by Selena Scott
“Holy pumpkins,” he muttered as he took off his socks and shoved them in his jean pockets so he could saunter barefoot through her yard, checking it out. There were two-foot-wide pumpkins sitting on the vine. “These are pretty early, if you take them off the vine, the plant’s energy will redistribute and you’ll probably get a ton more pumpkins before Halloween.”
“What would I do with a ton more pumpkins?” Sarah called from where she stood at the edge of the porch.
Seth turned to her with a smile on his face and he took his first good look at her since he’d arrived. She wore an oversized striped sweater, athletic shorts, and another pair of mismatched leg warmers. Her hair was up in a wavy ponytail high on her head and her hands sat authoritatively on her hips. It made sense to him that she was an athlete. She carried herself like an athlete. Purposefully, one part of her body stacked on top of the other in a logical, powerful way.
He thought her face was pretty, but always frowning. Her legs, on the other hand, would probably keep him up at night as much as her messy living room. They were toned and curved. Powerful and feminine. Her skin held a golden tan from the summer. He guessed that legs like that, even in the cool fall air, were most likely hot to the touch. He felt his lizard brain start to pull him toward a fantasy that involved parting those legs, but he pulled himself back to the present moment.
“You could give them to me,” he told her with a smile. “I’ll make pumpkin pie for the neighborhood.”
“Who are you? Martha Stewart’s grandkid or something?”
Seth laughed and bounded back up onto her porch. “I wish. Then maybe I could get discounts on her linens.”
Sarah furrowed her brow, like she didn’t understand him at all, and Seth started to wonder what it would take to get her to smile. Was she this surly all the time? Or was there something sweet and soft underneath? As he pulled out one of the deck chairs to sit down, he wondered what she’d be like on a lazy Saturday morning, still in bed after a late night with a man who knew what he was doing. Would she be shy and smiley?
She shoved a cup of hot coffee in Seth’s hands and leaned back, propping her feet up on the table between them, wiggling her dirty toes at the sky.
His fantasy screeched to a halt. Nope. He had money on her being a wildcat all hours of the day. No matter what.
“Seth’s a landscape architect,” Lynn told Sarah. “He runs a business with his brother.”
Sarah nodded, interest flaring in her expression for the first time since he’d known her. “That’s cool. You start your own business?”
Seth nodded. “Two years ago. At first it was just me and Raphael, but last year I was able to hire a few employees. I manage the business and create the plans for each project and Raphael runs the day-to-day operations. He manages the job sites and does a lot of the manual labor.”
“Is your front lawn an example of your work?”
Seth grinned, realizing that she’d noticed it. “Nah. Not really. That’s just something I work on during my time off. My clients don’t generally want something that intricate or that time consuming.”
Sarah turned an eye to her backyard. She took a long swig of her coffee. “What would you do with my backyard?”
Seth stood again and wandered down the steps of the porch, looking around. “Well, it would depend on what you’d want its use to be. You want a place to relax? More privacy from the neighbors? A place to play bocce ball? A place to host parties?”
“Mmm,” Sarah said, weighing her head to one side. “Everything except for the parties.”
Seth laughed. “Noted.”
The timer dinged in the kitchen and Lynn got up to grab the frittata.
“In that case,” Seth said, turning a circle and considering. “I’d keep this part a vegetable garden, because it looks like those pumpkins and the tomatoes are doing just fine. But I’d clean it up a lot. I’d turn those flowerbeds into a row of flower bushes. Probably like the hydrangeas I have in my front yard. Maybe we’d change this fence to a privacy fence on that side and add in a hammock under the shade there. And then we’d lay some new grass here so that you could play games out here. Bocce or… whatever.”
In his head, he was really trying to figure out how he’d be able to put up a small archery range for her, but he didn’t want to say that out loud and give away the fact that he knew who she was, when she hadn’t brought it up.
“Wow. You’re really a man with a plan.”
“I can’t help it,” he admitted, coming back up onto the porch and holding the door open for Lynn while she balanced plates in one hand and the frittata in the other. “I love making spaces look good. I’ve been doing it since I can remember. When I was a kid, I was lining up my Hot Wheels by color while Raphael was crashing his into a fifty-car pileup.”
Lynn laughed, but Sarah just considered him over the rim of her coffee cup.
They demolished the frittata and sat in the warming sun for almost an hour. Lynn mostly filled the silence and Seth learned that Sarah’s plan was to work at one of the ski lodges at Eldora come ski season.
Seth could think of nothing he’d want to do less than work at a ski lodge that had such a reputation for boarder bros who wanted to party all the time, but he figured Sarah knew what she was doing. Maybe she was a huge partier. Looking to cut loose.
“What’s on your schedule for the rest of the day?” Seth asked Lynn and Sarah, when he couldn’t stand it anymore and the back of his neck was actually itching just thinking about all the boxes yet to be unpacked.
Sarah shrugged and Lynn tipped her head up to the sun.
“Not sure yet. Maybe a hike?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?” Sarah asked in confusion.
Seth tried to fix his face, but had some trouble. “You’re not going to unpack?”
