“I wear them because I love heels,” she corrected him, then ruefully added, “I used to wear flats, trying to hide the fact that I was tall, but once I reached six foot in my bare feet, little details like inches were no longer important. Kind of like once you get to a certain net worth, it’s pointless to keep counting. Is it going to matter to anyone else whether you’re worth twenty billion instead of eighteen? Either way, you’re rich, period. I was tall, period. So I decided I might as well be tall in great shoes.”
“You’re not worth twenty billion, too, are you?”
She chuckled. “No, not by a long shot.”
He resettled in the seat, put his head back, and closed his eyes. “You know what, Lynda? All those guys you went to high school and college with have grown up now—most of them, at least. Their egos aren’t so fragile, and they’re not so worried about appearances. A lot of ’em couldn’t care less if they fall short in the height contest, as long as they measure up in other ways.”
“Not the men I meet.”
“Those guys aren’t scared off by how tall you are. It’s how rich you are. How powerful. How cool. If a man’s foolish enough to ignore the Do Not Touch warnings you give off, he’s gonna get frostbite. They may not care about height anymore, but they do want to keep their body parts intact.”
Lynda pulled into the grocery store lot and parked, then looked at him. “Did Dr. Matthews give you a shot of something that loosened your tongue?”
His laugh was low and rich. “No. If she were alive, Emmaline would tell you that knowing when to keep my mouth shut was never one of my strong suits. But I figure I’m out of a job anyway, so what can you do?”
“Out of a job?”
He raised his hand, started to wiggle his fingers, then winced. “The doctor said the stitches can come out in ten days, but I’ll be wearing this splint for a couple weeks. No lifting, no hammering, no climbing … that pretty much translates to no working.”
“You think I’d fire you because you got injured working on my house?”
“I think you’d hire someone else to finish the job.”
His response had neatly avoided the question, but that wasn’t what she wanted. “Answer me, please. Do you think I would fire you because of this?” What she really wanted to know was did he think she was that cold, that uncaring. She knew some people thought so—she’d been called heartless on more than one occasion—but that was different. That was business. Ben was …
Ben was business, too, as far as he was concerned.
Finally he looked at her. “No. I don’t. But it’s only reasonable for me to quit so someone else can take over.”
An odd sense of relief settled in Lynda’s stomach. “Have you forgotten? No one else wanted the job. You were the only taker.”
“So I get to keep it by default?” he asked wryly.
“No. You get to keep it because you do good work and you’re reliable.” And because she’d gotten accustomed to seeing him around. Because she liked knowing where to find him any time of the day. Because she liked all the possibilities he put her in mind of … even if most of them were likely impossible. She was no more his type than he was hers.
But what did type matter? Her mother thought she’d do just fine with a man named Darnell, or a pretty-boy slacker ten years younger. If she could make that relationship work, what did it matter how different she and Ben were?
Of course, there was one not-so-minor flaw in her reasoning. The pretty boy was looking for a rich wife. Ben was merely looking for a good time.
“Why are we sitting in front of the grocery store?” Ben asked.
“I thought I’d pick up some bandages for your arm. Do you need anything?”
He shook his head.
“You want the air conditioner running or the windows down?”
“How about the top and the windows down?”
She did as he suggested, got out, then hesitated. “You … Do you want to have dinner?”
“I usually do.”
“I meant … with me.”
When he hesitated, she felt the heat rising under her collar. She would take the invitation back if she possibly could, but since she couldn’t, she was seeking some graceful way to say forget it when he finally responded. “I usually do … but I don’t know if I’m up to learning to eat with my left hand in public.”
“Of course not. Sure.” It was a valid excuse, one she should have thought of before asking the question. Granted, she hadn’t known she was going to ask until it popped out, but …
“How about a picnic? You and me, a blanket in the grass. Common people have them every summer. Try it. You might like it.”
“I’m common,” she protested. “And I’ve been on picnics.” His unwavering look forced her to go on. “Just not in … twenty years or so.”
Without moving from her face, his green gaze warmed, and the corners of his mouth curved up in the slightest of smiles. “You’re not common. In fact, Miz Lynda, you just might be the most uncommon woman I’ve ever met.”
And that just might be the most pleasing compliment she’d ever been given, Lynda thought … at least, until she was inside the market and pushing a cart down the aisle and an earlier remark he’d made drifted into her mind. Do you want to have dinner? she’d asked, and he’d replied, I usually do. With me, she’d clarified, but he’d given the same answer. I usually do.
Maybe some of those impossibilities weren’t so impossible, after all.
After stocking up on first aid supplies, she headed for the deli section, where she got sandwich makings, chips and dip, and three different kinds of cookies. She added a six-pack of cold beer and another of Diet Coke, then headed for the checkout stand, then the car.
“Okay,” she said, once she’d stowed the groceries in the trunk. “Where should we go for this picnic?”
“Surely a town like Bethlehem has a couple of pretty little parks.”
