The First Gardener Read Online Free PDF Page A

Eugenia—seventy-one—but still had her grandchildren telling people she was thirty-nine. Eugenia was pretty sure Berlyn had convinced even herself it was true.
    Berlyn picked up her glass Coke bottle—the only way she’d have a Coke—and headed toward the trash can. “Say what you will, Eugenia Quinn, but everyone knows you and Burt Taylor got the eyes for each other. Ever since that wife of his died from heatstroke trying to beat you for the best hydrangeas in Franklin, he’s been after you.”
    Eugenia huffed. “You sound like you’re twelve, Berlyn. Mary Parker Taylor did not die trying to beat me at anything. She died from pneumonia in the wintertime and was a beautiful lady who was never in competition with me like you are.”
    Berlyn huffed back, but Eugenia went on. “Besides, I have had eyes for one man and that is all.”
    Sandra got up from her side of the table and picked up her empty iced tea glass. Her gnawed lemon lay at the bottom of the glass as if a piranha had spent the afternoon with it.
    Sandra was actually only two months older than Eugenia but had always acted just plain old. She was the most prim, most proper, and according to Berlyn, the most prudish. She didn’t know how to not dress up, and most of the time the collars of her clothes looked like they had a stranglehold on her neck. Even her short-sleeved blouses had ruffled collars.
    “He is such a sharp man, Eugenia,” she said. “So dapper and refined. There would be nothing wrong if you two went out on a date. But I do agree that Berlyn’s characterization of it is simply tawdry.”
    Berlyn grabbed a toothpick and jammed it in her mouth—something Sandra swore ladies never did. “You read too many bad Southern novels, Sandra. Get out of books and into the land of the living. No one has said tawdry since Scarlett O’Hara.”
    Dimples rose, leaning slightly to the right as if she were trying to follow Sandra with her good eye. “I think he’s hot,” she announced.
    Eugenia about swallowed her teeth—and she and Berlyn were the only ones in the room who actually still had theirs. Sandra would deny that to her grave, but Dimples would just pull hers right out of her mouth to clean them whenever she needed to.
    “Dimples Bass, what in the world do you know about someone being hot?” Eugenia asked.
    Dimples came into the kitchen and scratched at her head, her blue curls moving beneath her hand as she did. “I know my fifteen-year-old great-granddaughter says that about that boy who sings those songs about pop.”
    Berlyn sidled up next to her and leaned down toward her ear. “You mean, sings pop songs.”
    “Yeah, sings them pop songs. Says he is h-o-t, hot. And I’ve seen Burt Taylor, and—” she leaned against the side of the granite countertop, more to hold herself up than anything else—“well, he is hot!”
    That was it. Eugenia swatted them out of her house and bolted the door. As she returned to the kitchen, she dropped her clothes along the way and walked through the house plumb naked, just because she could. She poured herself some sweet tea, grabbed her iPod, climbed into the tub, and clicked on her new Kenny Chesney album.
    Who cared if she had borrowed the CD from the kid up the street? Mackenzie might call it stealing. And Eugenia’s late husband, Lorenzo, a circuit court judge, would probably agree.
    But after a night like tonight, Eugenia just called it therapy.

 
Chapter 3
    Gray stepped out into the early morning and stretched hard, letting loose a loud grunt as he did. He heard Jeremiah chuckle. If not for the laughter, he would never have seen the lanky figure striding up the driveway with all of Gray’s morning newspapers tucked under his arm.
    “Greetin’ the mornin’, Gov’nor?”
    “Yep.” Gray put his hands on the waistband of his khaki slacks. “Thought I might beat you out here this morning, Jeremiah.”
    “Gov’nor, you should know one thing ’bout me. I always gon’ be here right