands on his hips as he watched Tap vacuum, and I laughed. The man was so whipped. “We’ll be right behind you, Mum.” I steered her gently toward the door. “It’s going to be a busy afternoon, and I’d like a minute alone with Ryder before the chaos starts.”
