Chapter 545: The Secret in the Garden Restaurant

Chapter 545 -379: The Secret in the Garden Restaurant

The little wolf cub tilted its head back slightly, its eyes narrowed to thin slits in a look of utter bliss. It even turned its head to lick her hand.

“Ah! That tickles~~”

Jin Meiyan giggled and pulled her hand back. The wolf cub froze for a moment, then immediately squeezed next to her and nudged her hand with its little head, as if it hadn’t had enough yet.

“It really likes you, doesn’t it? Why does it ignore me?”

Drawn by the commotion, a flash of envy flickered in Erica’s eyes before vanishing. She also held out her hand and beckoned to it.

“Hey!”

“Come here, little guy!”

The wolf cub’s ears perked up, then drooped again. It couldn’t even be bothered to turn its head, just kept rubbing insistently against Jin Meiyan’s palm.

“It’s telling you to keep petting it,” Lin Chen explained with a laugh. “I didn’t expect wolves and dogs to have such similar habits. My dog does this all the time. It loves to sit right next to you; it’s not comfortable unless it’s pressed up against someone.”

“It’s probably because you fed it before. It must think you’re its mother.”

“Oppa, didn’t you feed it a lot too? Does that make you its father?”

Lin Chen was about to agree and use the topic to deepen their relationship, but just as the words were on his lips, he remembered Erica was right there and quickly swallowed them back.

Flirting with Meiyan right in front of her was definitely not okay, and the reverse wasn’t appropriate either. He had at least that much situational awareness.

More than a week had passed since the three of them had tacitly accepted this intricate, complex relationship, and he hadn’t found a single opportunity to be alone with either of the women.

The two women also seemed to be playing dumb. They either holed up in their own rooms or stayed together in the living room. He couldn’t even find a chance to speak to one of them alone.

This strange development left him a bit baffled. Since he got busy with work right after, he decided to just focus on his job for the time being.

“There’s no father. Coyotes are solitary creatures. The cubs will follow their mother until adulthood at most, and then they leave. The male coyote leaves after the cubs have a certain degree of mobility, presumably to accelerate their development.”

Hearing his explanation, Erica glanced at him covertly but didn’t say anything, continuing to focus on her food.

After they finished eating, Erica had planned to sit there and deal with the two days’ worth of recruitment emails that had piled up, but the signal in the forest was extremely unstable. She couldn’t even open her inbox.

“Damn it, when are they going to build that signal tower? I can’t even log in to my email!”

She snapped her laptop shut in frustration, packed it up, and put it in her computer bag.

“I have to go back and handle the recruitment emails. Are you coming with me?”

“No,” Lin Chen waved his hand, pointing to the pile of various plants on the ground not far away. “I have to classify and register all of these today, and plant them in their designated spots. They’ll die easily if I just leave them here. These are precious things I spent a lot of money on.”

“Meiyan is good at the arrangement part. I need to put in some muscle.”

Erica’s eyes narrowed slightly. She didn’t say much, just nodded and held out her hand to him.

“Then give me the car keys. I’ll come help you guys after I’m done with the emails.”

Watching the rear of the car disappear down the road, Jin Meiyan let out a sigh of relief for some reason. She subconsciously turned to look at Lin Chen, only to meet his gaze as he was looking over at the same time.

Their eyes met mid-air. Jin Meiyan’s pupils trembled slightly, and she immediately stood up and walked toward the plants.

“L-Let’s get started!”

‘What’s she so nervous about?’

A faint smile played on Lin Chen’s lips, and he too got up and followed her.

Having lived together for so long, he had rarely seen her like this.

The nervousness was written all over her face, yet she was trying so hard to act composed. It was strangely cute.

“First, we’ll determine the locations for the large trees, then the medium-sized shrubs, and we’ll finish up by arranging the small ones at the end.”

She was holding a folder containing the virtual mock-ups she had designed earlier. Next to it was a spreadsheet detailing the name of each plant and its location.

The job now was simple: find the corresponding plants in the pile, label them, then go to the restaurant to mark out their respective locations. Then they could call the workers to help move them with their truck.

With these documents in hand, the marking work was completed very quickly. After handing the list of large trees and their numbers to the workers, the rest was up to them.

Since the holes for the large trees had already been dug, the workers started moving the trees with a utility vehicle. Lin Chen and Meiyan, meanwhile, consulted the mock-up, found the shrubs needed for the areas around each tree, piled them onto a tricycle, and pushed it towards the restaurant.

By the time the two of them arrived, the workers had already planted a three-meter-tall palm tree in its hole. Using the vehicle’s claw, they pushed the surrounding soil back in, then drove over it once to compact the earth with the vehicle’s weight before moving on to the second tree.

The two of them just needed to handle the final details that the utility vehicle couldn’t, then plant the shrubs in the right places.

