Page 1 of Such a Tempting Omega

Chapter One

Liam

The view from the marble expanse of the back steps made the months of planning and execution worth every minute. And the fat check tucked in my wallet didn’t hurt. I couldn’t be sad about the appreciation I received from the couple whose estate I had transformed, either. The next project was already underway, as well. Success had many satisfying aspects, but it didn’t fix loneliness.

When I came to this city, I worked on a landscaping crew, a typical young mow-and-blow guy with minimal skills and no true knowledge of plants. Riding in the back of the van from suburban home to small apartment house to trailer parks, we swarmed out at each location and butchered their HOA approved lawns with a mower, I now knew, set far too low and rife with weed seeds from other yards. Pruning? We did it, but at least I had no idea what I was doing. Even after so many years, I cringed at the memory. But as bad as my work was, I learned to appreciate plants and how to better care for them. I watched videos and took online courses, even a few horticulture classes at the community college. And I chased and friended experts on social media. A mediocre high school student who barely graduated, plants and how to use them awakened a hunger for knowledge in me.

In the end, my efforts cost me my job. My boss did not have time for me to apply what I was learning in a business that relied on speed. But a strange thing happened. After I was dismissed, my phone began to ring. With calls from my former boss’s clients who wanted me to be their new gardener and even some of my fellow mow-and-blow guys who, it turned out, also wanted to do more than the basics.

So, I put a magnetic sign on my truck door and used up my savings to buy some equipment. I didn’t charge the same as Rico had, but then, I didn’t give the same type of service. Anyone who hired me wanted to make the most of their yard, whether it was handkerchief size or a half-acre.

Since that day, I’d never taken on a single job that was not a referral from a current client, and it seemed each one was a bigger property or a fancier home. I still took care of the original customers, although it wasn’t me who pushed a mower, changed out their suburban grass for native landscaping, or pruned their topiaries. Those first guys who came over with me were all trained now and capable of caring for anything I designed.

This estate had been my biggest challenge so far, a dilapidated property owned by a family that almost forgot they owned it until a wildfire encroached on it and they were forced to deal with it. The new owners hired me to transform the gardens, and my team and I had done that. As far as the eye could see around the mansion, there were colorful flowers, healthy shrubs, and trees and ground covers that were far more sustainable than standard grass. They had even requested a vegetable garden and herb beds.

And that I help them find a full-time gardener to maintain it all.

My favorite kind of client, indeed.

Each job had challenges I enjoyed overcoming, but this one had been a doozie. I shook the owner’s hands and chatted with them for a few minutes, while allowing my eyes to rest on the work we’d completed. For decades to come, this young wealthy couple and their children would be able to enjoy this. To stroll the pathways and smell the flowers. To sit on the swing cleverly tucked away in the flower garden or swim in the pool. I hadn’t put that in, but I had landscaped around it.

There was always a sadness to completing a project. I might never see it again, and only the couple who owned the home would determine who would. Like a work of art in a private collection instead of a museum where anyone could enjoy it.

I’d considered some public contracts, but they never had the budget required. It was a puzzle. How to bring my dreams to reality, pay my team appropriately for their work, and create vistas like this in a way they could be shared by more than just a couple of people.

Be that as it may, I took a pic on my phone of the view and went inside to say goodbye to the clients before moving on to the next very wealthy customers.

Chapter Two

Hirsch

Every time my phone rang, my stomach tangled up in a knot and my heart slammed against my rib cage. I shoved the phone away making it slide along the mahogany desk. It reached the edge but didn’t topple over. Honestly, I would’ve been relieved if the damned thing had broken. As much as Kyle wanted to get away from me, he sure did call and text a lot. His control issues knew no boundaries.

Once the lease was up on the apartment, his number would be blocked.

Leaning back in the plush leather desk chair, another thing he’d “graciously” left me—his word, not mine, I scrubbed my hands over my face. How did it come to this? Where had I gone wrong? How had I not seen the red flags early on.

Because I thought I was in love with him.

And now, I slept on an air mattress I bought in Aldi’s “aisle of shame” for five dollars.

A humorless chuckle burst from my mouth. Man, Kyle must’ve seen me coming from a mile away. I’d been tossed out of my family home on my ass five minutes after my high school graduation cap landed on my bed. Not because my parents didn’t love me or because I was a bad kid but because I was eighteen, and in their book, that meant it was time to go.

Very unlike any other pack I had ever heard of.

They said it would be good for me. I’d learn to stand on my own two feet. Grow a thicker skin.

What my minimum wage jobs—two of them—got me was a studio apartment that had stealthy roaches and questionable plumbing. I ate the cheapest of food and got by on three hours of sleep.

Kyle slipped right into my life and promised me the world.

And like the hungry, lonely omega I was, I lunged for the carrot he dangled in front of me.

No more working seemed like a dream.

No more lack of sleep.

Goodbye roaches and haunting sounds of dripping hot water at night.

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