Runaway Girl, page 32
Certainly, however, if he’d gone to school with this now-gardener, he would remember.
She was nothing if not memorable.
Why was the sensation in his belly telling him he should know her well, though?
It would be better to proceed as if this was their first meeting, just in case his perception was off, right? Weren’t men always trying to pick up women by claiming to know them from somewhere? Or was that just his colleague Garth?
Julian stood and extended his hand. “I’m Julian Vos. Nice to meet you.”
The light in her eyes dimmed distinctively, and he suspected, in that moment, that he’d already fucked up their acquaintance. His stomach soured at the way she blinked rapidly and renewed her smile, as if putting on a brave face. Before he could claw his way back and ask why she struck him as so familiar, she spoke. “I’m Hallie. Here to plant your begonias.”
“Right.” She was short. Several inches shorter than him. With a sunburned nose that he couldn’t seem to stop staring at. More appropriate than her incredible breasts, he supposed. Stick with the nose. “Did you need something from me?”
“Yes. I do.” Now she seemed to be shaking herself free of whatever was happening in her head. Why did he feel as if he’d disappointed her? Furthermore, why did he want to discern her thoughts so badly? This unpunctual woman and her hounds were interrupting his work, and he still had one more thirty-minute session before his workday ended. “The water that leads to the hose outside is turned off, since no one has been living here. I’ll need it to water the begonias after they’re planted. You know? To really welcome them home? There should be a handle in the cellar or maybe in a laundry room . . . ?”
He watched her hand mimic the motion of twisting a knob, noting the abundance of rings. The dirt under her nails was from gardening, no doubt. “I have no idea.”
She flicked a curl out of her eye and beamed a smile up at him. “I’ll go have a look.”
“Please. Be my guest.”
A beat passed before she turned, as if expecting more from him. When he didn’t deliver, she whistled at the dogs, bringing the trio of them to their feet. “Come on, boys. Come on.” She coaxed them down the hallway with vigorous scratches behind their ears.
Without realizing right away what he was doing, Julian followed them.
Everything about her movements drew the eye. They were harried and controlled all at once. She was a walking whirlwind, knocking into her dogs, apologizing to them, and turning in circles, searching for the handle of this faucet. In and out of rooms she went, muttering to herself, surrounded by her pack of animals.
He couldn’t look away.
Before Julian knew it, he’d followed Hallie into the laundry room, finding her on hands and knees, trying to wrench a circular piece of metal to the left, her dogs barking as though delivering encouragement or possibly instructions.
Had this house really been dead silent five minutes ago?
“I’ve almost got it, boys, hold on.” She groaned, strained, her hips tilting up, and the blood in his head rushed south so quickly, he nearly saw double.
One of the dogs turned and barked at him.
As if to say, Why are you just standing there, asshole? Help her.
His only excuse was being thoroughly distracted by the lightning jolt of energy she’d delivered to his space in a matter of moments. And yes, also by her attractiveness—an odd cross between radiant pinup girl and unkempt earth mother—and being distracted by her appearance wasn’t appropriate at all. “Please get off the floor,” Julian said briskly, unfastening the buttons on the wrists of his dress shirt and rolling up the sleeves. “I’ll turn it on.”
When she scooted back and stood, her hair was even more disarrayed than before and she had to tug down her ridden-up jean shorts. “Thanks,” she breathed.
Was she staring at his forearms?
“Of course,” he said slowly, taking her spot on the floor.
In the reflection of the handle, he could have sworn she was smiling at his bent-over form, specifically his ass, but the image was probably just inverted.
Unless it wasn’t?
Shaking his head over the whole odd situation, Julian gripped the handle and wrenched it left, turning until it stopped. “Done. Do you want to check it out?”
“I am,” she said throatily. “Oh, the hose? I—I’m sure the water is on now. Thank you.”
Julian came to his feet just in time to watch Hallie tornado her way out of the house, her canine admirers following her with utter devotion in their eyes, their nails clicking over his hardwood floor until they disappeared outside. Silence descended hard.
