resisted the impulse to look that way. He hated the bitter, edgy feeling in his gut from just thinking about looking up there. It made him want to jump in his car—any car—and put pedal to metal. To keep on driving until Plenty was nothing but a hell of a bad memory.
But he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. Not in her car, anyway.
Although, juggling her keys from hand to hand, he still considered leaving. Suddenly his reason for being there seemed more like an excuse, and a transparent one at that. He should have left a message on her answering machine telling her to collect the car on her way to work. She walked by the garage at eight forty-five every morning, her body swaying enticingly beneath the black skirt and white blouse that were the staff uniform of the town’s only department store. He tried not to notice the swaying, but he was only human.
Hell, he didn’t even have to leave a message. Tomorrow he could call out to her, “Hey, Julia. Your car’s ready.”
Except he was here now, and so was she. Zane had seen her go by on her way home, and something about the way she held her head or swung her hips or, shoot, didn’t even glance in his direction, had him deciding to return her car. Personally.
Plus, he needed to reassure himself about a couple of things. Such as the way he must have misread that curling caress of her fingers and the message in her eyes when she’d said she wanted to buy him that drink. Such as the way nothing about the impression she had left on his hormones matched his memory of Julia Goodwin, the all-’round good girl who used to cross the street to avoid him. Such as the fact that she already had Volvo Man ready and no doubt willing to take her up on the drinks offer.
Yeah, all he needed was a quick dose of reassurance and he would be on his way. No sweat.
He pocketed the keys, opened the tiny front gate and was ducking under a naturally sculpted archway of climbing roses when a dog appeared…although it took him an instant to recognize it as a dog. The animal appeared as an unidentified black-and-white streak careering through a mass of flowers to his right; then it came into focus as a border collie just before it launched into a frenzied welcome of circling, barking, leaping and grinning.
Zane couldn’t help grinning back, even as he tried to temper the dog’s exuberance. Then a tingly sense of awareness skittered down his right side and he knew she was there, watching him. Slowly he straightened, turned and immediately found her. Standing in that wild riot of garden, her light sundress lifting with a subtle shift of the breeze, she looked like some ethereal beauty born of the flowers themselves.
For a long second he squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, she’d moved, walking around the flower bed onto a path that traced a circuitous route to the front gate. As she walked toward him, Zane filled his empty lungs with fragrant air and told himself he’d been hallucinating.
Julia Goodwin was no otherworldly beauty. He smiled as the strange tightness in his chest eased. It was relief, he decided, nothing more. Relief because this Julia Goodwin looked exactly as she should. She bore no resemblance to Friday’s siren in black silk.
Good Girl Julia stopped in front of him, her smile tentative, her eyes not quite meeting his. If there’d been a street to cross, she would likely have crossed it. “I’m sorry about McCoy’s welcome. He gets a bit excited around men.”
“Around men, huh?” Amusement quirked the corners of Zane’s mouth. “Should we go there?”
For a second she looked puzzled; then the implication of her innocent remark took hold. “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. McCoy actually belongs to my brother, and every time a man comes through that gate, he goes crazy hoping it’s Mitch.”
Her brother’s dog—that made sense.
He’d been thinking how McCoy didn’t fit the picture. Women who wore filmy dresses and whose skin looked as soft as the velvety roses overhead had lap dogs called Muffy. Or cats. Not rowdy bundles of energy such as McCoy here.
He stroked a hand over the dog’s silky head. “You have a lot of men coming through your gate?”
“Visiting Kree,” she replied instantly, then looked stricken. “Not in that way, not since she’s been going out with Tagg. It’s just she’s so popular with guys. Ugh!” She clamped a hand over her mouth and then slowly removed it. “Do you suppose I can get my foot any further in here?”
“You could try it without the sneaker.”
“Mmm, barefoot would be easier.” She laughed and shook her head, and Zane remembered the laughter and the bare feet and the heat from Friday night. Then, still laughing, she looked right into his eyes, and he only remembered the heat.
Instant, blazing, intense.
About a millisecond before he went up in smoke, she blinked and looked away. Then she stooped to pet the dog and started talking—started and didn’t stop talking—about needing to keep the dog chained during the day because he’d found a spot in the fence he could jump over, about how much exercise he needed after such confinement and how she’d been about to take him down by the river.
“Some days I let him run free, other days we just walk.” Her monologue concluded as she straightened and smoothed an imaginary crease from her dress, and Zane noticed the leash attached to the dog’s collar.
With a twinge of irritation he also noticed how she avoided looking at him, even though he was blocking the exit she obviously intended taking. He planted his feet a little wider on the path and folded his arms across his chest.
Frowning, she checked her watch. “Kree’s not home yet. Thursday is her late night.”
“I know. I had lunch with her today.” And every day since Monday, plus a couple of dinners. Seeing as he’d been meeting her at her shop, he pretty much had Kree’s routine down pat.
“Oh. You’re welcome to wait for her inside.”
“You trust me in your house while you’re gone?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Her gaze—warm, hazel and a little perplexed—came to rest on his. “You’re Kree’s brother.”
Trust by association. Of course. Why had he thought it might be something personal? She didn’t know him. She couldn’t even hold his gaze for more than a second. And the way she kept shifting her weight from one sneaker to the other—hell, she looked as if she would be more comfortable in a snake pit.
He should tell her he wasn’t here for Kree. He should hand over the keys, leave, go. Hadn’t he found what he’d come here to find? The real Julia? The naive good girl?
Funny, but he didn’t feel reassured…or much like leaving. Call him perverse, but if she needed to go walk her dog, if she wanted him to step aside and let her by, then she could tell him straight-out instead of pussyfooting around.
Settling one hip against the gatepost, he looked around as if studying his surroundings for the first time. “You’ve done a great job here.”
She thanked him, politely but reservedly, as if she thought his words were empty rhetoric.
That only ticked him off more, and he found himself adding, “Yeah, I like it. But if old man Plummer were still alive, he’d come after you with his shotgun.”
Her
