Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3) by Marty Wingate Page A

disappointed that her assistant did not share her love of plants.
    They returned to tea. Pru tried to learn more about Saskia during their breaks, but she found it difficult to get more than a smattering of facts from the young woman. She grew up in Slough, but her old mum had moved up to Edinburgh to be with her. They lived in a flat off the Lothian Road. It had been just the two of them, always. “But I tell Mum, no worries, I’ll take care of everything.”
    Today, Pru ventured a question about Saskia’s father.
    The girl said she’d never met him. She shrugged. “It happens, doesn’t it?” she asked, flashing a smile at Pru. “Mum and I get on just fine.”
    “No siblings?” Pru asked—families fascinated her, especially as hers seemed to be expanding by the minute.
    Saskia shook her head. “You?”
    “A brother,” Pru said and smiled. “I have a brother. He lives in Hampshire.”
    —
    “She’s very…efficient,” Pru said to Christopher one evening. “I’m finding more and more things for her to do—she gets them done, and fast.”
    “Do you miss being out in the garden?” he asked. “What about all that digging and planting?”
    Pru thought back to working at her desk that afternoon when a sudden drumming sound on the window had startled her. Lashing rain was beating down so hard, the drops were bouncing back up into the air, creating a solid wall of water. “I miss it now and then. But if I see the sun, I make a mad dash for it.”
    —
    Thursday afternoon. Saskia had just flipped the switch on the kettle, and was rummaging in the filing cabinet for a copy of Captain Vancouver’s 1795 letter to the Admiralty, when Iain walked in.
    “I’m still waiting for the details on those plants I asked about,” he said.
    Pru sighed and dragged her eyes up from her work. “Hello, Iain.”
    He seemed to get the point. “Yes, hello,” he said, adjusting the pocket flaps on his tweed jacket. His eyes scanned her office.
    Pru’s eyes followed his, and she saw Saskia standing almost behind the door, clasping a file folder to her breast, her eyes wide, and standing still as a deer caught in headlights. It was then that Pru regretted venting her frustration about Iain and painting him as an ogre—poor Saskia was afraid of him.
    “Iain, have you met Saskia Bennett? She’s my assistant.”
    He glanced over his shoulder and nodded.
    “Tea?” Saskia asked, still glued to her spot.
    “I don’t drink tea—do you have coffee?”
    “It’s instant,” Saskia said, as she put her folder down on a chair and moved to the kettle without taking her eyes off Iain.
    “Is there milk?” he asked.
    Saskia’s head bobbed up and down.
    “Two sugars,” he replied.
    What were they, a cafeteria? Pru thought.
    “Sugar, Pru?” Saskia asked her. It should annoy Pru that Saskia couldn’t remember this one little thing about her, but instead she found it endearing that the young woman—eminently efficient in all things—could actually fall short in this one tiny aspect.
    “No sugar.”
    Iain started to sit down, and Saskia dropped a spoon and scrambled to pull her file folder off the chair before he made contact. Iain looked back to see what the commotion was, and Saskia froze once again. Pru smothered a giggle.
    “What about that fuchsia?” Iain asked. “Anything on that?”
    Yes, the fuchsia. The subject came up in the glasshouse only a moment before the lemon tree fell and almost killed one or both of them. Pru glanced at the cut on the back of Iain’s hand, still covered in a bandage.
    “You think it’s the Brazilian one, don’t you?” she asked with a zing of excitement after having read up on it. “
Fuchsia coccinea
. No one can pin down exactly when it was brought into cultivation—do you think Menzies brought it back?”
    Iain had a gleam in his eye. “It’s not my job to make that discovery, now is it, Ms. Parke?” he asked.
    The frisson of excitement disappeared, and Pru threw her pencil