by Julia London
Jake kept his back turned, trying hard to pretend like he hadn’t just heard every bit of that. After a moment, he heard the click of her heels into the kitchen, the sound of a variety of doors being opened, and then the click of heels back into the dining room.
“I’m ordering out, do you want anything?”
He assumed she was talking to him and glanced at his watch. Twelve-thirty.
“But vegan,” she added. “Do you like vegan?” He turned to look at her. She arched a dark brow. “You know, vegetables and plant-based. No dairy, no meat.”
“How does a person live without dairy or meat?” he asked.
“That’s precisely the point,” she said, and pushed that dark curl from her face. “You can live a much longer, healthier life without clogging your veins with animal fat.”
“Lots of people eat meat and live long lives.”
She blinked. “Well, yeah. But it’s not that healthy. Look, you don’t have to eat it. I was just asking.”
“No thanks,” he said. “I’ve got to go out later. I’ll pick something up then.”
“Fine,” she said absently, and picked up the phone, dialing from memory. “Hi, this is Robin Lear on North? I’d like delivery, please. Eggplant wrap and salad—EGGPLANT WRAP AND SALAD! Eggplant— Okay. Thanks. Wait—One question. I ordered an eggplant wrap two weeks ago, and I could swear it was mozzarella and not tofu. Are you sure it’s tofu? What? Well . . . okay . . . just make sure its tofu, will you?”
Now he knew for a fact he didn’t like vegan and was about to say as much when his cell rang. Lindy. He clicked on the phone and walked to the front door. “Lindy, what’s up?” he asked as he stepped outside and walked to his truck.
From the dining room window, Robin watched him. She could imagine what Lindy looked like—probably tall and willowy and blond. Jake probably asked her out for a pizza and the movies on the first date. She could just hear it now—Do you like piña coladas, long walks in the rain, puppy dogs, and old movies? They deserved each other. He was the kind of guy who probably needed a woman to hang on his every word, and anyone named Lindy was probably the woman for the job. A match made in heaven.
Dammit.
A match made in heaven had completely eluded her. It seemed like everyone she knew had one. Well, everyone except Rebecca, who was married to Dirtbag Bud. And Rachel—you could hardly count Myron as a match made in heaven. And Lucy, although she kept a string of guys around. And Evan damn sure didn’t count, in spite of her atrocious lack of judgment last night. Okay, so Mia and Fix-em Fred had matches made in heaven. It bothered Robin that she was even thinking this way. It wasn’t as if she was looking for some long-term relationship.
She liked her freedom.
Thrived on it.
Who was she kidding? She’d love to have a long-term relationship. But she picked the wrong guys (Evan), and the ones who picked her never stayed long. Why was she so obviously unlikable? “You’ll chill out someday.” Mia’s remark came screaming back at her, then Jake’s observation that she was bossy, and Robin wondered if it were possible that she was just now figuring out what everyone else already knew. Robin didn’t want to be unlikable. She really meant well. But she knew that she had a slight problem—every thought that popped into her head came tumbling out her mouth. And the thought that popped into her head in that moment was loser.
That sent Robin into an even blacker mood.
Jake wasn’t faring a whole lot better out on the drive.
“I was thinking we could study together for the exam Thursday,” Lindy was saying.
Why did that sound like an after-school malt date? “Lindy . . . I think you should know—I’m not really looking to date just now.”
“Date? Who said date?” Her laughter was stilted. “Just friends!”
“Okay. So we’ll study—”
“Sure!” she said brightly. “I’ll meet you at the campus cafe around eight, okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “See you.” He clicked off, wondered why he wasn’t into her more than he was. She had all the prerequisites—nice, fairly attractive, could cook . . . not mouthy like some women . . . Jake shook his head, didn’t really want to go there.
When he returned to the house, Robin was seated at the dining table and was chewing on the end of a pen, her brow furrowed as she pored over paperwork. Not wanting to disturb her, Jake passed through to the kitchen and checked out the plumbing beneath the sink, making a list of things he needed to price later this afternoon. But when he looked under the cabinets, he noticed a leak, and crawled in as far as he could to have a look.
