by Terry Spear
There was still a lot of traffic on the highway, which Natalie was glad for. Otherwise, Marek might have realized they were following him.
They had to fall back a bit when he turned off onto another road and began to drive out into the countryside. “He can’t be going for a wolf run out here,” she said.
“Maybe one of the guys he’s dealing with lives out in the country.”
She began doing a search for land for sale in the area. “Lots of farmland and ranch property out here. Expensive too. I’m kind of surprised. If one of the guys works with him, maybe he’s rich off the illegal money or drugs or something.”
“Could be. Or Marek has lied about all of it. Maybe his boss owns a palatial ranch house, and Marek is the middleman.”
“Which is why he was carrying the money to Denver. To sell it to a street team or mobsters.”
“Agreed. You know, we need to get your car and use it to track him in the future in case he saw my Humvee at the Denver airport. If he sees me following him, he might realize we learned he was going to be here.”
“I agree. We can switch out vehicles next time. He’s pulling into that ranch.” She got the address.
Cactus and live oaks dotted the ranchland, with the ranch house way off in the background and two smaller ranch houses to the right. Marek drove down the road past the property, kicking up a dust storm.
“Now what do we do?” Natalie asked.
“We go to your garden shop, and while you’re doing whatever you need to do, I’ll see what I can learn about the guy who owns the property.”
She gave a fake hearty sigh. “Somehow, I knew the fun was going to end, and I’d be working with plants again.”
“I thought you said you preferred that.”
“Yeah, when we’re just sitting around, doing nothing. But when we’re tracking someone and trying not to be seen? That’s fun.”
He smiled and found a different road out of the area so he didn’t have to drive back by the ranch house. Though if anyone was watching traffic from the main house, they’d need binoculars to see from that distance.
“Okay, now you can direct me to your place.”
“You don’t want to try setting up a bug at Marek’s house?”
“Not in broad daylight.”
When they finally arrived at the garden shop, Brock was impressed. He’d expected a small mom-and-pop garden center, not several acres of plants, greenhouses, fountains, koi ponds, and waterfalls. But it also meant her family looked to be well settled into the area and wouldn’t have any intention of moving anytime soon.
“Dad kept adding more features to sell more plants. But I think a lot of it has to do with just wanting to create a little slice of paradise here.”
“It’s beautiful. I really hadn’t expected anything this grand.” He saw Natalie’s mother at the register, checking out a man pulling a wagon of plants behind him. She was an older version of Natalie, dark-brown hair threaded with a few silver hairs, clear blue eyes, her hair swept up in a bun, her smile contagious.
Then he saw Shawn loading trees into a customer’s pickup truck. Brock chuckled. His cousin probably hadn’t thought he’d get this much of a workout on the assignment. “Looks like you could use some more help.”
“We’d hire wolves, but there were none that we could locate around here. Angie was a great help at the garden center, so we’ll be missing her.”
“I’m sure she’ll be feeling the same way about you.”
“Ha! She’s so wrapped up in Aaron, I doubt she’ll miss being here for a moment. But I’m truly glad for her.”
Brock saw an older man adding peroxide to a fountain, Natalie’s father, most likely. Brock frowned. “Won’t that hurt the birds?”
“Nope. Best-kept secret. Works better at cleaning out algae than any of those store-bought brands that could harm animals in higher doses. You just need to add the proper amount of the peroxide to the water. Distilled water is supposed to help too.”
“I hope you don’t sell the stuff that doesn’t work.”
“No way. We tell all new owners of our fountains how well it works. That’s Dad, if you hadn’t guessed it.” Natalie motioned to her father, who was working on another fountain.
He was a spry, older man, dark-haired with strands of gray hair, and when he glanced up and saw the two of them, he smiled broadly. He looked just like Natalie when she smiled.
Then he joined them, shaking Brock’s hand and slapping him on the back. “I’m Connolly Silverton, and you must be Brock Greystoke, Shawn’s cousin. Thanks for coming to watch over Natalie and the rest of us.”
“You’re welcome. I guess she told you that these people don’t know where you are living. Most likely, they believe Natalie’s with me in Denver and we’re mated.”
Connolly laughed. “Good thing we finally got the news.”
Natalie smiled and hugged her dad. “Yeah, well, it isn’t for real.”
“Too bad. We could use a strapping young man like Brock to help in the garden.”
“He’s a PI, Dad.”
“Even a PI can do some real work sometimes.”
She laughed.
Brock smiled. He liked the guy. Her dad had his kind of sense of humor. Brock could see what he would be doing in his spare time when he wasn’t working a job if he was mated to Natalie—assisting with the family business. Which he wouldn’t mind. That was the thing about a pack; everyone helped out.
“Are you here to work for a while, or do you need to do something else?” Connolly asked.
“I’m here to work. What do you need me to do?” Brock hoped Natalie’s dad didn’t believe he could answer customers’ gardening questions. He would do more research on Marek tonight.
“Natalie, can you show him the gardens so he knows where stuff is? Then he can load customers’ plants into their vehicles.”
