Page 24 of A Touch of Spring Magic

She didn’t want to be his game changer. “I haven’t drawn up a budget for the whole project,” she said stiffly.

“The accountant doesn’t have a budget?”

Was he laughing at her?

“My plans are in flux,” she admitted. “But I’ve been paying as I go. I refurbished the greenhouses, and I have started researching the plants I want to carry in the nursery, and last night I started researching gardens around the world looking for things that caught my eye and would work here with what I want to do.”

She sounded like a neophyte, which she was. Jessica was beginning to realize that dreaming as she stood in line for a latte or drove to work listening to gardening and business podcasts was very different from being freed from a job and alone on her rather feral property.

“But before I move too far ahead with the garden project, I will consult my sisters and Grandma Millie as this was her family farm, and I share the property with my sisters,” she admitted stiffly, knowing she sounded like the biggest hypocrite, going on about being her own boss, when she felt obligated to loop in her sisters.

“See, we’re on the same page.”

“We’re in a different book.”

“You need your sisters’ approval, and they approve of me.”

“You are so cocky.”

“Hey now, ease off on the compliments.” Then he laughed. “Jay, you know you’re going to show me so let’s stop dancing and get to work. May you said, yes?”

He opened the French doors wide. The sun slid lower in the sky, filtering through the towering evergreens and deciduous trees lower on the property. Jessica did not remember Storm so rude or stubborn.

“Coming, Jessica Maye?” He walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

It would serve him right if she slapped the doors closed and locked them. But this was her property and her dream, and she wasn’t ceding ground to anyone, even if the backside of Storm Stevens was as masculinely appealing as the front of him.

*

Jessica heard aweird whirring sound. It seemed to advance and retreat, and then circle? Disoriented, she lay in bed, sprawled on her tummy, star-fished. Gray light filtered through her unshuttered bedroom windows. She groaned. Past time to rise. She must have shut off the alarm on her phone.

No.

Wait.

She no longer needed to shower and spend half an hour on her hair and makeup. The dirt and weeds didn’t care. And she didn’t have outdoor lighting yet so she couldn’t work before the sun poked over the horizon anyway.

Sighing with pleasure, Jessica rolled over and stared at the ceiling of the childhood guest bedroom she’d shared with Chloe when they would spend the weekend ‘camping out’ and running wild with Grandma Millie at the farmhouse.

Jessica had loved those rare weekends away—the four of them with Grandma Millie—the freedom and informality. She could get dirty and not face the askance looks from her mother or her father’s disapproval. She and Chloe had painted this room with a warm wash of yellows that created an ombré effect. Over the past year, she’d started adding vines and leaves on the edge of the ceiling around the crown molding she’d installed with Meghan’s help. She loved the added artistic touch, especially since she and Chloe had worked together. But Chloe had wondered why Jessica didn’t take the primary bedroom. That had never occurred to her. She’d always liked the angles of the roofline of the one she’d shared with Chloe, and she had so many memories of them talking late into the night as kids.

“What is that sound?” Awake finally, Jessica hopped to her feet and opened the window and poked her head out.

A drone hovered over the garden and made slow passes over the property between the house, the greenhouses and the barn.

“What the heck?”

Fear wasn’t part of her equation. This wasn’t the first time she’d caught teenagers trying to sneak onto her property for a little party. Once she’d caught them in the barn making a bonfire and she’d snuffed out the party with her new fire extinguisher and a call to 911 to the sheriff’s, likely earning her a ‘mean crazy doomer lady’ moniker that sheowned.

Maybe Chloe was right. She should get a couple of dogs that could patrol the property. Her nose twitched, already imagining the dog hair she’d have to contend with, because even if she imagined they would be outdoor dogs, she knew the dogs would easily worm their way inside through Chloe’s spongy heart, just as the population of feral cats Chloe had rescued and was relentlessly taming continued to grow.

Now that she would be here all the time, did that make her and the property safer or more vulnerable? She hated thinking like prey.

“Dogs,” she huffed running down the stairs. She stuffed her bare feet into her gardening Romeos, flung open the French doors and stomped outside ready to ream out some nerdy kid for trespassing.

Brrrrrr. She ducked back inside, grabbed a chunky knit cardigan to throw over her tank top and leggings and marched out in the garden toward the drone. It zipped away and hovered over the pond for a moment and then lowered, circling and then rising up a bit.

“You’re trespassing,” Jessica called out, and it occurred to her then that: one, drones had cameras, and she was outside in essentially her pajamas yelling at a machine. Two, this encounter could be posted on social media, making her look like a disheveled crazy woman and three, the actual drone operator could be a pervert and up to a mile away if it was a good drone, so she couldn’t tell him off face-to-face.

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