Quick Takes Read online

  She looked at him. He’d moved closer, so close she could smell his cologne. Or maybe that was the testosterone. She drew the scent into her lungs, enjoying the distraction.

  Leaving would be worse than facing the music. If only Eduardo were some hot boy toy of hers, there to caress and worship her among the perennials, facing Simon again wouldn’t have the same embarrassing potential.

  If only…

  “Eduardo?” she asked.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s…” She trailed off. Would he remember? They’d shared a lot of secrets at the Center, but would he remember the details of her teenage angst so many years later? Heart pounding, she put a hand on his arm—and left it there. “That’s Simon.”

  He stared at her for a long, hot second before finally lifting his hand to her face, brushing a strand of hair off her cheek with the back of his fingers, his knuckles like a kiss.

  “Then we should go say hello,” he said.

  6

  Relieved Melissa hadn’t bolted, Eduardo seized the excuse to get closer to her. Capturing her hand in his, he turned to greet the infamous ex-boyfriend, the one who’d bailed on her when the going got tough.

  The man was blond, good-looking in a yuppie surfer kind of way, and was obviously infatuated with the glowing, equally infatuated woman at his side. Eduardo didn’t try to hide his dislike. From what he remembered, Simon had avoided her completely after the suicide attempt. He hadn’t returned her calls, her emails, nothing.

  “Melissa?” the woman asked, eyes wide. She was taller than Melissa, also with generous curves, and wore her long sandy-brown hair in a ponytail.

  “Eduardo,” Melissa said, “this is Jody and Simon, old friends of mine.”

  Jody shook his hand, giving him a curious smile, but quickly turned back to Melissa. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Melissa said.

  Jody glanced at Simon, her smile tightening, and everyone fell silent.

  “So, I’m so surprised to see you here,” Jody said. “What are you up to?”

  “I work here.”

  Eduardo noticed Melissa had paused a moment, and there was an edge to her voice. Simon stood off to one side, his hands in his pockets.

  “Here?” Jody asked. Then she stretched out her arms. “Are you kidding me? That’s fantastic! I thought you were still in Las Vegas.” She enveloped Melissa in a bear hug, and after another awkward moment, they broke apart.

  Melissa came over and stood close to Eduardo, brushing her elbow against his and plastering a huge smile on her face. “You two look good. Long time no see, Simon.”

  Thinking she should have a little support, Eduardo hooked a possessive arm around her shoulders. Much to his satisfaction, he felt her fingers slip around his waist. His blood heated.

  Simon took his hands out of his pockets and stepped forward, offering one. “You look great, Melissa.” His gaze darted to Eduardo, who stroked the curve of her shoulder. When her own fingers, still clutching his waist, began exploring the contours of his hip, he stopped caring about what the blond surfer yuppie had done to her long ago, turning his thoughts instead to what he’d like to be doing to her himself.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were here,” Jody said.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I should have,” Melissa said. “I’ve just been so busy.”

  “I can see that,” Jody said, smiling.

  Eduardo slowly moved his hand down her arm to her waist, hoping the awkward conversation would go on a little longer. She felt lush and sexy, sweet and warm.

  To his disgust, she dropped her hand from his hip and offered it to Simon. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Simon’s face relaxed and he shook it with obvious eagerness. “It’s great to see you, too, Melissa.”

  “We have to get going,” Melissa continued, returning to Eduardo’s side, “but let’s talk tonight. Promise.”

  The women squeezed hands and waved and repeated their plans to catch up, and then Melissa and Eduardo strode out the back gate to the street.

  With their arms around each other.

  Melissa forced herself to pull away from Eduardo as soon as they were out of sight behind a billowing Cecile Brunner rose that blanketed the chain-link fence. Her car was parked at the end of the street, and she planned on studying drip irrigation for the next several hours until her emotions had cooled.

  Which would be impossible in Eduardo’s arms. Cooling was the last thing that was going to be going on if he kept stroking her shoulder like that.

  “Thanks,” she said, wiggling away from him, “but they can’t see us anymore.”

  “I don’t care if they can see us or not.” He held her gaze. “Do you like Spanish?”

  “You mean the food?”

  The corner of his mouth curved up. “Yes. The food. Tapas, paella, sangria, that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be very good company right now.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” he said.

  “Seeing them was kind of a shock. I need time to process it.” Ten years ago Simon had hurt her badly, but now he was hooked up, apparently in a serious way, with one of her oldest friends.

  “Process it with me.” He caught her arm and entwined her fingers with his.

  She turned, caught in his warm grasp, and felt her stomach dance like a broken sprinkler.

  He was both familiar and mysterious. What would it be like to have him? Or be had…

  “I can’t. You’re my client.”

  “I’m much more than that.” He paused. “We’re old friends.”

  She rubbed her eyes. Not exactly. Sharing a group therapist wasn’t quite the same thing as a normal friendship. “I just started working here. I can’t get involved with a client.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” he said.

