Duets™

Two brand-new stories in every volume…twice a month!

Duets Vol. #81

Popular author Carol Finch takes us to Hoot’s Roost, Oklahoma, where there are quite a few single cowboys who don’t give a hoot about marryin’. But when two sexy city girls show up in town, that changes everything. Enjoy Carol’s funny, romantic Double Duets stories about The Bachelors of Hoot’s Roost—where love comes sweeping down the plain!

Duets Vol. #82

Delightful Tina Wainscott is back with another quirky Duets novel where the hero is driven to distraction by the gorgeous free-spirited heroine living next door! Tina tells “a charming story full of love and laughter,” says Rendezvous. Joining her in the volume is talented Candy Halliday with a story about a pilot hero who’s always winging it when it comes to relationships. It takes a special woman to bring this guy down to earth!

Be sure to pick up both Duets volumes today!

Driven to Distraction
Tina Wainscott
Winging It
Candy Halliday

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Driven to Distraction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Winging It

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Driven to Distraction

“Barrett—we need to kiss!”

“Kiss what?” he asked. Stacy sure seemed to know how to fake a relationship on the spur of the moment.

“Each other, silly. On the lips.”

Oh.

Stacy continued, “We have to kiss each other later at the canned-food party. Just one kiss ought to do it. But it has to be a good one. Nita’s going to be the judge, but everyone’ll know if we’re just pretending.”

Barrett was desperate for their scheme to succeed, so asked, “What is the criterion for a good kiss? Duration? Amount of movement?”

She looked exasperated. “You can’t judge a kiss on those terms. What determines a good kiss is chemistry. It’s how great you feel, how totally lost in the moment you are.” She paused, searching for the right description. “It’s…it’s the swoon factor.”

Now, Barrett had been a scientist for a long time, and he’d heard many theories on many subjects, and though the thought of kissing Stacy was heating his Bunsen burner, he couldn’t help but ask, “The swoon factor?”

Dear Reader,

That’s right…take one woman who’s given up on ever finding romance—she’s going straight for the baby. Take one guy who’s a little too smart for his own good—he thinks romance is a study in science. And factor in a group of nosy busybodies who believe they know best—they’ll go to any length to make things work their way. Add an ugly dog, a lovesick maintenance guy, plenty of good intentions, and what you have is a wacky story of plans gone totally awry. Isn’t it just right that when you think you’ve finally figured out what you really want, life throws you a curveball?

I hope you enjoy Driven to Distraction!

Tina Wainscott

Books by Tina Wainscott

HARLEQUIN DUETS

34—THE WRONG MR. RIGHT

54—DAN ALL OVER AGAIN

This book is dedicated to the gals (and guy)of the Southwest Florida Romance Writers.May we always celebrate with chocolate and whine….

It’s also dedicated to my workout class in my second home of North Carolina. Despite “Moon River” and the battle hymns, you all are the greatest. Thanks for welcoming me in with open arms.

1

THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR was driving Barrett Wheeler to distraction, and he hadn’t even seen her. This was not a good thing since he had exactly seven days, one hour and four minutes to complete his research study for a grant on the mating habits and preservation of tree snails for the University of Miami. The university would then take the data and approach the government with a plan to preserve these important inhabitants of the Everglades.

He’d trudged through the swamps of Everglades National Park for a year, sure that he had finally found what he’d been seeking the last twelve years—the life goal his father had been haranguing him about since he’d graduated high school when he was fifteen. He was sure biology was what he should have gotten into in the first place. That’s where he belonged. But that’s what he’d thought when he’d undertaken course work in physics and mathematics, too. Now, though, he had his PhD and was satisfied with that. He was. He only needed to figure out what field of biology interested him and stick to it. Instead, he kept choosing different kinds of projects, hoping to find the one field that grabbed his interest permanently.

He did care about the plight of the endangered tree snail, and he always gave his all to whatever project he was working on. He was proud to be part of the effort to preserve the dwindling tree snails. Even if his mind was already wandering to the endangered seahorses. Or maybe survival aspects of the big cats in Africa.

Maybe he just didn’t know what he wanted. He was ashamed to admit it, even to himself. He started a project with all kinds of interest and lost some of that steam along the way.

It wasn’t his mental meanderings that were hindering his progress on the tree snail study. First, there had been a mistake made on the due date of the study. Barrett had three weeks less than he’d planned on to complete his study. Then his sister, Kim, had shown up at his condominium with her husband and four kids needing a place to stay after the pipes in their house burst. That crisis was averted by a colleague’s offer. Since his parents were going on a cruise, Barrett could stay at their house in Sunset City, a retirement community. It sounded perfect. He’d stick to himself and complete his study with nothing but the occasional call of “Bingo!” to disturb the quiet.

At least in theory.

Sunset City wasn’t exactly what he’d envisioned. It was, in fact, a small city, with a grid layout lined with cozy homes and quaint yards. A large community center and pool were situated in the middle of the city, and toward the front entrance was a small store and gas station. Instead of being a quiet, restful place, it bustled with activity. When he’d pulled in evening before last, he was nearly run down by a pack of women wearing T-shirts with bright pink flamingos who were doing a remarkably good imitation of a power walk. Instead of rocking chairs on the porches of the small, neat homes, there were three-wheeled bicycles and even a Harley. A yoga class was doing their moves in the park, striking storklike poses to Chubby Checker tunes. Three men were dismantling a classic Mustang’s engine under a covered driveway.

Well, the sign had said Older Persons Community, not a word about retirement. Still, no one should bother him here.

At least in theory.

Normally, his theories were sound. What he hadn’t factored in was the woman next door. Yesterday, he took his files and laptop computer onto the back porch after his morning jog to enjoy the gorgeous fall weather. Maybe reward himself with a dip in the small pool in the backyard if he were particularly productive. The yard was small and private, surrounded by thick, tall hedges. He settled in to work, fingers poised above the keyboard.

That’s when her voice had floated through the hedge that separated their yards. He couldn’t see into her yard to verify, but she had to be an older person. Yet her voice had a young, provocative sound to it. He didn’t know why it had caught his attention. He usually immersed himself in a project and didn’t come up for hours. He was utterly embarrassed at the stirrings in his body. Come on, it was a voice, for Pete’s sake!

He had tried to ignore her when she called to her husband. Then she crooned about how handsome he was despite the fact that he apparently drooled a bit. But Barrett got completely off track when she said, “Would you stop licking me, Frankie? I swear you’ve got the biggest tongue I’ve ever seen.”

Mental images like that he did not need. He’d gone inside.

Early that evening he’d taken a break and eaten his TV dinner on the porch. Again, her voice floated through the hedge. “George, did you fart again? Holy stink bombs, honey, no more beef Stroganoff for you! I don’t care how much you beg. And I know how much you love to beg.”

George? Wasn’t she with Frankie earlier? Was he staying next to a senior citizen floozy? For a moment, he actually felt a spark of curiosity, an urge to peek through that hole in the hedge and see who this woman was. But that kind of nosy curiosity was impractical, at least outside his research. It didn’t serve much purpose in the real world.

Not that he could claim to be part of the real world in any sense. He’d been raised by his father, the man from whom he’d inherited his one-hundred-eighty-five IQ. His mother had gotten bored with her scientist husband and his scientist friends and even having a son who was smarter than she was by the time he was twelve. So she’d taken his sister, Kim, and moved to West Palm Beach. Barrett and his father moved onto the university campus and, at fifteen, Barrett entered University of Miami’s program. Because he was years younger than his peers, he felt more comfortable hanging out with his father’s contemporaries. Even now, professors and other research scientists were the people he related to best.

“Aw, do you love me? I love you, too,” she crooned, and Barrett thought he heard an answering groan. “Give me some sugar.” She’d giggled, a sound that sent a trill through his stomach. Then she’d squealed. “That tickles!”

He’d gone inside.

This morning she was with Buddy. He hadn’t said much, but the woman was rambling on as though they were old friends. “You’re one big boy. Oh, you want your butt scratched, do you?”

He’d almost gone inside then. The words, “Oh, you like that, don’t you? Mmm,” stopped him. He tried to put an older woman’s face to the voice, but couldn’t.

“Oh, goodie, sit on me, why don’t you?” She made a grunting sound, as though trying to shove the guy off. “Get off me, already! Geez, you weigh a ton!” After sounds of a struggle, she said, “Stop pawing me, you animal!”

It wasn’t his curiosity that finally propelled him to that hole in the hedge. The lady obviously required some assistance. He could tell himself that, anyway.

The hole, unfortunately, wasn’t as deep as it had looked. He had to bend down, stick his head into the gap and push branches aside before he could see into her yard.

The first thing he saw was pink spandex wrapped snuggly around a behind that wasn’t anywhere near octogenarian. He took her in as he would any fascinating specimen—slowly, analyzing each part. White sneakers with pink balls at the ends of the laces, shapely calves, then the pink spandex—forget about the pink spandex—a white tank top and short, brown hair.

“Get off my foot!” she said as she shoved Buddy aside.

Buddy was a large, tan horse dog that was sitting squarely on the woman-who-wasn’t-a-floozy’s foot. And Buddy had no intention of moving…until he spotted something more interesting.

That something more interesting, unfortunately, was Barrett. Buddy stampeded toward the hedge, a string of drool hanging from his sagging lips.

Barrett was at Buddy’s face level. He pulled back, but the hedge had other ideas. It pinned him in place with branches and one well-placed sharp edge against his neck. Buddy screeched to a halt in front of Barrett, some of the drool flying forward and just missing him. The dog was staring at him, its head tilted in utter fascination.

When the woman turned to see what had distracted the dog, she let out a warbled scream. “Oh, my goodness!”

“Get it away!” he said, still trying to extricate himself and wishing he could spontaneously combust.

Buddy had finally figured out how to investigate the head in the bushes, and he did so with a warm, wet tongue. Not to mention the drool, which caught Barrett on the chin. The more Barrett wriggled to free himself, the more entangled he got.

All in all, a fine way to meet the neighbor.

“Buddy, cut it out!” She tugged on the dog’s leash, but he tugged back so hard, she nearly crashed into the bushes. She caught her balance and focused on the dog. “Sit! Sit, now!”

As she wrestled with the horse dog, all Barrett could see was flashes of neon pink that covered curves he shouldn’t be noticing. And he really shouldn’t be feeling some stirring in his body, since he was here to work on his study and nothing more. His body, he realized, was smarter than his brain was. It knew instinctively the voice belonged to an interesting woman. An interesting young woman, at that. He finally extricated himself from the bushes just as she got Buddy under control. He wiped his face with his sleeve, trying not to think about the kinds of bacteria that thrive in a dog’s mouth.

“Sorry about that,” she said, though he should have been the one apologizing and she should have been much less charitable toward the man who’d been peeking through her hedge. She ducked down to the level of the hole, and he forgot about everything but how cute her face looked framed in shiny green leaves. “You must be the supersmart scientist dude who’s working on some important study on frogs. I’m Stacy Jenkins.”

And even more amazingly, she slid her hand through the hole. It took him a moment to realize she wanted to shake his hand. He’d been too busy noticing the elegant lines of her fingers and the spots of bright pink on her short nails.

He took her hand in his and returned her firm handshake. Her hand was soft and warm, and a sensual feeling slithered through his body. What came out of his mouth was, “Tree snails.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m tree snails.” He blinked. Get a handle on yourself, man. You’ve met attractive women before and had the wherewithal to introduce yourself properly. “I mean, you said frogs, but I’m studying tree snails.” The feel of her hand in his, plus the awkwardness of the whole situation, made him lose his train of thought. This never happened. “I’m Barrett Wheeler. I want to apologize for—”

“Peeking through the bushes at me?” she offered cheerily, extricating her hand and ducking to peer through the hole. “Gene does it all the time.”

“He does?”

“Just to be neighborly, to say hi.”

He couldn’t help notice the hint of cleavage showing above a tank top that hugged small, firm breasts and thought, Fat chance he was just being neighborly. Since he wasn’t exactly in a position to comment, however, he let it drop. “So Frankie and George were also dogs?”

She glanced at Buddy, who was whining but still holding his position. He had a fresh string of drool hanging from his lips. “Oh, sure. I work with the problem dogs at the Humane Society. We’re a no-kill shelter, which means we work extra hard to fix the reasons the animals got put up for adoption. I bring them home for half a day or overnight sometimes and teach them manners.” She tilted her head at him. “What did you think they were?” An expression of horror crossed her face. “George, Frankie, Buddy…you thought I was entertaining men, didn’t you?” Just when he was hoping for spontaneous combustion again, she laughed. Not the demure, quiet kind of laugh the women he socialized with had, either. Stacy’s laugh was an explosion of sound. In fact, she doubled over and braced her palms on her thighs. “If you only knew how preposterous that thought was!”