As he worked, he could hear Robin in the other room. She left two messages for one Lou Harvey in a tone that Jake figured was going to get her nowhere fast.
When he at last located the source of the leak, he crawled out, came to his feet, and made a few notes. The sound of Robin’s heels on the tile floor clicked to the front door; he heard it open. After a moment, the door shut, and the click-click-click returned to the dining room.
“Hello, this is Robin Lear,” he heard after a moment. “I ordered an eggplant wrap over an hour ago and it hasn’t arrived. Yes, North Boulevard.”
Jake finished making the notes he needed and walked into the dining room.
“But I ordered it an hour ago!” she insisted, doing the loop around the dining room table again. “What do you mean you don’t have a record? I asked the guy if it was cheese instead of tofu, and he said it was definitely tofu, and— What? How long? No. No, that’s okay. Never mind,” she said and put the phone down. “Pathetic. I can’t even order lunch right!”
She actually sounded sincerely forlorn. And looked it. She glanced up as Jake walked in, ran her hands through her wild hair. “I keep calling these people and they won’t call me back, the lunch guy forgets he even talked to me, and I don’t understand half of what I’m reading in these papers. I can’t be an acquisitions specialist and I am starving. I’m talking like five or six hundred calories worth of starving.”
Jake didn’t know about calories, but he knew where there were good eats. “You should check out Paulie’s sometime,” he suggested.
Robin turned, blinked big blue eyes at him, and Jake felt a curious draw from the pit of his stomach. “Where?”
“Paulie’s. Best food in Houston.”
Her blue eyes lit up. “Give me a minute to get my things.”
That startled him. “What? Wait—I just meant you ought to try it.”
“I know, but I don’t have my car.”
“Well, I . . .” What had he done? “I guess I could pick up a few things while I’m out.”
“Where?”
Jake shrugged, looked away from those blue eyes, and rooted around in his backpack. “Over to Smith and Sons.”
“I love Smith and Sons!” she said brightly.
He didn’t believe his ears; he looked up, but Robin was busy smoothing out the wrinkle in her slacks. “This sounds like a great idea.”
But it wasn’t an idea, it wasn’t even close. It was a gum-bumping mistake on his part.
“Just give me a minute, would you?” she added, but she was already halfway down the hall in the opposite direction.
Great. He was going to cart the barracuda around with him. Jake watched her disappear into the bedroom, then walked straight outside.
Whatever had just happened, however he had come to actually invite his client to lunch at Paulie’s (Paulie’s!), he hoped that her string of bad luck had ended and he was at last safe.
But a tiny little voice in the back of his head said that he wasn’t safe, not even for a minute. From what, exactly, he really wasn’t sure.
Chapter Ten
Robin appeared a few moments later, her hair brushed back and tucked neatly behind her ears, and sporting a pair of sunglasses that looked like sideways triangles. Jake peered at her closely as she climbed into his two-ton truck and sat gingerly on the dirty bench. He glanced at the stain she was avoiding and leane
d over to have a better look. “Mustard. It looks like mustard.” How could he know? A ten-year-old truck was going to have a stain or two. Robin just inched closer to the passenger door.
He started the truck, glanced at her again from the corner of his eye. “Can you actually see out of those things, or are they for decorative purposes only?”
“Of course I can,” she said, with a roll of her eyes that he clearly saw above the tiny little lenses, “these are Guccis.”
“More like gotchas,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He backed out onto the street and headed west. They rode in silence at first; Robin folded up in the corner, careful not to touch anything, he with one arm slung carelessly across the back of the bench seat. When they turned onto Park Lane, he turned on the radio, forgetting that he had last listened to hard rock, which damn near shattered the windows. He quickly moved to change it, but Robin said, “Oh hey, I love these guys!”
Jake blinked. “The Dead Sorcerers?” he asked, incredulous. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as hard rock.”
