A warm-hearted rich man's son, Richard Gardener needs to overcome three obstacles: find a way the family business can run without him, help his mother cope with grief, and stop butting heads -- and other parts of his anatomy -- with the gardener.<br><br>Ethan Fields has worked for the Gardener family for many years. He’s struggling with debt and the desire to leave, and has loved Richard far longer than the man would believe. Ethan can cope with most things, but his anger with Richard’s mother won’t fade. Until that and his feelings for Richard are resolved, he feels trapped and, alas, the idea that sex will get Richard out of his system isn’t working.<br><br>To make the situation worse, both men assume too much and don’t say the right words, and Ethan’s offer of ‘just sex’ grows more complicated by the day. Can Richard and Ethan stop getting their wires crossed before their paths diverge?

Flowers for the Gardener

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying there were discussions.” Christopher sounded tired and the meeting had only been going for thirty minutes.


Time for Rich to speak. “And as he put me in charge of the firm, these changes are ones I can implement without collaboration.” No harm reminding them who remained the largest shareholder, though in time, he and Sapphire intended to either swap it around or arrange joint ownership.


“But you’re telling us you wish to step down.”


“I wish to step aside, not disappear.”


Without a break, Sapphire added, “We’re already consulting, generating cash flow, we’ve got the relationships laid out. All we need to do is to finalise the right software, relaunch our technical team, identify customer needs and lay out the infrastructure. It’s all right here.”


“All, she says.” Wilfred White was shaking his head. “We’ve got customers on our existing systems who are quite happy.”


Chapter 78