Barrett thought he felt a warm flush creep up his face, though he was sure he was mistaken. He never blushed. “Not that it’s any of my business, of course, and my intention wasn’t to eavesdrop—”

That laugh of hers vibrated through him. “Too funny!” But her laughter and the delightful smile that lit up her whole face faded. “And too sad, when I think how long it’s been since—” Buddy nudged her behind, sending her into the bushes. She caught her balance, and Barrett caught a whiff of strawberry. “Well, I try to teach them manners, anyway,” she said.

How long since what, and why was the thought of her entertaining men preposterous? There was that curiosity again. He was probably better off not knowing. “Is that what you do for a living? Teach manners to dogs?”

“Not for a living, no. I’m just volunteering at the shelter until I get a real job.” She glanced at her watch. “In fact, I’m waiting for a callback on a job any time now, hopefully with good news.”

“Aren’t you a bit young to live in here?” he asked through the hole.

“My granny raised me here. I was grandfathered in on the sixty-five and older rule—well, grandmothered in, if you want to be technical. When I graduated from high school, I wanted to go to college, live on campus and everything. But the more I talked about it, the weaker Granny’s heart got, so I didn’t go. When she passed on two years ago, I was going to sell the house and move, but everyone asked me to stay. They’re all like family to me, so I did. I’m a surrogate granddaughter to a lot of them. And no one else is brave enough to lead the workout classes at the community center.”

“Workout class?”

“A combination of aerobics and light weight work.” She gestured with her arms as though she were lifting weights. She had great biceps, just enough muscle to still look feminine. “Keeps the bones strong.”

“So you stayed.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Well, it’s not like I had anyplace else to go.”

He gave her a smile. She smiled back, and their gazes locked. His stomach started feeling rather odd, as though he’d forgotten to eat. He sometimes did that when he was immersed in his research, but he was fairly certain he’d eaten a bowl of Cap’n Crunch cereal that morning. Maybe if he ceased looking at those eyes of hers, the feeling would go away.

He shifted his gaze down a couple of inches. That’s when he noticed what a great mouth she had, small but lush, coated in a clear pink color. The funny feeling wasn’t going away, it was intensifying. He went back to her eyes, a rich brown color that reminded him of the chocolate syrup he mixed in his milk. None of this looking was helping the strange feeling in his stomach. Still, he couldn’t seem to break away or find something, no matter how inane, to say.

Buddy helped by giving her another nudge, sending her forward again. She let out a yelp, and Barrett held out his hands even though he couldn’t do much good on the other side of the hedge. He got another whiff of that fruity scent before she regained her balance and made Buddy sit again. That gave Barrett another glimpse of that pink spandex, and though he’d never been fond of the color pink, he was reconsidering.

Buddy approached the hedge again, and Barrett backed away.

“Are you afraid of dogs?” she asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“Just how you were asking me to get Buddy away from you in a desperate sort of way.”

“Oh. Not afraid, more like…uncomfortable.”

“Have you ever had a dog before?”

“No.”

“That explains it. They’re really great to have around.” She nodded toward Buddy, sending a lock of brown hair to brush against her nose. She swiped it away. “You want one?”

“No.” His quick answer took her aback, so he added, “Not today.”

“Well, guess I’ll let you get back to your work. Welcome to the neighborhood. If you need anything, just come on over.”

“I will, thanks,” he said, wondering what he might need and then deciding not to delve too far in that direction.

Still, they remained there for another moment or two, until she smiled and said, “See you.”

“I see you, too.”

“No, I mean, see you around.”

“I knew that.” He knew that. So why was this woman skewing his logic?

“Okay,” she said with slightly widened eyes. “See you—I mean, goodbye.”

And then she was gone, playing hide-and-seek around her orange and grapefruit trees with the horse dog. Okay, that was over. Now he could focus on his work and not be distracted by his next-door-neighbor who was not a floozy. Right?

Wrong. Twenty minutes later, he was still distracted by her. Still thinking about those pink shorts and her small but lush mouth. He didn’t have to imagine her voice or her laugh. She was working with Buddy, pleading, cajoling, praising.

“Sit! Good boy.” This in a honey-coated voice that sent that strange feeling spiraling through his insides again. “Down. Good boy! Smile. All right!”

Smile? Before he could ponder how a dog could smile, his thinking process came to a halt. She couldn’t be distracting him. Women didn’t fit into the equation of his life. He couldn’t quantify them, for one thing. There wasn’t one rule that delineated them, one formula that they fit into. They consisted of way too many variables.

In the scientific world, everything added up. He loved the predictability, the formulas, knowing it would always make sense. A plus B equaled C every time. Science was a beautiful thing.

Relationships were something else altogether.

His parents were a prime example of two different people who should have never married. His mother was a free spirit who followed her whims and didn’t have a clue as to what her life goal was—or a care about finding out. After the divorce, she followed her whims into and out of several different jobs. Now she was a blackjack dealer on a cruise ship.

His father—well, he was still professor and chairperson of the Department of Biology at the University of Miami and always would be. After watching his parents’ marriage disintegrate, Barrett wasn’t inclined to date women who didn’t have his interests. He’d dated women in his peer group and been intellectually stimulated. He’d met women outside his peer group who’d physically stimulated him. But never had a woman done both.

So he’d accepted that a woman wasn’t going to comprise one of the elements that made up his life. He was fine with that. He derived all the satisfaction he needed in life from his work. As soon as he figured out what field interested him, anyway. Then there wouldn’t be any vague sense of something missing. And that something wasn’t a woman. After all, the shortest distance between points A and B was a straight line…and women were all curves.

2

STACY TRIED to forget about that hole in the hedge and the handsome face that had been framed there a few minutes before and especially the flutter in her chest whenever she did think about that handsome face. She knew about the smart scientist-type guy working there—everybody knew everything in Sunset City—but she’d never imagined he’d be so young and yummy. Well, at least as much as she could see of him with the hedge in the way. Vivid blue eyes with a warm tilt to them, almost shaggy blond hair. Dimples! Who would have figured?

She wondered what the rest of him looked like.

Forget it. He’s way too smart for you. What guy’s going to be interested in a skinny chick who lives in a retirement community and has no career? A bit of a tomboy who can’t grow her wispy locks into anything even resembling a sexy mane of hair?

Not that she hadn’t been working on a career. She’d gotten roped into continuing Granny’s T-shirt business out of the garage. Every time she told her customers—mostly the residents of Sunset City—that she was going to sell the equipment and get a real job, T-shirt orders came in like mad.

Last year she stopped letting the orders keep her from looking for a job where she could find purpose in her life and meet people her own age.

“Down.” She pushed Buddy on his haunches to give him the idea. When he complied, she gave him a dog snack. “Good boy!” He pulled his lips back in a dog smile. “Smile,” she encouraged so he’d eventually do it on command. “All right!”

The problem was, she rarely got a chance to meet eligible men. Well, men who were under sixty-five, anyway. On the rare occasion when she did, as soon as he came to Sunset City, he suddenly developed a condition or life situation that kept him from seeing her again. She wasn’t sure if she was a thirty-one-year-old has-been or never-been.

On her last birthday, she was about to once again push back her having-a-baby deadline. At twenty, it had been twenty-five. When she’d approached twenty-four with no prospects, she bumped it to twenty-eight. Then to thirty. Then thirty-two.

She refused to bump it again. Thirty-two was it. She was taking the situation into her own hands.

When she sneezed, she was gratified to hear Barrett say “gesundheit” through the hedge. “Thanks!”

Then the phone rang.

It was Ernie across the street. “God bless you.”

“Thanks,” she said sweetly. “Now turn that sonic ear thing off and stop eavesdropping on people, you nosy old fart!” Ever since he’d gotten that listening device, no one had any privacy.

He chuckled. “I was born to spy. Back in the war, they used to call me—”

“The Black Weasel, I know.”

“Gopher, not weasel! You don’t know nothing ’bout spying.”

“I know I don’t like being spied on.”

“Sorry, Stacy. I won’t do it no more.”

He always sounded so darn sincere, and she always believed him. Until the next time.

“It’s all right. It’s not as if I ever do anything that interesting.” She thought of the interesting science dude and then stopped thinking about him.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Ernie muttered, and he had the nerve to sound disappointed in her!

“You still need help with finding that old book you’re after on the Internet?”

“Sure do. Been looking for the Tall Book of Tall Tales for years now. Appreciate you coming over and helping me climb the Web.”

“Surf the Web, Ernie.”

“How can you surf a Web, now tell me that? I’m climbing it.”

“Fine, climb it,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll be over tomorrow—oh, got another call coming in. Bye!” She pressed the talk button twice and said, “Hello? This is Stacy Jenkins.”

“This is Bob over at Mary’s Grooming. You applied for the grooming position?”

Her heart started thumping. She was a shoe-in! She helped Arlene with her poodles and Betty with her miniature schnauzer. They would give her glowing references, along with her boss over at the shelter. “Yes, yes, I did.”

Finally, a job. A real job with a regular paycheck and benefits. Direction.

“I’m afraid we hired someone else. Now, it’s nothing personal, you’ve got to believe that. We chose someone more qualified, that’s all. Good luck with…finding something else. Just remember that we were real nice about it.”

She dropped the phone on the grass, feeling as deflated as the beach ball Buddy had popped with his teeth earlier. She’d failed again. Not that she necessarily needed the money. Granny’s house was paid off, and her expenses were minimal. The folks at Sunset City always paid her for her help, even though she always refused. What she wanted was purpose and a college fund for the baby.

What she had was a drooling dog staring at her with the phone in his mouth. “Give that to me!”

Buddy took off, ready for the chase. After she finally retrieved the phone and dried it off, she loaded Buddy into her old pink boat of a convertible and headed to the Humane Society. His ears flopped in the wind, but he didn’t seem to mind much. As usual, she got caught up in visiting the other animals at the shelter before she was able to head home. She started the engine and sank into a Celine Dion song while her car idled. A mushy love song, of course. She’d think that love was overrated, except she’d never been in love and couldn’t say for sure.

Then, miracle of miracles, a handsome man had entered her world—and he was all wrong for her. Too smart, too handsome, too temporary. Bummer. That was all right. She’d gotten used to the reality of not finding a soul mate. Well, mostly. And she had three successful men vying to give her what she really wanted—a baby. A software engineer, five foot eleven with blond hair and blue eyes. An artist who painted landscapes and portraits, six feet with brown hair and blue eyes. Or a model, six foot one with brown hair and eyes.

The fact that she didn’t know their names or what they looked like hardly mattered. No, not at all. Oh, there was a fourth candidate, and she did know his name—Ricky Schumaker, the maintenance engineer at Sunset City. He’d seen the three profiles of the sperm donors taped to her dresser mirror when he was fixing a leak in her bathroom. He’d been bugging her ever since to be the father of her child.

When ferrets flew.

For some reason, that face in the hedge popped into her mind as Celine crooned about everlasting love. No, he wasn’t going to be an everlasting love. He’d be a nice distraction for a while, nothing more. The best thing to do would be to forget he was there. Yeah, that’s what she’d do, put him right out of her mind. Not another thought.

She put the car in gear. He probably wasn’t much of a cook. Maybe he was too busy to worry about food. All right, she’d be a good neighbor and bring him dinner. No harm in that. And after that, not another thought.

Decision made, she pulled out onto the highway, images of homemade biscuits, ham and cheese soufflé and apple pie in her head. Unfortunately, she wasn’t much of a cook, so she pulled into a fast-food chicken joint and ordered a bucket of extra crispy.

AFTER NAVIGATING the ten speed bumps leading to her street—some of the residents liked to race down the main drag—Stacy pulled into her driveway. Balancing the bucket and the side containers, she headed next door.

The first sign of trouble was the golf cart parked in the driveway. It, like most of the golf carts and cars in Sunset City, had a poofy flower atop the antenna. That thanks to Granny, who had given one to all her friends one Christmas. Because the flower was blue, she knew it belonged to Arlene of the blue poodles. Said poodles—their silvery-blue fur tinted the exact shade of Arlene’s hair—were sitting in the golf cart in a car baby seat. Arlene also had a niece with a curvy figure. A single niece she’d been trying to find a husband for, because her only offspring had become a priest and wasn’t likely to produce any grandchildren for her. That left Tanya as her only hope for sort-of grandchildren.

Hugging the warm bucket to her belly, Stacy advanced up a walkway lined with pink flamingos—they lit up at night. Arlene was standing at the doorway talking to Barrett.

