HER FINAL FLING

by Joanne Rock

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  Contents:

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  1

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  "Please take your hands off my fire bush." Christine Chandler stared down the man taking too many liberties with her delicate red petals.

  Was the urge to manhandle somehow tattooed across the Y chromosome?

  "Excuse me?" The sexy stranger dressed in a charcoal-gray suit with the jacket unbuttoned and tie undone slid his hand away from the dewy softness of the unfurling bud.

  Sighing, Christine nudged past the man who'd appeared out of nowhere on the Miami property she was currently landscaping.

  "The fire bush is very delicate and I can't afford to disturb the blooms before I transplant it." She swiped a wrist over her sweaty brow, wondering why she bothered when the man clearly had no business being out here in the sweltering Florida sun. But maybe he was just a nosy neighbor looking out for Mr. Donzinetti's property. The old Italian eccentric who'd hired her couldn't have been nicer, so it only made sense he'd have a few friends in the Coral Gables neighborhood. "I need to get back to work before my roots start to dry, but if you'd like to leave your name, I'll let the owner know you dropped by."

  Christine smiled politely even though her mind was already taking silent inventory of the shrubs she still needed to plant along the rock facing of the sprawling, sixties-style ranch house. She didn't normally make time for too-handsome men wearing flashy gold watches and expensive sunglasses—even when she didn't look like the Swamp Thing reincarnated.

  But she sure as heck wouldn't bother kowtowing to a guy whose suit probably cost more than her last month's rent now, when she had ten pounds of dirt under her fingernails. Where were her gloves when she needed them?

  She just had to suffer his picture-perfect presence long enough to be sure she didn't offend one of Giuseppe Donzinetti's friends.

  "You say you know the owner?" Mr. Armani sounded doubtful of the fact as he surveyed the property in the relentless heat of the southern Florida afternoon, then turned his sleek black Wayfarers toward her.

  All five feet four filthy inches of her.

  Well fine, if that's the way he wanted to play.

  Shoving her dirt-covered trowel into an open loop on one leg of her cargo shorts, Christine used both hands to lift the large fire bush her uninvited guest had been examining when she discovered him. She hauled the shrub toward the new hole she'd just finished digging for her latest landscaping project.

  The project that would make or break her fledgling landscape business. The same project that had such a tight deadline no other designer in town had been willing to touch it. Only someone as desperate as Christine would try to complete this total lot makeover in six weeks for a late summer wedding. At twenty-five, she might not have completed too many projects, but she was confident she could handle the Donzinetti property.

  Edging around her unwelcome visitor, she resisted the urge to trail a muddy root, across the fabric of his trousers. Would serve him right for getting in her way when she needed to be working her tail off today.

  "Obviously I know the owner or I wouldn't be sweating like a pig to improve his property in the god-awful Miami summer heat." Okay, so maybe that came out a little testier than she'd intended, but for crying out loud. It's not like she was carrying a color TV out of the house. It had to be obvious to anyone—even a flashy Adonis whose eyes were hidden behind Oakley sunglasses. Those shades of his couldn't dim his vision that much, could they?

  Settling the bush into the perimeter of a small garden designed to attract hummingbirds, Christine reminded herself not to be prejudiced against Mr. Pampered just because he reeked of wealth. No need to be biased because she had simple needs and simple values. And no cash.

  "I'm sorry." He followed her, his dark leather shoes squashing through several yards of tilled ground to reach her. "I'm Vito Cesare and I happen to own this house jointly with my siblings."

  Fingers faltering in the dirt she'd begun gathering around the fire bush, she peered back up at the man with a name straight out of The Godfather.

  Taking in Vito's whipcord muscles that no amount of European tailoring could hide, she allowed herself a more careful inspection of her visitor. Dark brown hair grew too long around his face, while a neatly shaved patch of hair around his chin gave him a dissolute, Johnny Depp look. But his killer bod and custom-made suit belied the image.

