Page 17 of My Orc (Secret) Boss

Instead of drinking, he twisted toward the reserve, his gaze on the marsh that stretched into the distance. He seemed to be studying it. Finally he said, “If that’s what you want.”

Did Iwantto head back to the shop and get changed into something clean? I mean, yeah…but I didn’t want to losethiseither. This camaraderie.

Inspiration struck.

“Before we head back, would you like to see something special?”

He blinked, met my gaze, and merely said, “Yes.”

So we loaded up the equipment, posted a sign with my shop’s logo on it and a handwritten “Landscaping division” beneath it, and each grabbed another water.

And I took him along the deer track that led through the Gary property.

When I took this track, I used to pretend I was one of my ancestors, ghosting through the forest on the trail of some elusive prey. I did my best not to make noise and rememberTati’straining, but it had been many years since the summers I’d spent learning the old ways from him.

It took me a bit to realize thatMemnonwasn’t making any noise. I paused to grin over my shoulder at him—in his work boots and hair tied up in a bandana—and figured this was part of the knowledge he’d brought with him from his world.

The deer track led us to my favorite spot on the property: a little bluff—no more than seven feet high—that overlooked the creek. At high tide, the water almost lapped at the grasses, but now the water was on its way out and the mud was covered in periwinkle snails and fiddler crabs.

“Wow,” Memnon murmured, and I grinned, loving that he was amazed by the view.

“Here.” There was a fallen oak tree I liked to sit against, and he settled next to me. We watched the water flowing out of the marsh across the creek into the dwindling stream in the middle, heading toward the distant ocean. It was cool in the shade, the air scented with pluff mud and salt water.

I exhaled, feeling the tension leaching from my shoulders, as I waited for him to speak.

He didn’t.

After about five minutes, I glanced over at him. He was sitting with his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his left leg drawn up, and his forearm resting on his knee. He was watching the marsh contemplatively.

As if he could sense my gaze, he turned to me, and I felt my breath catch. There was something in his dark eyes, somethingintense. A little spark of green I’d never noticed before.

“This placeisspecial,” he said in a tone not much louder than a whisper.

I nodded. “It reminds me of…”

“Home.”

I hadn’t expected that. “This place reminds you of the Rocky Mountains?” I couldn’t think of any placelesslike the Rocky Mountains.

His lips twitched, and he turned back to the view. “A bit, yeah. Not the landscape. But the feeling. Peace. After the last decade, I’m not the type to believe in the gods…but sitting here, I could imagine them living someplace like this.”

“That’s how I feel too.” I shifted and ended up pressed against his side. Neither of us moved. “I grew up in Wilmington, but my parents were members of the Lumbee and Catawba Nations. American Indian tribes,” I clarified, knowing he’d never taken the obligatory state history course in elementary school. “Tati—my grandfather—still lived up near Pembroke, where our people had lived for generations. I used to spend my summers there with him.”

Memnon hummed, thenheshifted. And when he was done, his arm was stretched out along the fallen tree, at my back. I told myself the move was only because he was more comfortable like this and had nothing to do with me…but the back of his thumbwastickling my shoulder.

“And what did you learn from yourtati?”

I smiled, hearing his pronunciation. The Lumbee people no longer had a distinct language, although there was a lot of effort to reconstruct some of the extinct languages. SoTatihad proudly taken the Catawba term when he’d become a grandfather, and my cousins and I always called him that.

“I learned…” Sighing, I pressed my shoulders back against the oak. “Everything. I learned how to appreciate stillness and patience, and when I needed to act. I learned how to go after my dreams, and how to dig deep roots, and how to nurture what I wanted to thrive, and cull what I didn’t.”

“Can’t tell if this is a metaphor or if you’re talking about a garden.”

“Both,” I laughed. “That’s what makes nature—gardening—landscaping—whatever so important. Thanks toTatiand what I learned on his farm, I went to school for botany, but switchedto landscape architecture, because I wanted to be able to share what I loved with others.”

“And it’s working.”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “It’s finally happening, thanks to you.”

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