They could go to City Park, she thought, and while they were there, she could check out the site for the new swimming pool and … Get a grip, Lynda, she silently admonished herself. Ben—the devil in blue jeans—had agreed to have dinner with her, and she was thinking about work? She was pathetic. And she wondered why men weren’t beating a path to her door.
“Or we could go to your house. There’s a pretty place out at the edge of the front yard. And you’re going to have to change clothes anyway.”
“All right. My house.” She left the top down for the drive home, and he seemed content to let the ride pass in silence. She was content, too, for the first time in … she didn’t know how long. Half sorry the journey wasn’t longer, she parked beside the GTO—the car he would let Melina drive, but not her, she remembered, and a twinge of jealousy pierced her contentment. Of course, she wasn’t nuts about cars and engines as Melina was … but she feared she was on her way to becoming nuts about the owner of that particular car. It would have been nice, just for her ego’s sake, to be included in his vote of confidence.
“Are you sure you feel up to this?” she asked as she retrieved the bags. “We can eat inside or on the porch. It doesn’t have to be in the grass.”
“Yes, it does. It was my choice, remember?” He eased out of the car, grunting once, whether from general discomfort or the pain in his arm, she couldn’t guess. “Do you have a single pair of shorts in that prissy wardrobe of yours?”
“I have several. There’s the khaki linen ones that are cuffed at the knee and have a pretty striped sweater to match. Or the hunter-green velvet ones—I bought them for a Christmas party, but I don’t wear them often because they really look best with flats, and we’ve already discussed my penchant for heels. And let’s see …”
“Don’t you have a pair of cutoffs?”
“Cutoffs?”
His grin said he knew she was teasing—she wasn’t very good at it, so she was glad he’d caught on—and was simply playing along. “You know, faded, snug-fitting jeans, cut off high on the thigh and allo
wed to fray?”
“Jeans?”
There was no playing in the surprise that spread across his face. “You don’t own any jeans?” He sounded shocked, as if the mere idea were incomprehensible.
“Actually, I do have a pair. They were a gag gift from Melina. I believe they still have the tags on them.” She unlocked the back door, then set the bags on the counter. “Don’t worry. I’ll find something suitably casual. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Lynda would be the first to admit that she liked clothes. From the day she’d started making enough money to indulge her preference for expensive garments with designer labels, she had, resulting in a wardrobe that filled her own closet, as well as the closets in both guest rooms. She had suits that ranged from severely tailored to unbearably feminine, evening gowns to die for, racks filled with dresses, slacks, skirts, and, yes, a few pairs of dressy shorts … and nothing that appealed to her at the moment.
Five minutes had turned into ten by the time she settled on a pair of loose-fitting linen pants the color of caramel, a white ribbed-knit tank top—so called, she was sure, because it clung to her ribs like a second skin, an overshirt of white cotton left unbuttoned with the tails tied at her waist, and a pair of low-heeled jute sandals. The entire outfit was a souvenir of an unexpected layover, sans luggage, in the Bahamas a few dozen business trips ago. It wasn’t the sort of casual Ben had been talking about, but it was the best she could do. The next step down would be her loose cotton pajama bottoms, or the skintight Spandex shorts that made up her running wardrobe, and she wasn’t quite prepared for either of those.
When she returned downstairs, a quilt folded over her arm, Ben was standing in the foyer, studying the stained-glass sidelights that flanked the door. He turned to watch her with appreciation in his eyes that made her feel … special. “That’s better.”
“Th-thanks.” She laid the quilt over the banister, then didn’t know what to do with her hands. They fluttered nervously in the direction of the living room. “Have a seat, and I’ll—I’ll fix the food. It won’t take but a minute.”
With a silent curse and an uneasy smile, she escaped to the privacy of the kitchen.
Chapter Nine
Ben watched her walk down the hall, admiring the easy way she moved. She’d hated dance classes, she’d said, because she had no sense of rhythm. Malarkey, Emmaline would have said. With an innate grace to every move she made, there was no way she could not be a good dancer. A gesture as simple as tucking a strand of hair behind her ear was elegant and complex—her fingers arching together, gliding smoothly over hair on one side, the curve of her ear on the other, sliding all the way to the lobe with a smooth twist of her wrist, then drifting away. The way she touched things, the way she moved so fluidly, so naturally … he could watch her doing something as mundane as making sandwiches and consider it time well spent.
Instead of following her to the kitchen, though, to prove his point, he stepped through the double doorway into the living room. What he’d seen of the house was solid, well built, and meant to last for generations, though the previous owners had apparently lacked the interest or the wherewithal to maintain it. Too many Southern mansions, faced with the same problems as well as relentless sun and unforgiving humidity, fared much worse, crumbling right down to their foundations, but this place had been luckier. He hadn’t yet found any damage that wasn’t reasonable in a house its age, and Lynda had said cost wasn’t a consideration. If he stayed around long enough, and she didn’t change her mind, by the time he finished, this old place would look as good as it had brand-new.
