“I’m well. How are you?”
“Mmm . . . couldn’t sleep.” He stares down at the ground. “Came out here for a bit and saw how shabby this was looking.” He gestures to the barrel with the tool he’s holding. “Thought I’d tidy it up a bit.”
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” I ask, concern noticeable in my voice that I don’t bother to hide. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh yeah, fine, just . . . have a few things on my mind is all.” His eyes fleetingly meet mine as he runs his fingers through his dark hair.
“Is it anything I can help with?”
He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “Nah, but thanks. It’s nothing major – just work stuff.”
I know he’s not telling me the truth but I don’t push the subject.
“So can I help you with this instead, then?” I gesture towards the barrel.
He glances back. “Sure. If you go in the shed there’s a new pair of gardening gloves just in the top drawer and the secateurs are hanging up on the wall,” my puzzled expression prompting him to add, “You’re looking for one of these.” He holds up the scissor-like tool in his hand.
“Right.” I nod.
I venture into the shed, easily finding the gloves and secateurs, and take them back out with me. I kneel on the hard floor beside the barrel near James. “So what do I do?” I ask, pulling the gloves onto my hands.
He runs his gloveless fingers over the bushy green plants. “You’re looking for any browning leaves, anything that looks dead basically, then cut it off.”
I begin looking through the plants, moving my fingers through the leaves, as James is, and our fingers bump together. I glance up at him and he smiles, and even though my hands are covered with these clumpy gloves, I still get a surge of warmth from his touch. I get back to the task and it happens again, this time he laughs. “How about you do that side and I’ll stick to this one.”
With a nod and a touch of disappointment, I retract my hand and stick to my assigned side. I find a browning leave and snip it off and place it on the floor beside me. Then I find another, and another. And before I know it, I’ve clipped quite a few dead leaves off. I can see a noticeable difference in the plant already; it’s starting to look far healthier than it did a few minutes ago.
“This is quite enjoyable,” I say. “I can see why you like doing this as your job.”
“Yeah, I used to love it,” he murmurs.
I stop what I’m doing and look up at him, shading my eyes from the sun with my hand. “Used to?” I ask.
“Well I just –” He shrugs. “– I spent all of my working life with my dad, and when he passed away – well it’s just been tough not having him around.” His leans forward, arms on legs, shoulders hunched over, hands tightly clasping the secateurs. I reach over and touch his arm with my gloved hand.
He glances at my hand, then up at my face. He takes a deep a breath. “I’m enjoying this, though, working here with you.” He holds my gaze for a long moment until finally I look away and awkwardly withdraw my hand, aware that all my intense feelings for him are quickly bubbling up to the surface, knowing if I’d have kept his gaze or touched him for a second longer I wouldn’t have been able to keep my feelings in check.
“I imagine you and your dad must have been close, living and working together,” I say, attempting to fill my mind with other thoughts than my need for him as I get back to my pruning.
“Yeah, we were. We drove each other mad most of the time,” he laughs lightly whilst turning the secateurs over in his hands, “but it was always just us two. He was more like my best mate than my dad. And I guess we kinda relied on each other – me on him more than I’d realised.”
“You miss him a lot?”
“Yeah,” he says avoiding my eyes, voice suddenly low, thick.
I resist the urge to touch him again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No. It’s fine. It’s just – well – I find it hard to talk about him.” He looks at me. “But it’s not like I haven’t done enough prying of my own with you . . . even if it has been fruitless.” There is a hint of frustration in his expression.
I move back, sitting on my behind, and watch him as he starts snipping off the dead leaves again. My eyes travel the expanse of his perfect face, studying him as he presses his lips together in seeming concentration, but I know otherwise. I know he does this when he’s concealing his grief, causing me to want to offer words of comfort to him.
“You giving up?” he challenges me playfully.
I shake my head. “No, I was just thinking – well I think your dad will be looking down at you from Heaven –”
He cuts me off with a laugh, a genuine laugh, as he shakes his head. “My dad and the word Heaven don’t really go together – purgatory more likely.”
“You’d be surprised,” I utter quietly to myself as I get back up to my knees, quashing my temptation to tell him just how very wrong he is. “Well, wherever he is,” I add. “I think he’ll be feeling incredibly proud of you.”
He glances at me, eyebrow raised. “What makes you say that?”
“Well just look at what you’re doing, keeping his business going whilst recovering from a car accident and, in addition to that, taking a stray into your home and helping her out.” I use the word 'stray' to try to lighten the effect of what I am saying.
“You’re hardly a stray,” he says, voice suddenly intense. And the way he’s looking at me, so warm, so caring, sky rockets my emotions out into the stratosphere. I want to reach out and touch his face with my fingertips. I can feel them itching to move. It’s like I crave his touch, hunger for him. I clasp my hand tightly around the secateurs to control the urge.
