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“I wasn’t bored, just absorbing.”
He took another bite and changed the subject. “So, are there strings attached to your meal?” he asked. “Obligations?”
You could give me a long, wet kiss in gratitude. She blinked and hoped those words had only been in her head. What was wrong with her? “No strings. Just being nice.”
“Nice like making T-shirts for Arlene’s dogs and leading the workout classes?”
“Yeah, just like that.”
Totally, unselfishly nice. No ulterior motives at all. He was way out of her intellectual galaxy, for one thing. And he had an important project to finish, for another thing. It would be unfair to expect him to fall madly in love with her when he was under deadline.
He was looking at her mouth. Not in a sensual way, exactly, but a curious way. Oh, geez, there wasn’t a piece of chicken sticking to her face, was there? How gross would that be? She grabbed up a napkin and rubbed it vigorously across her face. What if she had something between her teeth? Even more gross! She kept her lips together and smiled, since he was still looking at her. Meanwhile, her tongue searched her front teeth for lodged food particles.
Oh, no. What if he wasn’t looking at her mouth at all, but at her nose! That would be even worse, the grossest thing in the whole, wide world. She rubbed her napkin over her nose, trying to be discreet. He continued eating, but his gaze remained on her. He didn’t look grossed out, though, just…curious.
“All right, I give up. Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked at last.
“I was thinking that the grease made your mouth look all shiny and interesting. After that, I was wondering why you were rubbing it all over your face.”
She looked at her rumpled napkin covered in grease and crumbs. “Would you please excuse me while I go stick my head under the faucet?”
This was undoubtedly why no one was trying to pawn her off on the eligible newcomer, she thought as she raced to the bathroom. She took in her shiny face with specks of batter and thought it was a darn good thing she wasn’t interested in snagging the man for herself.
3
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Barrett was scientifically sure that his distraction over the woman next door was finished. She had suffered some fit of embarrassment over the chicken crumb issue the night before and fled the scene shortly thereafter. So the aberrant curiosity was done, and now he could get to work. He spread out his paperwork on the patio table and dove into a year’s worth of data on water levels.
“You are so ugly, you’re cute,” a feminine voice announced from the other side of the hedge.
He looked around to see if she was talking to him. Apparently Stacy was working with another dog. Instantly that image of the pink spandex filled his mind instead of the tree snails and comparative numbers. Then the T-shirt about being a queen that overwhelmed two small but interesting-just-the-same breasts came into mental view. He’d only noticed them because the words any differently were scrolled across them in big, loopy letters. The snails were long out of his mind by the time he remembered her legs and the cute white sneakers she wore.
Uh-oh. She was distracting him again. Time to go in.
He started gathering up his papers when she yelled, “Don’t you run off on me!”
He froze. A rustling in the bushes caught his attention. For a moment, he hoped it was Stacy and then realized that as small as she was, even she couldn’t be pushing her way through the hedge.
One of the ugliest dogs he’d ever seen emerged, shook itself and pranced over to him. It looked at him the same way Barrett was looking at it, as though thinking, What the heck is that thing?
The dog was possibly a Chihuahua, with tufts of beige hair sprouting from its ears and tail. Otherwise, it looked nearly bald. Its brown buglike eyes never left him.
“Elmo! Where’d you go? I didn’t mean it, honest! You’re not so ugly. Just a little…beauty-challenged.”
When Elmo turned toward Stacy’s voice, Barrett took the opportunity to scoop him up and walk over to the hole in the hedge, the dog held out at a distance. Then he took a full minute to watch her look beneath her chaise longue and in a children’s pool that was situated under a palm tree. She was wearing blue spandex shorts today, and another T-shirt with words on it that he couldn’t read. Totally unbidden came the image of the thong underwear she said she wore.
Elmo started wriggling in his arms, and he realized he’d gotten off track again. He pushed the dog into the hole. “Over here, Stacy.”
She lifted her head and traced his voice to the hedge. “Oh, my God, Elmo, you can talk!”
“Uh, no, it’s me, Barrett.” He angled his face next to Elmo’s as she neared the hedge. “I’ve got your underwear over here.” He blinked, realizing what he’d said. “Dog, I mean.”
“Did you say underwear?”
“No, I didn’t say underwear.”
She gave him a speculative glance and headed over. “I knew the dog wasn’t talking, by the way. And speaking of, what are you doing with my dog? I thought you didn’t like them.”
“It came over to visit. I’m sure it would like to go back now. And it’s not that I dislike them.”
