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