  Her willpower wavered. It wasn’t like they paid her very much…

  No. She’d just moved hundreds of miles to work here, reconnect with old friends, build a meaningful life. She wasn’t going to chuck it for a handsome guy from her past who had more sex appeal in one muscled forearm than the sum total of every other man she’d ever…

  “I can’t,” she repeated.

  But he didn’t release her. His thumb, strong and warm, continued to caress the racing pulse at her wrist.

  7

  Melissa thought in a wild panic that he was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her—she stopped breathing, bracing herself—but instead he released her hand and walked over to his sleek black motorcycle parked at the curb.

  “All right,” he said, taking a helmet out of a case behind the seat. “Will I see you in the morning?”

  Her relief wasn’t as strong as it should’ve been. “The morning?”

  “To work on the garden.”

  Her mind cleared. The garden. “Around eleven. Can you be there then to let me into the back? I have some errands to run.” Sunday morning she had reserved for worshiping at the coin-op laundry. Working in the earth was hell on the wardrobe.

  “Eleven is good. See you then.” He pulled on his helmet, hopped on the bike, and then, before she could ask him to stay or never come back, he was gone.

  To stop herself from gazing after him longingly, she marched to her own car and drove home to her sublet apartment a few blocks away. She usually walked to work, but had needed the car to get to Eduardo’s gorgeous house in Oakland.

  She waited a few hours before calling Jody to clear the air. They’d been friends in high school, part of a group of five eccentric girls in their elite southern California high school that called themselves the Fab Five.

  “It was shitty of me not to tell you I’d moved nearby,” Melissa declared at the start. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s OK,” Jody said warmly. “I obviously had a secret of my own.”

  The line fell silent.

  Melissa dunked a teabag into water she’d forgotten to heat in the microwave. “How long have y
ou been together?”

  “Two months. It just happened. He moved into the unit upstairs, one thing led to another.” Jody paused. “There’s something you need to know.”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  Jody laughed. “God, no. Not yet, anyway,” she said.

  “Whoa,” Melissa said.

  “Yeah. It’s… it’s pretty serious. But listen, about Simon… what happened back then…”

  “It’s OK.” Melissa didn’t want her old friend to think she’d been obsessing over Simon all these years, and that now she was wobbling on the edge of another bout of clinical depression and self-harm. It was embarrassment, not obsessive love, that haunted her. “Don’t worry about it. You two are cute together.” If she hadn’t been so shocked, she might’ve been happy for these friends she’d had since childhood.

  “Your parents talked to him,” Jody said. “They were trying to protect you.”

  “Why would my parents talk to him? How would they—oh, you mean then.” For a moment she’d thought Jody was telling her that her mother had tracked down Simon recently, which she could’ve believed possible of the tenacious lady who’d brought her into the world.

  The implications struck her. Back when she’d been recovering from the suicide attempt, and Simon had completely avoided her, she’d understood, feeling utterly unlovable for what she’d done. But if he’d actually stayed away from her because her parents—her mother—had asked him to…

  “I’m going to kill her,” Melissa said. “She never told me.”

  “They were afraid it might… you know…”

  “The sight of his gorgeous, unattainable bod would drive me to finish the job,” Melissa said. “How fucking embarrassing. And he’s probably believed it all these years. Now I really do want to kill myself.”

  “Melissa—”

  “Just kidding. Rest easy, Simon Brodie is not the man on my mind right now.”

  “Oh, I saw that for myself,” Jody said, her tone growing more cheerful. “Tell me about that guy. Eduardo, was it? Wow.”

  “It’s not what it looked like. He’s a client.”

  “Sure he is.”

  “Seriously,” Melissa said. “I saw you and Simon, and used him for show.”

  “I don’t think he minded.” The line went silent for a moment. “Melissa, I think you’re in deep trouble if you think he’s just a client.”

  Melissa, not ready to tell her she’d first met Eduardo at the Center, covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle the pleasure that washed over her as she remembered the feel of his strong, hard body against hers. “He’s just a client.”

  But he doesn’t have to be, a smoky, imaginary voice whispered in her ear, millimeters from her favorite erogenous zone. It’s a tiny garden. You could plant a dozen agapanthus in under an hour: mission accomplished.

  No. She was just getting her life the way she wanted it: peaceful, organized, and no drama. A job and a small apartment, low expenses, a boring date now and then—that was more than enough. Seeing her high school ex had reminded her of how badly she overreacted to sexy guys with bedroom eyes. Of a past she didn’t want to revisit.

  And Eduardo Diaz was a grown-up, fully potent version of the boy Simon had been—way, way too hot for her to handle.

  “All right,” Jody said. “Just promise you’ll keep me posted.”

  “Same for you,” Melissa said. “And for God’s sake, please tell Simon I’m fine, will you? So he’s not afraid to invite me to the wedding?”

  When Jody didn’t immediately shoot down the possibility of marriage, Melissa wished her well, amazed but happy for her, and hung up.

  It was good to clear that up. She hated to wallow in the past. Life was today.

  And not, she thought as she looked at Eduardo Diaz on her morning schedule, at eleven a.m. tomorrow.

  I’m an asshole.

