certainly are,” she said, as a toe-curling chuckle behind her sent the breath she’d barely pulled back into her lungs whooshing out all over again. Especially when the man—tallish, nicely shouldered, his face partially obscured by one of those silly hats with flaps covering his cheeks—scooped up his daughter and pretended to munch on her shoulder, making Lili giggle and sending April into a free fall.
Shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot.
Automatically her left thumb went to her wedding rings, twisting them around until the diamonds dug into her skin, the sensation oddly soothing. Steadying. Yes, she should take them off already. But they made her feel … safe. Like the sweetest, most generous man she’d ever known was still watching over her, standing in the wings and cheering her on.
“Miss Ross,” Sam said after the man untwined his little girl’s hands from around his neck and set her down to go check out the pumpkins, “This here’s Patrick Shaughnessy. And this young lady,” he said with a wink in April’s direction, “needs you bad.”
So much for being cold. Heat swept across her face as she gaped at Sam, who—clearly enjoying her discomfiture—chuckled. “The Shaughnessys run one of the best landscaping outfits in the county.”
“County, hell,” Patrick said, turning just enough for April to see his eyes, a bluer blue than hers, like lasers in a face still mostly hidden in the cap’s shadows. Eyes that dimmed inexplicably when they met hers. “On the whole Eastern Shore.” After a moment’s hesitation, he offered his gloved hand, giving hers a quick shake before slugging it back into his jacket pocket. Canvas, no frills. Not exactly clean. His gaze shifted, presumably to keep an eye on his little girl, who meandered along the rows of pumpkins, like a finicky customer in a used-car lot, her face scrunched in concentration. “So I take it you need some work done?”
Deep breath. “I’d thought I could, you know, just buy some trees and things, hire someone to plant them. Until I got here and remembered I can’t even grow a Chia Pet.”
She thought his mouth might’ve twitched. “So how big’s the lot?”
“Three acres or thereabouts.” Another nippy breeze speared through the heater’s warmth, making April wrap the sweater more tightly around her. She’d never been here in the fall, had no idea how brutal the damp cold could be. “I’m turning my grandmother’s waterfront house back into an inn, so it needs to look halfway decent.”
Another twitch preceded, “The Rinehart place?”
“Yes. How do—”
“Small town.”
It was beginning to bug her that he kept his gaze averted. Especially since, as Sam had wandered out to help Lili select her pumpkin, the child was obviously okay. Patrick straightened, his arms crossed. “Got a budget?”
“Not really.”
His eyes met hers and she felt like she’d been burned. All the way to her girly bits. So inappropriate, on so many levels—
“A couple hundred bucks?” he said, once more focused on his daughter. “A couple thousand …?”
“Oh. I see. Sorry, I honestly don’t know. Even though … money won’t be a problem.”
The shock still hadn’t completely faded, how well-off Clayton had left her. She’d had to have the lawyer reread the will three times, just to be sure she’d heard correctly. Clay’s accompanying letter, however, she’d read herself.
“Yes, it’s all yours, to do with however you like. As you can see, I kept my promise, too.…”
“And yet,” Patrick said, “you were thinking of handling the project yourself?”
She laughed. “I think it’s pretty clear I wasn’t thinking at all. So anyway—I’m almost always around, so … maybe sometime in the next week you could come out, take a look?”
“I’ll have to check my schedule. But sure.”
“Great. Here.” April set her sunglasses and gloves on the counter to dig inside her purse for a business card, handing it to Patrick. He studied the card as though memorizing it, then pulled his own from his pocket.
“And here’s ours—”
“Daddy! I found one!”
“Be right there, baby,” he said, and April saw the tension slough from his posture … only to immediately reappear when his eyes once more glanced off hers before, with a curt nod, he walked away.
Odd duck, April thought, hiking up her shoulder bag as she tramped back out to her Lexus, a car that only five years ago she couldn’t have dreamed would be hers. She’d no sooner slid behind the solid walnut wheel, however, when she realized she’d left her sunglasses on the count er. This was why, despite her much improved financial circumstances, she never paid more than ten bucks for a pair. Because she left them everywhere.
Shaking her head at herself, she trudged back to the nursery, plucking them—and her gloves, sheesh—off the counter as she heard Lili’s musical, and irresistible, giggle again. Curiosity nudged her closer to the pumpkin display, where Patrick teased his daughter by pointing back and forth between two of the biggest pumpkins, saying, “This one. No, this one. No, this one. On second thought … I think it has to be this one.…”
Fortunately, his back was to her so she could watch unobserved, finding some solace in the sweet exchange, even though it scraped her heart. He’d ditched that silly hat, so she could see his dark, barely there hair, almost a military cut—
He abruptly turned, his smile evaporating when he saw her, his gaze crystalizing into a challenge …
… in the midst of the puckered, discolored skin distorting the entire right side of his face.
And God help her, she gasped.
Mortified, she stumbled out of the nursery and across the graveled parking lot to lean against her car, trying to quell the nausea. Not because of his appearance, but because …
Oh, dear Lord—what had she done?
Expelling a harsh breath, April slowly turned around, her eyes stinging from the ruthless wind, her own tears, as several options presented themselves for consideration, the front-runner being to get in the car and drive to, say, Uruguay. Except … she couldn’t. And only partly because she didn’t have her passport with her. So she sucked in a deep breath, hitched her purse up again and started her wobbly-kneed trek back toward the nursery. Because those who didn’t own their screwups were doomed to repeat them. Or something.
Sam chuckled when she walked into the office. “Now what’d you forget?”
“My good sense, apparently,” April muttered, then craned her neck to see into the pumpkin patch. “Patrick still here?”
“Just left,” Sam said, adding, when she frowned at him, “He was parked out back.” At her deflated grunt, he said, “Need anything else?”
The name of another landscaper?
But since that would have required far more explanation than she was