“It’s called Pissin’ in the Snow, one of my specialty dishes. See, it’s coconut gelatin, that’s the snow part, and the lemon drops spell out your name.” The white mold jiggled obscenely. “Where I was born in the Appalachian mountains, that was a compliment, spelling out someone’s name in the snow. It was trickier for the gals, of course, but we managed.” Arlene chuckled. That was an image Stacy didn’t particularly need. “I guessed at the spelling. My niece, Tanya, now she’s a whiz with names. Did I tell you about her? Beautiful, single, has a great job. Did I mention she’s a mechanic? How handy is that? You probably know how hard it is to find a good mechanic.” She glanced at the black Saab sitting in the driveway. “Are you having any car trouble at all? Any knocks or pings? I could have her come out and take a peek under your hood.”

Barrett’s mouth was slightly open, as though he wasn’t sure what part of that to address.

“Hi, Arlene, Barrett,” Stacy said, taking some delight in the relief that passed over his face when he took her in. Of course, he could have been eyeing her bucket of chicken.

“Tell him how beautiful Tanya is,” Arlene said, beaming as proud as a mother. “And didn’t she get the knock out of your engine just last month?”

Something bugged her about Arlene’s question, but Stacy couldn’t figure out what it was. “She did get the knock out,” she agreed, but let the beautiful part go.

“Exactly!” She turned to Barrett. “I’ll bring her over sometime. Tonight, maybe.”

“I’m not looking—” Barrett tried.

“Everybody says that,” Arlene said with a wave. “I mean, who admits they’re looking, only desperate people if you ask me. And it sure would be nice to have a doctor in the family. Do you know how much it cost me to have my corns removed? Let me tell you, it wasn’t cheap.”

Stacy stepped in for him since he was still obviously trying to get his mind around the corn removal. “He’s not that kind of doctor, Arlene. He does frogs.”

“Tree snails,” he said.

Arlene’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a doctor for tree snails? Good grief, they just have doctors for everything nowadays, don’t they? Maybe you can get a discount when the babies come. That’ll help with the expenses.”

Barrett’s expression bordered on horrified. Sort of like the one he’d had when Buddy had been eying him, only worse. “Babies?”

“Tanya’s a healthy woman in the prime of her life. She’ll give you lots of babies.”

“I…don’t do babies.”

Arlene’s optimistic smile faded. “What do you mean, you don’t do babies?”

He waved his hand as though refusing a pushy cookie salesperson. “All those noises, and the crying, and they can’t tell you what they need or what’s wrong. There’s no rhyme or reason to them. I just don’t do babies.”

Stacy narrowed her eyes. “Are you afraid of babies?”

He took in both their puzzled expressions. “Not in a Godzilla or unknown-bacterial-virus way. It’s more of an extreme-discomfort thing.”

Arlene dismissed that. “You just haven’t been around babies enough, is all.”

“Oh, yes, I have. My sister’s had four of them. In fact, there are two in my condominium right now. She tried to acclimate me, but it hasn’t worked. She’ll take me by surprise, put it in my lap when I’m not paying attention. There it sits, looking up at me wanting something, and then it starts bawling.” He shuddered. “It’s better to keep my distance.”

Arlene was clearly at a loss for words for a moment, a rare thing. Then it dawned on Stacy. Barrett was even smarter than she gave him credit for. Afraid of babies, indeed.

Arlene shook her head and turned to Stacy. “You still working on those T-shirts for my sweetie pies?”

“I’m having trouble finding a size small enough for your poodles, but I’m working on it.”

“That’s going to be so cute, blue shirts with their names on them—Blue, Suede and Shoes.” She winked at Barrett. “I’m a big Elvis fan, long live the king. So, Stacy, heard about that job at the dog salon?”

She felt her shoulders sag and perked them up again. “Not yet. Did they even call you for a reference?”

“Sure did, and I just went on and on about you, how you get the exact right shade of blue and everything, using natural ingredients even. I can’t believe they haven’t called you. Maybe soon, hon.” She patted Stacy’s head, then touched Barrett’s arm. “You enjoy my gelatin, now. Bet you’ve never had anything like that before, course you haven’t. It’s my own creation. I’ll just let you go back to your work, and we’ll be by to see you soon.”

Arlene greeted her three poodles with kisses on their noses when she got in her cart. She tooted her horn and backed out of the driveway.

“That was good, about being afraid of babies. And your expressions! Nice touch. Maybe that’ll detour her matchmaking.”

He gave her a sheepish look.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Just like with dogs, you’re afraid of babies.”

“Not afraid. Uncomfortable.”

Her gaze scanned him. He was surprisingly yummy for a scientific kind of guy—broad shoulders and an unbuttoned white cotton shirt hanging loose over jeans. Bare feet. Now, Stacy had never considered herself a foot person, but his bare feet with the faded jeans tripped her heartbeat big time. She was, however, a flat-stomach kind of gal, and his ridges of muscles sure didn’t hurt. She was so distracted by his stomach that she almost didn’t notice his shirt was inside out.

When she realized she was close to gawking, she snapped to and saw he’d been doing the same thing, making her realize she looked ten degrees off appropriate for a dinnertime visit. She still wore the pink shorts, though she’d thrown a long T-shirt over her tank top. The fact that the shirt read Don’t Treat Me Any Differently Than You Would The Queen probably didn’t lend much appropriateness to it. She should have picked out a more genteel one, but it wasn’t like she was trying to impress him or anything. Supersmart, afraid of dogs and babies…he couldn’t be farther from her type. She redirected her gawking to the sunset. “Wow, look at that sky, will you? It’s almost heavenly.”

“Heavenly?”

She let out a breathy sigh. “Yeah.”

“I don’t understand people’s fascination with the setting sun, like it’s some phenomenon.”

When she turned to him, he was looking at her. He shifted his gaze to the sky. “The colors are just a by product of—”

“Stop! If you’re going to tell me the science behind a sunset, I don’t want to know. How can you think about science when you look at those gorgeous colors?”

“Quite easily,” he said, barely giving the splashes of orange, purple and red a glance.

“No, take a good look.” She waited until he did. Stretched across the horizon was cloud stubble gilded in sunlight. Below that were her favorite kinds of clouds. “See that bunch of clouds over there?”

“Those cumulus—”

“Yeah, those. Doesn’t that one over there look like an angel? Look at the wings. And beside it, a barking dog.” She loved the dog clouds best of all. “And over there is a dragon. Uh-oh, it’s about to eat the dog. Run, pup, run!” When she looked at him, he was watching her with a speculative grin. “What?”

“They’re clouds. Nothing is eating anything.”

“I bet when you look at a starry night, you see burning suns and not magical twinkling lights. I bet you don’t even make wishes on falling stars.”

“Technically, the whole star isn’t falling—”

“I know that. But it’s just kind of magical to think of it as a falling star…and to make a wish.”

Of course, her big wish—meeting her soul mate—hadn’t come true. Since Barrett was still regarding her with that amused smile, she lifted the bucket. “Eaten yet?”

He eyed her offering. “Ah, food I can actually relate to. Join me for dinner?”

She shouldn’t. Let the guy get back to work, don’t spend too much time with him. “I’d love to.”

She followed him inside. Gene and Judy’s place looked like what King Kong would regurgitate if he ate Florida—flowery prints, pink—yes, pink—carpet with green throw rugs in the shape of lily pads, and a three-foot-high neon flamingo. Barrett walked into the kitchen, which had the same fanatical I-love-Florida decor, complete with magnets on the fridge attesting to every attraction they’d ever visited.

“I haven’t had a chance to put these away yet. I guess you can set the bucket between the Spam-and-pea casserole and something called a pretzel salad.” He looked at the orange dish questioningly.

“Scary, isn’t it? That’s Frieda’s speciality. A layer of crushed pretzels, a mushy layer that I think is cream cheese and strawberry gelatin on top, then a layer of grated cheese. I’ve always been afraid to try it.” She eyed the counter full of homemade offerings. “Uh-oh.”

First, they made her fast food look pitiful. Second, all these dishes meant Barrett had been thoroughly checked out by the local populace who had female relations to pawn off. They’d obviously been perusing the gelatin recipe book they’d compiled a few years back.

“It’s a very friendly community,” he commented, taking the Pissin’ in the Snow casserole to the refrigerator. He eyed it as though he expected it to wiggle right off the plate under its own power. “I’ve never lived anywhere where people bring you food.”

Poor guy didn’t have a clue. Or a chance. He bent to slide the gelatin into the fridge, and his jeans molded a very fine behind. It was a very good thing she wasn’t interested in him, because she could have some very fine fantasies about that very fine behind. And, she thought with a sigh as he turned to grab another dish, that very fine face with a mouth that could turn a bad day into ten degrees from Heaven.

“Here, let me help,” she said, setting down her bag and bucket and handing him the remaining three dishes. They sure hadn’t wasted any time, that was for sure.

“Guess I won’t need all these,” he said, opening the freezer door to show her stacks of gourmet TV dinners. “At least for a few days anyway.”

“You’ll be set your whole stay, believe me.”

He must have picked up on the ominous tone in her voice. “You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.”

“That food, my friend, comes with strings attached.” At his blank look, she added, “Obligations. Let me put it this way. You’re going to meet a lot of single women in the next week. Think parade.”

He still didn’t get it, not by his questioning look as he took out two plates from the cabinet.

“Parade of women,” she clarified.

“Women? But why?”

“You’re single. Judy, the owner of this house, considered it her social duty to tell everybody. These women have nieces, daughters, granddaughters…you name it, they’ve got at least one woman in their family who, in their opinion, needs marrying off. And you are the target.”

Ah, the smart guy finally figured it out. His voice cracked when he said, “They’re going to bring women here for me?”

“’Fraid so.” She took the plates from him since her warning had sidetracked him.

“But I’ve got to finish my study in—” he glanced at his watch “—six days, fifteen hours and two minutes or the snails might not get their land. And I’m never late. Parades of women would be worse than having my sister and her four kids cavorting around.” Then he obviously thought of the babies and added, “Maybe not.”

“Well, for one thing, everyone knows about your sister raiding your place. The fact that you let her family stay makes you one swell guy. Any guy who treats his sister so nice is on the A-list right off the bat. You’re smart, another plus. You have a job.” She started to set the plates on the table, but it was covered in papers and books on snails. On half of the table sat an aquarium filled with branches. The bottom was covered in moss. She redirected herself to the vacant counter. “And you’re a hottie, another downfall for you, I’m afraid.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “A hottie?”

“Yeah, you know…you don’t know. Hot. Good-looking.”

He set two cans of lemonade on the counter. “You think I’m good-looking?”

She blinked, holding back the words, Well, duh. He wasn’t kidding, wasn’t fishing for a compliment. She also held back the words, Would telling you I’d love to jump your bones make it any clearer? Nah, probably not. “You’re not so bad.”

He took her in, not with a leer like Ricky the maintenance dude did, but casual curiosity. Still, she felt all twitchy knowing his gaze was on her. “You’re not bad, either.” Merely a scientific observation, that. “Why isn’t anyone trying to pawn you off on me?”

“I, uh…well, I don’t have any relations to pawn since Granny passed on.” Wait a minute. Why wasn’t anyone trying to match her up with the yummy snail doctor? These people were like her family, right? That’s what had bugged her about Arlene’s question. She wasn’t even considering Stacy a contender. “Let’s eat, shall we?”

“I’m sorry about your grandmother.”

She slid onto the stool next to him. “Yeah, me, too. I miss her like the dickens.” She opened the containers and spooned out coleslaw and mashed potatoes. When she spotted a tree snail slithering up a branch, she walked over to investigate.

The swirled shell was banded in yellow, white and brown. The snail itself wasn’t so pretty, gray and slimy-looking, but it looked kind of cute in a snailish sort of way. Little eyeballs were perched on the ends of two long tentacles. Two smaller ones felt along the branch like a blind man using a cane.

“That’s cingulatus, one of the forms of liggus fasciatus.” He was standing so close behind her that his breath tickled her neck.

When she turned to ask him, “Huh?” they bumped noses.

“All tree snails are liggus fasciatus. The one you’re looking at is cingulatus. That’s the name of its color form. There are fifty-two different color forms. See the white one in the back with the faint green and beige bands? That’s septentrionalis. The one moving across the rock with the multicolored bands is vonpaulseni.”

Her knees were going weak. It was partly because he was close and because he smelled really nice. But part of it was those snail names. Or more precisely, him saying those snail names. “Wow,” she said at the realization of how strange that was.