“Oh yeah? What would you have pegged me?”
He shrugged, adjusted his Oakleys. “New age, maybe. Yanni, definitely.”
That prompted a very unladylike snort; she folded her arms beneath her breasts and adjusted in her seat to look at him. “For your information, I listen to all kinds of music and always have, but mostly rock.”
“Like?”
“Like the Foo Fighters, the Stones, Celine Dion—”
“Celine Dion?” he said with a laugh. “She’s elevator music!”
“She is not!” she cried indignantly. “Okay, Smartypants, who do you like?”
“First, no one’s called me Smartypants since the third grade. Second, I just bought the new Red Temple CD. You heard of them?”
“I went to their concert in New York,” she said. “That singer guy is to die for—what’s his name?”
She looked entirely too dreamy to suit Jake, so he feigned ignorance, saying only, “All I remember is that he looks like a girl,” and switched over to the Astros game.
“So did you play as a kid?” Robin asked, leaning over to turn up the volume like she owned the truck.
“Yep. Grade school, junior high, all the way through high school and beyond.”
“Beyond? What’s beyond?”
That was territory he hadn’t really intended to open up, particularly since the wounds were still a little raw after eighteen years, and he wasn’t exactly keen to admit his failure. But damn it, she was looking at him with her mouth pursed in a way that could, conceivably, make a man move a mountain or two. “Minor leagues,” he said cautiously.
“Really?” She looked happily surprised. “What team?”
Jake hesitated. “Baytown Sharks.”
“Oooh! Very cool! What position did you play?”
“Right field.”
“Must have had a good arm.”
Huh. Amazing, but she seemed genuinely interested, so interested that Jake began to talk, albeit reluctantly, about his stint in the minors. It surprised him—in all these years, he hadn’t actually spoken of it to anyone other than to mention it occasionally in the course of conversation. But Robin was engrossed in his telling of it, asking pertinent questions, seemingly impressed. Impressed. With him. It wasn’t that Jake thought poorly of himself, it was just that . . . he was a practical man, and practically speaking, women like Robin Lear were not usually impressed with guys like him. Nevertheless, by the time they arrived at Smith and Sons, he was telling her about the Sunday men’s league he played in Hermann Park.
“Hermann Park? I jog there! Maybe I’ll just run by and watch sometime,” she said as she flung open the door of his truck, nicking the car next to him. “I’ll yell if I see you.” She stepped out and marched off toward the garden area, her little purse swinging confidently in her hand.
Jake watched her hips moving in those nice tight pants a moment before he got out. By the time he’d locked his truck, Robin was bent over a stack of gargantuan ceramic pots. He walked past, told her he had to grab a few things and would only be a moment. Distracted, Robin waved him away.
Smith and Sons was one of those eclectic little mom-and-pop shops that had grown from hardware to just about everything else except groceries: a huge jumbled array of goods which took several minutes to navigate and even more to find anything. Once Jake had the couplings and pipes he needed, he paid—being careful to keep the receipt for Her Highness per their contract—and wandered back outside.
Robin was nowhere to be seen. He asked the guy watering the rose bushes, who shook his head. “She got a cart, man, and took off,” was all he could offer. Jake walked around the garden, didn’t see her, thought maybe she’d gone to the hardware section. But she wasn’t there, either. He made his way through the kitchen area, house decor, and lumber, then outside again among the native plants and trees. That’s when he saw the flash of curly black hair two aisles over.
Ducking through the saplings, he strode to where he had seen the top of her head and stopped dead in his tracks. It was Robin, all right, with a cart piled high and full with a dozen or more plastic pink flamingos, one gargantuan ceramic pot, and an azalea bush.
She looked up as he strode forward and stopped to survey the contents of her cart. Robin followed his gaze to the pink flamingos and flashed a cheerful smile. “For my pool.”
“Ah,” he replied, nodding. “Except that you don’t have a pool.”
