Page 50 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“It’s paid for by the project,” she said slowly, testing the words. “Assigned. Like any subcontractor.”

“Like any subcontractor.”

“And you’ll ask me. Next time. Before you decide anything about my work.”

“Yes.”

“Say it like you mean it, Garrick, because I will pull every plant off this site and let your mother’s roses grow back into brambles.”

The half-smile curved his lips. “I’ll ask you. Before anything. I mean it.”

She let out a breath that took most of the shakiness with it and turned to the kid, who straightened up hopefully. “Fine,” she said. “Unchain it. Put it around the side by the equipment shed. And you—” she pointed at Garrick without much force “—tell whoever needs telling that the paperwork says assigned, not given, or I swear to God…”

“Assigned,” he agreed immediately. “I’ll have the amended paperwork to you today.”

Of course he would. She shook her head and bent to pick the crushed newsletter out of the gravel, because she needed something to do with her hands that wasn’t reaching for him in front of the delivery kid.

Behind her, Sylvie set the coreopsis down on the ground with exaggerated care, then straightened up and looked at Garrick with her mouth slightly open and both eyebrows climbing towards her green-shot hairline.

“Okay,” Sylvie said. “Okay. No, that—” She pointed at him, then at Maris, then at him again. “A male who says you’re right and I’m sorry and does not follow it up with a single but? And not only a male but a rich male?” She retrieved the coreopsis and hitched it onto her hip, backing towards her van with the air of a woman carrying important cargo. “Oh, that’s going in the newsletter. That is absolutely going in the newsletter. Flora is going to lose her mind.”

“Sylvie,” Maris said.

“Very keen,” Sylvie sang, and got in her van.

CHAPTER 17

“Dot’s grandmother can’t do it.” Maris had her phone trapped between her ear and her shoulder as she wrestled a flat of switchgrass onto the truck bed at the same time. “Apparently there’s a raptor demonstration at Biltmore House and her whole clutch is going.”

“They get some kind of weird kick out of criticizing the raptor’s technique.” Sylvie handed up the next flat, and squinted at the load. “You’ve got the install at eleven and it’s an hour and a half drive unless you get stuck behind a tractor trailer, then it’s two.”

“Two hours one way,” she muttered. It came out the same unhappy way it had come out all morning. Four hours of Toby in a truck seat, most of it on winding mountain roads. At the end of it he’d be car-sick and cross and she’d be trying to talk a client through irrigation zones with a five-year-old melting down against her leg. She could do it. She’d done worse. But done worse was exactly the phrase she’d sworn off when she left Charleston. “Are you sure you’re okay staying here to help Junie hold the shop?”

“We’ve already agreed. We can hold the shop and gossip about you the entire time. The question is the small one.” Sylvie tipped her chin towards the cottage. Toby sat on the front step in his good navy sweater—the one his grandmother had sent wrapped in three layers of tissue paper—tying and untying his shoelace with tremendous concentration. “You want me to take him? He can certainly stay with us, but if it’s busy I’m afraid he’s going to get bored and while I don’t think he’d wander off…”

“No. God, no.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “I’ll figure it out. Maybe he can come and I’ll just⁠—”

“He can stay with me.”

She turned. Garrick had come through the garden gate—wide open and swinging easily with the vines cut back to a soft green frame. He stood next to her with his hands loose at his sides and dust on his jeans, taking up more of the morning than seemed physically fair.

“With you,” she repeated.

“I’ll be here all day regardless.” He shrugged. “He likes the grounds. He asks fewer questions than my project managers and none of them are about payroll.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “He won’t be underfoot. And he won’t be car-sick on a mountain road for four hours.”

Sylvie made herself very busy with a flat of switchgrass and did not quite succeed in hiding her face.

Maris looked at Garrick, and looked at Toby on the step, and felt the usual impulse to refuse—I’ve got it, I don’t need, I can manage—but for once she let it go by. Because it wasn’t the same. He’d simply offered, and left the choice to her.

“You’d have to feed him lunch,” she said. “He’ll tell you he’s not hungry and then he’ll suddenly be starving.”

“Okay.”

“He won’t ask if he needs the bathroom. You have to ask him.”

“I’ll ask him.”

“And no power tools.”