Page 73 of Arranged To Be Mine

She led me through a set of French doors into the backyard. I stopped dead in my tracks.

I’d expected maybe a few potted plants. A small herb garden at most. What I found was something else entirely.

The space was filled with color. Raised flower beds lined the perimeter, bursting with blooms I couldn’t begin to name. Reds and purples and yellows all fighting for attention. It wasn’t just the flowers. Her garden was an actual garden. I smelled tomatoes and some kind of melon. The air back here was different from the front of the house. It was thicker but in a good way. It smelled alive. I caught the sharp capsaicin scent of peppers.

I stared at the neat rows of tomatoes and peppers and what looked like squash stretching across one of the beds. Bright red tomatoes hung from the plants. I couldn’t tell if they were zucchini or cucumbers hanging from a trellis. There was a greenhouse at the back, its glass panels catching the last of the evening light.

“Holy shit,” I said.

Darcy glanced back at me, a small smile tugging at her lips despite the dirt on her face. “You like it?”

“This is incredible.” I walked further into the yard, taking it all in. “You do all this yourself?”

“Every bit of it.” She moved toward a wicker table and chairs set up on a stone patio, with more potted flowers at the corners. She gestured for me to follow. “It started as stress relief a few years ago. Now it’s kind of an obsession.”

I set the food on the table and watched her settle into one of the chairs. The ice queen was nowhere in sight. This was someone else entirely. Earthy. Grounded. Who the hell decided she was an ice queen? Clearly people that had never seen her in her true element. I couldn’t wait to see her do the water element.

Darcy in a bikini diving into the ocean was definitely on the fantasy menu.

“I never would have guessed,” I admitted, taking the seat across from her.

“That I garden?”

“That you do anything that involves getting your hands dirty.” I started unpacking the food, setting a burger and fries in front of her. “You always seem so put together. Polished.”

“That’s the work version of me.” She reached for a fry, popping it in her mouth. “This is the real version.”

I watched her unwrap her burger. She didn’t seem to notice or care that she was dirty. The contrast with the woman I’d seen at the masquerade ball, dripping in red silk and crystals, was almost jarring.

I liked this version better.

I noticed solar lighting along the path and wondered what it would look like at night. Above us, more lights crisscrossed overhead. A bee made a slow loop around a yellow flower in a pot. A breeze came up, stirring the wind chime she had hanging from the edge of the covered patio. It was the quietest I’d felt in weeks. She had created a little paradise in her backyard.

“This is so wild,” I said. “I’m speechless. Impressed.”

“Thank you. It’s a labor of love. I think I spend more time out here than I do in the house.”

“Did you take classes to learn all of this?” I asked.

She laughed. “Nope. YouTube. And I guess natural instincts.”

“You’ve got a green thumb.”

“I don’t think I was born with it. This all took a lot of trial and error.”

My gaze went to the greenhouse. I was curious but our meal would get cold and no one wanted cold, greasy fries.

“After we eat, can you show me the greenhouse?”

Her face lit up. “Sure. I’ll show you my berries.”

“I’ve seen your berries, but I’d be happy to check them out again.”

She choked on her fry. “My God. You have the wildest comebacks.”

I winked and took a bite of my burger. We both started working through our meal. She looked like she had worked up an appetite.

“You never texted me back,” I finally said, keeping my tone light. Casual. Like it hadn’t been eating at me all day.