“Oh,” she asked, looking curiously at Robin. “I just thought you might need a break and a chance to eat before we hooked up later.”
Hooked up later? Robin frowned at Jake's back, grabbed one pink flamingo and stuffed it under her arm. Jake took
the insulated bag from Lindy, clasped her elbow, and turned her away from the truck and Robin. As Lindy smiled adoringly up at him, Robin grabbed another flamingo and started stalking toward the kitchen door. 'T hank s for your help, Jake!" she called over her shoulder. She glanced back to see if he even heard her or was too busy making out with Lollipop Lindy behind the garage, and in the course of doing so, she collided head-on with Evan, who stepped out the back door at the precise moment she was stepping in.
One flamingo fell to the ground.
“Oops… are you all right?” he asked, catching her elbow.
“I'm fine!” she said (loudly for Lindy's benefit) as Evan stooped to get the dropped flamingo. “So what are you doing here?”
“I'm happy to see you, too,” Evan said with a wry smile and handed her the flamingo. “I am here because we've got work to do, kiddo. What are these?”
“Well… they look like pink flamingos.” Duh! She pushed past Evan, into her house and through the empty corridor and to the dining area, where she deposited the two flamingos against the wall.
“Why?” Evan asked, following behind.
“Why what?” Robin tossed her kate spade bag onto a chair.
“Why pink flamingos?”
“I was thinking of getting a pool,” she said, and before he could question her endlessly about that, she marched to her computer, hit a button, and watched her e-mail pop up. Four messages. One from Darren at Atlantic (Hope you're okay!!), one from Bob (Was it something I said?), and two from Lucy (1. Insurance guys; and 2. Re: Insurance guys).
“Did you look over those accounts?” Evan asked, pink flamingo in hand.
“Yes. And I made several attempts to speak to the accounts, and I am just dying for someone to clue me in on what sort of name is Eldagirt Wirt—”
The smell of fried chicken interrupted what was about to be a tirade as Jake came strolling in, the insulated meals-
on-wheels delivery in his hand. Robin looked away. “So, are we still on with the insurance guys?”
“As a matter of fact, I talked to the agent earlier—it looks like it was probably faulty wiring.”
That momentarily drew her attention from the smell of fried chicken. “Faulty wiring?”
“A short in the alarm system.”
“Not arson?”
Evan chuckled. “No, not arson.”
Flooded with relief, Robin instantly, unthinkingly, looked at Jake. He gave her a thumbs-up behind Evan's back and flashed a smiled that raced right down to her toes.
“—probably ten months or so before the office is inhabitable again. They'll talk to us about it. But we're covered and I let your dad know.”
Well, wasn't that cozy, Evan reporting to her father. Perhaps he mentioned that he got her drunk with very expensive wine last evening and then had sex with her. Perhaps the two of them toasted his success over the phone.
“I asked Lucy to make the arrangements for our travel to Minot,” Evan blithely continued.
“Excuse me?”
Evan glanced up from his casual perusal of the pink flamingo. “You don't think we are going to acquire a company over the phone, do you?”
“We?” she said, stealing another glimpse of Jake, who had, t hank fully, put the stupid lunch bag in his backpack and resumed work.
“Yes, we,” Evan said, looking at Jake, too. “I'm not going to leave you hanging, Robbie. Of course I am going to go with you. At least to Minot.”
Oh no. That was much, muchmuchmuch too convenient. “T hank s, but I prefer to do this on my own.”
“Robin—”
“Evan, if you want me to learn how, then you need to let me do it.”
"I suppose I should remind you that I tried to let you do it before, and now Aaron is holding me responsible for that little Atlantic deal you cooked up. Face it, Robin, you could
stand a little guidance, and your father has charged me with giving it to you. It's just to Minot, so don't get your panties in a wad. Once you see how I handle it, I'll go on to New York and you can go to Burdette and try your hand with Ms. Wirt."
Her face was flaming—she was certain Jake thought her a complete boob now, t hank you very much, Evan.
“I told Lucy to set something up for next week. In the meantime, why don't you try and get Ms. Wirt on the phone?”
