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 had 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.
Okay, 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 that he really found 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 laid-back 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 had 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
wearily and asked, “Do you have anything without grease?”
“Yea, right,” the waiter snorted. “We're into rabbit food here, carrots and tofu—”
“Tofu? Perfect!” Robin cried 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 demanded.
“A tofu notdog! He said they have tofu!”
“They don't have notdogs,” Jake quickly informed her and looked at Grok. “Just bring her a couple of dogs.”
“No! Do you have any idea how much fat is in a regular hotdog?”
“I don't know how much fat there is in a gnat. But I know I have eaten plenty of hotdogs in my lifetime and I haven't died yet.”
'That's a miracle. Anyway, 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.
Robin sniffed. “I never eat junk, especially when I'm trying to drop a few l.b.'s.”
Now that was just plain stupid. Robin Lear was about as
perfect as a woman could get, and in fact, upon further reflection, that perfect little ass of hers wasn't quite so perfect—it could use another pound or two. 'That's ridiculous," he said with a snort.
“What do you know?” she demanded, folding her arms across her middle and pushing her breasts dangerously close to the opening of her blouse.
“I know what looks good on a woman, and you look good,” he blurted.
Robin blinked her surprised, and then a slow, sedutive smile spread across those lips. “Well, t hank you,” she said, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
Jake groaned, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at the greasy ceiling.
“You're not so bad yourself.”
He instantly lowered his head and eyed her with all due suspicion.
“In fact, if it wasn't for your general lack of humor—”
“Oh, if that's not the pot calling the kettle black! You are the most humorless, don't-talk-to-me, you-must-be-a-pervert—”
“That again?” She sighed, flicked her hand dismissively. “I said I was sorry. You're too sensitive. And you need to take some responsibility for your part in it.”
“My part?” he choked. She shrugged casually. Jake shook his head. “You are one piece of work, Peanut.”
“Priceless art,” Robin said, and when Jake lifted a brow, she giggled.
Damn it all to hell if a smile didn't spread across his lips, which only made Little Miss Rich and Perfect giggle more.
He changed the subject. “So… how's your dad?”
Robin's smile quickly faded. She shrugged, picked at a seam on the table. “I guess he's okay. Mom says they are going to California to see a spiritualist. My mom is really into homeopathy and Eastern philosophies.”
“I knew a guy who had Lou Gehrig's disease and chose Eastern treatment,” he offered.
Robin lifted a very hopeful gaze. “And?”
And he should have kept his mouth shut. Joe Powell died.
“He, ah… he did all right,” Jake lied, grateful that Grok chose that moment to come back with the drinks. Jake changed the subject, asked her about where she had grown up. She told him how her parents left West Texas cotton farms behind for Dallas, and how her father had been a line-haul driver for years before branching out on his own and creating the shipping company that was, judging by her trappings, extremely successful.
By the time Grok brought the food, Robin was actually making Jake laugh with stories of her childhood. “We lived in a two-bedroom house next to the railroad,” she said as she carefully separated the two hot dogs to opposite ends of the plate. “We'd sneak out and go put pennies on the tracks so trains would smash them.” She picked one hotdog and opened the bun wide.
Interesting—Jake and his brothers had done the same thing, only with objects far more interesting than pennies. It was funny, but nearly impossible, to think of Robin living in the same kind of place. Just as impossible to imagine why she was methodically scraping the cheese and relish from the dog. But there she was, going at it with gusto, as if it was a perfectly natural thing to do to a hotdog.
“My mom caught us one day when the train was barreling down the track,” she said, pausing in her task. “Needless to say, that was the end of that.” She pushed the discarded toppings to one side, then pushed the wienie from the bun, and proceeded to cut the hotdog into bite-sized pieces. Fascinated, Jake watched her destroy a perfectly good hotdog as he shoved three and four french fries into his mouth.
“She didn't like what she called our 'experiments',” Robin said and popped a clean, bite-sized piece of wienie into her mouth.
“Ah. Reminds me of a similar experiment gone awry. My little brother, Todd, had a stuffed Bullwinkle that he dragged everywhere. My other brother, Ross, had this idea that if a train were to run over Bullwinkle, he'd just flatten out and spring right back to shape. Well, Bullwinkle did not spring right back to shape. There was cotton batting scattered from Houston down to the Gulf.”
“Ooh, poor Todd! What happened?”
Jake's memory soured. “My dad whipped the dickens out of me and Ross.” In truth, the whipping had left horrible welts on them.
Robin laughed. “You have two brothers? I have two sisters. Where are you in the lineup?”
“The oldest.”
“Me, too!” she cried in delight. “So what do your brothers do?”
This is where all similarities ended. Jake took a big bite of burger, chewed thoughtfully, pondering Robin's reaction, then wondering why he cared. She had hired him to do a job, not father a child. He swallowed. “Ross was killed in a drunk-driving accident,” he said, omitting the small detail that Ross was the drunk driver. “And Todd is in prison.”
To her credit, Robin did not balk or faint or scream in terror. She said nothing, just picked at the last two bites of the hotdog. “Really?” she asked after a moment. “Maybe I know Todd.” She lifted her gaze; her blue eyes were shining with empathy. “Hardy har har.”