“Yeah, Dad, sure.” She escorted Brock to see her mom first. They waited while she rang up a purchase, and then her mom gave Natalie a hug. “Mom, this is Brock Greystoke, and Brock, this is Juliet, my mom.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.” Brock meant to offer his hand in greeting, but she put her hands over her heart and just smiled at him.
“He looks every bit as handsome as his picture.” Juliet reached out and gave Brock a warm hug too. “And good, hard muscles.”
“Yeah, Dad already put him to work.”
“Naturally. Shawn’s good-natured about it, and he seems to have been around gardens, so he’s a real help. What about you, Brock?” Juliet asked.
“Uh, mowing a yard and trimming trees. That’s about it.” Brock didn’t want to give misinformation about his skills as a gardener, but for once in his life, he really wished he knew more about it like Shawn did. So many of the wolves in the early days had kept their own gardens to produce food for the table. Once he had grown to manhood, gardening had been a thing of the past for him.
“He’s got a beautiful house in Greystoke. Lots of acreage. It could be a really lovely piece of property if landscaped a bit,” Natalie said.
Smiling, Brock glanced down at her. “First, the wallpaper in the bathrooms has to go, and now I need to landscape.”
Natalie smiled up at him. “That’s a start.”
Her mom was eyeing them speculatively, probably wondering why Natalie had seen his house and was already “redecorating” it. But then Juliet got a customer, and before Natalie could show Brock the gardens, he offered to haul the customer’s shrubs, flowers, and bags of potting soil to her pickup, with Natalie going along with them.
“Oh my, the Silvertons never had this much assistance here before. And the new help is quite…lovely,” the older woman said, winking at Brock.
Natalie chuckled and loaded the flowers in the back of the truck bed to protect them from the wind. Brock set the bags of soil
on the bed to keep them from falling over, then loaded the shrubs.
“Well, thank you both,” the woman said, handing Brock a five-dollar tip. He was going to hand it back, but the look Natalie gave him made him reconsider.
“Good luck with your plants, ma’am.”
“They’d do even better if you’d come over and plant them, I’m sure. I might just have to come back soon to ogle the new help.”
He laughed.
Natalie was smiling. “Thanks,” Natalie said, and they waved to the woman as she left.
Brock handed the money to Natalie, but she wouldn’t accept it. “I think we’ll have to hire you for real, just so we have more paying customers. And maybe some good tippers too. You might even exceed what you earn as a PI if you keep making good tips.” She squeezed his bicep. “Maybe you and Shawn could wear muscle shirts.”
Smiling, he took her hand and led her back toward the gardens. “Show me the whole place, and then I’ll get to work. What will you be doing in the meantime?”
“Watching you? You didn’t need any help loading the lady’s flowers, but I was there if you needed rescuing.”
He chuckled. “She did have me worried. You too. I was afraid you’d offer my services to plant her flowers and shrubs to give your garden shop an even better reputation.”
“No way. Then customers would come expecting you to landscape their places for them. And you’d have no clue what to do. Sure, dig holes, but…” She shrugged. “Besides, then you’ll be gone, and all we’d hear is ‘Where are those nice hunky guys you had working for you?’ Sales would drop off because they would search other garden shops trying to find you.”
He chuckled. “Hunky, huh?”
“Did you see her wink at you? Positively shameless.”
“Yeah, I’ve never had that happen while on a PI job. I must be in the wrong line of business.”
“Wait until all her gardening friends hear about it.” Natalie took him through the rose gardens and herb gardens, showing him the numerous fountains they had on display.
The whole place was beautiful and made Brock rethink his own plain yard. Not that he had a need for a showcase place, but she did make him think about aesthetics.
Four cats—an orange tabby, a black and white, and two tan and white—lounged in various places in the garden.
“They don’t try to eat your koi?” Brock asked, surprised.
“They’re well fed. Between mice and cat food, they’re not really interested. They get treats, we have them all fixed, and they have all their shots. They’re like family. They come in out of the heat in the summer and the cold in the winter. Usually, they end up with my mom and dad. Customers adore the cats, for the most part. Unless the customers have cat allergies, but being outside, the cats don’t pose a real problem. And they don’t bother anyone, just lie around and look majestic.”
Natalie had no sooner said that when one of the tabbies leaped off his stone perch, landed on the stone walkway, and joined them. He rubbed his body against Natalie, and then circled Brock, rubbing against him the whole way around.
She looked down at the cat. “Well, that’s a first. George has just welcomed you into the family. I wonder if he welcomed Shawn too.”
“Maybe he can smell I’m different, like you.”
“Hmm, maybe. I hadn’t thought of that.” Natalie greeted a couple who were loading a wagon with potted flowers in the flower garden. “Do you need any help?”
“No, we’re good, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Just let us know if you need anything.” Natalie was walking Brock one way when he saw an intriguing path off to his left, red roses trailing over the top of a wrought-iron arbor, the walkway leading to a wooden gate under another wrought-iron arbor.
“You know it would be easy to forget you’re here to shop for plants.” Brock steered her to the other path.
