by Sarah Title
But it was hard for Walker to think about Myron when he was holding onto Lindsey like he was a drowning man looking for a metaphor. He didn’t want to take her to bed. He just wanted to throttle her, then change the locks on the garage.
But then she pressed up closer and opened her mouth, and his tongue seized the opportunity.
God, she felt good. It was like her wholesomeness was rubbing off on him, or maybe it was just her leg. Either way, he was so glad that he had decided to stop blaming her for his problems and to try to be nice. This was nice. A handful of those shorts was definitely nice.
She must have felt it, too, because her hands snaked up his shoulders and wound their way into his hair. He hitched her up closer and she made a little sound. He hoped it was a good sound, and then he knew it was a good sound because she wrapped her legs around him and he did a mental scan of his garage for the safest place to put her so he could press her even closer.
He took half a step toward his workbench with a vague thought of sweeping hundreds of dollars of tools to the ground. But that half a step must have broken the spell because suddenly Lindsey pulled back and was squirming, which at first he liked. But then he realized she was squirming to get down. So he eased her gently down his body, holding onto her hips until her feet touched the ground.
Then he saw her face.
Mother Teresa was not happy.
“What the hell?” she said as she swiped a hand across her mouth.
Walker instantly had that old feeling in his gut, the one that felt like he had swallowed a rock and it was bringing him down, guts first. His palms started to sweat. He opened his mouth to apologize. Really, what had he been thinking, grabbing her like that? And he’d thought she had responded to his kiss, but maybe that was wrong too. Maybe that was what he’d felt because that was what he wanted to feel. His panicked thoughts tripped over each other, tying his tongue so all he could do was stupidly stare.
“I’m sorry,” Lindsey said, finally.
His head shot up. She was sorry? For him mauling her?
“I shouldn’t have come in here. And I know it’s not much of an apology, but I was so angry. I wanted revenge.”
He opened his mouth, but Lindsey beat him to it.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
He couldn’t believe it either. Sure, he’d been wanting to do that ever since he’d seen her scolding the garden into growing in those cute little shorts. But that didn’t mean . . . he suddenly realized that she was not talking about the kiss.
“If you didn’t want me to have people over, you could have just said something.”
Have people over? He wasn’t upset about that. No, he thought, his shame slowly morphing into indignation, he didn’t care about her social life, not anymore. He just didn’t want her trespassing in his locked studio.
“Did you have to tear up the entire garden?”
Wha?
“That was Myron’s garden. Or is it because you said it was mine now, so it doesn’t mean anything?”
He watched her lips quiver and her eyes blinking fast. Oh god, he thought. I kissed Mother Teresa and then I made her cry.
“I knew you were rude. I had no idea you were cruel.”
“What are you—?” he started, reaching for her.
She jerked her arm away. “Don’t touch me. I can’t believe you!” she screeched.
He held his hands up, surrendering. “What do you mean about the garden?”
She froze for a second, and Walker felt the daggers of her stare go right through his heart. Then she tore the door open and stomped out.
He followed her out. He wanted to defend himself. She wasn’t mad at him for the reason he thought. She was mad at him for something else entirely, something that she would not explain. But she wouldn’t slow down and talk, and now he was starting to get mad.
It was a hell of a way to end a kiss.
She stopped halfway up the path that led to the house. She stood there, hands on her hips, looking out over the garden.
It was a crazy torn up mess. He’d vaguely registered this on the way to the garage, but what did he know about gardening?
She flung her arm out over the mess. “You’re telling me you didn’t do this in some midnight rampage?”
Was that what she thought of him? Mother Teresa had some funny ideas about how to be a good landlord. “Why would I destroy my own yard?”
“Because you hate me for having fun and making friends and trying to be nice to you!”
He watched her take a deep breath and gaze up at the sky as if she was looking for help or answers or lightning to strike him.
“So you didn’t destroy the garden?” she asked.
“No,” he said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“So someone broke in in the middle of the night while you were out in your garage working and destroyed the garden.”
“I guess so.”
“Maybe because you were blasting bad heavy metal all night?”
“Hey, it’s not bad. It’s Iron Maiden.”
She waved her hand. “Whatever. Your golden oldies.”
“Maybe,” he said, letting the oldies go.
“So, either you did it, or someone did it because of you. Either way, your fault.”
That was a funny kind of logic. But she looked so angry, he didn’t push her.
He just stared her down.
“You are a ridiculous human being,” she said, and stomped into the house.
Well, he wasn’t going to argue with her on that.
He stomped into his side of the house.
Oops.
Chapter 11
Lindsey heard Walker’s door slam. She leaned against her own recently slammed door and hung her head. It was just a little patch of plants. It wasn’t even hers, not yet, anyway. She’d spent a few weeks weeding it. It was her own fault for getting so excited about it. Who got so excited about home-grown produce, anyway?
It was the move, that’s all. The move and the stress of all the change and the hangover and the hot kiss. That was a lot for a girl to handle.
But what hurt the most was Walker’s cruelty. That he could be so spiteful, to destroy something she cared about just because he was angry. And before she even had a chance to find out that he was angry! That man needed some communication lessons.