“These yellow flowers are winter jasmine, which bloom from February to April. These purplish-red ones are saucer magnolias, which bloom from March to April. Planting the two shrubs together will create a very vibrant look, and their heights are different. When they both bloom in March and April, it’s the most beautiful time.”

It was currently April, and both types of shrubs were covered in beautiful blossoms, making them very easy to tell apart.

Lin Chen dug holes in the ground, one shovelful at a time, while Jin Meiyan marked the spots that needed digging around the palm tree, then placed the shrubs into the holes one by one.

Winter jasmine is relatively short, with drooping branches like miniature willow trees. It’s very suitable for planting in pots or on slopes, where it will form a charming wall of yellow flowers.

Saucer magnolias are also typically three meters tall, but the model they chose was a specially cultivated dwarf variety for landscaping, only two meters high, which was perfect for filling the gap between the palm tree and the winter jasmine.

After planting both types of shrubs on one side, they planted Taiwan cherry and forsythia on the other. One was a two-meter-tall shrub with pink and purplish-red flowers, and the other looked very similar to winter jasmine and was also a type of ground shrub.

The palm tree’s broad green leaves and straight trunk, paired with the brightly colored shrubs, immediately added a touch of life to the empty restaurant when viewed from a distance.

However, the planting density was still insufficient, and it lacked the small flowers to fill the gaps, making the visual effect not quite harmonious.

Jin Meiyan had designed the overall atmosphere inside the restaurant so that flowers would be in bloom during all four seasons, but the outdoor area was different.

This area would be divided according to different types of vegetation to create small private booths, which would then be named after the plants.

For the first half hour, they were both completely absorbed in their work. But as time ticked by, they slowly began to pant, especially Lin Chen, who was doing the physical labor. His clothes were already more than half-soaked with sweat.

Seeing him work so hard, Jin Meiyan felt a little sorry for him. She took a pack of tissues from her pocket, pulled out two, and walked over to wipe away the beads of sweat that were constantly trickling down his face.

“Do you want to rest for a bit, Oppa? Look at you sweating, it’s like it’s raining.”

“I’m fine. It’s just my constitution. I sweat easily when it gets a little hot. Are you tired?”

“I’m not tired. You snatched up all the physical work, Oppa. All I do is run my mouth and move some of the lighter plants at most. How could I be tired?”

As she carefully wiped the sweat from Lin Chen’s face, a gentle smile appeared, and the two charming dimples at the corners of her mouth forcefully drew his gaze.

He wasn’t sure if it was because his heart was pounding from the physical work, but looking at Jin Meiyan’s delicate, pretty face so close by, with her flawless, rosy-white skin, he felt an impulse slowly welling up inside him.

He glanced to the sides out of the corner of his eye. The various shrubs they had just planted happened to form a natural screen, completely concealing their figures. No one could see what was happening inside from the outside.

All the workers were currently working on the second floor of the restaurant. Based on past experience, they almost never left their posts except to use the restroom.

A series of thoughts flashed through his mind, and he suddenly beckoned to Jin Meiyan mysteriously with his finger.

“Come a little closer, I’ll tell you a secret.”

Jin Meiyan paused, then subconsciously leaned her upper body toward him.

Suddenly, a dark shadow flashed before her eyes. Lin Chen’s face rapidly grew larger, and the next second, she felt something soft and moist gently peck her lips.

She froze on the spot. She never would have thought Lin Chen would launch a sneak attack at a time and place like this.

A blush quickly crept up her cheeks. She guiltily glanced around, and only after confirming no one was there did she shyly raise a small fist and punch him lightly.

“Oppa, what are you doing? That’s such a lame excuse!”

Lin Chen grinned playfully, taking the opportunity to grab her wrist and pull her into his arms. His other hand wrapped directly around her slender waist, holding her tight.

Feeling the extreme softness and warmth of her body and the sweet fragrance that constantly filled his nose, he couldn’t resist and lowered his head to peck those alluring lips again.

“Don’t… don’t do this. There are so many people around. What if we get caught?”

The two consecutive sneak attacks made her heart pound. Her guilty gaze kept darting between the staircase and the direction the utility vehicle had gone, terrified that someone might suddenly appear and witness the scene.

Although she wasn’t sure if the workers knew about Lin Chen and Erica’s relationship, at the very least, those two had often appeared together from the very beginning. She, on the other hand, had joined later.

If the workers saw her and Lin Chen hugging, there was no telling what kind of gossip would spread.

“Who could blame me when our Meiyan is so beautiful? When you smile, you’re as lovely as an elf from a movie. Who could possibly resist that!”

Hearing him praise her beauty to her face, Jin Meiyan felt a burst of secret delight. The corners of her mouth turned up uncontrollably as she gave him a coquettish eye-roll.

“Oh, stop it. I never hear you praise me normally. You only say nice things when you’re trying to take advantage of me. You bad guy, let me go!”