by Nancy Warren
“Interesting way to choose a career.”
“Obviously, it didn’t work out in the long run. But I am a fabulous cook.” Of soups and hors d’oeuvres.
“Tell you what. Since you’re not a lady, and this is a democratic country anyway, I’ll mow your lawn if you cook me dinner.”
She would much rather cook than mow, but the main course was going to be a problem. “What about appetizers and drinks?”
He surveyed her yard and shook his head slowly. “That’s a big lawn, and I’ve got a big appetite.” Why was it the minute he mentioned his appetite, her thoughts skittered away from food?
“Matthew, might I remind you that you are an engaged man?”
“You might do anything you damn well please. Let’s say you’ll cook dinner for three. I’ll bring along a chaperone.”
“Excellent.” And that would give her a chance to get to know Brittany better. “Tomorrow night?”
“Works for me.”
She nodded and continued on her way, her Tequila Sunrise toes twinkling up the path.
The afternoon was hot and sultry and her calendar, while now holding a few appointments, wasn’t exactly overflowing with business. She sighed. She wasn’t overbooked for business or pleasure. In London, she’d have three or four events to pop in on. Parties, restaurant openings, first nights. Now that she was settled, she was going to have to do something about becoming known in Austin’s social circles.
She calculated the time and decided to give Nicky a call. She had a sudden longing to hear someone speaking a language she understood.
Nicky’s mobile rang three times. Chloe was about to ring off when it was answered on a giggle. “’Lo?”
“Nicky?”
“Chloe, darling!” There was noise and laughter in the background. Nicky was partying. Had been for some time, by the sound of things. “It’s Chloe,” Nicky bellowed, presumably to whoever else was present.
She heard hallo, Chloe shouted in various stages of drunkenness and felt a piercing pang of homesickness for all her friends.
“Tell everyone hello back,” she said.
“So, when are you coming home?” Nicky asked, her words slurring slightly.
“Coming home?”
“Oh, can you wait until tomorrow? I win the pool if you pack it in tomorrow.”
“Pack it in? Nick, you’re drunk. Have you forgotten that I’ve got a business to run?” And didn’t she sound like the Fortune 500?
A wheeze of horsey laughter greeted her. “I’m not so drunk that I don’t know my best friend. You always quit.”
“Not always.”
“Yes, always. Schools, men, fashions… name one thing you don’t change every few months.”
At a thousand pounds a minute or whatever long-distance mobile phone costs were, there was an extremely expensive pause. What had she ever stuck with?
Then she had it. With satisfaction, she announced, “My hair color.”
Another snort of laughter greeted her statement. “Only because that artist threatened to kill himself because he said such a perfect black could not be reproduced by any colorist on earth.” Nicky shouted the line with all the drama that poor Dennis, the almost-forgotten artist, had used when he slashed the portrait of Chloe he’d been working on and then held the knife to his own throat, threatening to do himself in if she wouldn’t marry him.
She’d have been frightened if he’d threatened himself with anything sharper than a palette knife. As it was, the story had made good telling, and Dennis’s outburst had caused her to stick with the hair color nature had given her and art couldn’t duplicate.
Chloe laughed too. How could she help it? Nicky and she went way back and they knew each other too well to mess about.
“You really don’t think I’m going to make it, do you?”
“Darling, you’re like Peter Pan.”
“A boy who flies?”
“No, silly. He never grows up. Jack says that’s your problem. You’ve never grown up.”
“Jack should mind his own bloody business.” She tried to sound annoyed, but was secretly rather pleased they were discussing her and laying bets on when she’d return. All her friends, and even her brother, missed her. She’d have to go home for a visit when she got enough money together.
“Give everyone my love. I miss you all.”
“Wait, am I going to win the pool?”
She was certain the noise level dimmed in whatever smart club they were in. She pictured the lot of them leaning forward, desperate to hear whether she’d soon be back among them. The thought made her smile.
“Not this time.”
As she rang off, she realized that she’d now been in this country for more than a month and had had none of the usual itchy feet. That was good. Progress.
Her new career wasn’t remotely boring, since her creativity was constantly taxed. As in the case of her newest client. She had precious little time to get the co-authors of Perfect Communication, Perfect Love perfectly cocked up.
She decided to read Jordan and his boss’s book, since Jordan was her priority client at the moment. She was very much hoping that this book would give her the secret to breaking up that romance before Perfect Love ever had its Perfect Communication on the telly.
She was hot, so she stripped down and changed into short white shorts and a gauzy purple Stella McCartney top and jeweled sandals. She couldn’t bear ball caps, but understood that one must protect one’s complexion from the withering heat, so she’d bought a plantation-style hat with a huge white brim. It made her feel like Scarlett O’Hara when she slipped it on. She tipped the brim to a rakish angle before donning big sunglasses and picking up the book. She stopped in the kitchen to fill a large glass with iced tea, an American invention she was beginning to enjoy very much, and her Evian spritzer.
Soon she was ensconced on her lounger, parked under a shade tree, her face pleasantly misted, her tea at her side and her book open on her lap.