“They’re called the gems of the Everglades,” he said, obviously mistaking her reverence. “Their populations have been decimated by collectors and by development of their habitats, primarily hammocks. The purpose of the study I’m working on is to obtain more land for protected environments.”

“So why do you have some here?” The first snail she’d spotted, cingu-something-or-another, had transferred to the glass. She could see its tiny T-shaped mouth searching for food.

“These are from a collection a botanist raises in his yard to help propagate the species. They’re here to keep me in the mind frame.”

Except he was looking at her. His hands were braced on the table beside hers. She caught herself inhaling his aftershave and covered by saying, “They’re kind of cute. They look like some creature you’d see in a Star Wars movie.”

He regarded the snail. “Cute. Never thought of them that way.”

“You probably never noticed how beautiful they were, either.”

“Er…no, I suppose not. I think they’re an essential link in the food chain and should be preserved.”

She gave him an admonishing look. “You need to stop and smell the snails, fella.”

“Smell…?”

“It’s an expression. Well, sort of. Like stop to smell the roses. Stop to admire the snails. Notice what’s around you!”

He was, only it was her he seemed to be noticing.

She pointed to one of the snails. “What was the name of that one again?”

“Cingulatus.”

“Mm—I mean, mm. As in interesting, mm.” Not as in, I love the sound of your masculine voice saying that foreign-sounding word, especially right next to my ear.

She abruptly stood and returned to her task of spooning out food. Forget about the way his voice sounded around those words, how his breath felt against her neck. “How smart are you, anyway? I mean, what’s your IQ? Or is that one of those improper questions, like how much do you make or do you wear briefs or boxers?”

“I…” He glanced down. “My IQ is one eighty-five. And why would anyone want to know whether I wear briefs or boxers?”

He really didn’t have a clue, which made him so cute, she wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him silly. Get hold of yourself. You’re not looking, remember? Only desperate women look. Sure, she wanted romance, wanted a man in her life who would cherish and appreciate her, but she’d passed desperate so long ago, she was in a whole new state—acceptance.

“It’s a…woman thing, I guess. Probably like the way men try to figure out if a woman wears a T-back or regular panties.” She waved the image away and grabbed a chicken leg. Tried not to picture him in briefs or boxers. Tried not to picture herself sitting on his lap kissing him silly. Not doing a good job of either.

“Briefs,” he said with a nod. “In case you were wondering.” He bit into a chicken thigh as innocently as if he hadn’t set her imagination off on a Barrett-in-whitebriefs tangent.

“I wasn’t,” she blurted. “Wondering, that is.” She stuck a big spoonful of mashed potatoes in her mouth so no other dumb words could come out. It had been so long since she’d seen either on a man, other than at the men’s underwear section of the department store. But she’d never admit to detouring through the section just to ogle the models on the packages.

Gawd, she was pitiful. She did draw the line at stopping to look, however. She had standards of conduct, after all. It was only a fly-by gawking.

“What’s a T-back?” he asked.

She nearly choked on her spuds. “You know, a thong. A panty that has more material in the front than in the back.” She took a sip of her lemonade and hoped that would be the end of that particular conversation.

“What about you?” Again, he looked totally innocent. “Thong or regular?”

She choked on her drink this time, a mere degree from spewing liquid. Could she really be discussing underwear with a guy she’d only just met? Well, heck, they were moving faster than any date she’d been on in the last four years.

“Thong.” She pushed the word out at last, since he actually looked interested in knowing. She wiggled her fingers to the bucket of chicken. “Eat up, go on.”

“What are the advantages and disadvantages of regular versus thong? Has anyone ever undertaken a study?”

“Uh…huh?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do, study and research. I’m afraid I look at everything with an eye to analyzing it.”

“I thought you were a snail scientist.”

“I’m a research scientist at the biology department at the University of Miami. The Liggus project—tree snails,” he added at her blank look, “is a one-year grant project on the survival and propagation of tree snails in the Everglades. I have to analyze population changes over the past year, species propagation, variant temperatures of the water…I’m boring you, aren’t I?” He gestured to her face. “The blank stare and open mouth are always a giveaway.”

“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.”

“I just haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.”

“I used to feel that way, too.”

He looked genuinely interested. “What did you do to remedy it?”

She almost wanted to tell him about her plans, but with his baby fears, he wouldn’t understand. “I changed what I wanted.” Or at least she thought she had, but looking into those eyes of his, she realized she hadn’t convinced all of herself that she didn’t want a man in her life. She pushed herself to her feet. “Come on, Weasel Boy, let’s leave the scientist dude to his work. See you.”

He smiled. “I see you, too.”

She smiled back and started to carry Weasel Boy around the hedge to her yard.

“Howdy, Stacy.” Jack Nelson walked around the side of the house. “No wonder no one was answering the door. Just wanted to introduce myself to our temporary resident.”

He aimed his perfect white smile at Barrett. “I’m Jack Nelson, king of Sunset City.”

Barrett dutifully walked from the table and accepted Jack’s outstretched hand. “King?”

“No need for formalities. I stopped requiring people to curtsy years ago. Hear you’re a frog doctor. Pretty interesting. I used to wrassle alligators myself.”

Between being a fighter pilot and a professional surfer, Stacy thought, but held the words. Let him indulge in his harmless fantasies. At least his were more harmless than hers.

“Tree snails,” Barrett said.

“Mighty fine eating, them. Well, gotta go. Duty calls, as you’d imagine it does with someone in my position. Stacy, remember, taxes are due beginning of the month.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“Sorry you didn’t get that job. Seems like you got enough going on here to keep you busy, though. Heck, don’t know what we’d do without you. Well, I’ve gotta go have a talking with Nita. Seems she’s been playing her bunny music too loud again.”

“Bunny music?” Barrett asked.

“Hip-hop,” Stacy clarified.

Jack nodded to Barrett. “Glad you got to meet me.” And then he was off, humming a jaunty tune as he walked away.

“He said you didn’t get the job.”

Word traveled fast, as always. She waved that away, as though it didn’t matter. “That job I applied for at the dog grooming salon…”

“You’re not disappointed then?”

“No…well, a little. Mostly in that it’s the fifteenth job I’ve applied for over the last year, and not one of them has panned out. But, like Jack said, I’ve got a lot here to keep me busy.”

“Jack, the king of Sunset City who collects taxes.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s his little fantasy. We indulge him. He only collects a quarter a month. In January he throws a big Christmas party with the money.”

“January?”

“All the Christmas stuff is on sale then.”

Barrett seemed to contemplate all this. “Are the people here considered…normal?”

“Define normal.”

“Conforming to the standard type. Usual. Not abnormal—”

“I didn’t mean for you to actually define…oh, never mind. Normal is relative. If I were hanging around with your supersmart scientific friends, I’d probably consider them abnormal. See what I mean?”

He was considering her in that speculative way. “I understand. Interesting, this relativity. My only real gauge as to what people are like outside my own circle is my sister. She’s a housewife with four children. The things she’s concerned with are beyond my level of understanding. Entering sweepstakes with insurmountable odds of winning. Spending hours clipping coupons and consulting sale fliers to spend the saved money on gas driving all over town. Do you know, she’ll spend an hour on her hair to make it look like it did when she woke up?”

Stacy laughed, even though she’d done all of that. “Is your sister normal? I mean, not supersmart like you?”

“She’s of average intelligence, like my mother.”

“So, you get along with your sister then?” Watch it, Stacy. You’re getting your hopes up.

“Get along…I suppose we do. We don’t have much to talk about, though. I bore her with my latest research, and she bores me with talk of every detail about her offspring. It’s amazing what amazes her. Every tooth lost, every word spoken. The first time they use the pottie is a big celebration. That is, after all, the normal progression of a human being.”

Oh, boy. Well, it wasn’t like she cared, right? “You’ve obviously never had to change a diaper.” His horrified look gave her her answer. “Where’s your mother?”

“She’s doing a stint on a cruise ship as a blackjack dealer. We get a postcard from her every week.”

Postcards reminded her of Florida tourists, which reminded her of pink flamingos, which reminded her of something else. She glanced at her watch. “Oh, shoot! I didn’t realize how late it is. I’ve got a workout class to teach in ten minutes.” She looked at the dog. “Which means I don’t have time to take you back. Guess you’re staying the night.” She caught herself mid-sigh. “Well, guess I’ll see you around.” Better not to see him at all. He didn’t get why a mother would celebrate every achievement her child made, something Stacy hoped to be doing on a regular basis soon.

Barrett asked, “Would you like to come over for dinner? I’ve got plenty of food.”

Say no, you’re busy, you’re not hungry, you gave up food! “Sure.” Maybe he just wanted to ditch some of that awful food. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed. She could think of a few reasons offhand. Let’s see, gorgeous guy who was out of her league brainwise. Didn’t have a clue about committing to a direction in life. Afraid—no, uncomfortable around dogs and babies. Got bored easily, and when he did, he just went right out and got himself another degree.

She trudged through the too-high grass and knew she was a bigger dummy than she’d ever suspected because she still couldn’t wait to see him again.

4

“HE’S A HOT MAMA,” Nita said as the class did a second set of bicep curls.

“A man can’t be a hot mama,” Frieda said. “It’s against the laws of nature.”

Nita chuckled. “I’m against the laws of nature. And I’ll be personally checking that man out tonight.” The petite woman looked at odds with herself, a lascivious grin coupled with her graceful movements.

Ernie, the only male in class, grinned. “I won’t even have to use my sonic ear to hear what’ll be going on.”

Nita rolled her eyes. “You’re such a dirty old man.”

His grin widened, nary a trace of shame on his face. “Yes, indeedy.”

Sunlight poured through the rows of windows along the wall and glinted off the water in the community pool.

Arlene said, “He’s got an eight-pack, too.”

Nita said, “It’s a six-pack, goofball.”

Arlene sniffed. “I’d think an eight-pack would be better than a six-pack.”

“And here we thought he was going to be a dork,” Maureen said. “Boy, were we wrong!”

Stacy cleared her throat. “Ladies—and Ernie—can we please focus on our arms?” This was the fourth time she’d had to steer the conversation away from Barrett.

“Moon River” played in the background. She’d tried to introduce them to Janet Jackson, Billy Ocean and ‘NSYNC. The whole class had been out of sync, bumping into each other, kicking each other…it was back to Barry Manilow, Barbra Streisand and “Moon River.” And every now and then Maureen insisted on playing battle hymns. Which were better, she supposed, than working out to the hymns Annette sometimes brought in.

Even Weasel Boy looked like he was trying to cover his ears. His face was snuggled between his front paws.

“Oh, come on, he’s the most exciting thing that’s happened here in Snooze City for a long time,” Betty said. “We’ve all got someone we’d like to fix him up with.”

Nita chuckled again. “I sure do.”

“He’s afraid of babies. Isn’t that right, Arlene? She heard him say it,” Annette said.

Arlene waved her hand. “Ah, all men are afraid of the little buggers. Until they hold their own in their arms, that is. Then it all changes.”

Stacy let out a sound of exasperation, and not because everyone had halted in their movements, all thinking and planning and conniving. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be fixed up with a woman. Did you all think of that?”

All eyes swiveled toward her at the front of the community center’s rec room. “What, is he gay?” several of them asked simultaneously.

Okay, it was tempting—very tempting—to tell them he was flaming gay. She even opened her mouth to say yes. But she couldn’t do it, not when those broad shoulders and that very fine behind came to mind. “I doubt it.”

A wave of relief swept over the group of women in their pink, purple and, in Nita’s case, slut red—Nita’s words—leotards.

“It’s a darn shame when a good-looking man is gay,” Frieda said.

“A real waste,” Nita said.

“Except if you’re a gay man,” Betty said with a lift of her shoulders.

“All right, class, are we ready to proceed?” Stacy lifted her weights to ear level. “One-two-three, two-two-three…”

Arlene wasn’t even pretending to work out. “We need to approach Barrett logically, since he is, after all, a logical man.”

“There’s a perfect woman among us for him.”

“Someone we’re all overlooking.”

That got Stacy’s attention. And since no one else was working out, she dropped her weights to the floor.

“Down to earth, that’s what she needs to be,” Arlene said. “No woman on a permanent flight of fancy.”

“Definitely. But she should have a sense of humor.”

“And she should be compassionate,” another woman added. “The kind of woman who puts others before herself.”

Nita said, “But who knows how to have a good time.”

They all agreed on that one. Stacy was beginning to get a warm feeling inside.

“She should be cute,” someone else said. “Not gorgeous, not a woman who gets caught up in her appearance. A scientific man isn’t going to understand why she’d spend an hour making up her face.”