  "Like what you see?" He pulled off his shades and surprised her with keen hazel eyes instead of the brown she'd expected.

  "Frankly, no. I was just thinking to myself that there isn't a chance in hell you're the owner's brother." Giuseppe Donzinetti had been dressed head-to-toe in clothes from the Gap. A neat, energetic little man, he'd talked with his hands as he'd ambled all over the sprawling Coral Gables yard to describe what he wanted her to accomplish.

  "Who hired you? Was it Nico? Renzo? Marco? I know it couldn't have been my sister Giselle because I just talked to her a few days ago."

  "Good Lord, how many of you are there?" Giving up her efforts to bury the shrub roots, she leaned back on her heels. "And I didn't contract with anyone named Cesare."

  Suspicion mounting, she rose to her feet. "Which leads me to wonder what kind of line you're feeding me."

  No man would ever trick her in a web of lies again. Least of all a guy named Vito who looked like trouble from the start. She'd been reeled in, hook, line and sinker, by a too-slick Internet Casanova last year who'd wooed her with poetry and promises before proposing online. She hadn't realized until she'd gotten an irate phone call from his wife that she was one of eight fiancées who'd been lured by his romantic lies.

  Her BS detector was a hell of a lot more sensitive these days.

  "I'm not feeding you any lines." Vito stuffed his sunglasses in the breast pocket of his shirt before wrenching off his jacket and then swiping a hand across his forehead. "And it's too damn hot to argue about this in ninety-nine-degree weather. Why don't you come inside where there's an air conditioner so we can sort this out?"

  Over her dead body.

  "Do you think I was born yesterday? I'm not going to let a total stranger into the house." Although, much to her happy fortune, she did possess a set of keys Mr. Donzinetti had loaned her as part of their deal. She'd given him the cut-rate bargain price he'd wanted and in return, he'd allowed her to stay on the property while her green thumb worked its magic.

  Not only was the arrangement highly convenient for planting purposes, it had come at just the moment she'd realized she couldn't afford another month's rent on her shoe-box studio apartment.

  "You don't need to let me in." He dug in his pants pocket and withdrew a well-worn key that appeared older and darker than the shiny bright gold one Mr. Donzinetti had cut for her. "I can get into my own house anytime I damn well choose."

  Delving into her cargo shorts in search of her own key, Christine tried not to panic and failed. What if Mr. Donzinetti had just been a weird old man playing games with her and she'd never receive the rest of the payment on a job she'd been killing herself to complete? What if Giuseppe had Alzheimer's and had given her his neighbor's key instead of his own?

  Finding what she sought, she dragged her key out of her pocket and held it up near his, hoping maybe Vito had the wrong damn key and he had been pulling her leg the whole time. Damned if they weren't mirror images of one another.

  Please don't let this be happening.

  "If you're really the owner, where have you been for the past week that I've been staying here? And for that matter, who is this Giuseppe Donzinetti character who hired me?"

  "Uncle Giuseppe was here?" Vito unbuttoned another fastening on his shirt, drawing her eye to
the deep bronze hue of the skin there, along with a sprinkling of black hair.

  She fought the urge to tug at her collar, suddenly feeling the effects of the heat. But then his words hit home.

  "He's a relative?" Maybe there was a chance her job here was still legit. That she'd be paid for all her hard work.

  "A relative with no business bringing in guests without asking me, but yes, he's my uncle." He shoved up his shirtsleeves as a group of prepubescent boys whizzed past on the sidewalk, their skateboards bumping over every seam in the pavement. "Last I knew he was still in Naples. Italy, that is."

  Oh, great. What if the weird old uncle with Alzheimer's had sailed back to Italy and left her here to contend with Vito's torn-up lawn and no payment in sight?

  For the second time in her life, Christine Chandler found herself screwed by a situation that had looked too good to be true. Only this time, she had no one to blame but herself.

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  Vito Cesare had never been the kind of guy who picked fights with women.

