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 eyes narrowed a fraction. “What do you mean?”
“You cut down his hedge.”
“It was overgrown, and it blocked the view.”
“He 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