He said he hadn’t done it. She didn’t believe him, but he really looked like he hadn’t noticed the destruction. Her Detective kicked in, and she started to see clues. The garden was pretty thoroughly torn up, but he didn’t seem to have any dirt on him. Oh, he was dirty, and he smelled like sweat and metal—she had gotten close enough to find that out. But surely he would’ve had some dirt on his clothes if he’d spent half the night throwing plants around?
She definitely would have noticed the dirt. She noticed all of his smells. The tang of sweat and metal. She also noticed the feel of his hair, like silk around her fingers. And his shoulders, and the vise-like grip of his arms around her ribs. But a gentle vise. A nice vise.
She shivered. That was some kiss. It almost made her forget that she hated him right now.
But that kiss, and that art. Any man who could create like that and kiss like that was a man with some serious depth. The more he kept that depth from her, hidden behind half-frowns and exasperated silence, the more she wanted to break down those walls.
So if he hadn’t destroyed the garden, who had?
If she couldn’t figure out the mystery of Walker’s hidden depths, she could at least figure out who was crazy enough to pull their yard apart in the middle of the night.
She opened the door and poked her head out, noting that Walker’s door was still slammed shut. She felt like an idiot, especially as she crept, Pink Panther-style, toward the garden, but she couldn’t help it. Something was up, and she needed to know what it was.
She stood up and surveyed the damage. Yup, pretty damaged. But there was a tomato plant that was encased in one of those ci
rcle wire-y cage things that seemed to have survived. And as she stepped into the garden, she saw that at least one of the zucchini plants was still intact. At least she thought it was a zucchini plant. She should have brought her book out with her.
Because that would not have been dorky at all. First sleuthing, then with a reference book.
Made it hard to believe Walker had wanted to kiss her at all.
She shook that thought off. He hadn’t wanted to kiss her. He had just done it to distract her from his top-secret work-in-progress.
Even though, toward the end there, he wasn’t exactly acting like a man who was just trying for a distraction. One does not simply squeeze a girl’s butt like that if one only wants a distraction.
But his distraction was distracting her from her investigation. Clues. She needed clues. Maybe he had stuff in the garage that she could use to make a mold of any footprints she found. Then she could compare it to the shoes people in the neighborhood owned, and then . . .
She was sidetracked by a rustle at the side of the garage, the one closest to where she stood in the garden. Aha, she thought. The culprit is back for more. “Come on out, buddy,” she said, and picked up the nearest weapon. Which, unfortunately, was her dead eggplant.
Well, at least she would die defending her territory. She watched the unmown grass wave as whatever was hiding moved closer to her. She took a step forward and the waving stopped, but she only had to wait a second for it to start up again. Then she heard a snap and a squeak and the grass went crazy as the beast sprang from its hiding place and charged straight toward Lindsey.
Before she had a chance to throw down her useless weapon and run, she was knocked into the garden, taking the last tomato plant with her. She grabbed for her attacker, pulling it off of her and—
It was a puppy. A big, brown, wet-nosed puppy, whining and burrowing into her armpit. He seemed upset, and Lindsey saw why—his tail was clamped in a mousetrap, one of those old-fashioned metal-and-wood ones.
“Okay, okay,” she said in as soothing a voice as she could muster, what with her heart beating out of her chest. “Hold on, pup. I’ve got it.” She grabbed the wooden bottom of the trap with one hand and his tail with the other, and the dog whimpered and jerked and almost blew out Lindsey’s ear drum with a high-pitched yelp, but the mousetrap came off. Lindsey tossed the thing aside and dropped her head into the dirt. The puppy sat on her chest and licked her nose.
“Uh, you’re welcome,” she said, then scratched behind his ears.
“What’s that?” Walker asked when he came back to find Lindsey not quite where he left her.
Lindsey looked up from whatever she was doing on the ground in what was left of her garden and held her arms out. Her arms, which were full of dog.
“It’s a dog.”
He shook his head. “I know that. I can see that. But . . . why?”
“Well,” she said, “when a mommy dog and a daddy dog love each other very much . . .”
He noticed the mischievous glint in her eye. He was still annoyed at her.
“What is it doing here?”
“I think he’s hungry.” Walker watched blankly as the dog licked Lindsey’s face. “I think he’s the garden destroyer.”
“That little dog did all this?” Walker didn’t know much about dogs. He never had one. This dog looked way too small to be able to tear up every square inch of garden.
Although the dog’s feet were pretty big. If his feet were any indication of his appetite, then . . . maybe.
The dog wiggled out of Lindsey’s arms and made his somersaulting-over-his-ears way to Walker. “This dog must be part Tasmanian devil.” He watched as the dog bounced up and down on Walker’s knee.
“He had all night.” Lindsey shrugged, then knelt down to pick up the dog. “Didn’t you, my little love machine angel baby face.” She shrieked and laughed as he licked her.
“Wait a second.” Walker crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to be charmed by either Pollyanna or her Destroying Angel. “When you thought I tore up the garden, you were pissed.”
“Yeah,” she said, clearly only half-listening to him as the dog tried to climb up her chest and nip at her ponytail.
