pointed steel bit into the soft soil with a satisfying crunch. By the third thonk, two little pairs of sneakered feet suddenly appeared on the lower rail, followed by two little faces hanging over the top. Two little eat-’em-up faces that she bet looked exactly like father’s when he’d been that age.
“Whatcha doing?” the shorter-haired twin, clearly the appointed spokesperson of the duo, now said. The babies reminded her of leaves fluttering in the breeze, never completely still.
“I’m gettin’ the soil ready so I can plant a garden.”
“Whatcha gonna plant?”
“Tomatoes,” she said, breathing a little hard as she jabbed the shovel into the soil. Most people would use a rototiller and be done with the chore in no time flat, but Karleen liked doing it the old-fashioned way. “Cucumbers. Squash. Maybe cantaloupe.” For some reason, she couldn’t grow flowers to save her soul, but vegetables, she could handle.
“C’n we help?”
“Yeah,” the second, smaller one said, his voice like a butterfly’s kiss. “C’n we?”
“Oh, I’m not planting anything today,” she said, secure in the knowledge that by the time she did, they would have in all likelihood forgotten this conversation. “It still gets too cold at night. So not for weeks yet.”
“Oh,” the first one said again. “But when you do, c’n we help?”
Then again, maybe she’d have to plant by moonlight this year.
Then the littler one said, his eyes like jumbo blue marbles in a face that was all delicate angles, “Yeah, we never, ever had a garden before.”
Oh, Lord.
“Tell you what,” she said, straightening up and shoving her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist, which was when she noticed Troy, his damp T-shirt molded to his torso, standing on his deck, watching her as intently as a cat stalking a bird. “When it’s time, you can ask your father, and we’ll see,” which of course sent both boys streaking away shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! C’n we help Karleen plant her garden?”
Troy swung the first child to reach him up into his arms, making the little boy break into uncontrollable giggles as he blew a big, slurpy kiss into his neck. Chuckling, he squeezed a few more giggles out of the kid before setting him down to scoop up his brother and repeat the process. “You two are going to be the death of me yet,” he said, the top notes of amusement and exasperation in his voice in perfect harmony with the deep, almost unbearably tender melody line of unconditional love.
The ache that bloomed inside her was so sweet it clogged her throat, even as, from thirty feet away, she caught the apology in his eyes. “It’s okay,” she pushed out, but he shook his head. He said something to the boys, who scampered off to the other side of the yard, before he stepped inside his house. A second later he reappeared and headed her way, a bottle clenched in each fist.
Karleen jerked her head back down and plunged the shovel into the soil again like she was inches away from striking oil.
Chapter Three
Troy’d been watching Karleen off and on for ten minutes or so, going after that poor plot of dirt as though it had offended her deeply. Especially after the boys had accosted her. Not that he could hear the conversation over that god-awful country caterwauling. But after more than a decade of dealing with bank managers, suppliers, advertising agencies and potential investors, he was no slouch at deciphering body language.
A dialect in which his new neighbor was particularly fluent.
The cold, wet bottles soothed his heated palms as he crossed the fifty feet or so. A good thing, since the closer he got, the more agitated her digging became. Well, tough. She still wasn’t his type, but he wasn’t the bogeyman, either. And it bugged him no end that she seemed to think he was. So, okay, maybe he wasn’t exactly racking up the bonus points by invading her space, but considering she’d come out of her house looking ready to bite somebody’s head off, he sincerely doubted he was more than a fly on an already festering wound.
The brim of her hat quivering, she glanced up at his approach. And sure enough, worry peeked out from behind the aggravation simmering in her expression, and he thought, See? Told ya, followed by the inevitable pang of empathy whenever confronted by someone in trouble. Amy used to tease him unmercifully about it, about his always getting far more personally involved in other people’s messes than he should. Some things, he thought as he held out one of the bottles, can’t be helped.
“It’s hotter than it looks. You’ll get dehydrated.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” she said, stabbing the dirt again. Her jeans sat intriguingly low on her hips, allowing an occasional glimpse of that sparkly belly-button stud, companioned by one of those stretchy tops that were basically just big, blah bras. Although on her, not so blah. In fact, the way the sun licked at the moisture sheening her skin…
Nope. Not blah at all.
“It’s a bottle of water, Karleen. Not my fraternity pin.”
Panting slightly, she shifted her gaze toward him again; fireflies of sunlight danced over her face through the straw brim. He wiggled the bottle. She reached over and snatched it out of his hand. “Fine,” she said, twisting off the top and taking a swallow. “Now will you go away?”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
Surprise flickered across her features, followed by a head shake. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Bull.”
Now her brows lifted, as well as one corner of her mouth. “You don’t know me from Eve. Why would you care?”
“Consider it a character flaw.”
She met his gaze with a startling intensity that jolted his sex drive awake like a fire alarm. Underneath her T-shirt, her sigh took her breasts for a little ride.
“It’s not you,” she said after a moment, breaking the spell before his tongue started dragging in the dirt. Jeez. “I got a phone call that rattled me, is all.” She shrugged, then set the bottle down by the fence before she went back to work. “Family stuff, nothin’ too serious, and not to put too fine a point on it—” she attacked a particularly obtuse dirt clod “—but it’s none of your business.”
The haze nicely cleared now, Troy took a sip of his own water, then propped the bottle on the top rung of the fence. “Okay, so I didn’t come over here soley to make sure you wouldn’t die of thirst.”
A tiny smile made a brief appearance. “No?”
“No. You were right the other night, when you made that comment about it having been a long time for me. I haven’t even gone out with another woman since my wife died.”
The dirt clod exploded like a supernova; her gaze touched his. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope.”
She stilled, clearly on the alert. “And what does this have to do with me?”
“Well…Blake—the guy who helped
