droned through the forest and the compressor grunted to life.
“Isaac, love.” She inhaled thick, syrupy air and imagined the humidity clinging to her like an exhausted two-year-old. “Time to do something cool and quiet indoors.”
“Awww, Mommmmm.” Isaac’s basketball fell to the concrete with a gentle boing, and James trapped it with his foot. Isaac glanced up, unsure.
James cocked his head to the right. “Tar Heel or Duke fan?”
“Tar Heel, of course,” Isaac said.
“Good man.” James winked.
Isaac beamed and then skittered into the garage to put away the basketball before bounding up the front steps two at a time.
Okay, so James Nealy had been nice to her son. That bought him five minutes.
James straightened up and towered over her. Well, most people did when you were five foot two, except for David. David had been the ideal height.
She swiped her palm down her cutoffs and extended her hand. “I’m Tilly, by the way. Tilly Silverberg.”
James twitched, the slightest of tics, and his hand darted forward, touched hers and darted back. David always shook hands with a firm, double-handed grasp, drawing you into his space. But James’s palm was cool, his loose handshake more of a dismissal than a greeting. His face remained impassive while his fingers flexed as if he had a cramp.
“Your assistant mentioned $25,000. I’m willing to double that.”
Sari had discussed a figure with him? Wait a minute. He was offering her $50,000? She could redecorate, buy a new truck, go on a cruise—not that she wanted to. Since the crippling bout of seasickness on her honeymoon, she had avoided boats. And exactly why had she agreed to go snorkeling off the Great Barrier Reef when she hated snorkeling? Because it was always easier to say yes to David.
But widowhood had taught her to say no.
A crow cawed deep in the forest, and Tilly shuddered. Actually, it was more of a full-bodied spasm. Fifty thousand dollars, but at what price? There was a reason she hadn’t expanded into retail despite Sari’s best efforts; there was a reason she let Sari deliver customers’ orders. How could she find the oomph to engage in other people’s lives? Hanging on to Isaac’s and her own was challenging enough.
And Isaac, her pint-size sage, may have been right about James Nealy. He was all wound up with nowhere to go, his fingers writhing with more nervous energy than those of a philandering priest waiting to be skewered by lightning. She should back away, right?
James flicked his hair from his face once, twice, and tossed her a look that was almost a dare, that seemed to say, “Go ahead. Ask what invisible demon snaps at my heels.” And she nearly did, on the off chance it might be the same as hers.
She sighed. “I can recommend an excellent landscaper in Chapel Hill.”
“I don’t need a referral.” James scanned the forest, first to the right, then to the left. “Your property has this controlled feeling, yet the borders speak of nature rioting. Breaking free, but in an orderly way. Your garden by the road is organized bedlam.”
Tilly screwed up her face. Was that a compliment?
“The plants all grow into each other,” he continued, his speech speeding up. “But they’re balanced in height and color, contained by shrubs shaped to fit. Individuality within structure. It’s perfect.” He cupped his long, thin fingers into a chalice. “It’s perfect.”
“Thank you.” I think. Did he really believe there was a thought process behind her garden? She worked on instinct, nothing else, and after thirteen years of hard slog, had barely begun. How could this man, who was in such a rush that he had extracted his checkbook and a pen from his bag, understand?
“Shall I pay half up front and the balance when you’re done?”
“Listen, flattery’s lovely, but I have no experience in garden design.”
“No experience? What do you call that?” He pointed to the woodland path that snaked through arching sprays of poet’s laurel and hearts-a-bursting to open up around a small border edged with fallen cedar limbs. Mottled tiarellas wove through black-stemmed maidenhair ferns; a mass of Indian pinks with tubular flowers embraced the birdbath she’d rescued from the dump; the delicate arms of native Solomon’s seal and goldenrod danced behind.
“Instinct,” she said.
“Fine. I’ll pay $50,000 for your instinct.”
She would laugh, but the heat had siphoned off her energy.
“Mr. Nealy.” Tilly leaned toward James and gave what she hoped was a firm smile, like opening your door a crack to a stranger but not letting him inside. “I appreciate your willingness to pay such a large sum for my instinct. But Sari told me that you’re building a house.” Tilly pulled back. “You should be searching for a landscaper, not a nursery owner.”
James picked a single, dark hair from his black T-shirt. Was he even listening? Mind you, offering to double his payment without so much as a peeved expression suggested more money than sense. According to Sari, he had made appointments with every local business listed in the yellow pages under landscape architects, landscape designers, landscape contractors and nurseries. That was beyond thorough and not the behavior of someone she wanted to work for…if she were wavering in her decision, which she wasn’t.
“I don’t have the right qualifications for this job,” Tilly said. “My answer has to be no.”
His hand shot to his hair, then jerked down to massage his shoulder awkwardly. “You have a gift, and I’m willing to pay for it. How are career definitions relevant?”
Tilly swiped sweat from her hairline. No perspiration rolled down his face, no damp splodges marred his slim-fitting T-shirt. She had no eye for fashion, but Tilly understood cut and fabric. That simple black T-shirt probably cost more than her weekly grocery shop. Certainly more than today’s red tank top, which was one dollar’s worth of the thrift store’s finest.
James cracked open his checkbook.
“People don’t say no to you very often. Do they?”
“I need this garden.” He clicked the top of his pen then repeated the gesture.
Interesting. Need and garden in the same sentence. Now he was talking her language.
“I need this garden.” He grew still like the eye of a storm.
“Yes, I rather gathered that. Shame it’s not for sale.”
Tilly caught the scent of gardenia, that finicky little bugger she had come to love for its determination to survive. She braced for an outburst, but James surprised her with a smile. A warm smile that softened his face of angles and shadows and touched her in a way his handshake had not. If he were some fellow shopper queuing next to her in a checkout line and he threw her that smile, she might be tempted to give him the once-over. Not that she eyed up men anymore.
“I’m sorry.” Tilly flicked a dribble of sweat from her pitiful cleavage. “This heat is making me cranky, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t help you.”
“You prefer rain to this interminable heat?” James scrutinized the sky.
“God, yes. I’m a rain freak. How did you know?”
“English accent.”
The hawk drifted overhead, and Tilly watched it disappear into the forest. “People tend to guess Australian, since my accent’s such a hybrid. English lilt, American terminology, although I swear in English. I’m not sure my voice knows where it belongs.” And what did she hope to achieve by confessing that?
“The rest of you feels the same way?” James studied her.
The polite response would be a shrug. The impolite