Perfect Communication, Perfect Love, she read in the preface, came about as the collaboration between two colleagues.
“Oh, right. Blah bloody blah,” Chloe muttered as she flicked past the frontispiece to Chapter One and began to read.
An annoying sound smote her ears. The irritating buzz of a small engine.
Really, just when she was trying to read quietly. She rose, thinking this was the first moment she’d had all day for some peace, when a mower came into her line of vision from around the side of the house, dragging Matthew behind it. Bare-chested, scrummy, super scrummy Matthew.
She retreated once more to her lounger and proceeded to read, giving herself a mental reward for each page finished with a peek at her most delicious gardener.
Chapter 10
Matthew wondered what the hell he was doing, playing gardener to Lady Chatterley over there in her lounger with her feet up and her novel open on her lap. Nice life.
He wondered if she could really cook. And if he did the weeding as well as cutting the lawn, whether her skills stretched to breakfast.
Then his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. His call display told him it was Brittany calling and he pulled his gaze away from his neighbor. “Tanner,” he said, because he always answered that way no matter who was calling.
“Hi Matthew, it’s me. Brittany.” Just as he always identified himself, so did she, even though she knew he had call display. Just one of those stupid things people do, he told himself, willing himself not to be irritated with the woman he was planning to marry. Someday.
“Hi, honey. You packing for the conference?”
She was heading out for a teacher’s conference in San Antonio for three days. “The conference was postponed. The main presenter is sick with pneumonia so it was rescheduled.”
“Too bad.”
“It’s fine. It gives me three days off, since I already have the time booked, and you know what that means?”
Matthew didn’t even want to speculate.
&n
bsp; “It means that you and I can start our redecoration project.”
A drop of sweat trickled down his temple under his ball cap; he swiped at it with the back of his hand. “What redecoration project?”
“You know. Your house.”
“Since when are we redecorating my house?”
“Honey, don’t you remember when I said that I thought your colors were too dark and you agreed?”
He didn’t remember any such thing, but he knew he had a bad habit of not always listening too intently to everything she said.
“Right. But I didn’t necessarily want to change everything right away.” Or ever. His colors might be dark, but he was a guy. He was supposed to like dark colors.
He made a mental inventory of Brittany’s decorating style and thought he might as well just kill himself now as be ridiculed to death when his buddies saw throw pillows and a collection of antique dolls in his house.
“Well, why don’t we spend the day tomorrow looking at decorating stores and get an idea of what might work. You never know when things might change,” she said softly.
Once more he felt like a pig. She was right. They were an acknowledged couple, they got on well, were compatible in the sack, though he sometimes thought she tried too hard to please.
While his bride-to-be outlined an exciting day’s events shopping for paint samples and fabric swatches, and more sweat dripped from his forehead, he stole a look at his tenant next door. She was laughing her head off at something in that novel of hers. Must be a pretty good comedy. Kind of like his life.
The thought stole through his mind, unbidden, that Chloe would never be the kind of woman who would try too hard to please. He had a pretty good idea that she was one of the demanding ones who took what she wanted from a man and gave as good as she got.
Her shorts, pretty damn short to begin with, had ridden up her thighs and he had a vision of pale skin on legs that weren’t long, but were slim and shapely. As though she felt his gaze, Chloe glanced up and the laughter died on her face. Whether she’d read his mind or not he couldn’t tell, but a zing of lust, hot and visceral, shot between them like a very bad idea.
At the same moment, they both averted their gazes. She to her book, he to the row of bushes that needed pruning at the side of her yard, against the fence that bordered the road.
“…and then tomorrow night,” Brittany said, “maybe we could go out for dinner somewhere, just the two of us. We’ve both been so busy lately that we’ve hardly seen each other.”
“I know. Dinner would be—oh, shit. I just remembered. I’m having dinner at Chloe’s.”
“Chloe’s?”
“Yeah. My next-door neighbor.”
“You’re having dinner with another woman?” She sounded surprised rather than jealous. But that was Brittany all over. She’d expect a reasonable explanation before jumping to conclusions.
“I’m doing some gardening for her, so she invited us for dinner. I knew you’d be away so I asked Rafe along. I can’t really get out of it now, but why don’t I tell her there’ll be one more for dinner?”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You won’t be. I’ll do some extra stuff for her. That should make it even.”
“I suppose it is better with even numbers. More like a double date.”
He chuckled to himself at the thought of scruffy, down-to-earth Rafe with the English princess. Should be an interesting evening.
“So, what about tomorrow?”
He could think of about six million things, including chopping off his toes with the weed whacker, that he’d rather do tomorrow than go shopping for a redecoration project he didn’t want to undertake, but he’d been less than stellar as a boyfriend to Brittany over the last month, so he figured it was penance. “Yeah, okay. I’ll pick you up at ten.”
He ended the call and finished the lawn before walking over to tell Chloe the good news that she now had a fourth for dinner.
She was chuckling again when he walked up and pulled out one of the patio chairs to sit down and cool off for a minute.
“Pretty funny book?”
