by Cara Colter
Oh, well, that was his problem. She was going to enjoy her day, especially with this new sense of having discovered who she was.
She gave herself over to the task at hand, placed her shovel, then jumped on it with both feet to drive it in to the dirt. It was probably because he was watching—or maybe because of the desperately unsuited shoes—that things went sideways. The shovel fell to one side, throwing her against him.
His arm closed around her in reaction. She felt the hardness of his palm tingling on the sensitive upper skin of her arm. The intoxicating scent of him intensified. He held her arm just a beat longer than he had to, and she felt the seductive and exhilarating zing of pure chemistry.
When he had touched her yesterday, she had felt these things, but he had looked only remote. Today, she saw something pulse through his eyes, charged, before it was quickly doused and he let go of her arm.
Was it because she had made a decision to be who she really was that she couldn’t resist playing with that zing? Or was it because she was powerless not to explore it, just a little?
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. And then just in case she thought he had a weak place somewhere in him, that he might actually care, that he might be feeling something as intoxicatingly unprofessional as she was, he said, “Second Chances can’t afford a compensation claim.”
She smiled to herself, went back to shoveling.
He seemed just a little too pleased with himself.
She tossed a little dirt on his shoes.
“Hey,” he warned her.
“Sorry,” she said, insincerely. She tossed a little more.
He stopped, glared at her over the top of his shovel. She pretended it had been purely an accident, focused intently on her own shovel, her own dirt. He went back to work. She tossed a shovel full of dirt right on his shoes.
“Hey!” he said, extricating his feet.
“Watch where you put your feet,” she said solemnly. “Second Chances can’t afford to buy you new shoes.”
She giggled, and shoveled, but she knew he was regarding her over the top of his shovel, and when she glanced at him, some of that remoteness had gone from his eyes, finally, and this time it didn’t come back. He went back to work.
Plop. Dirt on his shoes.
“Would you stop it?” he said.
“Stop what?” she asked innocently.
“You have something against my shoes?”
“No, they’re very nice shoes.”
“I know how to make you behave,” he whispered.
She laughed. This is what she had wanted. To know if there was something in him that was playful, a place she could reach. “No, you don’t.”
He dangled it in front of her eyes.
A worm! She took a step back from him. “Houston! That’s not funny!” But, darn it, in a way it was.
“What’s not funny?” he said. “Throwing dirt on people’s shoes?”
“I hate worms. Does our compensation package cover hysteria?”
“You would get hysterical if I, say, put this worm down your shirt?”
He sounded just a little too enthused about that. It occurred to her they were flirting with each other, cautiously stepping around that little zing, looking at it from different angles, exploring it.
“No,” she said, but he grinned wickedly, sensing the lie.
The grin changed everything about him. Everything. He went from being too uptight and too professional to being a carefree young man, covered in dirt and sweat, real and human.
It seemed to her taking that chance on showing him who she really was was paying off somehow.
Until he did a practice lunge toward her with the worm. Because she really did hate worms!
“If I tell your girlfriend you were holding worms with your bare hands today, she may never hold your hand again.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Ah, it was a weakness. She’d been fishing. But that’s what worms were for!
He lunged at her again, the worm wiggled between his fingers. He looked devilishly happy when she squealed.
Then, as if he caught himself in the sin of having fun, he abruptly dropped the worm, went back to work.
She hesitated. It was probably a good time to follow his lead and back off. But, oh, to see him smile had changed something in her. Made her willing to take a risk. With a sigh of surrender, she tossed a shovel of dirt on his shoes. And he picked up that worm.
“I warned you,” he said.
“You’d have to catch me first!”
Molly threw down her shovel and ran. He came right after her, she could hear his footfalls and his breathing. She glanced over her shoulder and saw he was chasing her, holding out the worm. She gave a little snicker, and put on a burst of speed. At one point, she was sure that horrible worm actually touched her neck, and she shrieked, heard his rumble of breathless laughter, ran harder.
She managed to put a wheelbarrow full of plants between them. She turned and faced him. “Be reasonable,” she pleaded breathlessly.
“The time for reason is done,” he told her sternly, but then that grin lit his face—boyish, devil-may-care, and he leaped the wheelbarrow with ease and the chase was back on.
The old people watched them indulgently as they chased through the garden. Finally the shoes betrayed her, and she went flying. She landed in a pile of soft but foul-smelling peat moss. He was immediately contrite. He dropped the worm and held out his hand—which she took with not a bit of hesitation. He pulled her to her feet with the same easy strength that he had shoveled with. Where did a man who crunched numbers get that kind of strength from? She had that feeling again, of something about him not adding up, but it was chased away by his laughter.
“You don’t laugh enough,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I’m not sure. I just do. You are way too serious, aren’t you?”
He held both her hands for a moment, reached out and touched a curl, brushed it back from out of her eyes.