Sarah pinned him with a look. “No?”
Seth sunk in his chair and scrubbed his hands down his face. “I’m going to have a brain aneurysm.”
Lynn snickered into her hand. “I told you, Sarah. I knew he was going to come back over and try to get you to unpack.”
“Okay,” Seth said, ignoring Lynn and sitting up straight. “A hike is what you really, really want to do today?”
Sarah nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” he repeated. “Give me three hours with your living room and after that, I’ll take you on the hike of your life.”
“Are you kidding?” she leaned forward and he could see that she was legitimately asking him.
“I’m dead serious.”
“You are truly asking if you can help me unpack.”
“Yes.”
“I mean… okay.”
Seth slapped his hands together and rubbed them like he was trying to start a fire. “Hell, yes. Lynn, you in?”
“Ah. No. I share my niece’s aversion to all housework. I think I’ll head home and catch up on my soaps.”
Seth was already gathering plates and barely even heard her. He practically jogged back into the house.
He grinned as he heard Sarah mutter to Lynn, “Seriously, who the hell is this guy?”
***
He’d lied. It wasn’t three hours. In fact, it was five hours. And even though, now, after five hours of unpacking and setting up and cleaning, she was in the front seat of his truck. He wasn’t taking her to the hike of her life as he’d promised. He was taking her to Sarah’s version of hell.
A flea market.
“How in God’s name did I let you talk me into this?” she asked as he pulled into the crowded parking lot.
“Because you’re a reasonable woman, Sarah Moyer. And even if you hate setting up your house, you recognize that reasonable people need dinner tables. And chairs. And a dresser for your piles of athletic clothing, none of which match.”
She side-eyed him. “Is me living across the street from you going to be a problem? Are you going to break into a cold sweat imagining all my mismatched socks?”
She could not figure this guy out. She’d spent the morning and afternoon attempting to keep her mouth closed as she watched him heft boxes around her house. He’d had all of her kitchen utensils unpacked and organized in twenty minutes flat. Next, he’d dragged her boxes of clothes all the way to the attic without complaint. His eyes had lingered on her pathetic little sleeping bag, but he’d said nothing about her not even having a bed.
The whole time he’d kept a running list on his phone of things he thought she’d need to acquire in order to call her house complete.
And the flea market was apparently the place to pick up that crap.
Sarah jumped down from his truck and sighed, looking at the large warehouse in front of her. She hated shopping.
“Come on, I’ll have you in and out in an hour. I swear.”
She sighed and followed him.
But she had to give it to him. He was a quick shopper.
“Sarah, would you prefer a tall dresser like that one, or a wide, short one like that one?”
She shrugged.
“Okay, do you want something more mod like those dining room chairs or more traditional?”
She shrugged.
“Do you prefer stylish or homey? Colorful or quiet? Simple? Elegant? What’s your taste?”
She shrugged.
Seth stepped forward and bent at the knee, leaning down to block out the factory style lighting that was hanging from the ceiling. “Sarah, are you alive in there?”
She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I don’t know the answers to any of your questions! I don’t care about any of this. Any of it. I’m happy to live out of boxes. Also, I’m hungry, thirsty, and bored. Does that answer your questions?”
He eyed her for a second and nodded. “Wait here. Give me two minutes.”
He was back exactly two minutes later, with two hot dogs in one hand and a water in the other. “I didn’t know what you’d want on it, but you seem like a ‘the works’ type of woman.”
He handed over the hot dog and it was, in fact, brimming over with the works. Every kind of topping. His had a neat stripe of mustard down the middle. They stood side by side and watched the flea market bustle around them, neither of them speaking. When they were done and tossing their napkins in the trash, Seth handed her the water bottle.
“Sarah, I have a question here and there’s no wrong answer. Do you want me to (A) butt out completely, take you home and let you live your life? Or (B) make this nice and easy on you and pick out everything you’ll need. You won’t have to do a thing. I’ll even set everything up?”
Sarah crossed her arms and eyed him. “Do you know who I am?” she eventually asked.
He looked taken aback, a little color washing over his cheeks. “Oh. Um. Actually yes, I do.”
“So, what? You’re trying to bang a former Olympian? Or steal my silver medal? Or—”
He leaned forward and clapped a palm over her mouth, shocking the shit out of her. “No!” he said in what looked like genuine horror. “I’m a nice person. Truly.” He appeared to think for a minute. “Here.”
He took his hand away but the heat of it still burned against Sarah’s lips. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her like that. Firmly, without thought, like they were both just two people on equal footing.
Seth took out his phone and typed something into it, handing it over. She saw that he’d put ‘Seth Durant Boulder Colorado’ into the search bar.
“Go ahead,” he told her. “Google me.”
Maybe he’d thought she was going to hand the phone back to him, that the gesture itself would be enough. But, nah, she wasn’t that kind of girl. Plus, she was nosy. So she pressed search and spent a few minutes scrolling through the results.
“Jesus,” she muttered. “What the hell do you do in your free time?” The first hit was for his business’s website. And it was clear just how successful his business was. The following hits were a lot of charity and non-profit websites where he was listed as a volunteer. As far as she could tell, he taught a self-defense class at the women’s shelter, read for kids at the library, ran a monthly food drive, and the list went on.