Oh, brilliant idea! Why hadn't she thought of that before?
“And there are some local accounts that need your review. They're out in the car—I'll be back in a jiff.”
She watched him stroll out of the dining room, dressed to the nines as usual, his Italian leather loafers almost soundless on the tile floor. As he walked past Jake, Robin was momentarily distracted by the tattoo peeking out beneath the arm of Jake's T-shirt as he reached high above his head. She was dying to see it, imagining it was something like a heart, with a name scribed in flowing letters across it. I heart Lindy. Ugh. Better yet, maybe it was a skull and crossbones. Whatever, it sent a peculiar little shiver down her spine, just like the rest of him.
Oh God.
Robin abruptly turned away, walked out of the dining room and down the long corridor to the master suite. Okay, since when had she become so… so aroused by the sight of a man? Was it some sort of pre-premenopausal thing? After all, she was turning thirty-five in a few months… Nah. It was way too early for that. So then what the hell?
Irritable now, Robin shut the door behind her and stood, hands on hips. What the hell was, of course, that she was avoiding work. Why? Because she felt like a fish out of water, that was why. Not only did she not have the foggiest clue how to go about acquiring a company, she was so inept she couldn't even get the likes of Eldagirt Wirt on the phone. And the only person who could teach her was her ex-lover Evan {Definitely ex! One gigantic slip in judgment did not constitute a re-relationship! Ex, Ex, Ex!).
Well. At least she hadn't burned down her office. She could at least cross that catastrophe off her list. Which left only about five hundred more on said list.
Robin fell backward onto her bed and stared morosely at the ceiling. Dad was right; she was arrogant and useless and nothing but window dressing. All right, well, she had to change that, didn't she? And she was not the kind of person to let a little thing like inexperience stop her (case in point, the Atlantic account). The thing to do was to pour herself into this job and stop avoiding the obvious with this fruitless, impractical, stupid flirting with Jake. So she hadn't been so successful today. But she could march out there, get on the computer, and start researching bubble wrap. And when she proved she could do it, Dad would see how wrong he was about her and everything would go back to normal. Assuming she could figure out what normal was. Okay, well, one thing that was definitely abnormal was lying on her bed and fretting in the middle of the day, and she damn sure didn't want to face the fact that maybe she was just a little bit, teeny-tiny bit afraid.
That did it.
Robin sat up, shook her fingers through her hair, and marched out of her room to do what she did best. Work.
Jake noticed the change in Robin's demeanor the moment she came back into the dining room and plopped down at her computer with a determined look on her pretty face. She ignored him, was even a little stiff with Romeo (which didn't bother Jake in the least), and punched the computer keys like pop-up weasels. That was all just as well, because he had decided that intriguing or not, this flirting thing was dangerous business. The last thing he needed was to have some sort of fling with a client, because nothing would come back to bite him in the butt faster than that. And there was no question in his mind that this flirtation could ever be more than a fling, period. He harbored no illusions otherwise; which then begged the question, what in the hell was he doing?
Wasting his time, that was what. He had enough going on with school and Cole, and there was the constant distraction of work, and Zaney and his mom's health. And the occasional messing around with gals like Lindy. Shit, Lindy—Lindy, you're great… but I don't want to date you. Please don't call me. Smooth, pal. He hated telling women he didn't want to see them, and generally tried to avoid those situations altogether. Which meant he hadn't dated seriously in a long time, mainly because of a lack of money and time. But things were a little different now, weren't they? After all, he wasn't getting any younger. He had bought the house in the Heights with the vague notion that he might want to settle down someday, hadn't he? And Lindy was great— what more could a guy want? Something … he just didn't know what it was, and thinking about it only made his head hurt.
So Jake forced himself to ignore his little problem, and ignore the conversation going on behind him between Robin and Romeo. Actually, he had no idea what they were talking about, but whatever it was, he really did not care for the way Romeo spoke to Robin, his tone condescending, like she was stupid. Robin was anything but stupid. Crazy, maybe. Wicked fine, yes. But not stupid. The man sounded like a patronizing buffoon.
