“Oh, I know, but I think I might get one,” she said with all sincerity. “Maybe some ferns, too. You know, for the corners,” she added thoughtfully, and pushed the cart forward, between two neat rows of ferns, while Jake wondered what corners. He stood with his bag of couplings and watched her look at first one fern, then the next, and realized, much to his horror, that they were shopping. Shopping! For a pool she didn’t even have! He eyed his watch, then Robin again, bent over another fern as she was, and his gaze was drawn to the tantalizing bit of purple he could see beneath her silk blouse.
He adjusted his stance slightly, saw that it was purple lace, barely covering what he guessed might possibly be the perfect breast. If it hadn’t been for the bit of purple lace, Jake would have walked on to his truck and called her a cab. But there he was, following that piece of lace down the aisle between the ferns, saying things like there’s a good one and not that one, the tips are brown.
A half hour later, the azalea and ceramic pot were stuffed in the bed of his truck, next to two ferns, a stack of lumber from an old job, and fourteen pink flamingos that bobbed along in their strange little gaggle as Jake sped down Kirby toward Paulie’s.
Robin was talking about pools. She was so wrapped up in imagining where exactly she might put this pool (and of course, those stupid pink flamingos), she did not notice she was the only one conversing. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, wondered if he’d lost his mind. What in God’s name was he doing in the early afternoon, running around town with this woman? He had work to do, plenty of it, really did not have time for shopping at Smith and Sons, much less a bite to eat at Paulie’s.
No time for it, but hell, he was only human. After all, she was an exceptionally good-looking woman. And she had a strange sort of refined, elitist mud-wrestling thing going on that he was finding disturbingly intriguing. And even though she held herself out as being in another stratosphere, beneath that slick exterior (and it was a kick-butt exterior), there was a funny little girl with a mess of black curls and the prettiest blue eyes he had ever seen.
Yep, he was intrigued, all right.
Even more so when they went into Paulie’s. He liked Paulie’s relaxed atmosphere, liked the wide variety of what he considered to be really good, really cheap food. But when Robin began to peruse the menu, rattling off the caloric content of each entry like an astrophysicist, Jake instantly realized his dumb mistake.
The waiter, who looked like he’d been pulled off the set of the Planet of the Apes, chewed his thick lips as he stood, his pencil poised and pressed against the little notepad, waiting for her to order something. Anything. Robin ignored him, took her own sweet time to flip through the menu and wrinkle her nose at every entry. She finally sighed and asked, “Do you have anything without grease?”
“Yea, right,” the waiter snorted. “We’re into rabbit food here, carrots and tofu—”
“Tofu? Perfect,” she said, and handed him the menu. “Just bring me a notdog, please.”
Grok the Apeman paused in the scratching of his big head to exchange a look of confusion with Jake. Robin folded her hands primly in her lap and looked first at Jake, then the waiter. “Oh!” She laughed sheepishly. “And a glass of water. With lemon. And not too much ice, maybe half full. The ice, that is, not the water.”
Grok blinked, looked at Jake for help, but seeing that he was going to get none there, looked uneasily at Robin again. “Uh . . . what did you want again?”
“A not-dog,” she said, articulating.
“A what?” Jake asked.
“A tofu notdog. He said they have tofu.”
“I think he was kidding,” Jake said, to which Grok nodded violently. “And they don’t have notdogs.” He looked at Grok. “Just bring her a couple of dogs.”
“No! Do you have any idea what’s in a hotdoy?”
“I’ve eaten plenty of hotdogs in my lifetime and I haven’t died yet.”
“That’s a miracle, Jake. Hotdogs are as disgusting as they are fattening.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d quit worrying about calories, you might actually enjoy some good food now and then,” he countered, and looked again at Grok. “A couple of dogs, a bacon mushroom cheeseburger with fries, and two cokes.”
“Wait!” Robin cried. Grok stopped writing. Robin looked at Jake, saw his scowl, and looked at the waiter again. “Okay. Hotdogs. But water!” she insisted. “And don’t forget the lemon!”
Grok nodded furiously, made some mark on the paper, and loped away before she could change her mind.
Robin sniffed. “I never eat junk, especially when I’m trying to drop a few l.b.’s.”
Now that was just plain stupid. Robin Lear was about as perfect in body as a woman could get, and in fact, upon further reflection, that perfect little ass of hers wasn’t quite so perfect—it could use another pound or two. “That’s ridiculous,” he said with a snort.
“What do you know?” She folded her arms across her middle and in doing so, pushed her breasts dangerously close to the opening of her blouse.
“I know what looks good on a woman, and you look good,” he blurted.
Robin blinked her surprised, and then a slow, seductive smile spread across those lips. “Well, thank you,” she said, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
With a sigh, Jake leaned back in his chair and looked up at the greasy ceiling.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she added.