“We created ‘room dividers’ of tall, narrow holly in the shrub area to showcase what can be done with plants. That’s the goal. To create several landscaped niches to show what can be done with the ponds, fountains, and plants. It gives some customers an idea of what to do that they might not think of. When we started this a couple years ago, we had just the usual garden shop with every inch filled with plants in an organized way: trees there, flowers here, shrubs over there, shaded plants under shade, et cetera.” They paused to watch the colorful gold and orange koi swimming in the pond.
“But I always wanted something more. A little bit of Eden to enjoy. It’s nice and relaxing after a day of work. And it’s special because we created the gardens ourselves. Not only did we end up with tons more garden sales, fountains and ponds included, but we also ended up with a couple of additional sales features.
“Individual photographers had come here to pick up some potted plants for photo shoots. They were so impressed with the beauty of the gardens that they began to pay us a fee to photograph their clients here after we close. You might have noticed that we have garden lighting all over for nighttime. It makes the gardens quite magical, and we sell the outdoor lighting too. We close at six, so there’s still light until late in the evening in the summer. In the winter, we have the lights on. We have a bulletin board in the shop where photographers share the pictures they shot of their clients around the gardens. Between that and the photographers sharing their pictures on social networking sites, the word has spread like wildfire. The fun thing is we decorate for every season, so we always have a slew of scheduled photography sessions, even if plant sales are down in the off-season.
“We even set up an eating area with a roof and a view of a waterfall spilling into one of the koi ponds for receptions. We don’t do any of the catering. But we’re paid for the use of the gardens.”
“You’ve done a remarkable job. And what a great way to extend your marketing skills and sales.” They continued on their way and came to a bench on one side and the quaint gate with an arbor over the top that had intrigued him. “What’s beyond the door?”
“That’s the path to my personal gardens and the carriage house.”
In the worst way, Brock wanted to see her house and gardens. He wanted to learn if she had floral wallpaper throughout. To discover if her “yard” was as much a garden as the nursery was. To see what her place looked like and learn if it suited her. He had to admit he felt at home here in the garden setting. But it also made him feel as though it was private, despite the number of customers roaming about the place. He could hear some of the customers discussing what they wanted to buy, but he couldn’t see them.
She took his hand and led him away from her gate. “Later, you can see my house. After we close up today, you can drive around back and park. We’ll drop off your bag and have dinner at my parents’ house. Depending on the day, sometimes I just eat at my place, but most of the time, we have dinner together and have fun sharing our stories of what went on during the day. We might not be a pack, but we still are a family.”
“Totally understandable. Vaughn and I lived together until he found his mate. We often ate with others in the pack, the bachelors, mostly.” He glanced back at the gate. “Does it lock?”
“No. We have locks on the gate in front so when we’re closed, no one can drive into the place. That way, we don’t have any plant thieves come and steal our plants.”
He looked skeptically at her. He couldn’t imagine anyone stealing plants from a garden store.
“Ohmigosh, yeah, it’s unbelievable. We’ve been lucky, but then we have a really good security system with motion-detector lights. If anyone’s creeping around the place, they come on. And we live on the property, so we can hear what goes on. That acts as a deterrent. If someone drives up and gets through our locked gate, we’ll hear them. They wouldn’t be able to carry a lot of stuff out of here unless they have a vehicle close by. And they don’t know we’re wolves, so we can hear better than they can
.
“We’ve only had one attempt at theft. Four men in ski masks figured they could steal a couple of our fountains. Dad had his gun out, Mom was on the phone to the police, and I was a wolf. They were armed and so considered dangerous. The lights were on all over the place, the security cameras catching them in the act. Dad told them to get on the ground, but one of the men pulled out a gun. Dad shot his hand, and the thief dropped the gun. Another went after his gun, and I came around the corner and leapt at him, knocking him down.
“Mom came out with a shotgun and was ready to shoot anyone who didn’t do what they said. The two other men eyed my parents with a look that said they thought they were bluffing. One of them went for a gun, and I leapt at him, knocking him down. ‘Down now, or I shoot,’ my dad said.”
“I guess you were afraid to bite the men,” Brock said.
“Yeah, we had the security videos running, and we didn’t want it to look like we were in the wrong. What if I’d bitten someone and turned him? That would have been a disaster. The police might have tried to quarantine the wolf, dog, whatever they thought I was. We were trying to get the thieves’ cooperation without getting ourselves in trouble.”
“And?”
“They heard the police sirens. The man with the injured hand was groaning, cupping it, whining that he was going to bleed to death. The man I had knocked down was getting to his feet. I growled and barked at him. He smelled of fear and sweat. He ran, and I took him down, one pounce, slammed into him, and he was pinned to the gravel road. The other three got down on the ground, but two of them were still armed. Dad always had a pocket full of ties for plants, or in this case for thieves. Mom held the shotgun on the men while Dad tied them up, and then he confiscated their guns. I just stood there wagging my tail and growling. When we heard the sirens wailing, I was ready to head back to the house. I waited until I saw the police cars’ headlights though, afraid to leave my parents alone with the men.”
“Hell, what happened to the would-be thieves?”
“They were all charged with attempted armed robbery. Two of the men were on parole, and they went to prison. I think it helped us because we never had another problem. Too much security here. Too many guns. And one badass wolf.”