“How does a person live without dairy or meat?” he asked.
“That's precisely the point. You can live a much longer, healthier life without clogging your veins with animal fat.”
“Lots of people eat meat and live long lives.”
“Well, yeah—lots of Neanderthals. Look, you don't have to eat it. I was just asking.”
“No t hank s,” 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—I said, EGGPLANT WRAP AND SALAD! Okay, got that? Wait-One question. I ordered an eggplant wrap two weeks ago, and I could swear it was blue cheese, not tofu. Are you sure
it's tofu? What? Well… okay…just make sure it's 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, the phone at his ear. Oh yeah, she could just imagine what Lindy looked like. Probably tall and willowy and blond. He probably asked her out for a pizza and the movies on the first date. She could just hear it now—Do you like pina coladas, long walks in the rain, puppy dogs, and old movies? Good! 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. Theirs was a match made in heaven, damn it.
Why did everyone have a match made in heaven except her? 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. Why did she care all of a sudden? It wasn't like she wanted a match made in heaven. She liked her freedom. Thrived on it.
Right.
Who was she kidding? She'd never have a match made in heaven! Why hadn't anyone ever told her she was 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—that she was a big fat loser, giant L on forehead, the whole nine yards.
The very real possibility 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? “I suppose we could. But, uh, 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!” But something in her voice rang false.
“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 and risk some huge eruption, 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 slammed, 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 blue cheese instead of tofu, and he said it was definitely tofu, that you didn't have blue cheese, and—What? How long? No. No, that's okay. Never mind,“ she said and put the phone down. ”How pathetic,“ she gestured to the ceiling. ”I can't even order lunch right!"
Miracle of miracles, she sounded sincerely forlorn. 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 don't know what I am going to do. I can't be an acquisitions specialist! And I am starving! I'm talking like five or six hundred calories worth!”
He 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 .”
She frowned, then sighed loudly. “Oh, all right. Just let me 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…” Shit, what had he done? “I have to go pick up some things.”
“Where?”
Jake shrugged, looked away from those blue eyes, and rooted around in his backpack. “Over to Smith and Sons. You don't want to go to there—”
“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. “Actually, that sounds like a great idea,” she said emphatically. But it wasn't an idea, it wasn't even close—it was a stupid, moronic, 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. Just great. He was actually going to cart the barracuda around with him? Jake watched her until she disappeared 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 just hoped like hell 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.
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 little Falling Rock signs. 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 leaned over to have a better look. “Just mustard, old and dried—at least 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. “So can you actually see out of those things, or are they for decorative purposes only?”
“Don't be ridiculous,” 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 turned up North Boulevard , 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 seat bench. When they turned onto Park Lane , he couldn't stand it another minute and 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 Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Stones, Celine Dion—”
“Celine Dion?” he said on a bark of laughter. “She's elevator music!”
“She is not!” she cried indignantly. “Okay, Mr. Smarty-pants, who do you like?”
“Wait just a minute—no one's called me Mr. Smarty-pants since the third grade. Okay, here's one—I just bought the new Red Temple CD. You heard of them?”
“I went to their concert in New York !” she said proudly, lifting her chin. “That singer guy is to die for—what's his name?”
She looked entirely too dreamy about that doofus to suit Jake, so he feigned ignorance, saying only, “All I remember is that he looks like a girl,” he said, switching 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 squealed with surprise and pleasure. “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 all 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 so you'll know I am there,” she added and stepped out, marching off toward the garden area, her little purse swinging confidently in her hand.
Jake watched her hips moving in those nice tight pants and figured he'd know exactly who it was yelling at him. Hell, he'd know the moment she reached Hermann Park — the sirens would definitely give her away.
By the time he could get out and lock 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 like a bothersome servant.
Smith and Sons was one of those eclectic little mom-and-
pop shops that had grown from hardware to just about everything else, save groceries; a huge jumbled array in which it took several minutes 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 Nipple. And 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.