“Yeah, this will be one beautiful house . . . with a beautiful owner.”
Robin’s breath caught in her throat; she froze for an instant, debated madly whether she should turn around and kiss him, but quickly decided against it. Because she didn’t have the guts. And because Mia chose that moment to come strolling in.
“Robin?”
Robin spun out from beneath Jake’s arm and into the middle of the entry, her heart pounding.
Mia’s eyes narrowed with suspicion; she looked at Jake, then at Robin. “I thought I might find you here,” she said, in that all-knowing, all-seeing way of hers. She walked into the entry, the heels of her Prada pumps clapping loudly on the tile floor. Perfectly dressed as usual, Mia’s blond hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail and her capri pants were skin tight. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Learning about brick,” Robin said quickly and walked through the archway into the dining room. “What are you doing?”
Mia was eyeing Jake as if she expected him to pull out a gun. “Shopping. I thought maybe you’d want to get some lunch.”
“Lunch? Ah . . .” Think fast, think fast . . . “I can’t. I have a lot of work to do.”
One of Mia’s blond brows arched high above the other as she coolly shifted her gaze to Robin. “Oh really?” she drawled, and took one last up-and-down look at Jake. “What are you going to do for food?”
“Leftover ravioli.”
“You must be kidding.”
“From Santiago’s.”
“Ooh, I’ve heard Evan talk about that place. Was it as good as he says?”
Acutely aware that Jake was listening to every word, Robin picked up a paper on which she had scribbled some notes and pretended to study them, muttering, “It’s okay.”
“Speaking of Evan,” Mia said, “he called this morning and said his new boat is down in the marina again. He wants to do a dinner out there.”
Robin jerked her gaze to Mia. “Evan called?
“We talked about it last weekend remember?”
Like Robin could ever forget last weekend.
Mia sighed impatiently. “Michael and I are free this weekend. Are you?”
“No,” Robin said quickly. “I can’t. Anyway, I thought Evan was going to New York.”
Mia shrugged. “What’s the deal with all these pink flamingos?” she asked, picking up Robin’s kate spade bag and having a look inside. “And where did you get this bag? Is it last year’s?”
Thankfully, the conversation deteriorated from there into Mia’s general obsession with handbags. Robin loved Mia, but she had never wanted her friend to be gone as badly as she did at that moment. She felt like a frumpy wallflower in her jean skirt next to her perfect friend, and worse, she could have sworn she saw Jake looking at Mia more than once. But Mia, true to form, seemed to have forgotten he was even in the same room, for which Robin was grateful. Which begged the question—since when did she feel so ridiculously and profoundly stupid and gangly? What was happening to her? She was out of control, so out of control that she suddenly informed Mia she had changed her mind about lunch. “I don’t really like ravioli,” she said to Mia’s look of surprise, grabbed her handbag from Mia’s grip, and marched out through the kitchen without so much as a glance backward.
Jake watched the Porsche pull out onto North Boulevard, his nostrils still full of the sweet smell of lilac. Robin’s scent. He frowned; whoever the blond was, her timing couldn’t have been worse—he’d been about to kiss Robin. Which wasn’t exactly the brightest idea he’d ever had. In fact, it ranked right up there as the dumbest. The woman as much as admitted that money and power mattered, neither of which he possessed. No wonder she thought that—she’d grown up in River Oaks, probably in one of those gated mansions with a security guard. What would she think if she knew he grew up off Telephone Road? She’d think he was too far beneath her, that was what, a working man trying to latch on to the better deal, as she so eloquently put it. She didn’t need someone like him hanging around.
On second thought, maybe her friend had excellent timing.
But damn it, that black curly hair and figure that was all butt and legs, and those blue eyes and those lips . . . Get a grip. Those were River Oak lips that drank wine he couldn’t pronounce and ate at Santiago’s. Okay, so he had lost his friggin’ mind. Thank you, God, he hadn’t kissed her.