  And he definitely didn't want to upset the very dirty female who seemed to have single-handedly dug up fifty percent of his yard. For all he knew, she'd go plow up the rest if provoked.

  But it was at least ninety-nine degrees outside his Coral Gables home, with enough humidity that he'd have to wring out his clothes by the time he got inside. Frankly, he was getting too cranky to discuss whatever the hell it was she was doing here while the sun deep-fried him on the front sidewalk. He'd just stepped off an international flight from Paris and he was fighting a bout of jet lag. Add to that the fact that he'd stayed up way too late the night before celebrating his latest racing win with an overenthusiastic female who'd had a really difficult time taking no for answer.

  All of which meant he was operating on no sex, no sleep and no patience.

  "Look. I'm sorry if there was a mix-up about the house, but I just had a twelve-hour flight and I'm going to lose it if I don't get a drink and cool down." He stalked toward his lone small suitcase the cab driver had left in the driveway as he shouted over his shoulder. "You're welcome to come in while we figure out this mess."

  And he meant the "mess" part quite literally. His house was a bona fide disaster with all the old flower beds dug up, a tree cut down and lying in sawed-up chunks across the side yard and the cobblestone path to the front door piled into a heap of rubble. Just what in the hell did this woman who'd never bothered to introduce herself think she was doing to his property?

  Strictly speaking, it wasn't all his. He really did own it in conjunction with his siblings since their father had died and left the family home to them all. But with his youngest brother at Harvard and determined to live up north, a soon-to-be married sister who already lived abroad and two other brothers who had bought houses with their significant others, Vito had begun thinking of the Cesare family home as his responsibility.

  The way it had been for many years after their folks had died.

  As the oldest of the Cesares, Vito had stepped in to raise his younger siblings. His mother had passed away in childbirth when he was barely a teenager, his father had followed her six years later. He'd taken care of the kids and the house until his sister was safely in college and his youngest brother was almost finished with high school. Then he'd given over the responsibilities to his brothers Nico and Renzo so he could finally live his own dreams on the European racing circuit.

  The sound of footsteps on the driveway made him pause, pulling his head out of old memories. Turning as he reached the side door, he found the possessive owner of the fire bush on his heels, staring up at him with wary blue eyes.

  "You can't go in," she informed him, tucking a strand of chin-length dark brown hair behind one ear. "The place is a little messy."

  He peered around the yard and wondered if the inside could be as bad as the outside. Glancing back down at her dust-smeared khaki cargo shorts and damp gray T-shirt, he was hardly reassured. Although he'd be lying if he pretended not to notice the admirable curves beneath the layers of dirt. "How messy?"

  "Considering you look like you just walked off a shoot for GQ, you'll probably think it looks pretty bad." She folded her arms under those admirable curves of hers and looked at him as though he was the one covered in grime. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's just all in a day's work."

  That didn't sound good. At all. Vito's method of combating jet lag involved lots of sleeping, not cleaning. In fact, he'd grown accustomed to maid service since he'd traded surrogate parenthood to his younger siblings for life in the fast lane as a Formula One race-car driver. He hadn't picked up a mop in years.

  And he didn't miss domestic duties one little bit.

  Deciding that facing the mess couldn't be any worse than surviving the heat, Vito inserted his key in the lock.

  Paused. Turned back to the woman behind him.

  "I don't believe I caught your name."

  "Christine Chandler. Sorry. I try to avoid introductions when my hands are dirty." She kept the hands in question tucked under her folded arms.

  "Very understandable." Nudging open the door he stepped inside the kitchen of the sprawling ranch house his dad had bought when he moved to the U.S. Or at least, the room that used to be the kitchen.

  Currently, the kitchen sink overflowed with flower cuttings, plant stems and mountains of dirt. The windowsill overlooking the backyard was crammed full of flower flats precariously balanced half on the sill and half on the dining-room chairs. Bags of potting soil and birdseed crowded the floor.