“Maybe I am,” he admitted.
Something in her felt absolutely weak with what she wanted at that moment. To make him laugh, but more, to explore all the reasons he didn’t. To find out what, exactly, about him did not add up.
“Truce?” he said.
“Of course,” she panted. She meant for all of it, their different views of Second Chances. All of it.
He reached over, snared the camera out of her pocket and took a picture of her.
“Don’t,” she protested. She could feel her hair falling out, she was pretty sure there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and probably on her derriere, too!
But naturally he didn’t listen and so she stuck out her tongue at him and then struck a pose for him, and then called over some of the other gardeners. Arms over each other’s shoulders, they performed an impromptu cancan for the camera before it all fell apart, everyone dissolving into laughter.
Houston smiled, but that moment of spontaneity was fading. Molly was aware that he saw that moment of playfulness differently to her. Possibly as a failing. Because he was still faintly removing himself from them. She had been welcomed into the folds of the group, he stood outside it.
Lonely, she thought. There was something so lonely about him. And she felt that feeling, again, of wanting to explore.
And maybe to save. Just like she saved her strays. But somehow, looking at the handsome, remote cast of his face, she knew he would hate it that she had seen anything in him that needed saving. That needed, period.
They got back in the car, she waved to the old people. Molly was aware she was thrilled with how the morning had gone, by its unexpected surprises, and especially how he had unexpectedly revealed something of himself.
“How are your hands?” she asked him. He held one out to her. An hour on a shovel had done nothing to that hand.
“I would have thought you would have blisters,” she said.
&
nbsp; “No, my hands are really tough.”
“From?”
“I box.”
“As in fight?”
He laughed. “Not really. It’s more the workout I like.”
So, her suspicions that he was not quite who he said were unfounded. He was a high-powered businessman who sought fitness at a high-powered level.
That showed in every beautiful, mesmerizing male inch of him!
“Wasn’t that a wonderful morning?” she asked, trying to solidify the camaraderie that had blossomed so briefly between them. “I promised I would show you the soul of Second Chances and that’s part of it! What a lovely sense of community, of reclaiming that lot, of bringing something beautiful to a place where there was ugliness.”
She became aware he was staring straight ahead. Her feeling of deflation was immediate. “You didn’t feel it?”
“Molly, it’s a nice project. The warm and fuzzy feel good kind.”
She heard the but in his voice, sensed it in the set of his shoulders. Naturally he would be immune to warm fuzzy feeling good.
“But it’s my job to ask if it makes good economic sense. Second Chances owns that lot, correct?”
She nodded reluctantly. Good economic sense after the magical hour they had just spent? “It was donated to us. Years ago. Before I came on board it was just an empty lot that no one did anything with.”
If she was expecting congratulations on her innovative thought she was sadly disappointed!
“Were there provisos on the donation?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’ll have to do some homework.”
“But why?”
“I have to ask these questions. Is that the best use of that lot? It provides a green space, about a dozen people seem to actually enjoy it. Could it be liquidated and the capital used to help more people? Could it be developed—a parking lot or a commercial building—providing a stream of income into perpetuity? Providing jobs and income for the neighborhood?”
“A parking lot?” she gasped. And then she saw exactly what he was doing. Distancing himself from the morning they had just shared—distancing himself from the satisfaction of hard work and the joy of laughter and the admiration of people who would love him.
Distancing himself from her. Did he know she had seen him? Did he suspect she had uncovered things about him he kept hidden?
He didn’t like feelings. She should know that firsthand. Chuck had had a way of rolling his eyes when she had asked him how he was feeling that had made her stop asking!
But, naive as it might be, she was pretty sure she had just glimpsed the real Houston Whitford, something shining under those layers of defenses.
And she wasn’t quite ready to let that go. It didn’t have to be personal. No, she could make it a mission, for the good of Second Chances, she told herself, she would get past all those defenses.
For the good of Second Chances she was going to rescue him from his lonely world.
CHAPTER FIVE
“HEY,” she said, “there’s Now and Zen.”
She could clearly see he was disappointed that she had not risen to the bait of him saying he was going to build a parking lot over the garden project.
“Why don’t we go in?” she suggested. “You can look for some gardening shoes.”
She was not going to give up on him. He was not as hard-nosed as he wanted to seem. She just knew it.
How could he spend a morning like they had just spent in the loveliness of that garden, and want to put up a parking lot? Giving up wasn’t in her nature. She was finding a way to shake him up, to make him see, to make him connect! Lighten him up.
And Now and Zen was just plain fun.
“Would you like to stop and have a look?”
He shrugged, regarded her thoughtfully as if he suspected she was up to something but just wasn’t quite sure what. “Why not?”
Possibly another mistake, she thought as they went in the door to the delightful dimness and clutter of Now and Zen. He’d probably be crunching the numbers on this place, too. Figuring out if its magic could be bottled and sold, or repackaged and sold, or destroyed for profit.