He moved upstairs to work so he couldn't hear them any longer, and was actually beginning to make some headway when his cell phone rang—Mom.
“Jacob, where are you?” she asked when he answered.
“At a job. What's up?”
“It's Cole. The principal called and said he wasn't in school again today—”
“Goddammit, I'm going to kill him if I find—”
“He's home,” his mom quickly interrupted him. “He just came wandering in like he always does after school. He doesn't know that I know he ditched school today. I thought you might want to be here when I talk to him.”
“Yes, I definitely want to be there,” he said through clenched teeth. “Look, Mom, it's time he came to live with me,” he blurted. "I've been thinking about this—he needs
to learn how to be a man, and I'm going to have to be the one to teach him. It's too hard on you."
“You know how I feel about that, Jacob. You aren't home enough as it is.”
“I'll be home more.”
“How are you going to do that? Are you going to give up school? You were so hellfire bent on it, even though I told you it'd take away from your obligations. Now you don't have the time to give to him. I'll grant you he needs to learn to be a man, but he needs someone who can devote his full attention to it. You can't do that.”
“Maybe not, but you can't deny he's running roughshod over you, Mom,” Jake insisted. “He needs a firm hand. He needs to be jerked up by the short hairs once in a while and know he's going to find his butt on the end of my boot when he cuts school.”
She paused, lit a smoke, and exhaled wearily. “Are you coming over or not?”
Jake sighed, looked at his watch. “Yeah. I can be there in an hour,” he said and warned her to keep an eye on him before he got there. He clicked off the cell phone and stared blindly out the casement window at the thick, lush lawn surrounding Robin's house. Maybe his Mom was right. Maybe his vow at Ross's funeral was just a wish, not really a promise. He didn't have time for Cole; he barely had time to breathe. He was working hard, trying to make something of himself… but for what? So he could be a rich and lonely old man some day? He was thirty-eight years old and had so far managed to avoid any sort of meaningful relationship. Cole was in desperate need of one. But did he really have it in him to give?
Whatever the answer—and Jake really wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer—he had the immediate problem of Cole's cutting school to deal with. He walked down the curving staircase to the entry, lost in thought, packed up his things, and left to fight Houston traffic to have yet another heart-to-heart with a lost kid.
Robin never heard Jake leave, and in fact, was a little surprised he had managed to get out without her noticing. Perhaps she was actually able to focus on her work. Or perhaps it was because Evan had talked and talked and talked until her head was pounding and her ears felt like they might fall off. Who could even hear themselves think in all that racket? And then he was pacing about the dining room, complaining that he was hungry, and somehow convinced her to try a new restaurant with him.
But when they got there, Evan was smiling in that familiar way of his, like he knew something about her perhaps she didn't know herself. Robin hated that look; it implied an intimacy that just wasn't there. She decided, over appetizers, that this was the perfect opportunity to explain that they were not getting back together again, and if he ever brought wine to her house again, she just might clock him one. She owed him at least that much—after all, she had slept with him last night. She could understand where a man might misconstrue things.
But when she told him, as nicely as she could, that last night had been one huge, monumental mistake, Evan had gotten sort of pissy. After he had insisted she had liked it, she said again, “I had too much to drink, Evan. I got carried away when I should have showed some restraint. But I need to tell you that even though we did that, it really has no bearing on my feelings about… about…”
“Wanton and meaningless sex?” he had snapped.
“About us,” she had said, ignoring his jab. “I haven't changed my mind.”
Evan had slowly leaned back in his seat and glared at her, finally managing to say (through a jaw that was clenched tightly shut), “You can be pretty damned arrogant at times, Robin. And cruel. I wonder why you think it is okay to toy with people like this.”
There was that arrogant thing again, and it pricked her hard. “I am trying to be honest,” she had said. “You should try it because I think you've been trying to rekindle something with me for several weeks—”
"You ran off to London . How could I try and do any-
thing? Okay, fine. You made some huge fucking mistake. But we have to work together and I don't want to screw that up."
“Me, either,” she had said softly and contritely.
Evan had downed his wine and said, “I won't go so far as to say I understand you, but okay. Colleagues only, right?”