Their hands tangled as they exchanged the dog, who was wriggling like bacteria under a slide. She hoisted him under her arm and peered down. “I know, you’re afraid of them.”
“Uncomfortable.”
“And babies.”
“Pardon?”
“And you’re afraid of babies.”
“I’m slightly more uncomfortable around babies than I am dogs.”
She let out a quick little sigh. “Thanks for returning Elmo.”
They stood there for thirteen seconds before they cleared their throats and said simultaneously, “Well, I’d better get back to work.”
Another five seconds passed until she said, “See you.”
“I see you, too.” He rolled his eyes. Why did this woman have him tongue-tied?
Then she was gone, and that was a good thing, because he really had to get back to work. Before he’d even reached the table, Elmo had returned. It was looking at him in an odd way, with its head tilted. What did it want? Why was it back? Then it jumped up on his lap and continued looking at him with those bug eyes. With a frog-quick tongue, it licked Barrett’s chin.
“Stacy,” he called, avoiding another assault. “Get it off me, please.”
“Coming.” She appeared around the corner of the house with a leash in hand. Today her yellow T-shirt said Madness Takes Its Toll. Please Have Exact Change. “He’s not an it.” She tilted her head and studied Elmo, who was lapping at the air Barrett exhaled. “I’ll be darned. I think he likes you.”
He handed the dog to her. “But he doesn’t even know me.”
She laughed at that, just a quick giggle actually. Still, making her laugh, though he had no idea how he’d done it, sent a flood of warmth through him.
“Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” she asked, rubbing her cheek against the top of Elmo’s head.
“The sensation of falling in love, or romance in all its various forms, can be explained scientifically. I did a report on it in college. Feelings of euphoria are produced by natural stimulants in the brain—dopamine and norepinephrine. It’s all hormone driven, all geared for the sole intent of propagating our species. The euphoric feeling of falling in love is simply a chemical reaction that can be broken down into—”
“Forget it!” She lifted her hand as though to physically stop the words from leaving his mouth. “I don’t want the magic of falling in love to be ruined by technicalities. Wait a minute.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not afraid of romance, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Uncomfortable with it?”
A loud horn honked three times out front before he could respond. The challenge faded from her face. “Tanya,” she said. “The parade has started.”
“Arlene’s niece?”
“The one and only.” Stacy clipped the leash on Elmo and set him on the ground. The scrawny dog tried to get to Barrett, its little legs flailing when it hit the end of the leash. “She always honks her horn when she comes into Sunset City. This time she’s honking for you.”
“Be still my heart.”
That got an interesting look from Stacy—and a smile. They headed around the side of the house and met up with a pretty woman in jeans so tight, if she sneezed, they’d probably disintegrate. Her thick blond hair was tied back with what looked like a belt that belonged in a car engine. Her blue shirt was smeared with grease.
“Hey, Stacy. You must be Barrett.” She took a moment to survey him, and her voice shifted an octave lower. “Aunt Arlene said you might need a thrust angle alignment. Want to show me where your shimmy is?”
“I need a what?” Barrett said.
“His shimmy is just fine,” Stacy said. “I mean, he doesn’t need to put his car in your garage…if you know what I mean.” She lowered her chin and stared at Tanya meaningfully.
“Oh, I get what you mean. You already have a garage in mind.”
“Exactly.”
Tanya’s eyes narrowed. “Nita’s bagged him, hasn’t she? Dang, she’s fast.” She handed Barrett her business card, letting her fingers linger against his. “If you want me to lube your ball bearings, give me a call sometime.”
Barrett cleared his throat. “My ball bearings will keep that in mind.”
“Cute.” She winked, clucked her tongue and hopped in her tow truck.
“She called me cute. After you called the snails cute, I don’t think that’s much of a compliment. And what did she mean, Nita’s bagged me?” he asked. “Who’s Nita?”
“Oh, you’ll meet her soon enough.” Those words came out from between gritted teeth. “And never mind the bagging. Look, I suggest you lock your doors for the rest of the day. Don’t answer the phone or doorbell.” She tugged on Elmo’s leash. “Come on, boy.”
STACY STALKED back to her house and tried to continue working with the recalcitrant Elmo. For some reason, the little weasel was completely enamored with Barrett. He kept glancing longingly toward the hedges and whimpering. “He doesn’t do dogs,” she said in a low voice. “Or babies. Or even romance!” Perfectly good reasons not to be interested, if she needed more than the disparate intelligence factor. So that swirling feeling inside her at the thought of him must be the ovulation countdown. She had a deadline for her project, too.