  "Birdseed?" It was the least offensive question that sprang to mind when all he really wanted to know was what in the hell this insane woman was doing to his house.

  His mother had always called their home "Hollywood tacky" with its open floor plan and sixties modern architecture. But it had felt like home to Vito with the big yard and tons of neighbor kids to grow up with. He always looked forward to coming home, but this time… Damn.

  "For the birds," she explained very slowly as if only a complete moron would ask such an obvious question. Easing around the bags on the floor, she washed her hands over a tiny free corner of the sink. "Your uncle Giuseppe stressed that he hoped to attract a lot of birds."

  "And you can't keep this stuff in the garage?"

  "The birdseed, yes. I'll move it now that you're home." She nudged one of the bags with the toe of her work boot. "But I have to be careful with the plants because it's very hot in the garage and they'll stay fresher if I keep them cool. I can always move them out to the workshop."

  Vito dropped his suitcase on top of a stack of empty flower flats by the door. Draping his jacket over the suitcase, he made his way to the refrigerator and hoped a drink would clear his head. He wanted straight scotch. He'd settle for a soda or anything else his brothers had left in the fridge.

  He found only lemons. Tons and tons of lemons.

  "I drink a lot of lemonade when I work." Drying her hands, she moved past him to grab a white pitcher off the door. Something he hadn't noticed thanks to the citrus garden growing on the other shelves. "Want me to pour you a glass while we discuss how to handle this miscommunication?"

  He wasn't sure he even wanted to discuss it anymore. His whole world was in chaos and he'd been made a stranger in his own home.

  Maybe he'd hunt down the scotch after all.

  "Are you okay?" Christine stuffed a glass in one of his hands and then pried the open refrigerator door from his other. "I'd be happy to get out of your way and go back to work as soon as we establish that I am still getting paid for my efforts. I am going to get paid for all this, aren't I?"

  She made a sweeping gesture to indicate his house, that ought to be condemned, and his eyesore of a yard that would piss off neighbors for miles around.

  "Do you usually get paid for doing this?" He'd be surprised if she didn't get hauled off to jail. Was she exercising squatter's rights by moving into his house and making it hers?

  He had to stifle an absurd urge to
laugh as she seemed to genuinely consider his question.

  "Honestly, sometimes I don't get paid because I'm very new at this, but I studied horticulture with the best landscape designers in California and now I'm ready to bring that knowledge to southern Florida." She busied herself by filling a paper cup with water and pouring the contents over the plants in his sink. "Your yard is my first large-scale production as a solo artist, but I've worked on bigger undertakings with other designers."

  He leaned against the light wooden cupboards in the kitchen where he'd toasted his first Pop-Tart, weary with the way she seemed to talk in circles. For all he knew, his tired brain could be making it sound as though she was talking in circles when she was being perfectly rational.

  "And just what did my uncle hire you to do here?" He made a mental note to call Giuseppe as soon as possible and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing jumping in to hire help for Vito without asking.

  For that matter, why did Vito's whole family have to tiptoe around the fact that Vito was now a multimillionaire and could damn well afford to hire his own help? And his brothers were no better, paying to take care of every repair needed on the family home instead of letting him know when he needed to pitch in. According to Renzo and Nico, Vito had already given enough to the family coffers while they were growing up.

  "I'm landscaping the property." She set down the paper cup and turned to face him, her back against the wine cabinet his brother Renzo had built long ago. "Your uncle said he wanted this place to be gorgeous by the time his niece's wedding rolls around, so I'm developing a large-scale overhaul." Pausing, she bit her lip, automatically drawing his gaze to that soft expanse of pink. "Do you know anything about this wedding, or is your uncle … you know … losing it?"

  "He's not losing it." And even if he were, Vito would never let on as much to an outsider. He did wonder if Giuseppe really intended to pay Christine, or if he was leaving that up to Vito. He needed to discuss that matter with him when he called, too. "He probably wanted to surprise me. He didn't mention anything about me coming home while you were working?"