“Oh yeah? What would you have pegged me?”
He shrugged, adjusted his Oakleys. “New age, maybe. Yanni, definitely.”
That prompted a very unladylike snort; she folded her arms beneath her breasts and adjusted in her seat to look at him. “For your information, I listen to all kinds of music and always have, but mostly rock.”
“Like?”
“Like the Foo Fighters, the Stones, Celine Dion—”
“Celine Dion?” he said with a laugh. “She’s elevator music!”
“She is not!” she cried indignantly. “Okay, Smartypants, who do you like?”
“First, no one’s called me Smartypants since the third grade. Second, I just bought the new Red Temple CD. You heard of them?”
“I went to their concert in New York,” she said. “That singer guy is to die for—what’s his name?”
She looked entirely too dreamy to suit Jake, so he feigned ignorance, saying only, “All I remember is that he looks like a girl,” and switched over to the Astros game.
“So did you play as a kid?” Robin asked, leaning over to turn up the volume like she owned the truck.
“Yep. Grade school, junior high, all the way through high school and beyond.”
“Beyond? What’s beyond?”
That was territory he hadn’t really intended to open up, particularly since the wounds were still a little raw after eighteen years, and he wasn’t exactly keen to admit his failure. But damn it, she was looking at him with her mouth pursed in a way that could, conceivably, make a man move a mountain or two. “Minor leagues,” he said cautiously.
“Really?” She looked happily surprised. “What team?”
Jake hesitated. “Baytown Sharks.”
“Oooh! Very cool! What position did you play?”
“Right field.”
“Must have had a good arm.”
Huh. Amazing, but she seemed genuinely interested, so interested that Jake began to talk, albeit reluctantly, about his stint in the minors. It surprised him—in all these years, he hadn’t actually spoken of it to anyone other than to mention it occasionally in the course of conversation. But Robin was engrossed in his telling of it, asking pertinent questions, seemingly impressed. Impressed. With him. It wasn’t that Jake thought poorly of himself, it was just that . . . he was a practical man, and practically speaking, women like Robin Lear were not usually impressed with guys like him. Nevertheless, by the time they arrived at Smith and Sons, he was telling her about the Sunday men’s league he played in Hermann Park.
“Hermann Park? I jog there! Maybe I’ll just run by and watch sometime,” she said as she flung open the door of his truck, nicking the car next to him. “I’ll yell if I see you.” She stepped out and marched off toward the garden area, her little purse swinging confidently in her hand.
Jake watched her hips moving in those nice tight pants a moment before he got out. By the time he’d locked his truck, Robin was bent over a stack of gargantuan ceramic pots. He walked past, told her he had to grab a few things and would only be a moment. Distracted, Robin waved him away.
Smith and Sons was one of those eclectic little mom-and-pop shops that had grown from hardware to just about everything else except groceries: a huge jumbled array of goods which took several minutes to navigate and even more to find anything. Once Jake had the couplings and pipes he needed, he paid—being careful to keep the receipt for Her Highness per their contract—and wandered back outside.
Robin was nowhere to be seen. He asked the guy watering the rose bushes, who shook his head. “She got a cart, man, and took off,” was all he could offer. Jake walked around the garden, didn’t see her, thought maybe she’d gone to the hardware section. But she wasn’t there, either. He made his way through the kitchen area, house decor, and lumber, then outside again among the native plants and trees. That’s when he saw the flash of curly black hair two aisles over.
Ducking through the saplings, he strode to where he had seen the top of her head and stopped dead in his tracks. It was Robin, all right, with a cart piled high and full with a dozen or more plastic pink flamingos, one gargantuan ceramic pot, and an azalea bush.
She looked up as he strode forward and stopped to survey the contents of her cart. Robin followed his gaze to the pink flamingos and flashed a cheerful smile. “For my pool.”
“Ah,” he replied, nodding. “Except that you don’t have a pool.”