“Oh, I know, but I think I might get one,” she said with all sincerity. “Maybe some ferns, too. You know, for the corners,” she added thoughtfully, and pushed the cart forward, between two neat rows of ferns, while Jake wondered what corners. He stood with his bag of couplings and watched her look at first one fern, then the next, and realized, much to his horror, that they were shopping. Shopping! For a pool she didn’t even have! He eyed his watch, then Robin again, bent over another fern as she was, and his gaze was drawn to the tantalizing bit of purple he could see beneath her silk blouse.
He adjusted his stance slightly, saw that it was purple lace, barely covering what he guessed might possibly be the perfect breast. If it hadn’t been for the bit of purple lace, Jake would have walked on to his truck and called her a cab. But there he was, following that piece of lace down the aisle between the ferns, saying things like there’s a good one and not that one, the tips are brown.
A half hour later, the azalea and ceramic pot were stuffed in the bed of his truck, next to two ferns, a stack of lumber from an old job, and fourteen pink flamingos that bobbed along in their strange little gaggle as Jake sped down Kirby toward Paulie’s.
Robin was talking about pools. She was so wrapped up in imagining where exactly she might put this pool (and of course, those stupid pink flamingos), she did not notice she was the only one conversing. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, wondered if he’d lost his mind. What in God’s name was he doing in the early afternoon, running around town with this woman? He had work to do, plenty of it, really did not have time for shopping at Smith and Sons, much less a bite to eat at Paulie’s.
No time for it, but hell, he was only human. After all, she was an exceptionally good-looking woman. And she had a strange sort of refined, elitist mud-wrestling thing going on that he was finding disturbingly intriguing. And even though she held herself out as being in another stratosphere, beneath that slick exterior (and it was a kick-butt exterior), there was a funny little girl with a mess of black curls and the prettiest blue eyes he had ever seen.
Yep, he was intrigued, all right.
Even more so when they went into Paulie’s. He liked Paulie’s relaxed atmosphere, liked the wide variety of what he considered to be really good, really cheap food. But when Robin began to peruse the menu, rattling off the caloric content of each entry like an astrophysicist, Jake instantly realized his dumb mistake.
The waiter, who looked like he’d been pulled off the
set of the Planet of the Apes, chewed his thick lips as he stood, his pencil poised and pressed against the little notepad, waiting for her to order something. Anything. Robin ignored him, took her own sweet time to flip through the menu and wrinkle her nose at every entry. She finally sighed and asked, “Do you have anything without grease?”
“Yea, right,” the waiter snorted. “We’re into rabbit food here, carrots and tofu—”
“Tofu? Perfect,” she said, and handed him the menu. “Just bring me a notdog, please.”
Grok the Apeman paused in the scratching of his big head to exchange a look of confusion with Jake. Robin folded her hands primly in her lap and looked first at Jake, then the waiter. “Oh!” She laughed sheepishly. “And a glass of water. With lemon. And not too much ice, maybe half full. The ice, that is, not the water.”
Grok blinked, looked at Jake for help, but seeing that he was going to get none there, looked uneasily at Robin again. “Uh . . . what did you want again?”
“A not-dog,” she said, articulating.
“A what?” Jake asked.
“A tofu notdog. He said they have tofu.”
“I think he was kidding,” Jake said, to which Grok nodded violently. “And they don’t have notdogs.” He looked at Grok. “Just bring her a couple of dogs.”
“No! Do you have any idea what’s in a hotdoy?”
“I’ve eaten plenty of hotdogs in my lifetime and I haven’t died yet.”
“That’s a miracle, Jake. Hotdogs are as disgusting as they are fattening.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d quit worrying about calories, you might actually enjoy some good food now and then,” he countered, and looked again at Grok. “A couple of dogs, a bacon mushroom cheeseburger with fries, and two cokes.”
“Wait!” Robin cried. Grok stopped writing. Robin looked at Jake, saw his scowl, and looked at the waiter again. “Okay. Hotdogs. But water!” she insisted. “And don’t forget the lemon!”
Grok nodded furiously, made some mark on the paper, and loped away before she could change her mind.