It was hard to actually imagine herself as a mother. Particularly a single mother.
Forget that part. Just think about the baby part.
She hadn’t started converting the second bedroom into a nursery yet. She didn’t want to alert the neighbors. But she knew exactly what it was going to look like—bright yellow, the flowers-with-faces theme she’d seen at the department store.
Elmo made the dash to the hedge once again, yanking her out of baby daydreams. She tried to grab the end of the trailing leash, but weasel boy was gone before she could reach it. Then she heard a soft oof from the other side, and then, “You again, huh?”
He probably thought the same thing whenever he saw her. With resignation, she walked around the hedge to the backyard where Barrett sat at the table with all his notes, charts and his laptop computer…and Elmo sitting on his lap, his insanely long tongue flicking toward Barrett’s chin. Barrett was shrunk back as far as the chair would allow.
“I’m officially renaming him Weasel Boy,” she said. “He does look a bit like a weasel, doesn’t he? You know, I haven’t seen that dog take to anyone in the whole time he’s been at the Humane Society.”
Weasel Boy gave up on the licking and curled up on Barrett’s lap, an enviable position to say the least. She only let herself dwell on that particular fantasy for a moment before she realized he’d said something. “What?”
“How long has he been at the shelter?”
“Five months. The problem is, when people come in looking for a dog, they want pretty or cute. Weasel Boy is the cute kind of ugly that baby birds are. And snails. He won’t come to anyone, hardly eats, whines all the time, looks lost…” She tilted her head. “Well, until now.”
Barrett studied the dog. “Why is he in there?”
“God supposedly told his owner to join the Peace Corps. Weasel Boy had been with him since he was a puppy. He took it hard, naturally. Dogs bond with their pack leader, their owner. He does seem to adore you for some odd reason. Not that you’re unadorable, because you’re not. Are. Not that I think you’re adorable. Or that you’re not.” If only she had some mashed potatoes she could stuff into her mouth. “Anyway, that dog obviously adores you.”
After trying to make sense of her senseless barrage of words, Barrett tilted his head at Weasel Boy. “I’ve never been adored before.” He picked him up and handed him to her. “Nevertheless, I must relinquish him to your custody.”
“You’ve never been adored?” she asked.
“Well, in third grade there was a girl who called me adorable all the time. Then again, I was a couple years younger, the smallest kid in class. She stopped adoring me when I got an A and she got a C, so I don’t think that counts.”
She took Weasel Boy from him. He’d never been adored, not really. How sad, how…wait a minute. She’d never been adored, either. Better not to dwell on how sad and pitiful it was.
“So what other kinds of things do you research? All kinds of critters?”
“I’ve only been studying—” he smiled “—critters since I got my PhD in biology a couple of years ago. My father is professor and chairperson of the department of biology at the University of Miami. I thought that field might be interesting.”
“So you went and got a PhD in it, just for something to do?”
He missed the sarcastic tilt to her voice. “Right.”
“What about before that?”
Too bad he wasn’t geeky-looking. A man that smart shouldn’t be gorgeous, shouldn’t look so good in blue jeans and a wrinkled blue cotton shirt that set off his eyes. A man who looked like that should be dumber than a box of hair. It just wasn’t right.
“I got a BS in mathematics and studied time.”
“Time? How does one study time, exactly?”
“I worked with a team on leading-edge research on an optical time standard that relies on laser light and a single atom of ytterbium.” He was really getting into it, using his hands and everything. “We needed to find something with a regular motion, like the pendulum on a clock. What we used was the movement of the laser’s light wave. The trick was, of course, to make sure the light was oscillating at a precise frequency. Enter the ytterbium atom, which worked wonders by absorbing the light of a defined frequency. Now that was magic. Once we…” He took in her expression. “I’m boring you again, aren’t I?”
“Sorry. You’re talking to three-point-oh grade average, no college here. You lost me after the first ytterbium.”
Barrett leaned forward, and she caught a scent of woodsy aftershave. “Don’t apologize.”
“So you studied time for…a time, and then what?”
“Then I got bored with physics and got a degree in botany.”
She would have disliked him on principle except there wasn’t a trace of pretentiousness in his voice. As though that’s what everyone did.
“So, botany’s your thing.”
“I lost interest in that and switched to biology.”
“Ah…I see.” Not. “So biology is your chosen field then. Tree snails for now.”
“I work on various short-term projects. Keeps things interesting.”
“Sounds like you get bored easily.”
