toward her mailbox, blinking at the dozen or so jewel-toned pinwheels bordering her walk, happily spinning in the breeze. Halfway down, however, she realized that all movement had ceased next door. While she had to admit she felt a little spurt of pride that, at thirty-seven, she still had what it took to render men immobile, there was also a ping of annoyance that she couldn’t go to her damn mailbox without being gawked at. However, if she didn’t say anything, she would be forever branded as The Stuck-Up Bitch Who Lived Next Door.
And that would just be wrong.
So she fished her mail out of the box and the box out of the weeds, then wound her way over to the fence through her ever-growing collection of lawn ornamentation.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “I’m Karleen. You guys my new neighbors?”
She might even have pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for the eyes.
Bimbo.
The word smacked Troy between the eyes like a kamikaze bee. Followed in quick succession by blonde, stacked and oh, crap.
It wasn’t just the eighties retro hair. Or the Vegas makeup. Or even that she was dressed provocatively, because she wasn’t. Exactly. The stretchy pants rode low and the top rode high (and the belly button sparkled like the North Star), but the essentials were more than adequately covered. No cleavage, even. A delicate gold chain hugged her ankle, but that was pretty much it. She was just one of those women that fabric liked to snuggle up to.
Men, too, no doubt.
Beside him, Blake cleared his throat. Troy came to and extended his hand; Karleen shifted everything to one arm to reciprocate, an assortment of fake gemstone rings flashing in the sunlight. Jeez, those fingernails could gut and fillet a fish in five seconds flat, a thought that got a bit tangled up with the one where Troy realized that her breasts seemed a little…still.
“And I’m Troy. Lindquist.” Her handshake was firm and brief and he suddenly got the feeling that she wished this was happening even less than he did, which irked him for some reason he couldn’t begin to explain.
“You’re kidding?” She hugged her mail with both arms again, her deep blue eyes snaring him like Chinese finger traps. “My maiden name’s Almquist.”
“Swedish,” they both said at once, and everybody else looked at them as though they’d totally lost it, while Troy noticed that Karleen’s mouth said friendly and her eyes said pay no attention to the mouth.
“Anyway,” Troy said. “These are my boys Grady and Scott, and this is Blake Carter, my business partner, and his son Shaun.”
She said all her hello-nice-to-meet-yous, very polite, very careful…and then she turned that glistening smile on the boys, and Definite Interest roared onto the scene, huffing and puffing. Because people tended to have one of two reactions when confronted with his sons: They either went all squealy and stupid, or got a look on their faces like they’d stumbled across a pair of rattlesnakes. Karleen did neither. Instead, Karleen’s expression said, Anything you can dish out, I can take and give back ten times over, which Troy found disturbingly attractive and scary as hell at the same time.
“Hey, guys,” she said in a perfectly normal voice, with a perfectly normal smile, which was when he realized she was around his age and that she hadn’t had any work done that he could tell. Not on her face, at least. “Let me guess—y’all are twins, right?”
Scotty, slightly smaller than his brother, stuck close to Troy’s leg while the more outgoing Grady clung like a curious little monkey to the post-and-rail fence separating the yards. Still, clearly awestruck—and dumbstruck—they both nodded so hard Troy was surprised their heads didn’t fall off. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Blake elbowing Shaun. “Breathe,” he said, and the sixteen-year-old turned the color of cranberry juice.
“How old are you guys?” Karleen asked, not looking at Shaun.
“Four!” they chorused. Then Grady leaned closer and asked, “You got any kids?”
Karleen shook her head, tugging a straw-colored hair out of her lipstick. “No, sugar, I sure don’t.”
“Then how come you gots all that stuff?” Grady said, jabbing one finger toward her yard. Which looked like an annex for Wal-Mart’s lawn-and-garden department. And no, he did not mean that in a good way. Surely all those whirligigs and stone raccoons and such hadn’t been there before? Was that a gnome over in the far corner?
“’Cause it’s fun,” Karleen said with a shrug. “I like sparkly stuff, don’t you?”
More nodding. Then Scotty piped up. “You got a pool, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Disconcertingly cute, that. “But I haven’t used it in years.”
“How come?”
“Okay,” Troy said, slipping a warning hand on the boy’s shoulders. “Too many questions, bud.”
“It’s all right,” Karleen said, meeting his gaze, apparently forgetting to switch from kid-smile to I’m-only-doing-this-because-that’s-how-I-was-raised smile, and his lungs stopped working, painfully reminding him how long it had been since he’d done the hokeypokey with anyone. Then, thankfully, she returned her attention to the child. “It just got to be too much of a bother, that’s all.”
“Oh. Daddy said we couldn’t have a pool ’cause we’re too little an’he didn’t wanna hafta to worry ’bout us. But if we learned to swim, then he wouldn’t hafta worry ’bout us.”
“Yeah,” Grady put in with another enthusiastic head nod, after which, as one, both blond heads swiveled to Troy with the attendant you-have-ruined-my-life-forever glare. But then Troy pulled his head out of his butt long enough to realize that that was the most Scotty had ever said to anyone, ever, at one time.
Karleen laughed. A low, from-the-gut laugh. Not a ditzy, tinkly, bimbo laugh. Definitely not a laugh Troy needed to hear right now, not with this many neglected hormones standing at the ready to do what hormones do. He glanced over to see Blake looking at him with a funny, irritating smirk, and he shot back a What? look. Chuckling, Blake poked Shaun—twice, this time—to help him unload the leather sofa for the family room, as Karleen said, “Your mama must sure have her hands full with you two,” and Troy thought, Oh, hell.
“We don’t got a mama, either,” Scotty said, but with less regret than about the pool. “She died.”
Karleen’s eyes shot to Troy’s, even as her cheeks pinked way beyond the makeup. “I am so sorry—”
“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “They’ve never known her.”
“But you did,” she said, then seemed to catch herself, the flush deepening.
“Hey, Troy,” Blake called from the house. “You wanna come check out the sofa, make sure it’s exactly where you want it?”
“Yeah, sure, be right there.” He turned again to Karleen, who was already edging back toward her house. “Really, it’s okay,” he felt compelled to say, and she nodded, said, “Well. It was nice to meet you, welcome to the neighborhood,” and hotfooted it back across her yard.
“I