Stacy glanced in the mirror. Well, that was her, cute, definitely not gorgeous and not a woman who spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. That was evident. Granny taught her the practical things in life—using Spam to polish the furniture, using the bathroom before leaving the house and carrying a sweater just in case it was chilly where you were going. Makeup, hairstyling…Granny had been too simple to care about that kind of thing.

“And a woman who needs a man in her life. Someone who’s aching with loneliness, who needs affection and love…”

Stacy cleared her throat. “What about me?”

“Good one, Stacy! Like you’d be interested in some smarty-pants like that,” Nita said.

“Can you imagine the two of them?” Arlene said, shaking her head.

They must have imagined, because they all giggled. Stacy glanced at the mirror again to see if she’d missed something. Warts on her nose, for instance. A hunched back. Nope, just the cute-but-not-gorgeous gal that always looked back at her.

Arlene said, “Stacy, you have us.”

Betty said, “You’ve got a full life, just like your granny did. She didn’t need a man.”

Nita said, “You can babble on all you want, but the right woman for that man is here in this room.” She smiled. “Me.”

“Or the right woman for Ricky,” Betty said, nodding toward the wall of windows where Ricky the maintenance dude made his usual obvious attempt at not appearing as though he were watching them work out. That strip of decking between the windows and the pool was the cleanest few feet of concrete in the whole community. Stacy couldn’t understand why with his beefy, blond good looks he was so annoyingly desperate.

He wiggled his eyebrows at Stacy and patted his stomach. She shook her head and hoped no one had seen it. No way did she want these folks to know what she was up to until the deal was done. Till it was too late for them to tell her what a selfish, un-Granny-like thing that was to do.

“Too young,” Nita said with a dismissing wave. “No staying power. He’s like a small town—blink and you’ll miss it.”

A rousing polka filled the room after the laughter subsided. Still, no one moved. Pink and purple dumbbells had been forgotten on the carpet.

“What we need is a game plan,” Arlene said.

Frieda said, “Gene’s son Marty has worked with Barrett on a couple of projects. Says he’s a real good guy. Honest. Hardworking. Got his smarts from his father. Barrett’s mom has average intelligence, and that’s why the marriage didn’t work out. No connection, no communication. They got bored with each other.”

“Ah, so he needs a smart woman,” Betty said. “Good thing my Denise is smart. She was in all those advanced classes in high school, you know.”

“We know,” Arlene said with a roll of her eyes.

“Why don’t you just leave the poor man alone?” Stacy said, picking up her weights in a lame attempt to jump-start the workout session. “He has an important project he’s got to finish in less than a week.”

“That’s all the time he has?” Arlene asked.

Finally, some understanding. “Yes, he’s down to the wire and he’s never late. He needs some peace and quiet, not a date.”

“We’re running out of time, girls,” Betty said, clapping her hands. “We have mere days to snare him.”

“What about that game plan?”

“Arlene, you’ve already sent your niece over,” Nita said, glancing at her reflection in the mirror and fluffing her Lucille Ball red hair. “It’s my turn next.”

Arlene accused, “Tanya said you’d already bagged him, which isn’t true at all, is it?”

Betty raised her hand. “I was the second one to bring him a casserole, so Denise is next!”

Frieda made a snorting sound. “I brought him the first casserole, so I get next dibs on him.”

“But Breanna’s already married!” Betty objected.

“So? He’s a loser. Do you know what the man does for a living?”

In unison, they all answered, “Nothing.”

“And he beats her all the time,” Frieda added.

“At poker!” Stacy interjected. “That’s different.”

Frieda sniffed. “Is not. She’s into hock to him for thousands. He keeps a tab going.”

“Well, I guess we’re not going to agree on who the best woman is for this man,” Nita said. “So it’s going to be a free-for-all.”

As they all stormed toward the door, Stacy yelled, “He’s gay! Really, he’s gay!”

The only person who heard her was Ricky, who was standing in the doorway with a perplexed look on his face.

“YOU HAVE a big problem,” Stacy announced when Barrett opened the door.

As if in response, a hank of his blond hair fell over his forehead. He pushed it back and stepped aside to let her in. “I do?” She was wearing white leggings and a red tank top that revealed an interesting slice of flesh at abdomen level.

Weasel Boy walked in with her and strained at his leash to get to Barrett. After he made some choking sounds, Stacy let go of the leash. He made a beeline to Barrett.

Her nose wrinkled. “What is that smell?”

He referenced the index card with heating instructions on it. “The Tater Tot casserole.”

“I remember it. Ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, onion-flavored Tater Tots, all thrown in a dish and topped with cheese. Grossville. It was a good side benefit of the canned-food party, no casseroles.”

Barrett realized he was paying way too much attention to her mouth and shifted his gaze to her eyes. Chocolate syrup eyes. He loved chocolate syrup. “Canned-food party?”

Stacy sauntered into the kitchen and opened the oven door. She quickly closed it with a grimace. “We’re having one this Saturday at lunch. Granny started the monthly potluck parties to foster community spirit. So, do you want to know why you’re in trouble or not?”

He could think of a few reasons, like his preoccupation with her mouth and her spandex. “Maybe you’d better tell me.”

“The women around here seem to think you need a lady in your life.”

He surveyed her, from the way the tip of her ear peeked out of her brown hair down the skintight workout outfit and her sneakers with the little red balls at the ends of the laces. “Tree snails,” he said. “I mean, I have to study the tree snails.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Definitely not.”

She was tracing her finger along the edge of a plate, following the curves of the flowers. “Is the reason you’re afraid—don’t feel comfortable with romance because of your parents?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “How did you know about—”

“There are no secrets in Sunset City.”

“That’s right, you did mention that. That’s not the singular reason, though it was painful to watch them try to communicate. I just haven’t met a woman who makes me want to understand…well, women. And relationships. I’ve come to the conclusion that I never will. The women I work with share my interests but don’t inspire me. Whenever I’m physically attracted to a woman outside my peer group, I tend to send her into sporadic boredom when I talk about my work. I have, in fact, sent you into a near comatose state twice already.”

She waved that away. “But only for a few seconds. Otherwise, I’ve been quite aroused—aware—I haven’t been bored,” she finished quickly.

He found himself smiling at the news that he hadn’t bored her. “I’m glad I’ve aroused you.”

She started coughing, then cleared her throat. “So, any moment now a flock of women is going to descend on you. They think you need a woman in your life. And they also think they know best. We need a game plan, a defensive position.”

He cleared enough of the paperwork off the table to set down plates. “Defensive?”

“Football speak. Go Miami Dolphins! I don’t suppose you…” She shook her head. “Nah, you don’t look like much of a football fan.”

“I’ve seen fans in hotel lounges before, groaning and yelling at the players on the television. It seems like a lot of energy to expend on something you can’t influence.”

“But it’s fun.”

“They seem to be in agony.”

“Well, yeah, but we’re also in ecstasy. When a running back sweeps around the end, breaking beastly tackles along the way to the end zone. When a wide receiver catches a pass while he’s sprinting down the sidelines and beats the last tackle, he’s going for the touchdown, he’s going for the touchdown…and score!” She blinked. “Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a good pass. Ah, so, anyway, we need a defensive position. What you need is a girlfriend.”

“But I thought the whole point was that I don’t need a girlfriend.”

“Ah, but the point is you need a fake girlfriend. If they think you’re otherwise engaged, they’ll leave you alone so you can get your project done. I’m willing to step in and help you out.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Sure.”

“That’s awfully nice of you.”

“I’m a nice person. And I know how important your project is.”

The prospect had him smiling for some reason. It must be because he’d get some peace and quiet. “Thank you.”

The oven timer dinged, and he took out the steaming casserole dish and set it on a hot pad on the counter. She poured two glasses of water. Then she spooned a bit of the casserole onto a smaller plate and set it on the floor.

“Here you go, Weasel Boy.”

“So he’s staying the night with you?” he asked as he scooped the aromatic food onto their plates.

She batted her eyelashes at him. “Unless you’d like to keep him.”

“Er, no.”

She pointed to the dog, who had already slurped up the food and was sitting next to Barrett’s bare feet. “You can’t tell me you’re afraid of that?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“All right, you can’t tell me you’re uncomfortable with that harmless little thing.”

“A dog isn’t an option. I’m off on research trips, sometimes for a year or more at a time. My next project is working with the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Madidi National Park in Bolivia for two years.”

Elmo laid his chin on Barrett’s foot but never moved his buggy-eyed gaze from him. He let out a throaty sigh.

“He’s small. He could go with you. Having a dog is a lot easier than having a girlfriend,” she said. “Even a smart girlfriend.”

“That’s another thing. I’ve never had an actual girlfriend before. Observing it has always been enough for me. ‘I’m fine,’ she says, but sounds angry. He accepts this as fact, and then she blows. Or she gets mad because he’s forgotten the anniversary of their first kiss. We won’t have to do any of that, will we?”

“Uh, no.”

“Good. Tell me what’s involved.”

Her forkful of Tater Tots paused midway to her mouth. “The truth is…I haven’t really had a boyfriend before, either. I mean, I’ve dated guys, of course, but no one long enough to be legally considered a boyfriend.” She ate the casserole and washed it down with water.

“I’d think you would have had a lot of boyfriends.”

“Really?”

“You have nice attributes.”

She blinked. “Thanks. I think.”

“So why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

She speared a Tater Tot covered in cream gravy and studied it. “I don’t get to meet a lot of men my age here in Sunset City, as you can imagine. Some of the men I meet, well, they’re not comfortable with where I live. One guy had a phobia about older people. He wouldn’t even drive into the community to pick me up. He made me walk to the entrance. And the others…well, maybe they all had phobias about older people. As soon as I brought them here, they disappeared. Poof.”

“Spontaneous combustion?”

“No, nothing as exciting as that.” She gave a sigh that sounded a bit like Elmo’s, only not so throaty. “It was usually preempted by some lame excuse.”

Before he could contemplate that, the doorbell rang.

“Uh-oh. The offense is moving in.” She shoved away her plate and smoothed her hair. “We’re on.”

“Wait a minute. What am I supposed to do?”

She glanced at Weasel Boy. “See how he looks at you in that adoring I-can’t-live-without-you way? Take his lead.”

5

BARRETT TILTED his head and looked at Stacy. “How is this?”

His blue eyes looking at her with something sort of close to adoration was a bit too much to handle, even if it wasn’t real. Just the fact that this hunky, broad-shouldered man was trying to look adoring sent a tickle right through her belly.

“Why don’t we hold hands?” she said, reaching to take his hand in hers.

“Why?”

The doorbell rang again, but she could only stare at Barrett, who was totally serious. And then she realized she didn’t know how to answer his simple question. “Because that’s what people do when they’re dating.”

She expected a soft handhold, considering he hadn’t a clue, but when he grasped her hand, it was firm and solid and felt all kinds of good.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Oh, right. I knew that.”

She tugged him toward the door. “Couples hold hands because it feels good. It connects them. It’s romantic.” She gave him a wry smile. “But you knew that.”

He was looking at their linked hands as she opened the door to find Nita standing there wearing a tank top and a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Her red hair was teased wanton-woman style. Her blue eyes smoldered with a come-hither look. For a retired woman, Nita was one hot mama. But she was in no way the right hot mama for Barrett.

Nita’s smile faded when she saw Stacy. It crumpled completely when she spotted their linked hands. “You?”

Stacy nodded, wishing for one slightly—okay, really—insane moment it was true.

Barrett was still staring at their linked hands, a look of wonder on his face. He’d clearly taken the adoration thing a bit too far. Stacy squeezed his hand, and he finally looked at Nita.

“Hello,” he said with a genuine smile.

Nita looked again at their hands, as though she still couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and said, “I…just wanted to see how you liked my Tater Tot casserole.”

“We’re eating it right now,” he said. “It’s interesting.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it,” she said in a distracted tone, still taking the two of them in. “Well, guess I’ll cruise and leave you two to it. I…”

The buzzing sound coming from down the street drew their attention. Barrett leaned out the door and scoped out the otherwise peaceful community.

“It’s the Power Squadron,” Stacy explained.

They came into view, a group of women power walking—Stacy would never tell them they looked like ducks—and power talking—the buzzing sound. They wore matching pink T-shirts—made by Stacy, of course—with flamingos in bomber gear. Arlene, as usual, was pushing a triplet’s baby stroller filled with her blue poodles. The group all glanced at the house at different times, and each stopped when they saw Stacy and Barrett standing in the doorway holding hands. To cover their blundering and stumbling, they waved, said hello in too-high voices and pushed onward.

