living in an apartment the size of a shoe box and storing my clothes in the oven. You know how it is in New York.” Embarrassed, she stooped to stroke the cat and Claws shot under the table for protection. “Oops. Moved too fast. She’s nervous.”
He turned. “She’s getting better. A few months ago she wouldn’t have paid you a visit.” He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and Claws immediately crept out and jumped onto his lap. “Thanks for feeding her.”
“You’re welcome.” Frankie watched as Claws gave a slow stretch. The cat lost her balance and shot out her claws, but Matt curved his hand over her back, holding her securely against the hard muscle on his thigh.
Frankie stared at that hand and the slow, reassuring stroke of his fingers and felt herself grow hot.
“Something wrong?”
“Excuse me?” Frankie dragged her eyes from the mesmerizing movement of his fingers and met his amused gaze.
“You’re staring at my cat.”
Cat? Cat. “I—” she’d stopped staring at the cat a long time ago. “She’s still skinny.”
“The vet said it will take a while for her to regain all the weight she lost when she was shut in that room.” There was a grim set to his mouth that reminded her that there were limits even to Matt’s patience. And then he smiled. “Have I seen that T-shirt before? The color suits you.”
“What?” Unbalanced by both the smile and the comment, she stared at him.
She didn’t think Matt would ever mock her, which could only mean—
“Do you want something?” She looked him in the eye. “Because you can just ask straight out. You don’t have to do the whole ‘you look nice in that T-shirt’ thing to soften me up. Thanks to you I live in the best apartment in Brooklyn, and on top of that I’ve known you forever so you can pretty much ask anything and I’ll say yes.”
“Another owner’s privilege?” He gently lifted the cat and set her down on the floor. “You probably shouldn’t have told me that. I might choose to invoke that clause in our agreement.”
Was he flirting with her?
Confusion jammed her thought processes.
She always knew where she was with Matt but suddenly she was in unfamiliar territory.
Of course he wasn’t flirting. They never flirted. She didn’t know how to flirt. Her expertise, honed over a decade, was in putting men off, not in encouraging them.
And anyway, Matt would never be interested in her. She wasn’t sophisticated enough or experienced enough.
She needed to say something light and funny to restore the atmosphere, but her mind was blank.
Matt watched her steadily. “I paid you a compliment, Frankie. You don’t have to strip it down and check it for bugs or incendiary devices. You just say thank you and move on.”
A compliment?
But why? He never paid her compliments. “This T-shirt is five years old. It’s not that special.”
“I didn’t say I liked your T-shirt. I said I liked the way you look in it. I was complimenting you, not what you were wearing specifically. Did you mention wine?” Smoothly he changed the subject and she turned to pick up the bottle, frustrated with herself.
Why did she have to turn it into such a big deal? Was it really so hard to flirt?
Eva would have had the perfect response ready. So would Paige.
She was the only one who had no idea what to say or do. She needed to get a “how to” book. How to flirt. How not to make a fool of yourself around a man.
“Montepulciano. Unless you’d rather a beer?”
“Beer sounds good.”
She stooped and pulled one out of the fridge, forcing herself to relax. She was going to type “how to flirt” into a search engine later. She was going to practice a few responses so this never happened again. If a guy paid her a compliment, she should at least know how to respond instead of treating every comment as if it were an incoming computer virus. “How was your day?”
“I’ve had better.” He snapped the top off the beer. “Too much work, not enough time. Remember that piece of business I won a few months ago?”
“You’ve won loads of business, Matt.”
“Roof terrace on the Upper East Side.”
“Oh yes, I remember.” This conversation was better. Safe. “It was a real coup. Is there a problem with planning?”
“Not planning. That’s all good. What isn’t good is the fact that Victoria left yesterday.”
Frankie had trained with Victoria at the Botanic Gardens and she’d been the one to recommend her to Matt. “Doesn’t she have to give you notice?”
“Technically yes, but her mother’s sick so I told her to forget it and just get herself home.”
That was typical of Matt. He was a man who appreciated the importance of family. His was a tight-knit unit, not a fractured mess like hers. “She’s not likely to be back soon?”
“No. She’s moving back to Connecticut so she can be closer.”
“Which leaves you without a horticulturist when you’re in the middle of a big project.” Roof terraces were Matt’s specialty, and his projects ranged from residential homes to large commercial properties. “What about the rest of your team?”
“James’s expertise is hard landscaping, and Roxy is keen and hardworking but has no formal training. Victoria had started to teach her the basics but she doesn’t have the skills to put together a design.” He set the bottle down on the table. “I’m going to have to recruit, and hope I get lucky. Fast.” He drank and Frankie eyed the strong column of his throat and the dark, grainy shadow of his jaw. He was strikingly handsome, his body hard and strong. He spent half his working day with his sleeves rolled up covered in dirt, but even dressed casually his innate sense of style shone through. It was that restrained eye for design that had built his business.
If she had been interested in men, he would have been a prime candidate.
But she wasn’t interested. Definitely not.
People told you to play to your strengths, didn’t they? And she was very, very bad at relationships.
Matt put the beer down and for a brief moment his gaze met hers. He gave her a look laden with intimacy and it made her heart pump a little faster and her breathing quicken.
Crap, her mind was playing tricks.
She had an overactive imagination courtesy of an underactive sex life.
She looked away. “I know a lot of people. I’ll make some calls. Roof terraces need special skills. It’s not just about planting pretty flowers.