Stop it, she ordered herself. Show him. Invite him into this world. He’s lonely. He has to be in his uptight little world where everything has a price and nothing has value.
She tried to remind herself there was a risk of getting hurt in performing a rescue of this nature, but it was a sacrifice she was making for Second Chances! Second Chances needed for him to be the better man that she was sure she saw in there somewhere, sure she had seen when he was putting his all into that shovel.
That was muscle, a cynical voice cautioned her, not a sign of a better man.
Something caught her eye. She took a deep breath, plucked the black cowboy hat from the rack and held it out to him in one last attempt to get him to come into her world, to see it all through her eyes.
“Here, try this on.”
Now and Zen was not like the other stores, but funky, laid-back, a place that encouraged the bohemian.
The whole atmosphere in the store said, Have fun!
He looked at her, shook his head, she thought in refusal. But then he said, “If I try that on, I get to pick something for you to try on.”
She felt the thrill of his surrender. So, formidable as his discipline was, she could entice him to play with her!
“That’s not fair,” Molly said. “You can clearly see what I want you to try on, but you’re asking me for carte blanche. I mean you could pick a bikini!”
“Did you see one?” he asked with such unabashed hopefulness that she laughed. It confirmed he did have a playful side. And she fully intended to coax it to the surface, even if she had to wear a bikini to do it.
Besides, the temptation to see him in the hat—as the gunslinger—proved too great to resist, even at the risk that he might turn up a bikini!
“Okay,” she said. “If you try this on, I’ll try something on that you pick.”
“Anything?” He grinned wickedly.
There was that grin again, without defenses, the kind of smile that could melt a heart.
And show a woman a soul.
He took the hat from her.
“Anything,” she said. The word took on new meaning as he set the hat on his head. It didn’t look corny, it didn’t even look like he was playing dress-up. He adjusted it, pulled the brim low over his brow. His eyes were shaded, sexy, silver.
She felt her mouth go dry. Anything. She had known that something else lurked between that oh so confident and composed exterior. Something dangerous. Something completely untamed. Could those things coexist with the better man that she was determined to see?
Or maybe what was dangerous and untamed was in her. In every woman, somewhere. Something that made a prim schoolteacher say to an outlaw, anything. Anywhere.
“My turn,” he said, and disappeared down the rows. While he looked she looked some more, too. And came up with a black leather vest.
He appeared at her side, a hanger in his hand.
A feather boa dangled from it, an impossible and exotic blend of colors.
“There’s Baldy’s missing feathers!” she exclaimed.
“Baldy?”
“My budgie. With hardly any feathers. His name is Baldy.” It was small talk. Nothing more. Why did it feel as if she was opening up her personal life, her world, to him?
“What happened to his feathers?”
“Stolen to make a boa. Kidding.” She flung the boa dramatically around her neck. “I don’t know what happened to his feathers. He was like that when I got him. If I didn’t take him…” She slid her finger dramatically over her throat.
“You saved him,” he said softly, but there was suspicion in his eyes, worthy of a gunslinger, don’t even think it about me.
No sense letting on she already was!
“It was worth it. He’s truly a hilarious little character, full of personality. People would be a
mazed by how loving he is.”
This could only happen to her: standing in the middle of a crazy store, a boa around her neck, discussing a bald budgie with a glorious man with eyes that saw something about her that it felt like no one had ever seen before.
And somehow the word love had slipped into the conversation.
Molly took the boa in her hand and spun the long tail of it, deliberately moving away from a moment that was somehow too intense, more real than what she was ready for.
He stood back, studied her, nodded his approval. “You could wear it to work,” he decided, taking the hint that something too intense—though delightful—had just passed between them.
“Depending where I worked!”
“Hey, if you can wear a wedding gown, you can wear that.”
“I think not. Second Chances is all about image now!”
“Are you saying that in a good way?”
“Don’t take it as I’m backing down on Prom Dreams, but yes, I suppose I could warm to the bigger picture at the office. Don’t get bigheaded about it.”
“It’s just the hat that’s making you make comments about my head size. I know it.”
She handed him the vest. “This goes with it.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “No freebies. If I try on something else, I get to pick something else for you.”
“You didn’t bring me a bikini, so I’ll try to trust you.”
“I couldn’t find one, but I’ll keep looking.”
He slipped on the vest. She drew in her breath at the picture he was forming. Rather than looking funny, he looked coolly remote, as if he was stepping back in time, a man who could handle himself in difficult circumstances, who would step toward difficulty rather than away.
He turned away from her, went searching again, came back just as she was pulling faded jeans from a hanger.
He had a huge pair of pink glass clip-on earrings.
“Those look like chandeliers. Besides, pink looks terrible with my hair.”
“Ah, well, I’m not that fond of what the hat is doing to mine, either.”
