Skullduggery {sapphic thriller}

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As we turned down the dirt road to the back of the house, long domed greenhouse tents stretched across the property in several rows. Beyond the nursery, acres of farmland rolled against blue skies forming the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. It was a different kind of quiet up here. A quiet I had often sought out during undergrad to avoid the drama that always seemed to surround Artie. But I also had a bad tendency of dragging it right along with me and often got more than what I bargained for from Maya.

I parked the truck just off the lane along the first tent where the storefront connected and then hopped out. A hand-painted flip sign read CLOSED in the window, but the door was propped open with a lemon tree in a five gallon pot. Someone had to be around.

"Should we head up to the house and knock?" Desirae asked, looking back towards the old white farmhouse.

"On a beautiful day like this? If Maya's here, she'll be out back. Likely, in one of the greenhouses."

Green metal wagons lined the front of the building for customers to wheel around their pots of flowers. Bags of mulch and soil laid stacked in piles against the tent. I poked my head inside and glanced towards the counter, but there was no one behind it.

Desirae wandered over to the cash register where a spike pierced a stack of receipts. I could see her eyeing them up, but a security camera watched our every move from the corner. Other cams throughout the rest of the tents transmitted their footage back to a computer screen next to the register.

Casually, Desirae tapped a service button and leaned back against a wall of seed packets. "I'll need you to distract Maya when she gets here."

"Distract her?" I repeated. "How?"

"I'm sure you'll think of something," she murmured, scanning the shelves full of ribbon and floral foam behind the counter. "If you can, find a way of asking her about the flowers that were arranged with Gabriel. See if she'll take you to them so I can look around."

I nodded, heading around the corner to the shade annuals tent with Desirae close behind. Well-tended rows of red begonias and pink impatiens lined the pallets that stretched to the back. In the next tent were all sun-loving flowers, geraniums, dahlias, gerber daisies. Beyond a pallet of pansies, a pair of muddied boots and long brown legs stood on a step ladder, head somewhere in the sea of pastel blooms that hung in baskets from the ceiling.

"We're closed," a gruff voice called out from the flowers.

"Oh. Sorry," I stammered, realizing it wasn't Maya. "I uh, was just actually looking for-"

A ruggedly good-looking guy in a pink racerback tank and hoochie daddy shorts popped his head out around the basket of tumbling purple petunias with a sheepish grin. His long wavy hair pulled back in a bun made him look like a jacked, hipster Jesus.

"Oh shit," he laughed softly, swiping a wild curl back with the side of his hand. Black soil smeared against his brow. "My bad, I saw the truck pulling in and I-well, I wasn't expecting you." There was warmth in his voice this time as his dark eyes went from me to Desirae before finally settling on me again.

I returned his smile. "You know Rafael, huh?"

His eyes sharpened on me as the corner of his mouth twitched with a smirk. "Yeah, you could say that." Hopping down from the ladder, he wiped his hands on his tight white shorts. "What uh, was it you said you were looking for?"

The way he looked at me made my stomach flutter with a familiarity I couldn't place. At least I tried to blame the butterflies on that. Masculinity wasn't something I was normally attracted to no matter sex or gender, but labels are never a one size fits all kinda thing and there were always a special few who really made my heart race. Maya had always held that top masc spot for me.