treasured his privacy.”
“Privacy!” She made an indignant huffing sound. “I needed a chainsaw and a blowtorch to get through the wretched thing.”
“That hedge was something else.”
“Old man Plummer was something else.” But she couldn’t help the small fond smile that came with memories of the irascible recluse. “And he was a lousy gardener. About the only thing I kept was the cedar tree out back.”
“In the northern corner?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I hung a tire swing from it one summer.” He grinned, remembering. “That’s one great tree.”
Julia shook her head. A funny mix of surprise and wonder and delight bubbled around inside her. Not to mention the effect of that grin. Mama mia. She shook her head again. “I won’t ask how you got past the hedge and the shotgun.”
“You don’t want to know.” Their gazes met, held. Heat, yes, but this time it was the solid companionable warmth of a shared memory, and she didn’t need to look away, to escape. This time she smiled and said, “You want to come take a look at your tree?”
He looked surprised; then the corners of his mouth curled into that killer grin. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Julia turned away quickly. The way her heart started hammering away in her chest every time he grinned might just be noticeable to a man with such an intensely sharp gaze. That grin was one the first things she’d noticed when she’d come upon him in her garden.
One of the first, right after the immediate impact of his presence.
Today the T-shirt was black, the jeans faded by work and wash, and as he’d stooped to pat McCoy, both had molded the hard contours of his body in a way that screamed m-a-n. All that potent masculinity was thrown into perfect counterbalance by the gentle frame of her pastel-pink David Austen roses…the ones she’d planted to replace old man Plummer’s infamous hedge.
“I didn’t know you were so familiar with this place,” she said over her shoulder.
“We lived around the block, on Docker Street.”
“I remember.”
“Yeah?”
“Kree lived there, too.”
“I don’t recall you visiting.” They came to a halt on the open stretch of lawn behind the house, but she knew Zane wasn’t looking at the tree. As she bent to free Mac, she felt the full force of his gaze on her.
“I wonder why that is?” he asked.
“Why do you think?”
“Scared of big brother?”
Lifting her chin, she met the intense stillness of his gaze. “Terrified. But that’s not the reason. Kree didn’t ever invite me.”
A touch of bitterness sharpened his silver-grey gaze and hardened the line of his mouth. His tension seemed to reach out and enfold her, blotting the late evening sounds until all she could hear was the heavy pounding of her heart. She felt sure he would say something, something to challenge why she’d never visited her friend, something that included the word slumming.
But whatever burned so harshly in his eyes remained unsaid. He turned and walked away, stopping in front of the tree, hands on hips, to inspect the tire she had slung from the lowest branch.
Moving closer, he reached up and took a firm grip of the rope, as if to test its strength. The action called Julia’s gaze to the width of his shoulders, to the richly tanned curve of his biceps, and she was back in that moment when she’d first seen him in her garden. Giddy, dry-mouthed, determined not to keep staring in case she hyperventilated.
Needing a distraction—badly—she threw a stick for Mac and watched him execute a spectacular catch. She sensed Zane’s soft-footed approach, felt it in the heightened sensitivity of her skin. She rubbed her hands along her arms, but the tingling remained.
“How long is he staying?”
“Indefinitely.” She tossed the stick again. “Mitch used to have a house with a yard and plenty of space, but when he got married, they moved into an apartment and he couldn’t keep Mac.”
“Isn’t that meant to work the opposite way? Apartment first, house and yard second?”
“Oh, there’s nothing usual about Mitch’s marriage,” Julia said without thinking. Chastened, she bit her lip. “That didn’t come out right. They both travel an awful lot, so it wasn’t practical to have a pet or a garden that would need care.”
He didn’t comment, but he looked around, taking in the rest of her yard—Mac’s kennel, her well-tended herb and vegetable plot, the swing and sandpit over by the fence. She sensed a strange tension in him as he took it all in, as he turned to look at her. “Kree told me you’d been married. She didn’t mention kids.”
Kids? It took a second for his meaning to gel. The swing, the sandpit, the discarded toy dump truck. “Oh, no, I don’t have children. These are for Joshua, for when he stays.”
“Joshua?”
“Mitch and Annabel’s son.”
“They farm him out, too?”
He might not have been passing judgement—neither his casual tone nor his closed expression gave anything away—yet Julia’s protective instincts shot to full alert. “It’s only occasionally that they’re both away at the same time, and I don’t mind having him.”
In fact, she loved having Joshua stay, loved indulging him with the simple things he missed out on, such as homemade swings and sandpits, and playing with a dog. Staying here was good for him. It wasn’t farming out.
Feeling unduly aggrieved, she put her whole shoulder behind the next throw, then watched Mac disappear around the side of the house in frantic pursuit.
“Where is he getting out? Your fences look good.”
“Around the front. It’s simply not high enough.”
With one of those noncommittal grunts peculiar to men, he ambled over to the side fence, studied it this way and that, then started pacing the distance between fence and house.
“It’s three point six meters each side,” she said, way too snappily. “And I know that by fencing it off I can enclose the backyard to keep him in. I’m saving to do it.”
“What about the dog’s owner? Shouldn’t he be the one saving?”
“I don’t think that’s any concern of yours.”
“You’re right.” He gave her a hard, sidelong look. “And it shouldn’t be any concern of yours, either.”
“It’s my fence and my house, so that makes it my concern.”
End of debate.