Nita gave a long-suffering sigh. “Might as well join ’em, since there doesn’t seem to be any other interesting ways to increase my heart rate tonight.”

The buzzing grew louder when Nita joined the squadron. They couldn’t believe Stacy had snagged the smart guy. Well, phooey on them. It was okay if she didn’t believe she could snag a guy like Barrett, but they didn’t have to look so darned surprised.

“That ought to hold them,” she said, noticing he hadn’t released her hand yet, enjoying the feel of smooth palms and pencil calluses and hoping he’d hold it for a while longer.

He was studying their hands again. “This holding hands thing is interesting.”

She tried not to sound too horrified when she said, “Interesting like Nita’s Tater Tot casserole?”

He turned their hands at an angle. “Interesting in a different way.” He met her gaze and said, “Arousing.”

“Arousing,” she repeated in an airy voice, not sure if she was agreeing or clarifying that he’d actually used that word.

He rubbed his thumb over her skin, back and forth. He had hands more suitable for a carpenter than a research scientist. They were strong, with long fingers and neatly trimmed nails. The kind of hand that would look really good sliding across her stomach or down her thigh, for instance.

She was standing in the pink foyer surrounded by the flowery couch and palm tree prints and she wasn’t grossed out by the Florida decor because she was totally, completely aroused by the feel of his thumb moving across her skin and his fingers tightening over the back of her hand. The fact that he was aroused, too, even if he didn’t actually mean the sensual meaning of the word, made it more arousing yet. She didn’t even think about how tragic it was that she was getting off on the most innocent of touches because it had been so long since she’d had any kind of touch.

He met her eyes after another few moments. “Definitely more interesting than the Tater Tot casserole.”

When she heard the whining sound, she had the horrible suspicion it was coming from her. She was relieved to trace it to Weasel Boy, who was staring at Barrett with desperation in his brown, bulging eyes. Barrett let go of her hand. “Guess he’s feeling left out.”

She gave Weasel Boy the evil eye for interrupting. “Guess so.”

They returned to their half-eaten plates of the casserole, looked at each other, then at the plates.

“I have cereal,” he said with a shrug.

“Sounds good to me.” She scooped the casserole down the garbage disposal. Even if he ate bran flakes, it would be better than…she turned to find him pouring kid’s cereal into two bowls.

“I used to love this stuff!” She slid into the seat and poured in milk.

“Used to?”

“Well, I got out of the habit of eating sugar-coated, peanut-butter-flavored cereals. When you grow up with an older lady, you eat a lot of bran cereals. Granny thought fiber was God’s greatest creation, right next to prunes and chocolate.”

Nothing could look more out of sync than Barrett holding a box adorned with a cartoon pirate. They sat down to eat.

“What kind of kid were you?” she asked. “I’ll bet you were way ahead of all the kids your age, huh?”

“Intellectually, maybe, but not in any other way. I was terrible at sports and games. I was the first kid to get out during dodgeball and the last kid to get picked for a team. It didn’t help that I was always the smallest kid in the class.”

“I’ll bet PE was the only class you didn’t ace.”

He gave her a crooked grin. “I even failed recess. And I was accused of being every teacher’s pet. I couldn’t help that I related to them better than the other kids in class. I had always related to adults better. I was unpopular even back in kindergarten.”

“But you were only a little kid then.” She was beginning to see how tough it was to be supersmart.

“Unfortunately, I was the first person to tell them Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny couldn’t exist. I laid it out logically until they saw the truth. I thought I was doing them a favor, dispelling a myth that had no purpose. Three mothers called my parents to complain. Nobody liked me after that.”

“And here I thought you’d had it easy. I always wanted to be smart.”

“And I always wanted to be like everyone else.”

Wow. She never thought she’d feel sorry for someone as smart as Barrett. “But it got better in college, right?”

“When I started attending college, I was barely fifteen. I was surrounded by students who didn’t seem to have time to do much else but party and think about sex. I had friends, only they were the professors and research scientists my father socialized with. I managed.” He nodded toward her bowl. “How is your cereal?”

“Better than the Tater Tot casserole.” She wanted to ask him more about his childhood, but he was apparently finished talking about what must have been a painful time of his life. Could they have been more different? She’d had to struggle with every test, particularly math and the sciences. But she hadn’t been very popular, either, growing up in a retirement community, raised by her grandmother. She’d been way low on the cool scale.

She shifted her gaze to the aquarium in case she gave away her sympathy. All of the snails were gliding along their branches. If she asked him about the study, maybe she could spend the whole evening with him. Maybe they could practice holding hands. Maybe…

She stopped those selfish thoughts. He had work to do. The only reason she had offered to be his girlfriend was to be nice, right? To help him out. Not because she thought she had any chance of making Barrett fall in love with her. Certainly not because she was falling for him.

That would never do. He’d become bored with her in no time even if he were interested to begin with, which was probably ninety degrees away from reality. And she wanted a baby. Barrett was eyeing Weasel Boy with concern. He’d be way out of his league with a baby.

She tilted the bowl and drained the remaining milk into her mouth. “I’d better let you work,” she said, pushing her chair back and taking her bowl to the kitchen. “Come on, Weasel Boy. Let’s leave the scientist dude in peace.”

Weasel Boy wasn’t budging. He followed Barrett into the kitchen when he put the bowls in the dishwasher, then to the foyer where Stacy was waiting. But he was firmly at Barrett’s heel.

“You must really like dogs,” he said at the same moment she made a grab for the dog and landed face first on the floor.

“I love dogs,” she muttered as she made another futile grab.

Barrett was watching as she played tag with Weasel Boy all around his legs. “Then why don’t you have one?”

“Granny was allergic to animals, so growing up, I couldn’t have any pets.” Another lunge, another miss. “We compromised when I started bringing the problem dogs home from the Humane Society. I kept them outside, of course. It worked out pretty good.”

“But you could have a dog now.”

“Yes—” her hands slid over the dog’s slippery body “—but the problem is I want all the dogs at the shelter. I can’t look at those faces and pick just one to adopt. I wish I had acres and acres of dogs, cats, rabbits…everything. So I’ve continued to bring them home and spread my love out to a lot of them.”

He scooped up Weasel Boy and handed him to her. “Because you’re a nice person.”

“Yeah, real nice,” she said breathlessly. When she met his gaze, he looked almost…disappointed. Nah, she must be misreading him. “I got it from Granny. She was a saint.” Weasel Boy started wriggling in her arms. “Well, I’d better go.” She wanted to stay. Bad. But she reminded herself about his deadline and opened the door.

“What about your being my girlfriend?”

She stopped mid-movement and turned. “What?”

“What are we supposed to do? To convince the neighbors?”

Her shoulders deflated. Boy, he really was afraid of those women. More precisely, afraid they’d interrupt his work. “Oh, that. We’ll make a few appearances. That should do it. Nothing that’ll distract you from your work.” She gave him a wave. “See you.”

He grinned. “I see you, too.”

NITA JOINED the women at the corner just out of sight of Stacy’s house. “She’s pretending they’re dating, I just know it.”

“Wait, here comes Ernie.”

He was putting a lot of effort into appearing casual as he strolled down the sidewalk. Occasionally he glanced behind him, then around. As soon as he turned the corner, he sped up.

“Well? Are they?” they all asked.

“I never give up my secrets to the enemy,” he said with a lift of his chin. “Not even if you torture me.”

“You’re spying for us, you dingy!” Betty said.

He took them in with narrowed eyes. “But how can I be sure of that? Maybe you’re all just pretending to be on my side. Maybe you’re double agents. I’m good at ferreting out the bad guys. That’s why they made me a spy in the war, you know.”

“We know, we know already,” Nita said. “Out with it.”

“They called me the Black Gopher. That was my code name.”

“All right, Black Gopher, out with it!”

He lifted his chin. “I never cracked under the interrogation. No matter what they did to me, I held my secrets. I…ah!”

“Give it up!” Nita said, a firm grip on his earlobe.

“All right, all right! You’re dislodging my sonic ear, woman!” He pushed it back in. “I pretended to be watering my plants when they was by the door talking. They didn’t have a clue I was listening. They used to call me the Black Gopher, you know.”

“We know! Are they or aren’t they?”

He nodded, pride gleaming on his face. “It’s a charade, all right, just like you said.”

“Like I said,” Nita said, releasing her hold. “That’s just the kind of thing she’d do to protect that man from us.”

Betty said, “But I think it’s more than that. She really likes him. She’s got a glow about her.”

Annette gave it some thought. “Yeah, now that you mention it, she does.”

“So what’s our game plan? The usual?” Arlene asked.

“No, it’s different this time. Barrett’s different,” Frieda said.

Ernie nodded. “He does seem like a good guy. Gene’s son says so.”

“Not like some of those other guys she’s brought around.” A chorus of agreeing murmurs went up. Ernie said, “It took a lot of convincing until that last guy believed Stacy was part of a Mafia family. I should have used the line I used the time before that with the dinner theater actor.”

“But it’s so mean to make up stories about Stacy’s mental health,” Frieda said.

“Maybe we’ve finally found the guy she deserves.”

“And she’s everything we said Barrett needs in a woman.”

“She looked so dang disappointed that we didn’t see it at workout earlier,” Arlene said with a slow shake of her head. “I feel just terrible about it.”

“We were only thinking about ourselves. Game plan, game plan. Well, they’re already pretending to be dating, that’s a start.”

“But you know our Stacy. She’ll be diligent about not distracting him from his important project.”

They all nodded in agreement. Then Nita got a glimmer in her eyes. “So we force their hand. Call their bluff. She’s protective of Barrett getting his project done, right? If we keep bluffing about trying to set him up with our offspring, she’ll have to spend more time protecting him. More time with him.”

Betty rubbed her hands together. “Ah, and what if we come right out and tell her we don’t believe her? Tell her we want proof?”

They all put their hands in the center of their circle, cheered, “Power Squadron, unite!” and pulled their hands away with a flourish.

“Oh, by the way, Arlene, good work nixing that grooming job for Stacy. It wasn’t the right thing for her. What line did you use this time?”

“The one about her escaping the loony bin. It seems to do the trick.”

Betty smiled. “We’ll find her the right man, and then the right job. Hopefully the assistant director’s position at the Humane Society will open up soon. That’s where she belongs, not grooming dogs.”

“Or working at a pet store.”

Ernie had a glint in his eyes. “Maybe we can give that assistant director a little nudge….”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I can’t bring Elmo back in?” Stacy stared at the phone and imagined RJ’s lean face and military-style haircut on the other end. She’d called to tell him she was keeping Elmo for the night.

The director of the shelter cleared his throat. “Naomi took in some boarders. Five of them.”

“We only had four cages available.”

“That would be the problem with bringing Elmo back. Look, I’m not pleased about it, either, but the woman with the dogs gave us a very generous donation. She had to fly out of town to attend a funeral, and she had no one to watch her dogs. I can’t put Elmo in a cage with any of the other dogs, because he’s so small, and the woman said all the dogs had to be kept separate. Sorry, Stacy, but you’re going to have to keep him for a few days. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

She glanced at Weasel Boy, who was staring at the front door and whining. Yeah, he was going to be real grateful, wasn’t he? “You’re right, it’s not a problem. He’s fallen in love with the guy next door.”

“Good for you, Stacy. It’s about time.”

“Not me! The dog!” But even as she denied it, her heart gave a funny dance inside her at the thought.

“Maybe you can convince him to take the little guy, then.”

“Forget it. He doesn’t believe in romance. I mean, he’s not comfortable around dogs.”

“I’ve gotta run. Thanks for helping us out. You’re the best.”

When she walked into her bedroom, she was drawn to those pieces of paper taped to her dresser mirror. She couldn’t walk in here without looking at them. Which was good because then she didn’t notice the clean clothes in a stack on the floor waiting to be put away or the unmade bed. Granny would be ashamed of her. What would she think about this unorthodox way to start a family?

She looked at the sperm donor profiles. Which one, which one? These were her top picks. Smart, talented, healthy. “Eeny, meeny, miny…” Her finger dropped to her side. She just couldn’t decide. Why? Every time she thought she’d made a choice, she changed her mind. The calendar reminded her she had mere days before ovulation. She fell back on the bed and pulled the gingham comforter over her head. Why couldn’t she commit?

FOR HALF THAT NIGHT, Barrett watched the snails and made diligent notes. Unfortunately, they were about Stacy. He couldn’t figure her out, and more important, couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get her out of his mind. When she left, he felt strangely empty. He’d never felt that way before. He knew it had something to do with her, or more precisely, her absence. So he sat down at the computer and started charting what he knew about her.