He shrugged. “I volunteer in my free time. And I work in my yard. I hike. I board. I date.”
Her eyes snapped up to his. She noticed that they were celery green and almost a little spooky. Maybe it’s why she hadn’t initially trusted him. With his light hair and light eyes, he looked a tiny bit ghostish. Like he could see into her mind but was pretending he couldn’t. She sighed. Spooky eyes excluded, it seemed that she had a nice man on her hands. A nice man who was offering to help her out with something she categorically hated doing.
She handed his phone back and yanked out her hair tie, redoing her messy ponytail. “Oh, fine. Option B, I guess. If you must.”
“Yes!” He pointed one finger at the ceiling, as if he were thanking God. “Okay, let’s start here.”
He dragged her to a booth that had a lot of old-fashioned furniture that Sarah would never have picked out for herself. And then suddenly, Seth was starting to hand over cash to the booth owner.
“Hold on, hold on,” Sarah said, yanking his arm back. “What are you buying here?”
He pointed at a dresser that was long and wide and had roses carved into the corners. She hated it on sight. “Are you kidding me? You’re paying that much money for that? No way.”
She started to tug Seth away and saw he’d gone beet red at how rude she’d been in front of the vendor. She squeezed his elbow quickly and winked at him.
“I can knock fifty bucks off if that changes anything,” the vendor called to their backs.
Seth’s eyes lit with understanding. She wasn’t being a complete asshole, she was driving a hard bargain.
Sarah paused and inspected the dresser. She shrugged. “Eh. It’s nice, I guess, but it’s not my style. And this drawer sticks.” She made a big show of wrenching one of the drawers in and out. “Knock another fifty off and you’ve got a deal.”
“I can go seventy-five below asking but that’s all I can do.”
Sarah shrugged, pushed the drawer in and started to walk away.
“Fine!” the vendor called. “Another fifty it is.”
She turned and shook the guy’s hand, letting Seth handle the rest.
“You’re an evil genius!” he whispered in her ear as they headed to the next booth for her dining room chairs.
“It’s not evil to haggle.”
“I’m in awe of you. I’ve never bargained for anything in my life. It always makes me feel like such a cheapskate.”
“Gee,” she said in a dry tone. “Thanks.”
“No!” he laughed. “I’m not calling you a cheapskate. I think you’re a badass. Here, let’s pull the same song and dance on this guy, okay?”
Half an hour later, the back of his truck was full of furniture as they barreled down the highway, but he pulled off at an unfamiliar exit.
“How much do you trust me with your house?” he asked her as he steered with one wrist on the top of the steering wheel and his gaze split between her and the road.
She pursed her lips. “Well, I pretty much hate everything we just bought. But what do I care? Go nuts.”
“Great!” he chirped, as if she hadn’t just admitted to hating everything he’d just purchased with her money. “Then one more stop it is.”
He pulled into a hardware store. “I’m gonna wait in the car,” she told him.
“Great!” he chirped again, not in the least bothered by her lack of involvement.
Fifteen minutes later, he came out with a shopping cart and loaded what looked to be about six gallons of paint into the back of his truck.
“Now you’re painting my house?” she asked incredulously as he slammed back into the front seat.
He grinned at her. “The inside, not the outside. Though…” he tapped his chin tho
ughtfully. “The outside could definitely do with a fresh coat.”
“One thing at a time, you maniac!”
He grinned and pulled back into traffic.
***
He’d fibbed a little, because the hardware store was not the last stop. The last stop was an actual furniture store. When they arrived, she looked at him as if he’d just pulled up to the strip club outside of the airport.
“What in God’s name are we doing here?” she asked him, her voice lowering to a sinister decibel.
He didn’t bother answering her. He jumped out of the truck, came around to the passenger side and yanked the door open, reaching across her to unbuckle her seatbelt. “If you give me half an hour in this store, I’ll immediately buy you a burrito the size of your head. And a beer. A really cold beer.”
It was getting on dinner time and he watched her eyes dilate with the word ‘burrito’ as if it were some kind of magic spell. One thing he really liked about this girl was how much she was into food.
“If we’re not out in thirty minutes on the dot, I’m calling the police,” she muttered.
He laughed and stepped aside for her to jump down. When he’d talked her into going out to buy stuff for her house, he’d asked her for a budget. Because of her prodigious haggling skills, they had plenty of money left over for a few things she desperately needed.
First things first, he took her straight to the bedroom section of the house. The woman was a highly trained athlete. Her body was a finely tuned machine. She deserved a bed to sleep on.
He already knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to give a rat’s ass about her bed frame, and considering that she was sleeping on a mat on the floor, she might not care about her mattress either, but he wanted her to at least test some out.
“It feels wrong to lay on a bed with my shoes on,” she muttered as she crawled across the first one.
“Can I help you folks—”
Seth clasped the salesman on the shoulder and leaned in. “You are definitely not going to make this sale if you hover. Come back in twenty minutes.”
