more of this wall than I am, so get out here and tell me how you want this pattern to go.”
Laurel shoved her bare feet into a pair of leather flip-flops by the patio door, grabbed a bottle of tea out of the fridge, then went out onto the high-railed deck, mostly in shade this time of day thanks to the thirty-foot sycamore planted smack in the center of the yard. Next summer, she could put a portacrib out here, she thought with a little smile, where the wee one could nap while she wrote....
Tyler turned, grinning and sweaty and glistening, and she actually gulped. So wrong. Because, really, how old was this guy? Twenty-five, twenty-six...?
“Looking good,” she said, then blushed. “The trench, I mean.” Since that’s all there was, at this point. Still grinning, the goofball shook his head, clearly finding amusement in her discomfiture. She held up the tea. “Thirsty?”
“That looks amazing. Yes.”
Laurel skipped down the deck’s stairs—something she probably wouldn’t be able to do for much longer—and crossed the small yard, the cool, too-long grass tickling the sides of her feet. Since she still hadn’t mowed. But the idea that she could mow her own yard...the thought still made her a little giddy.
She handed Tyler the tea, watching the muscles in his damp neck stretch as he tilted his head back, rhythmically pulse as he swallowed. Suddenly not feeling too steady on her pins, she sank onto the bench of her grandmother’s old redwood picnic table a few feet away, grateful for the cool breeze meandering through the leaf-dappled sunlight. Tyler joined her to set the half-drunk tea on the table, then reached behind them for the tablet hidden underneath his rumpled, abandoned T-shirt, and Laurel thought, Whoa. Because, although the bloodhound sense of smell had diminished somewhat after the first trimester, thank God, after a couple hours spent working in the hot sun, the man’s pheromones were singing like the chorus in a Verdi opera.
And she did love her some Italian opera, boy.
“Man, that feels good,” he said, shutting his eyes for a moment as another breeze drifted through. Opening his eyes again, he picked up the T-shirt and swiped it across his chest, and Laurel nearly passed out.
“Nice yard,” he said. “Was it like this when you moved in?”
Yard, okay. That, she could talk about. “The bones were there, but it’d been badly neglected. And of course I moved in during the Winter That Would Not End. Every time I thought I’d get out and start puttering, it’d snow—”
Or she’d feel like the walking dead, tossing her cookies every morning.
“—but now that Mother Nature’s finally stopped with the schitzo routine, I’ve been working on it, little by little, to make it my own. Well, to make it look more like my grandmother’s yard, which I loved. Hers was bigger, though. Much bigger. This is just right, though. For me.”
“Your grandmother’s something else, isn’t she?”
“That’s one way of putting it.” She grinned. “You better watch out—she likes you.”
“I know, older women can’t keep their hands off me,” he said, grinning back. “It’s a curse.”
“I’ll bet,” Laurel said, inwardly sighing as Tyler handed her the tablet and she got another whiff of hot, damp male. One who did not—thank you, Jesus—douse himself in man-stink cologne.
“I was playing around with some design ideas last night, this is what I came up with. But nothing’s set in stone,” he said, then groaned at his own lame joke.
She chuckled then forced her attention to the designs on the screen. “I think...this,” she said, pointing to the top one, all one color except for two rows near the top, where the dark and light blocks alternated, checkerboard style.
“Yeah? Me, too. And you know what else would be really cool, right over there?” Leaning his elbows on the table, Tyler nodded toward the middle of the wall. “A fountain. Like you’d see in an Italian garden. Or English, maybe.” He grinned at her, his mouth adorably lopsided, his hair adorably messy. She could say the feelings surging inside her were more of a maternal nature, but she’d be lying. “You know, where the water’s coming out of the lion’s mouth or something?”
“And where would I get one of those?”
“Actually there’s one at the shop—”
“Of course there is.”
“No, hear me out. It was part of a huge haul from a property over in Weehawken, from like a year ago. If you like it, I’ll let you have it for really cheap.” He winked, and she laughed—because the flirting, it was absurd, really— before, with another smile, he reclaimed the tablet. “Here, let me show you...” He scrolled through his photos, then turned the screen back around.
“Oh, my. That’s quite lovely, isn’t it?”
“I know, right? And it would look perfect there, with some rosebushes and sh—stuff planted around it. You can’t really tell much from the picture, though, you should really see it in person. If you’re interested, I mean.”
“Well...I suppose that depends on the price?”
“Like I said, it was part of a huge haul, we’re already in the black with it. So...twenty bucks?”
“You can’t be serious?”
“Too high? Fifteen?”
“No! Tyler! For heaven’s sake...you can’t tell me you’d normally price something like that so low. Why on earth would you basically give it to me?”
He got quiet, then said, “It’s a really cool piece, for sure—at least, I think so—but to be honest, it looks like it’s a hundred-plus years old. Part of the lion’s nose is missing, and it’s got a lot of dings and cracks. It works fine, but it’s not...perfect.”
“But isn’t that what gives it character?”
“You would think so, yeah. And it’s not like we haven’t sold stuff in worse shape. Far worse shape. I don’t know why this guy hasn’t moved. Unless...” He looked at her from underneath his shaggy hair. “Unless he was waiting for his right home.”
“And you think my wall is it?”
“Could be,” he said with a shrug—and another wink—before getting up again, grabbing the tea to finish it off. Laurel sighed.
“What?” he said, twisting the cap back on.
“Are you even aware you’re flirting with me?”
He actually blushed. “Sorry, I... No. I mean, that’s just me.” Which was exactly what she’d thought. “Didn’t mean to offend you or anything—”
“Oh, I’m not offended at all. Amused, perhaps. And I was going to say flattered.” She sighed. “Until you made it clear it’s not personal.”
“It’s not. I mean...please don’t take this the wrong way, but—”
Yes, that was the story of her life, wasn’t it? And again, exactly as she’d figured.