“So why is the dog off the hook?”
She looked at him sharply. “The dog can’t help it! He doesn’t know any better! Besides, he was probably starving!”
“So if I was starving and tore up your garden, you would be fine with it?”
She threw him a challenging glare. “If you were as cute as the dog is.”
“Hey, I’m—” Walker stopped himself. He was not cute.
He threw his arms up. “Fine. The dog wins. Whose dog is it, anyway?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t have a collar.” Lindsey scratched behind the dog’s ears. He flopped onto his belly at her feet. Lucky dog. “But he did have this attached to his tail.”
She held up one of those ancient cartoon-style mousetraps Myron had insisted on putting around the garage. Those had been out there for years. Walker thought he’d picked them all up. He was surprised he hadn’t stepped on it the last time he mowed the lawn.
Good thing he didn’t mow the lawn very often.
“How could you?” Lindsey spat at him, and pulled the dog closer to her chest.
“I didn’t mean to trap the dog! Although you should be thanking me. Without that trap, you never would have caught him.”
“Hmph.” She held up the dog’s face and started speaking babytalk gibberish to him.
Walker rubbed his jaw. “So, how are you going to find his owner?”
Lindsey huffed out a breath. “I guess we have to find your home, don’t we, boy? I’ll make some posters. Here,” she said, handing the dog to Walker. “Hold him while I get my phone.”
Before Walker could say anything, he had his hands full of dog, and Lindsey was sprinting into the house. The dog was still dangling from Walker’s hands when she came out, phone in hand.
“Hold him up so I can get his face. Oh my gosh, support his legs,” Lindsey scolded him. “He’s not going to bite.”
“He could bite,” muttered Walker.
“Over here! Look over here, boy! That’s a good boy!” Lindsey made a series of clicking and whistling noises that the dog ignored. Instead, he just licked Walker’s hands.
“You know . . .” he said, and pulled the dog tight to him with one hand while he wiped the other on his jeans.
“Got it! Very cute. Oh my gosh, Walker, you’re smiling in this one! It’s a miracle!”
What was that supposed to mean? “Hey, why am I in the picture?”
She shrugged. “I’ll crop you out. Look at this face.” She tapped her phone to zoom in on the dog’s face, his big brown eyes glistening pathetically and adorably in the sun. Lindsey smelled like sweat and peppermint. The dog licked her cheek.
Lucky dog.
“We’ll find your home, don’t you worry,” she said, snuffling her nose into the dog’s neck. Walker just stood there, trying hard not to inhale the scent of her hair or generally drool over the good feeling he got when she was near. He also tried not to be jealous of the dog. Because it was a dog.
This dog, he thought as it wormed its way out from under Lindsey’s affection to rest its chin on Walker’s shoulder, this dog is a problem.
“Oh my god, do not move,” she said and circled around them, phone out. “Holy crap. I can’t . . . Okay, my ovaries just exploded.”
Walker turned at that, despite her instruction. She stuck the phone in his face again. “Please,” she said, and he just grunted because, please what? The dog was flopped in sleep on his shoulder. It was pretty cute. If Walker had ovaries, he imagined they’d be exploding right now, too.
Until he felt the picturesque, adorable, ovary-exploding drool soak through the shoulder of his shirt.
Why was he letting this dog drool on his shirt again?
Lindsey stood in front of him, swiping at her phone as her face morphed into var
ious stages of maniacal joy.
That’s why. He was covered in dog drool because watching this woman’s gloriously joyful face made it worthwhile.
He’d been covered in worse.
He had it bad for Lindsey. He should go inside and put his house on the market and not come out until he had a moving truck lined up. He did not like the idea of pining over his next-door neighbor.
He never should have kissed her.
Myron was going to have a field day with this.
With a sigh, Lindsey looked up from her phone. The look she gave him was slightly less joyous, but it was a hell of a lot better than the one she’d given him when she thought he’d torn up her garden.
“I guess you’re off the hook,” she said.
He was standing in the middle of a destroyed vegetable garden, his work left unfinished and exposed in the garage, a drooling puppy on his shoulder that he didn’t want to put down because it made Lindsey happy and, if it was internal monologue confession time, he kind of liked the warm, furry weight.
All in all, not the worst situation he’d ever been in. But Walker felt decidedly on the hook.
“For the garden,” Lindsey clarified. “Clearly it wasn’t you.”
It rankled that she ever thought it might be. But then the puppy shifted and Lindsey came over to scratch behind its ears and Walker smelled her again and he was done rankling for the moment.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said with as much sarcasm as he could muster in the face of her sincerity and her aroma.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m still not sleeping with you, you know.”
The puppy squirmed out of his arms and reached an adorable tongue over to lick Lindsey’s hands. She giggled and baby-talked and reached over to pull the dog off Walker.
He was finally rid of the burden of the garden-destroying beast, but that wasn’t what made him smile. “You were thinking of sleeping with me?”
She tossed him another narrowed-eye glare, the ferocity of which was slightly marred by the rosy blush that crept into her cheeks.
He was still probably going to have to move. But she was thinking of sleeping with him.