“Okay,” he said. “See you.” He clicked off, wondered why he wasn’t into her more than he was. She had all the prerequisites—nice, fairly attractive, could cook . . . not mouthy like some women . . . Jake shook his head, didn’t really want to go there.
When he returned to the house, Robin was seated at the dining table and was chewing on the end of a pen, her brow furrowed as she pored over paperwork. Not wanting to disturb her, Jake passed through to the kitchen and checked out the plumbing beneath the sink, making a list of things he needed to price later this afternoon. But when he looked under the cabinets, he noticed a leak, and crawled in as far as he could to have a look.
As he worked, he could hear Robin in the other room. She left two messages for one Lou Harvey in a tone that Jake figured was going to get her nowhere fast.
When he at last located the source of the leak, he crawled out, came to his feet, and made a few notes. The sound of Robin’s heels on the tile floor clicked to the front door; he heard it open. After a moment, the door shut, and the click-click-click returned to the dining room.
“Hello, this is Robin Lear,” he heard after a moment. “I ordered an eggplant wrap over an hour ago and it hasn’t arrived. Yes, North Boulevard.”
Jake finished making the notes he needed and walked into the dining room.
“But I ordered it an hour ago!” she insisted, doing the loop around the dining room table again. “What do you mean you don’t have a record? I asked the guy if it was cheese instead of tofu, and he said it was definitely tofu, and— What? How long? No. No, that’s okay. Never mind,” she said and put the phone down. “Pathetic. I can’t even order lunch right!”
She actually sounded sincerely forlorn. And looked it. She glanced up as Jake walked in, ran her hands through her wild hair. “I keep calling these people and they won’t call me back, the lunch guy forgets he even talked to me, and I don’t understand half of what I’m reading in these papers. I can’t be an acquisitions specialist and I am starving. I’m talking like five or six hundred calories worth of starving.”
Jake didn’t know about calories, but he knew where there were good eats. “You should check out Paulie’s sometime,” he suggested.
Robin turned, blinked big blue eyes at him, and Jake felt a curious draw from the pit of his stomach. “Where?”
“Paulie’s. Best food in Houston.”
Her blue eyes lit up. “Give me a minute to get my things.”
That startled him. “What? Wait—I just meant you ought to try it.”
“I know, but I don’t have my car.”
“Well, I . . .” What had he done? “I guess I could pick up a few things while I’m out.”
“Where?”
Jake shrugged, looked away from those blue eyes, and rooted around in his backpack. “Over to Smith and Sons.”
“I love Smith and Sons!” she said brightly.
He didn’t believe his ears; he looked up, but Robin was busy smoothing out the wrinkle in her slacks. “This sounds like a great idea.”
But it wasn’t an idea, it wasn’t even close. It was a gum-bumping mistake on his part.
“Just give me a minute, would you?” she added, but she was already halfway down the hall in the opposite direction.
Great. He was going to cart the barracuda around with him. Jake watched her disappear into the bedroom, then walked straight outside.
Whatever had just happened, however he had come to actually invite his client to lunch at Paulie’s (Paulie’s!), he hoped that her string of bad luck had ended and he was at last safe.
But a tiny little voice in the back of his head said that he wasn’t safe, not even for a minute. From what, exactly, he really wasn’t sure.
Chapter Ten
Robin appeared a few moments later, her hair brushed back and tucked neatly behind her ears, and sporting a pair of sunglasses that looked like sideways triangles. Jake peered at her closely as she climbed into his two-ton truck and sat gingerly on the dirty bench. He glanced at the stain she was avoiding and leaned over to have a better look. “Mustard. It looks like mustard.” How could he know? A ten-year-old truck was going to have a stain or two. Robin just inched closer to the passenger door.
He started the truck, glanced at her again from the corner of his eye. “Can you actually see out of those things, or are they for decorative purposes only?”
“Of course I can,” she said, with a roll of her eyes that he clearly saw above the tiny little lenses, “these are Guccis.”
“More like gotchas,” he muttered under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He backed out onto the street and headed west. They rode in silence at first; Robin folded up in the corner, careful not to touch anything, he with one arm slung carelessly across the back of the bench seat. When they turned onto Park Lane, he turned on the radio, forgetting that he had last listened to hard rock, which damn near shattered the windows. He quickly moved to change it, but Robin said, “Oh hey, I love these guys!”
Jake blinked. “The Dead Sorcerers?” he asked, incredulous. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as hard rock.”