Page 77 of Where You're Planted

She shrugged, turning to wander again, trailing herfingertips across leaves and taking in the structure overhead. “There are as many plants in here as in the greenhouse at work.”

“I’ve brought some things home,” he said. “The greenhouse there was barely limping alongbeforethe storm. We were supposed to be building a new one on our expansion property by now.”

“But the commissioner froze your budget,” she said with a shake of her head.

“The new one’s bigger and state of the art. Everything about it will be a huge upgrade, especially its energy efficiency. A good portion will run on solar. And it’s fully automated and customized. Name a condition, and you can control it to the finest degree. Plus, it has all this built-in feedback through sensors and data collection. It’s a ‘science-y plant stuff’ person’s dream.”

“Okay, nerd,” she laughed.

“I’ve been waiting for this greenhouse since I came on a decade ago.”

“What about the money you guys raised? Will that help?”

“Some, maybe. We raised a fraction of what we need to make up for the flood-mitigation stuff.”

She frowned. “I hate that literallyeverythingcosts so much money.”

“Most of the plants I’ve managed to get for the park lately have come from trades.”

“You can trade for plants? With who?”

“I’ve got a greenhouse network.”

Her brow lifted. “That sounds secretive.”

He chuckled at her sudden intrigue. “Things used to be a lot more isolated, but in recent years, there’s been a push to share more, trade, send out backups of rarer species so theydon’t die off in the one place cultivating them. We got back a few things that way. Even though we lost a lot of mature plants and many of our own backups, I secured our seed bank, which has some things of interest I can trade for pricier stock when the grounds are more stable.

“But if you wanna talk secret, espionage shit,” Jack said, dropping his voice, “there are some species we all keep under wraps, even from our own staff, because they’re so rare people try to steal them. It’s all off the books. I’ve got a few things in here right now that some folks would kill to see, let alone get a cutting of.”

She whirled around. “Where? Which ones?”

“Not gonna divulge my secrets that easy, Tansy.”

She narrowed her eyes in disapproval.

He nudged her back a few steps, offering instead, “This one’s not a secret, but it is my favorite.”

She touched the cinnamon-colored branches of the shrub and cupped one of the velvety flower clusters in her palm. “Why is this your favorite?”

“Probably because I’ve killed it twice already.”

She glanced from the shrub to him and back as if to point out that it was not, in fact, dead.

“Notthisone, obviously. It’s calledEdgeworthia—paper bush. Everyone’ll tell you it needs some shade, but after I lost it the first time, I moved the next one into full sun, and it was much healthier there until a hard freeze killed it. I should have pulled it out ahead of time, but they also don’t tolerate being moved well. With this one, I finally had the right light, soil, and moisture—everything figured out—and then a damn hurricane barreled straight for it.”

“Oh, that was because of this one plant?” she teased.

“The only reason I was at the library so late that afternoon,”he told her, “was because after I secured as many structures as I could and moved things up to higher ground—not that that mattered in the end—I went back for this one. Took a while to know if transplanting it killed it anyway.”

Tansy’s eyes went wide with righteousness. “Hold on. You left late during the hurricane because you weresaving a plant? You made me feel like an idiot for going back for those birds.”

Jack sighed and shook his head. “I had a truck. I knew how to drive in high water. And I understood how much time I had before the creek was gonna overflow.”

She shook her head at him. “Unbelievable,” she said, but she was smiling all the same. “So this plant is a handful, huh?”

“The pretty ones tend to be,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face. He kissed her.

“You really do flirt via plants,” she murmured against his mouth.