She raised her head, looking like a movie star with the big hat and oversized sunglasses. “It’s not meant to be.”
She closed the book and showed him the title. He felt a jolt of pure nausea. “Perfect Communication, Perfect Love. What are you doing reading that crap?”
“It’s for business, actually.”
He opened his mouth and she forestalled him with a finger in the air. “So naturally, it’s confidential.”
It was funny, Chloe irritated him a hell of a lot more than Brittany ever did, but at least he didn’t feel boredom creeping over him at the same time he wanted to grind his teeth. With Chloe, it was pretty much only the dental problem.
She handed over the book. “You might want to give this a read. It might help you work things out with Brittany.”
His eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I need help with Brittany?”
“Women’s intuition.” She rose. “You look hot. Would you like some iced tea?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He flicked through the book, which, from what he could see, was made up of rules to follow. For love. Like there weren’t enough rules in life, a man needed more.
When Chloe returned with a huge glass of iced tea, he thanked her with a nod and downed half of it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You were laughing when you read this.”
“It’s the most ridiculous nonsense,” she said. “Listen to this.” She took the book back and flicked pages. “Conflict is a natural part of any relationship. Bad feelings can be destructive if you let them grow, leading to alienation or shouting matches. We recommend a regular session with your loved one. Imagine you’re in our office. Talk to each other about your issues, how it went this week. Always end by holding hands, looking each other in the eye, and saying, ‘I love you.’”
He loved the sound of her voice, so crisp and British, so different from what he was used to hearing. That was probably why she was so intriguing to him. She was different. She was an English rose in a field of Texas bluebonnets. That was all.
“Sounds like a load of crap to me.”
“Exactly. I’m all in favor of a good row. Clears the air.”
“Leads to some great sex, too,” Matthew remarked. “With all those emotions flying.”
“My thoughts exactly.” She seemed happy that they viewed arguments the same way and he thought she’d say more, but suddenly she snapped the book shut and looked past him. “The lawn looks lovely. Thank you for taking care of it so promptly.”
He wasn’t positive about what had suddenly made her treat him like the hired help, but he had an idea. He rose from the chair. “You’re welcome. I need to ask you a favor.”
“Yes?”
“I need to bring one more person for dinner tomorrow night.”
Her brows rose. “How many girlfriends do you have?”
His teeth wanted to grind again. “One. And she was supposed to be out of town. The chaperone I already invited is a buddy of mine.”
“I see.” She glanced at him. “You knew I was expecting Brittany. Why didn’t you tell me you’d invited a man?”
He thought about it for a second. Decided to go for the truth. “There’s something about you that just begs to be riled up.”
She shot him a look that was surprisingly understanding. But then, he suspected she’d spent her life riling up other people. Unfortunately, the list had his name on it, right at the top.
“So, we’re four for dinner. How cozy.”
“Look, I feel bad about this. Why don’t I bring over steaks and we can barbecue?”
She looked delighted and, he thought, a little relieved. “That’s very nice of you. I’ll prepare appetizers and salad and pick up something for dessert.”
He rose. “And I’ll keep taking care of the lawn for you.”
Her surprise showed even behind the
glasses. “What do you want in return? More dinners?”
“I’ll call in the favor if I ever need any private detective work.”
Instead of rising to the bait, she gave him a smile that was suspiciously smug. One he didn’t trust at all. “I’m at your service,” she said.
Chloe loved markets. She loved the smell of food, the vendors, the colors and textures of produce—and here, everything was so different. The displays seemed larger, the fruit bigger.
Of course, she hadn’t brought many recipes, but the Internet was an amazing source of inspiration and she knew her favorites by heart.
Two men, and if his friend was anything like him, he’d be big and a man of simple tastes, she thought, immediately discarding the idea of frog’s legs, escargot, or anything with too many sauces. In the end she opted for fresh prawns in a coconut masala, and a salad with organic greens and her own special salad dressing in which the secret ingredient was champagne.
She bought cheerful sunflowers for the table, some pretty blue cloth napkins, and candles. A nice white wine for the appetizers and a hearty red for the steaks. Dessert, she decided, would be a selection of cheeses and fresh fruit.
When she returned home, she got to work, singing along to Taylor Swift as she prepared the masala.
Her doorbell rang at seven precisely. Chloe ran lightly down the stairs, slipping the second diamond earring into her ear. How prompt.
She opened the door and suffered a slight shock. A disheveled-looking thuggish type stood there in a battered leather jacket, jeans that no designer had had a hand in, and scuffed boots. His hair was too long and he needed a shave.
“Can I help you?” she asked, wishing she wasn’t always so impulsive. She really ought to use the peephole in the door. Still, at least Matthew was next door. One good scream away.
The guy on her doorstep gave her a crooked grin, as though he’d read her mind reasonably well. “I’m Rafe.” Then he raised his hand and, instead of some deadly weapon, he held a wrapped bottle. “Matt’s friend.”
“Why, thank you,” she said, accepting the wine. “Come in.” She stepped back and said, “Can I take your coat?” She noted the shiny black helmet. “And, um, your bike helmet?”