“How long have you had the business?” I ask, needing a distraction to stop myself from doing something stupid.
“My dad started it when I was about six,” he says reaching down and picking up the coffee cup that’s sitting on the floor beside his chair. “He’d always been a gardener and he just got sick of working for everyone else, so he started his own business – small at first, just local contracts, and it grew from there, and now we’re doing pretty well.” He takes a sip of his drink and puts it back on the floor.
“And you’ve always done this? Worked for your dad's business, I mean.”
He nods. “Yeah, well after I finished uni. I’d wanted to come and work for him as soon as I left school but he wouldn’t have it. I had to do my A-levels.” He smiles. “Then I had to go to uni. But I just wanted to work for him, it was all I ever wanted to do – you know be a gardener like him, but he wouldn’t have it, he wanted me to do all the things he’d never had the chance to, and if you’d of had the pleasure of knowing my dad, then you’d have known he had a very persuasive manner. You just couldn’t win an argument with the man, it was literally impossible!” He laughs shaking his head, and I join in, knowing just how very true that statement is. “So before I knew it I’d agreed to go to uni,” he continues, “but I told him if I was going I was doing a degree in Landscape Design. So I did my degree, came back home and have worked for him ever since – well except for now, obviously – I mean it became my business when he died.” His eyes instantly cloud.
“And is it just Neil that works for you?” I ask to keep him talking, to stop him dwelling on his grief, even though I already know otherwise.
“Nah, there’s six lads altogether. Neil’s worked for the business as long as I have. He’s kinda my right hand man – I just promoted him last week to team leader. He deserved it. He’s good at what he does and he helped keep the business going when dad died. I wasn’t in a great place, obviously, and he just took hold of the reins and got on with it. We’d have probably lost a few contracts if it wasn’t for him. He’s helped me a lot. And now I’m out for a few months because of this.” He taps his finger on his pot and looks directly at me. “But I’m not a lazy boss, you know.” He grins, a slow languid grin. “That’s why I had to get a temp in to cover me. I don’t just sit back and give orders. I’m very hands-on.” His voice suddenly sounds husky and he’s looking at me in a new way, in a way he’s never looked at me before. It’s almost as if his eyes are daring me, tempting me. I’m frozen to the spot, unable to tear my eyes from his.
His mobile phone starts ringing and his eyes instantly flicker back to life. He glances down at his pocket, brushes the dirt off his hands onto the shorts he’s wearing, and digs the phone out of his pocket.
“Speak of the devil,” he utters looking at the caller display. “I wondered who’d be ringing this early.” He clicks the phone on. “All right, mate, I was just talking about you . . . Nah just telling Lucyna how crap you are at your job . . . yeah, yeah, whatever! . . . oh right you are, okay, hang on a minute.” He moves the phone away from his ear. “Its Neil,” he says to me. “Work stuff. You okay if I leave you doing this for a min?”
I nod. “Yes, I’ll be fine.”
He presses the phone back to his ear. “Neil, I’ll just have to get the drawing’s out so I can see what –” The sound of his voice disperses as he disappears off into the house.
I sit back in shock, little tremors of hope rippling through me. Was James just . . . flirting with me? I mean the seemingly suggestive manner in which he said ‘I’m very hands-on’, and the way he was looking at me. Maybe he likes me in the way I like him . . . or maybe it’s just my wishful thinking. Come on, Lucyna, these are your own desires that you’re projecting onto him making you think this way.
I shake the thoughts from my mind and carry on trimming off the dead leaves, desperately trying to ignore the little shots of stupid hope that keep trying to force their way in.
James is gone a good while and, when he comes back outside, he’s carrying a tray containing food and drink.
“Sorry about that. There was a bit of confusion over the plans for the job that the lads are going to do down in Hove. All sorted now, though.” He is seemingly back to normal, confirming that whatever I may have thought occurred between the two of us obviously didn’t. “Anyway, I thought I’d get us some breakfast whilst I was inside.”
He sets the tray on the table. I glance over at it seeing coffee, croissants, butter and a jar of jam. He places one of the cups of coffee and a plate with a croissant on it across the table from him where I assume I’m to be sitting.
I go and take my seat, pull my gloves off and lay them on the table, all the while wondering how on earth I’m going to get out of this. So far I have managed to avoid eating with him, telling him I’m not hungry or that I’ve already eaten. But now I’m stuck here, faced with food and drink that he’s made, with no easy way out. I can’t say I’m not hungry as he knows I haven’t eaten this morning. Maybe I should just try and eat it, but then I don’t know what would happen if I did and I really don’t think it’s a risk I should take.