Page 47 of A Touch of Spring Magic

“I’m fine. Midnight startled me. Pepper’s here too,” she called out and looked around, hoping to see her phone’s glow. “Keep talking. I lost my phone.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything.” She crouched down at the edge of the mosaic where she’d stopped her careful excavation earlier. “I can’t see my phone, but I can hear you. Maybe sing your favorite country love song.”

Why had she asked him that?

“You definitely don’t want that.” Storm laughed, his voice a deep rumble on her left. She leaned forward onto her knees, a bit loath to stick her hands in the vegetation in the dark. There were brambles and thistle and nettles—a lot of it dead or dormant and choked with years of debris. “I’ll start the coyotes howling.”

“Go ahead. I like the symphony.”

“Sure you’re okay? I can come over.”

“Always the hero,” Jessica said, striving for an airy sarcasm that missed because she remembered how Storm had won the volunteer of the year award scholarship two years running—by a lot—in high school. He was a generally good guy, and she’d used him to cover up her embarrassed hurt and confusion and relief about Rustin leaving town and her absurdly inappropriate stupid brief crush never being discovered until she’d outted herself to Chloe before Christmas.

Storm was the good guy.

She needed a warning label.

“Tell me what you’re working on in the picture I saw on your computer.” She plunged her bare hands into the overgrown dead perennials. She fished through the death, finding the first hint of bulbs poking up, which thrilled her, while Storm detailed the grid pattern he had created for the nursery so they could plan and prioritize sections.

“Oh,” Jessica said, feeling the smooth rectangles of her phone, along with something stone.

“Found me?”

She smiled, but his question pinched a little. “I don’t think you needed to be found,” she admitted, brushing her phone screen off with the hem of her cardigan and blowing at jack at the bottom. “It’s me who got lost.”

Silence.

Too much too soon. But probably just too much. And she wanted to keep things from becoming weird.

Good luck.

“I found something,” she said reaching into the bushes. “I think it’s a statue.”

“Of what?”

“Not sure.” She ran her fingers over it. “Like a person. Maybe a saint.” She wrapped one hand around it and tested the weight.

She extricated it from the weeds. “Oh,” she breathed, awed. “Wow.”

“What?”

Jessica rose to her feet and put the two-foot figurine of an angel…or a fairy…unearthed by the storm and a black cat.

“There’s an inscription, I think.” She fumbled for her flashlight and read.

“There is magic still in the garden.”

Chapter Nine

Jessica stopped resistingthe lure of the shower this morning—even though she knew she’d be sweaty and dirty within the first hour. She missed her early-morning, indulgent commune with steam and water and the stretching and delicious smells that had accompanied most mornings of her life, except during the last week.

Fragrant and relaxed, she hurried downstairs, realizing she was late to put the coffee on. She’d turned the back porch into a mini café for Storm and his team with a vintage-looking Coca-Cola red cooler full of bottled water and energy drinks. She also had a coffee maker and thermal carafe for coffee, and a large, covered cake platter for muffins or scones, and a bowl of fruit and energy and granola bars. She was a little embarrassed by how much pleasure it gave her to make breakfast for everyone and bake cookies, scones and muffins. She’d been trying out different recipes but not usingthatbook.

As she hurried down the stairs, she heard voices. What the heck?

Jessica rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw Storm at the stove cooking scrambled eggs, and stirring cheesy grits while Sarah made French toast on the griddle.

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