She was nice. In fact, everything he knew about her was involved with her doing things for others, things she didn’t necessarily want to do. Now she was doing something for him just to be nice.

Then there was the hand holding. Now that was something. He’d never admit this to anyone, but he felt a little out of touch with the world. Like when he saw groups of people socializing and laughing at things he didn’t get at all. Or couples strolling arm in arm. He’d never once seen his parents hold hands or nuzzle each other or perform any mating rituals.

He’d always figured he wasn’t inclined to that kind of affection.

But when he’d held Stacy’s hand…he’d connected with her. For the first time, he’d felt emotionally connected to another person. To Stacy.

He shot out of his chair, ready to walk next door. He sank into his chair as reality set in. He was sure his parents had felt some degree of desire, enough to marry, at least. Look how that had ended.

Here he was feeling, well, aroused, and she was just posing as his girlfriend to be nice. He grimaced at that. He didn’t want her to be nice to him. He wanted her. To want him.

Go back to the first part, he reminded himself. And don’t forget that you’ll soon be in another country studying the rain forest. He tried to remember how excited he’d been at the prospect. He glanced at the snails. She thought they were cute. She saw angels and dogs and dragons in clouds. She wished on falling stars.

He tried not to see the dreamy sparkle in her eyes.

He was leaving the country for two years.

With a sigh, he closed her file and went back to work.

6

DESPITE THE LATE NIGHT, Barrett was up early. He ran the perimeter of the neighborhood, took a shower and started working on the snails. He made four charts for each season, with graphs for water levels, temperatures and snail activity. At sunrise, he moved to the back deck. Normally he wouldn’t have noticed the dappled sunlight on the white concrete deck or the scent of jasmine from the bush in the corner of the yard. Or the waves of light as the sun reflected off the small pool. He wouldn’t have been aware of the back door opening next door, of Stacy’s voice calling, “Weasel Boy, stay in the yard!” He would have been so wrapped up in his work that he wouldn’t have put the picture of Stacy’s face with her voice. Or thought of her spandex-covered bottom.

But he would have probably noticed the mutant dog that stared at him with a happy yipping sound. And that same dog leaping into his lap. Normally he would have minded the interruption to a nice, quiet morning. But that interruption was coupled with Stacy’s smile as she walked around the side of the house, so he could hardly mind too much.

“Sorry about that. I’m telling you, that dog loves you.”

Barrett patted the dog’s nearly bald head, finding it wasn’t bald, but covered with fine, silky hair. “I guess he has to go back to the shelter today.”

She scrunched up her face. “Well, no. The assistant director boarded five dogs yesterday, which means Weasel Boy’s cage is now occupied, and he’s too small to be put in with any of the other dogs. Which means I’m stuck with him until they find a home for another dog and free up a cage. And I wouldn’t mind so much being stuck with him, except—” she glanced at the dog on Barrett’s lap “—it means you’re stuck with him, too.”

Elmo tilted his head and gave a melodic whine. Something about that plea twanged a chord in his chest. He shrugged. “I suppose he can hang around here for the day.”

“Really? That’d be great. Otherwise I’d have to leave him in the house, and he’d whine up a storm. That’s what he did last night, whine and whimper for you. Kept staring at the door. I even let him sleep with me, just so he’d feel better.”

Barrett glanced at the dog again, because looking at Stacy while she was talking about whining and whimpering for him was doing strange things to his body. Then he actually envied the dog for snuggling up with Stacy all night, and that had him looking at her again. Sunshine slanted down over her, glinting off her brown hair and making her purple spandex leggings look nearly fluorescent. Her calves were muscular and shiny from what he guessed was suntan oil. Her arms were set off by the white tank top she wore. She was squinting, and then she shaded her eyes with the flat of her hand against her forehead.

“I have something for you,” she said, coming closer. He could smell the light coconut scent that obliterated the fruity scent she usually wore. And since when did he notice scents?

“I made it for you last night. What do you think?”

She shook out a white T-shirt and smiled as he read the words in serious script. Alcohol and Calculus Don’t Mix. Never Drink and Derive. “Cute, huh?”

He smiled. “Yeah…cute.”

She walked closer and handed it to him. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. You’re probably not even a T-shirt kind of guy. It was just for fun.”

He held it up, wondering how long she’d worked on it, and what she’d thought about when she’d made it. “Thank you.”

She shrugged. “It was nothing. I’ll leave you alone so you can get your work done. Let me know if Weasel Boy bugs you, and I’ll come get him.”

He liked watching her walk. There was a bounce to her step, and of course there were the curves of her behind to consider, too. Elmo whined, and Barrett reluctantly drew his gaze to the dog. Happy with just that moment’s worth of attention, Elmo curled up in his lap with his dog sigh. No way was Barrett going to tell Stacy the dog was bothering him. He set the T-shirt over Elmo like a blanket and settled in to work.

Thirty minutes later, a persistent noise penetrated his consciousness. It was time to get a glass of chocolate milk anyway, and perhaps a bowl for Elmo, too. And to find out what that high-pitched buzzing noise was.

The noise, it turned out, was Stacy up on her flat roof with some loud contraption blowing leaves out of the gutter. Since she hadn’t noticed him yet, he figured it was all right to watch her for a minute or two. As she wrestled with the blower, it blew her hair into wild disarray. She wore sunglasses that occasionally caught the sun in a blinding flash. She moved around on the roof with ease, stepping toward the gutter where she aimed the nozzle and blew pine needles and debris over the edge.

In fact, she seemed to be…dancing. That’s when he noticed the headphones. She wiggled her hips and pursed her lips, mouthing the words to a song. Then she twirled with the blower close to her. It blew her hair straight up until she swung it out again.

She was dancing with the leaf blower. And while he should find that preposterous, he found himself smiling.

He forced himself to go into the house before she caught him staring. A woman like Stacy could make him believe things could work between a man used to his comfortable world of research and grants and a woman who wanted romance and worked with dogs. The only thing she lacked to make her perfectly wrong for him was a baby.

He and Elmo enjoyed their chocolate milk out on the lanai, and then Barrett went back to work. He wanted to glance toward Stacy’s place, but he congratulated himself on keeping his focus.

Elmo wandered away only long enough to attend to his canine business before returning to his place in Barrett’s lap. He did the strange air-licking thing for a few minutes and then settled down. Barrett laid out the pertinent field notes he had made over the last year as he’d trekked through Everglades National Park logging tree snail data. He glanced at the calendar and calculated the remaining time he had left. He had virtually no time between this project and the next. He knew his father was disappointed that he hadn’t remained working on Everglades projects for the university. But that wasn’t what called to him. Would he ever find the one thing that kept his interest indefinitely?

The blower noise had grown louder since he’d been in the house, though he couldn’t see Stacy on her roof anymore. Focus on the tree snails, he told himself. If he kept his focus, he could probably complete his project on time. The papers were laid out so he could gather the data he needed from each sheet in order. He got into a rhythm for a while.

Elmo’s head came up a second before the papers on the table spiraled into the air and drifted gently down around and into the pool. The noise stopped abruptly, and he turned and looked up to see Stacy on his roof with her hand over her mouth.

“I’m so sorry!” She set the blower down, stood too fast and lost her balance.

He scrambled to position himself beneath her. She tumbled over the edge of the roof but hung onto the gutter. Without thinking, he wrapped his arms around her to help ease her to the ground. Only he didn’t want to let her go.

She was warm and soft and firm all at the same time, and she smelled delicious, coconuty and sun-warmed. His arms were anchored around her stomach, and his hands brushed her bare waist. A catchy tune pounded from the headphones that were dangling around her neck. He thought about dancing with her, but that would be sillier than…than holding her for much longer than was strictly necessary.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” she said.

For someone who had studied time, who knew the measurement of time remained constant and absolute, those moments felt longer than usual. She turned to look at him. “Barrett, we’ve got to get your notes out of the pool!”

The notes. Of course, how could he have forgotten? She slid down his body to her feet, tossed the radio headphones on the table and pivoted toward the pool. Twenty or more pages floated at the surface, the ink dissolving before their eyes. Stacy slid into the pool and started retrieving them.

“I’m so sorry. You must think I’m a klutz.”

He grabbed the papers he could reach from the edge. “What were you doing up there, anyway?”

“Gene asked me to do their gutters the next time I did mine. I wasn’t going to do the gutter above you, because I was afraid this would happen.” She was plucking papers as she spoke. “I glanced down to see where you were, you know, to make sure I didn’t bother you, and…lost my balance. I never lose my balance. Granny said I had the balance of a monkey.”

The word monkey came out all garbled. The water was up to her mouth as she walked toward the deep end where most of the papers ended up. She wasn’t going to be able to reach them. So he did something impulsive, maybe for the first time he could remember. He got into the pool with her.

The water was cool as it enveloped him. “Here, I’ll get these.”

“You didn’t have to come in here. I’m the one who scattered them into the pool.” She sounded breathless as she treaded water.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and held her up, facing him. “It’s…” He forgot about the cold water, the papers and whatever he’d been about to say. Like when he’d held her as she’d hung from the roof, his body awakened as her body brushed against his. Her skin was cool beneath his hands.

“It’s what?” she asked in a breathless voice.

“Hmm?”

“You said, ‘It’s.’ You never…finished.”

Their faces were inches apart as he pulled her flush against him. Beads of water dotted the pink lip gloss she wore. Why did he have the insane urge to lick them off? He wanted to kiss her, wanted it with every molecule in his body. He felt an intense desire to take her mouth and see if it tasted as good as it looked.

Her brown eyes were large as she watched him. Her breath was coming in short puffs, soft and barely audible. If he didn’t consult his logic here, he was going to be in big trouble.

Logic.

“Tree snails,” he said, and moved her toward the edge of the pool.

She grabbed onto the edge when he abruptly moved to retrieve the rest of the papers. “Pardon?”

He started reciting snail names with each piece of paper he snatched out of the water. “Delicatus. Elegans. Floridanus. Lucidovarius.” He had exactly four days, four hours and twenty-nine minutes to complete this project. All right, he was focused again, his mind firmly on deadlines and Stacy’s bottom as she pulled herself out of the pool…“Septentrionalis.” He took a deep breath when he grabbed the last piece of paper and turned around. “Nipples.”

At first he wasn’t aware of what he’d said, only that she was sitting on the edge of the pool, and her white tank top was close to transparent. She glanced down and jerked her arms across her chest. Only then did he realize exactly what had come out of his mouth.

Not a snail name.

Not even close.

She jumped to her feet and set the wet papers on the edge of the table. “I’d better go before I die of embarrassment altogether,” she said, her arms still fastened to her chest.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I’m going now.”

Barrett had reached the side of the pool, where Elmo was waiting for him. They both watched her stalk around the hedge and heard her door slam shut.

He was completely baffled. First that she’d affected him in such a profound way. And second that she’d blamed herself for his faux pas. It made no sense.

It made even less sense than his having gone in the pool fully clothed, shoes and all.

STACY LOOKED at herself in the bathroom mirror. Yep, there they were, showing right through the white material like brown beacons. No wonder the word had slipped out of his mouth! Gawd, could she be more embarrassed? Probably not. First sending his notes afloat and then this. He must think she was something else. He probably had some technical word for her, some fifty-cent word she wouldn’t understand.

The only redeeming factor in the whole pool incident was when he was reciting those snail names. She had to be the only person in the world to be turned on by snail names. That probably made her a disturbed woman, but she could handle that. Of course, it more than likely had something to do with the fact that Barrett was reciting them, though why he’d been doing it just then was a mystery.

She peeled off the tank top and tossed it in the hamper. Okay, the other redeeming factor was when he’d held her against him in the pool. The water sure wasn’t cold anymore after that. No, sirree. And if she’d been in her right mind, she wouldn’t have thought for a minute that he was going to kiss her. She wouldn’t have imagined the hunger she saw in his eyes. He was only holding her up in deep water, being nice. What he was probably thinking was that he’d like to throttle her for distracting him from his project yet again, and worse, for waterlogging his notes.

That’s what she’d really seen, annoyance, not hunger. He’d probably been reciting those snail names to keep his temper at bay like other people counted to ten.

She stripped out of her leggings and left them in a wet pile on the bathroom floor. A glimpse of her boyish figure reinforced her misunderstanding. No way could this body entice that man.

She threw on shorts and a T-shirt and wandered into the living room. If Gene and Judy’s home was regurgitated Florida, her home was granny style. The sturdy furniture was made to last more than a lifetime. Granny had had it since her early days of marriage. The colonial style would never be outdated. Brown sculptured carpet hid the stains and wear. Beiges and browns were neutral. For some reason Stacy had never quite understood, Granny liked mushrooms for a decor accent. The kitchen clock was shaped like a mushroom, and if that weren’t bad enough, there were tiny mushrooms at the ends of the minute and hour hands. A mushroom statue sat on the coffee table. Though she wasn’t enamored of the fungus, she couldn’t bear to part with anything Granny loved.

