The First Gardener by Denise Hildreth Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

frustration. But she was still left at a disadvantage with a half-Italian father, a Southern mother, a cook from Mexico, and a child who thought macaroni and cheese was a vegetable.
    Mackenzie opened the folder and looked over the schedule change. She had known about the luncheon with the educators and the meeting with the chef for Wednesday night’s dinner. But she hadn’t planned on the meeting with the Child Advocacy Coalition of Tennessee, for which she was the spokesperson. “Ooh, busy day.”
    “Yes, ma’am. We’ve got a lot to accomplish today. And Chandra needs a word with you today or tomorrow about the children’s volunteer curriculum.” Jessica stood stiffly beside Mackenzie’s barstool, obviously anxious for her to finish eating.
    Mackenzie had three people on her office staff, which operated independently of the household staff. Susan ran her office—answering phones, screening e-mails, handling all the nitpicky details and paper shuffling. Chandra handled all the initiatives Mackenzie was a part of. Jessica was her executive assistant, traveling companion, and the only person besides Eugenia officially authorized to tell Mackenzie what to do.
    Not that she always listened. “Why don’t you sit down, Jessica? Sure you don’t want something?”
    Jessica pulled out another barstool and sat. Her simple gold bracelet clanked against the white marble countertop as she did, and she drummed her fingers without even knowing it.
    Jessica didn’t do well with waiting. She tended to be uptight and a little hyper—the perfect balance, Gray said, to Mackenzie’s schedule-challenged attitude. Mackenzie could spend an hour or more chatting with people after an event, even when she had a back-to-back schedule. But she couldn’t help it. She’d never liked living in a hurry. She loved a plan. She just didn’t want to rush while doing it.
    “A real Southerner isn’t in a hurry,” she’d tell Gray when he complained about her tardiness. She was just like her mother in that regard, and it had driven her father crazy too. A native New Yorker with a passionate Italian mother and expressive Irish father, Lorenzo Quinn had fallen in love with Eugenia during her brief freshman semester at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. He’d been a senior at Columbia at the time. He’d stayed on for three years of law school while she moved back home to Franklin and worked at a flower shop. But as soon as his schooling was complete, he had moved to Tennessee to marry the chronically late, slightly ornery, very Southern girl who had stolen his heart. Southerners had driven him crazy until the day he died, but he’d been willing to endure them for Eugenia’s sake.
    Mackenzie knew she pretty much drove Jessica crazy too, and it had nothing to do with being Southern. Jessica had been born and raised in Nashville. She was just naturally tense—and seemingly oblivious to Mackenzie’s efforts to lighten her up. Mackenzie had tried pretty much every tactic in her arsenal, from changing the schedule at the last minute to jumping out from behind doors to scare her. But all these efforts just seemed to make Jessica’s edginess worse, and Mackenzie had practically given up. With her tight bun of black hair, her tortoiseshell glasses, and her two-stranded pearl necklace, Jessica had probably made about all the progress she was going to make.
    Mackenzie wiped her mouth and set her napkin down beside her plate. She ran her hands through what was left of her attempt at curling her hair, but the humidity had collapsed the curls into limp waves. Come to think of it, she should probably adopt Jessica’s strategy and plaster it all back. But no, she chose to torture herself. She pushed her barstool back and picked up her red cotton argyle sweater, letting it hang loosely from her left hand.
    “Breakfast was absolutely perfect, Rosa. Just like my mom would make, but don’t tell her I said that.” She winked and turned to