He ran his hand over aged wood and cold marble, skirted an antique rug that covered heart-of-pine flooring, looked out intricately designed windows that combined wavy glass that was likely original to the house with stained-glass borders. Except for the electric lighting, the room was so true to its time period that he looked totally out of place. He wondered if Lynda ever felt that way, if she regretted too many fussy flowers on the prints, too many elegantly exaggerated curves on the woods, or the heavy hand with dark, bold colors. She was a simpler, subtler sort of person.
He was standing at the fireplace, studying the ornately framed mirror that hung above it, when she appeared in the hallway, carrying a large wicker basket and the quilt. She looked incredible in the softer, less structured clothes, though, truthfully, she didn’t seem totally at ease in them. Of course, she had the body to look incredible in anything … or nothing. He doubted she was totally at ease in nothing, either.
“Are you ready?”
For a moment, he studied her in the mirror, trying to imagine her without clothing, but the image refused to form. Just as well. He wasn’t sure it was an image he could deal with this evening.
Particularly when he’d decided sometime in the past few hours that he did want to meet Alanna, not as strangers but father to daughter. It was the acknowledgment at the motel that he truly was alone that had made up his mind for him. He’d never needed much in his life as long as he had Emmaline, but without her …
A man needed someone to notice he was alive, someone who might wonder what happened if he disappeared from sight, who might give a damn if he died. Even if Alanna hated him for the rest of her life, to which she was surely entitled, at least he would have a connection to another human being.
“Ben?”
At the curious sound of Lynda’s voice, he blinked and realized he’d been staring at her reflection, wide-eyed and unresponsive. He managed a grin as he turned to face her. “I was just admiring the view.”
“You like looking at yourself?”
“I like looking at you.” He complimented women as easily as he breathed. He’d learned at an early age that green eyes and flattery would get him almost anything. With Lynda, it was an added bonus that the flattery was true.
He took the basket, though she protested, and they left through the front door. New wood showed in a dozen places on the porch—where rotted floorboards had been pried up and new ones laid down, railings had been repaired, and spindles and sections of rail caps had been replaced.
Lynda bent to run her fingers over one delicately curved spindle. “It’s a perfect match for the others. Where did you find it?”
“Sebastian Knight made it. He’s doing about twenty more—mostly for the porch, though three are for the main staircase inside.”
“I saw you talking to him Sunday evening.”
“The guys at the hardware store said he’s good. They weren’t sure he’d take the time for a small job, though.”
“Gee, where have I heard that before?” Her voice was dry enough to ease the humidity on a steamy Georgia day. “Yet somehow you persuaded him to make time for your small job.”
“I offered him fair payment for an easy job. Even Sophy could do it—and I prefer to keep her away from power tools.”
The yard stretched a hundred feet in front of the house, a broad expanse of emerald green in need of mowing. At the edge, where the hillside dropped away, a system of retaining walls had been built to create a short flight of steps leading to a small grassy promontory. Looking out over the valley and the town, it was private from all but the birds flying overhead.
Once the quilt was spread, he stretched out, resting his head on his left hand. Lynda sat primly, properly, her long spine as straight a line as could be plumbed.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” he asked.
Her gaze shifted to him, away, then back again. “You can ask anything.” Whether she answered was another matter.
“Don’t you ever kick back, let down your hair, and relax?”
For a time she concentrated on unpacking the basket. Though they’d come straight from the house, she’d taken the time to wrap each sandwich individually, and she’d included linen napkins, china plates, and an antique silver spoon to serve the dip. It was a start … but maybe he’d keep suggesting these picnics until he got her out there with throwaway dishes.
She fell silent, and he didn’t prompt her but waited and watched. She stared across the valley, but he would bet she wasn’t seeing the trees or the mountains. Her expression was too distant, too pensive. After a time, she faintly smiled, then drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She stared off again for a moment, smiled uneasily, turned her face away from him, then finally faced him. “Who’s the bug under the microscope now?”
He grinned. “Does it make you nervous for me to look at you?”
“Of course not,” she said, but she lied.
The first time he’d seen her, he wouldn’t have believed for an instant that she was even capable of getting nervous. She had been so amazingly aloof, except for the brief bout of intimidation with the baby munchkin, that he would have been more likely to believe she bit the heads off small animals for breakfast … and grown men for dinner.
But she got nervous. She blushed. Sometimes she didn’t seem to know what to say—at least with him. Which meant what?
“So you lived for your job and your job became your life. Is that what happened with your fiancé?”
“What— How do you— What do you— Melina.” Her features shifted into a grimace, then resignation. “What did she tell you? That buying this house was the second biggest mistake in my life, after getting engaged to Doug?”
“Doug,” he echoed, deliberately drawing out the vowels a few beats. “She just called him the idiot lawyer.”
Getting Lucky Page 14