When the doorbell rang, she found Nita standing on the front step.

“Hey, Nita. Nice shirt.”

Nita wore one of Granny’s classics: Coffee, Chocolate, Men—Some Things Are Just Better Rich. “I want a word with you, young lady.”

“Uh-oh. Maybe you’d better come in.”

Nita made herself comfortable on the afghan-covered couch while Stacy searched her mind for whatever favor or task she’d forgotten to do. Nothing came to mind as she sank into the brown chair Granny thought looked like an upside-down mushroom. “Okay, what’s up?”

“I know you’re lying. Out with it.”

“Lying? About what?” At first she wondered if Ricky had spilled about the donor insemination. But technically she hadn’t lied about that, just omitted information. Then it must be about—

“You know exactly what I’m talking about—your so-called romance with Barrett. I think you’re pretending to be in love with him to throw us off his trail.”

Well, that had been the idea. Unfortunately, it was becoming truer every time she saw him. And as hard as it was to lie to someone who was like family to her, she had to think about the mess she’d made of Barrett’s notes. She owed him. “We’re not pretending.”

“Then how come he was jogging all by himself this morning? If you were really keeping company with that man, you’d be jogging with him. I know you. You wouldn’t let him go out there alone with all these women just waiting to send their daughters and granddaughters out jogging with him, if you know what I mean. That’s how I know you’re lying.”

Stacy swallowed hard. She hated jogging. It made her breasts feel like overused tennis balls.

“I was going to jog with him this morning, as a matter of fact. But he went earlier than we’d planned, and he was nice enough not to wake me up. Who’s planning on ambushing him?”

Nita just lifted her shoulder. “Couldn’t say for sure. But I’ve heard talk. Plans,” she added in a low voice. “I’d be keeping a close eye on him, that’s all I’m saying.”

Oh, boy.

7

STACY STOOD at Barrett’s door early that evening looking very serious in blue jeans and a pink short-sleeved sweater. “Barrett, we have a problem.”

“Does it have something to do with the can of dog food you’re holding?”

She lifted the can. “This is dinner.”

At his horrified expression, she followed his gaze to the hand she held up. “This is for Elmo!” She lifted the bag in her other hand. “This is our dinner. Subs from the deli. Not a hint of processed ham or cream of mushroom soup anywhere.”

She smelled fruity again, and he forgot about her declaration of impending doom. He followed her into the kitchen where she found a bowl and scooped something foul-smelling into it. It reminded him of the Tater Tot casserole.

“How’s it going between you two?” she asked, nodding toward the dog.

“We have an understanding. I let him sit on my lap, and he doesn’t whine.”

She set the bowl on the floor and gestured to Elmo.

He didn’t budge.

“Come on, it’s your favorite. Savory salmon.”

Elmo looked at Barrett.

“Go on,” he said, and Elmo dashed forward and consumed it.

Stacy placed a plastic lid on the can. “How does it feel to be adored like that?”

“I’m growing to like it.”

She looked at him, and he felt that strange tickle in his stomach.

“I’ll bet you are.” Her gaze shifted downward to his shirt. “You’re misbuttoned.”

She was right. “After my shower, I was deep in thought…about the tree snails,” he lied. “Sometimes I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing when I’m immersed in thought.”

She started unbuttoning his shirt. “We have a problem that might affect your uninterrupted time. You see, they don’t believe we’re attracted to one another.” She stopped when she finished undoing the buttons and was staring at his chest. She made a funny sound deep in her throat and quickly started buttoning the shirt. “Jogging. We have to go jogging together. That’ll be easy. And we should probably hold hands a couple more times, just to show them. Why am I buttoning your shirt for you? I don’t know.” She took a step back.

“Because you’re nice?” he offered, though he hoped it was more than that.

“Yes, that’s it. I wasn’t even thinking…” She glanced toward his chest again and then shook her head. “What I was thinking was we could go for a stroll together and eat dinner in the park. You, Weasel Boy and me. Holding hands. Think you can handle that?”

“Sure.”

She studied him for a moment. “You don’t seem very bothered by it. I thought, because it’s going to cut into your work schedule, you’d be annoyed.”

He shrugged. “I can work all night if I need to.” Besides, he’d become immersed in a side project, and that was what he’d been thinking about when he’d put on his shirt. He’d pulled up his study on romance and found it dry and lacking in actual fieldwork. He’d gone over his notes on his subjects, the feelings they’d talked about having—tickle in the stomach, distracted, fantasizing—all things he’d been experiencing since meeting Stacy. He’d decided that even with all his interviews, he hadn’t come away understanding romance at all. To be accurate, he needed to do hands-on research. Posing as a couple was perfect fieldwork.

Her expression lightened. “Well, okay then. I’ll try not to let this interfere too much with your work.” Her face crinkled with worry again. “Were you able to decipher those notes I ruined?”

“I just reprinted them. Really, it’s not a problem,” he assured her when the worried look didn’t go away.

“All right. Good. Let’s go then.”

She snapped the leash onto Elmo’s collar and they walked to the front door. She took a deep breath and shored up her shoulders. “Okay, here’s the game plan,” she said, using that sporting term again. “I’ll hold Weasel Boy’s leash, and you’ll hold my hand. Like this.”

She slid her hand against his, and their fingers entwined automatically. Which was strange since his reaction shouldn’t be automatic at all. Before he could analyze that, though, he was overcome by that elating sense of connection. And an odd sense of anticipation.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Very.”

They stepped out into the cool evening air. They had only reached the end of the walkway lined with the glowing pink flamingos when it became evident that he should be the one holding the leash. Elmo kept crossing in front of them to get to Barrett, tripping Stacy in the process. She carried the bag with the sandwiches.

The sun had just set, casting an orange glow across the western horizon. The rest of the sky was a brilliant indigo blue. Instead of thinking about how the colors were created, he took in the scene like Stacy obviously did. He’d never noticed the way the colors melted together before. Now he noticed not only that, but the way the light cast a glow across Stacy’s face and made her look beautiful. The way her hand felt in his also cast a warm glow over him, though he knew that was scientifically impossible.

Several of the Sunset City residents smiled and waved, then turned and whispered to each other.

“This should go a long way toward convincing them we’re madly in love,” she said. “We can walk around to the lake, sit on a bench and pretend to enjoy each other’s company.”

Pretend? Perhaps she was pretending, but he was definitely enjoying her company. He didn’t like the thought of her pretending.

“I appreciate you going to all this trouble for me,” he said.

“It’s no trouble.”

Okay, that was better.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive,” she said, a content look on her face. She met his gaze. “Is it hard on you?”

To his surprise, he wanted to say yes. It was hard to look at her mouth and not kiss it, hard to understand why he wanted to kiss her when they were only pretending and the last thing he needed was someone like her in his life.

She was waiting for his answer, as though it mattered to her.

“No, not at all.”

When they reached the small park area, he released Elmo to explore. The dog sniffed the ground as he traveled in circles, though he never took his gaze off Barrett for more than five seconds. If that was adoration, well, he did like it. He glanced at Stacy, who quickly shifted her gaze to Elmo, as well.

“Have you ever been adored?” he asked, making her snap her gaze toward him again.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

For some reason, she tried to pull her hand free of his. He held on tighter, not ready to relinquish the charade.

She looked at their linked hands. “I…well, Granny adored me, though I’m not sure it counts when it’s family. Not that they have to adore you or anything, but…” Her gaze lifted to his. “No,” she finished with a soft sigh. “Not even by a dog. I’m sure my time will come.”

He led her toward the bench that faced the lake. The surface reflected the sky and the palm trees that swayed in the breeze. Only the occasional ripple marred the mirror image. It amazed him how something so simple could be so beautiful. He looked at Stacy, who looked beautiful, too, even if she looked a little sad.

They ate, the wrappers making makeshift plates in their laps. Stacy kept dabbing her face, reminding him of the chicken crumb episode. At one point, she left a smear of mustard by her mouth, which she licked off with a swipe of her tongue. He heard himself make a small sound between a choke and a groan.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

He crumpled his sandwich wrapper. “Not me.”

She stuffed the rest of her sandwich in the bag.

“Should we…” He gestured, then took her hand. “Tell me about hand holding.”

“What?”

“What other uses does it have? Besides just being romantic.”

He set their linked hands on his thigh and traced his thumb over her skin. Her breath hitched as she stared at their hands.

“Didn’t your parents hold hands?” she asked.

“No. I’ve seen my sister, Kim, and her husband, Dave, hold hands. I was just wondering if it served some practical purpose.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“If we’re going to be a couple, I should be aware of all the nuances, right?”

“Well…it’s a friendly gesture. But it doesn’t last very long in that context.” She demonstrated, loosening their hands, giving his hand a squeeze, then retracting her hand again. “It’s a gesture of support, too. If you were going through something sad or trying, I might hold your hand for a while.” She took his hand again. “I might even place my other hand on top of yours, just to give you extra support.”

He was supposed to be cataloging all this for research purposes, but the feel of her hands enveloping his was making it hard for the information to register.

“What about this? I’ve seen men kiss a woman’s hands before.” He turned her hand over and kissed her moist palm.

She shivered. “You kiss the back of the hand…in greeting.” She took his hand and planted a kiss on the back of it. “Like that. Only women never do it to men. It’s a romantic gesture. Sometimes it’s a classy greeting. I think the French do it.”

A trace of moisture remained on the back of his hand from her kiss, skewing his thoughts. He’d never had trouble focusing before he met Stacy. “Have men kissed your hand before?”

“No. It’s not an everyday sort of thing.”

He kissed the back of her hand. She didn’t react the way she had when he’d kissed her palm. “You didn’t like it when I kissed your palm?”

“Well, actually…I did. No one’s ever kissed my palm before. It was…interesting.”

“Tater Tot casserole interesting?”

She laughed, and a warm, satisfied feeling flooded through him.

“Definitely more interesting than that.” She took a quick breath. “It was arousing. Like this.”

She took his hand, faced it palm up and kissed the center of it. Her mouth lingered there, hot and moist against his skin. She was right—it was arousing. And not just the legal definition of inciting to action, awakening…No, this was arousing in a different way. More than physical.

But very, very physical. His body was awakening, rising. If she asked if this charade was hard on him, he couldn’t honestly answer no this time. Heat flushed through him. Was it dopamine or norepinephrine? All he knew was that it was way more interesting than Tater Tot casserole interesting.

She abruptly stopped pressing her mouth against his palm and sat up. “We’d better stop.”

“But we’re doing so well. I’m aroused. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we’re only supposed to pretend to be…aroused.”

“Oh…right.” That pretending thing again.

“Geez, look. No, don’t look. There’s Nita and Jack. And Arlene. Look at them, they’re like vultures, moving in for the kill. No, don’t look!”

He was getting dizzy with the looking and not looking. “The people we’re supposed to be fooling,” he whispered.

“Exactly.”

“So, if I did this—” he kissed her palm again, very slowly, the way she’d kissed his “—it would help our defense position. Right?”

Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she whispered, “Exactly.”

He’d never had this effect on a woman before, at least not that he’d noticed. He was noticing now, cataloging every action versus reaction. When he flicked his tongue against her skin, she inhaled sharply. When he traced his tongue across the lines of her palm, her breathing increased threefold. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elmo watching them with interest. When Barrett’s tongue dipped into the crevice between her fingers, he didn’t care what Elmo was doing anymore. She let out a long, low moan.

Her eyes snapped open, and she pulled her hand back. “Okay, that’s good. I think we’ve got them fooled now, yes, indeedy.” Her voice sounded shaky.

He was surprised to hear a quiver in his voice when he said, “Are you sure?” He leaned closer to her face. Her lips glistened after she licked them. He wanted to kiss her—just for show, of course. Mostly for show, anyway. All right, forget the show. “Maybe we should—”

“Go home. Yes, that’s what we should do,” she said in a breathless rush of words. “Our mission here is done.”

Done, Barrett thought. But not over. He was a research scientist, after all. And he had a lot more research to do on Stacy.

THIS ENTIRE SITUATION was unfair, Stacy thought as she readied herself for a jog at six-thirty in the morning—sixthirty! After which, she had to teach her workout class. If she’d slept well, that would have helped. She couldn’t even blame Weasel Boy. Barrett had kindly offered to keep him so she wouldn’t have to abide his whining all night.

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