Jake smiled, grateful that she had tried.
“So what's he in for?”
“Armed robbery.”
She nodded, took a bite of dog. “And how long has he been gone?”
A lifetime. “About three years now. He's got another twelve to do. Maybe less if he can keep out of trouble.”
“And Ross? When did he die?”
Jake looked out the front window at the sunlight dappled on the hood of his truck and wondered just exactly when the spirit had left Ross. “Two years ago.”
“You must really miss him.”
Her voice sounded odd; Jake looked at her, saw the sadness deep within him reflected back in her eyes, and knew she was thinking of her father. “I miss him a lot,” he said solemnly.
They sat just looking at one another for a long moment, until Robin's fair skin colored an appealing shade of pink,
and she abruptly attacked the second hot dog, scraping the condiments from the meat.
“Wait,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I can't watch you do that again.”
“Do what?”
“Destroy a perfectly good hotdog! Eat it right.”
“I am eating it right!”
“No, you're not, you're eating it like a teacake.”
“I may be forced to eat heathen food, but I refuse to behave like one.”
“Oh for Chrissakes!” Jake impulsively grabbed her wrist with one hand, then reached for the dog with his other. “This is how you eat a hotdog,” he said firmly, and let go her wrist, swiped up the catsup bottle, and poured a respectable pile onto the dog. Then he shoved one end in his mouth, took a bite (very tasty!), and put the rest of the dog back on her plate. “Try it! You'll like it!”
“No!” she exclaimed, looking at her plate in horror.
“Come on—”
“It's gross!”
“Chicken.”
“What? What did you say?” she gasped, her brows forming a sharp V. “Did you just call me a chicken?”
“Bok bok bok—”
It worked. She picked up the dog so fast he almost didn't see it. She put the dog to her lips, stretched her mouth open to carefully accommodate it, and slowly slid it between her teeth. Her eyes rounded. “Umm,” she said.
Jake thought he was going to faint, right then and there.
Robin chewed slowly and thoughtfully as if tasting meat for the first time ever, while Jake squirmed and silently begged her to take another bite. She swallowed, looked at him in great surprise. “Not bad!” she admitted, and put the dog to her mouth again in such an innocently seductive way that Jake feared he would melt all over the damn floor.
She finished the dog, drained her water. “So? Are you going to sit there and critique my eating habits all day? I suppose we ought to get back, huh?” she asked, and popped up from her seat.
Yes, yes, yes, they needed to get back to reality right away. Jake dug in his back pocket for his wallet, lifted out a twenty and tossed it on the tabletop as Robin fussed with her unruly hair. He followed her out, noticed how smoothly she slipped into the truck when he opened the door for her. He came around to the driver's seat, started her up, and was adjusting the radio again when he caught her looking at him.
He lifted a brow in question.
Robin smiled. “Is the game still on?”
As a matter of fact, the Astros game was now in its seventh inning, and he and Robin drove down Kirby listening to the game while the pink flamingos did their little dance in the rearview mirror. When they turned onto North, the Astros drove a run in, and both whooped, high-fiving it like old friends.
“You know,” she said coyly as they neared her house, “I meant what I said today.”
“What? That I am crude and humorless? Or just a Neanderthal?” he asked as he coasted into the drive and cut the ignition.
“That you aren't half bad,” she said with a grin so wicked that it made his pulse pound. He smiled and turned toward her, waiting for the punchline.
Robin arched one perfectly sculpted, devilish little brow.
A silly grin spread across Jake's lips, and he felt exactly like he had in the fifth grade when Maria Del Toro said she liked his shoes. He could have leapt tall buildings in those shoes after that. “Is that right?” he asked.
“You're surprisingly much better than a mere pervert.”
“T hank s. That means a lot coming from you, Peanut.”
“But I have to take off points for your advocacy of processed meat snacks and the nasty things you said about Moz, who is the greatest pitcher ever.”
“Fair enough,” Jake agreed. “But I'm taking points off for the Fu-fu Notdogs.”
“That's not fair! You can't take points off for being healthy!”
“No, points off for being wacko,” he said, laughing, fully intent on telling her that she still wasn't half bad in spite of
her grave error in judgment, and in fact, pretty damn good, but Robin's gaze was drawn to a point over his shoulder and her smile suddenly faded.
Jake dragged his gaze from Robin to look over his shoulder, to where Lindy was standing at the window holding an insulated lunch bag.
How odd, Robin thought, as she sat staring at the girl with shoulder-length mousy brown hair, that she detected the faint smell of fried chicken. She and Jake opened their doors, stepped out at exactly the same moment, and he said, “Lindy, what are you doing here? How did you find me?”
Robin almost dropped her purse. Lindy? This was Lindy! This little chicken-fried jailbait was Jake's girlfriend? What happened to blond and willowy? What happened to adult? What was she, maybe twelve? Unbelievable! Robin could kick herself—I meant what I said, you know—Damn it! She could just die of humiliation right here and now!
“Your mom. Hey, I brought you some fried chicken. Are you hungry?” Lindy was asking.
“It smells great. That was nice of you, but you really should have asked me before coming down to the job site.”