She laughed, decided she liked Handy Andy. “Hey . . . sorry I called you a pervert.”
Jake shrugged. “I’ve been called worse. Have a good weekend,” he said, and with a wink, walked out the door, leaving her to stand behind the screen.
Robin stood there for a moment, admiring his form as he mounted the bike. But when he disappeared from her drive, she chastised herself for getting all worked up about his good looks. Okay, so he seemed to be a nice guy (in spite of her earlier, moronic assessments), but . . . he was the contractor renovating her house. She was only thinking of him now in a warm fuzzy way due to a general state of intoxication and hunger.
Right. Food.
Robin turned away from the door and headed for the phone book.
At the Blue Cross ranch, Aaron was lying prone on the king-sized, four-poster bed in the master suite, staring up at the Star of Texas painted on the ceiling and trying to keep his dinner down. At the granite vanity near the master bath, Bonnie mixed a concoction of herbs. “This should help your nausea.”
“Nothing is going to help while they’ve got me on this medicine,” Aaron groused and swallowed hard against another swell of nausea.
“I talked to Gordon again today,” Bonnie said, and Aaron groaned. “He is sending me a couple of books on biological therapy.”
“Gordon is a hack, Bon-bon.”
Bonnie frowned at him over her shoulder. “You have nothing to lose by trying his way. Look at him—he’s been in remission for eight years now.”
“Yeah, well, not because of the crap he keeps pushing on you, I guaran-damn-tee it.”
With a snort of exasperation, Bonnie got up from the vanity and glided toward him, carrying the shit she would make him drink in a large Dixie cup. “Drink it.”
Aaron made himself sit up, felt the sickening roil in his belly. “I don’t think I can,” he started, but Bonnie thrust the cup at him.
“You have to do something, Aaron. I won’t let you just lie there and wallow in self-pity and not do something, do you hear me?”
Her blue eyes were flashing, her hand trembling. Aaron gripped her wrist, stilled the trembling. “Bon-bon, sooner or later you’re going to have to accept what is.”
“Shut up,” she snapped and, with a grunt of anger, thrust the cup at him. He reluctantly took it, wrinkled his nose at the pungent smell. Holding his breath, he tossed the stuff down his throat, then handed the cup to Bonnie.
She watched him closely; Aaron waited. And just when he thought the sickness had passed, it surged up on a violent wave. He bolted from the bed to the bathroom, leaning his head over the toilet just as he heard Bonnie lament, “Maybe I didn’t mix it right.”
Chapter Seven
Jake almost missed the turn to Zaney’s house, no thanks to Robin Lear. His head was filled with the image of her bare belly, her slender knee peeking out of the rips in the denim, her corkscrew mess of curls and that mouth. . . . God, that mouth was enough to make a grown man cry.
But it wasn’t her near-perfect body that got to him. It was the uncomfortable notion that he was, inexplicably, kind of attracted to a snobby woman with a fat mouth who most definitely had a screw loose, if not a whole series of parts missing. She was nuts! Certifiable! Probably one of those good-looking chicks who thought she was God’s gift to mankind. But she also had a smile that could light up all of Houston, a laugh that went all over him like warm spring rain, a definite sense of self, and a refrigerator full of AA batteries.
A man couldn’t help but wonder about those batteries.
Attractive or not (definitely attractive), Robin Lear was trouble, the kind of trouble that ought to be broadcast with big neon lights and orange cones so men could steer clear. The only problem was, he couldn’t figure out exactly how he was going to steer clear of her, given that the rocket scientist had burned down her office.
He’d think about that later. At the moment, he’d arrived at the house of his most immediate problem, Chuck Zaney. Sometimes it seemed like he had two teenage headaches, as if he didn’t already have enough trouble with Cole, the son of his brother Ross, who died two years ago. Then again, Cole was so plainly rudderless that your heart ached for the kid. At twelve, he had lost his father to drunk driving. The very next year, he lost his mother to God knew where—she couldn’t handle it, she said, and took off with some guy.