  Wallowing in self-recrimination, Eduardo watched Melissa digging and hauling dirt in his backyard. There was his dream girl, likely his soul mate, with her hair pulled back fifties-style in a red-and-white polka-dot bandana, the knees of her faded jeans stained with dirt, while he sat on his ass and sipped freshly pressed coffee.

  It wasn’t like she was working in her own garden, or next door—it was his dirt she was straining to mix and rearrange, or whatever the hell she was doing.

  Why couldn’t she just dig a little hole and put in the little plants? Why did she have to bring cubic feet of more dirt? She’d pulled up in a pickup and spent the first hour hauling wheelbarrows full of the stuff through the side yard. At least for that first hour she’d had help, another guy from the nursery, but he’d driven off with the truck as soon as it was unloaded.

  Something about her had always felt right: the sound of her voice over the phone, the sight of her at the nursery, the feel of her hand in his. The memory of what they’d both shared as teenagers. Not together, but separately, a trauma that others couldn’t understand.

  But something had changed since yesterday. Seeing her ex had bothered her, and that bothered Eduardo. They’d been having fun, flirting, getting closer, but now she was remote, serious, and quiet. Back to business.

  He watched her push the wheelbarrow over the patio, saw how it wobbled, caught in the flagstones.

  He got to his feet. His parents obviously couldn’t see him from their house in Sacramento ninety miles away, but he could feel their critical gaze nonetheless. He deposited his coffee mug on the counter, strode over to the closet to put on a pair of old running shoes, and in a minute he was outside, tapping her on the shoulder.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  Her eyes were hidden under giant sunglasses with scratched amber lenses. “You don’t do anything. That’s why you hired us.”

  “I don’t see an ‘us,’” he said. “I only see a ‘you.’” And I want to go on seeing you.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’ll be finer with a little assistance.” Although she was plenty fine to him in every other way.

  She sighed. “Your khakis will get dirty.”

  Did she really think he was the kind of guy who’d care about that? What else did she think?

  Removing her sunglasses, she continued, less sure of herself now. “They look nice. Your pants.”

  He glanced down at himself. Banana Republic’s clearance rack, twenty bucks, if he remembered correctly. But he liked to think she’d been checking out his lower half. He put his hands on his hips and grinned. “Thank you.”

  Because she was already flushed from working, he couldn’t tell if any of the pink in her cheeks was thanks to him.

  “If you have to do something, you could refill my water bottle,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I can handle that. I might get my fingers wet. Spoil my manicure.”

  The sunglasses went back in place. “Fine, I’ll do it.” She turned, plucked a green plastic bottle off the patio, and marched into the house.

  All according to plan. He picked up the shovel she’d propped against the fence and commenced digging.

  “What are you doing?” she cried behind him.

  He excavated a mound of the fluffy brown stuff she’d hauled in, moving it a few feet to the right. “I’m helping.”

  To his annoyance, she laughed. “You’re just randomly moving dirt around.”

  “How is that different from what you were doing?”

  Her smile blinded him. The dimple in her left cheek was deeper than the one in her right, giving her face an adorably lopsided charm. “I was mixing the compost into the native soil,” she said, “loosening up the clay a little bit.”

  “Exactly what I was doing,” he said.

  Laughing again, she wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm and took a drink from her water bottle. When she leaned her head back, the sight of her exposed throat, glistening with sweat, made him tighten his grip on the shovel.

  Then she lowered the bottle and nodded. “All right, since you insist.”
She pointed at the dirt. “We want to dig down about two feet here and mix in the compost.”

  “That deep? Really? Doesn’t your boss have a machine for that?”

  “It’s too small to bother,” she said.

  “Then I’ll pay you to do the entire yard.”

  Still smiling, she put down her water bottle, picked up a second shovel, and began digging a few feet from him. “First things first.”

  Seeing her smile was worth the hit to his ego. Much better than the withdrawn, unhappy woman of the early morning.

  With his help, she’d forget the blond surfer. It would be his pleasure.

  If he could convince her to give him—them—a chance.

  8

  Around three o’clock, Melissa stood up and stretched her arms over her head, trying to ease the cramp in her back. She had to admit: repotting perennials was a lot easier on the soft tissues than amending clay soil for four hours. The thought of a hot, tension-releasing shower was now as appealing as her client—who, to her relief, had disappeared inside the condo a half hour earlier.

  Actually putting the plants in the ground and laying some drip irrigation tubing would be fast work compared to this; she’d only have to come back one more day.

  And then…

  In spite of herself, she’d been thinking a lot about how long this business relationship of theirs would last. Rather, how brief it would be.

  Shaking her head, she dug her knuckles into her lower back, wishing the pain would drive the lustful thoughts from her mind.

  No such luck.

  “Time for a break,” he said directly behind her.

  His rich voice melted her more effectively than an hour with a massage therapist. She turned, saw the tray in his hands, and dropped her spade.

  “Oh, my God. What is that?”

  “Just a little something I whipped up,” he said.

  Furiously wiping her hands on her jeans, she stared. A pitcher of iced tea with lemon—nice. But also thick slices of chocolate cake. The shiny kind, with layers of something creamy. “You just whipped that up?”