Thank God.
Still, he followed Hallie.
No idea why. His work was waiting.
Maybe because he felt this oddly unsettled feeling, like he’d failed a test.
Or perhaps because he’d never answered her question.
Is it true? That you won’t let yourself have a drink at the end of the day unless you write for the full thirty minutes?
If this young woman was blunt enough to ask a stranger about his habits, there was a good chance she would have several uncomfortable follow-ups, which he didn’t have the time or inclination to answer. Yet he continued to the porch, anyway, watching as she lowered the gate on her white pickup truck and started to unload pallets of red flowers. The tiny woman who barely reached his chin staggered under the weight of the first load of flowers, and Julian lurched forward without thinking, the dogs yipping at his approach. “I’ll carry the flowers. Just tell me where you want them.”
“I’m not sure yet! Just set them down on the lawn. Where that line of shrubs begins.”
Lifting a pallet of flowers, Julian frowned. “You’re not sure where they’re going?”
Hallie smiled over her shoulder. “Not yet.”
“When will you decide where they should go?”
The gardener dropped to her knees, leaned forward, and smoothed her hands over the turned brown soil. “The flowers more or less decide for themselves. I’ll move them around in their individual containers until they look just right.”
Julian didn’t exactly love the sound of that. He stopped a few feet away, trying and failing not to notice the strands of frayed, white denim lying on the backs of her thighs. “They will be an equal distance apart, I assume.”
“Maybe on accident?”
That did it. His mother was definitely punishing him. She’d sent him this curvaceous gardener to throw off his concentration and flaunt his need for organization. Detailed plans. A schedule. Relative sanity.
She laughed at his expression, stood, and chewed her lip a moment. Brushed her hands down the worn-in lap of her shorts. Was she blushing now? Back in the house, he could have sworn she was cataloguing his physique. Now, however, she ducked past him, almost as if too shy to look him in the eye. The mini blond hurricane returned to the truck for a canvas bag full of tools, then picked her way back across the yard in his direction. “So,” she started on her way past him. “You took a break from teaching to write a book. That’s so exciting. What made you decide to do that?”
Finally, he set down the tray of flowers. “How did you know?”
Trowel in hand, she paused. “Your mother told me.”
“Right.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands now. They were too dirty to put in his pockets, so he just kind of stood there looking at them. “It’s something I’d always planned to do. Write the book. Though the occasion came sooner than I expected.”
“Oh. Why?”
Hallie knelt straight down into the dirt, and his stomach turned sideways. “Can I not get you a towel or something?” She threw him an amused glance but didn’t answer. And, in a way, Julian supposed he was stalling. He didn’t know how to answer her question. Why was he back in Napa, writing the book sooner than expected? His answer was personal, and he’d spoken it out loud to no one. For some reason, though, the idea of telling Hallie didn’t make him feel uncomfortable. After all, she was casually digging away in the dirt, instead of waiting on his answer as if it would be some monumental revelation. “I changed the order of my ten-year plan slightly after . . . well, my colleague at Stanford, Garth, had something of a mental breakdown.”
She set down the trowel. Twisted her butt around in the dirt to face him, cross-legged.
But her undivided attention didn’t throw him off or make him wish he hadn’t started down this path. Her knees were caked in soil. This was as low pressure as it got.
“Normally I would be teaching through the summer. I’ve been going year-round for some time now. I wouldn’t . . . know what the hell to do with a break.”
Hallie’s gaze flickered past him to the sprawling vineyard, and he knew what she was thinking. He could come home to his family’s nationally renowned vineyard on a break. No. It wasn’t quite as easy as that. But that was a far different conversation.
“Anyway, toward the end of the spring semester, there was a commotion during one of my lectures. A student ran down the hall and interrupted my lesson on the geographical conceptions of time. They asked me for assistance. Garth had . . .” The difficult memory had him rubbing at the back of his neck, remembering too late that his hands were dirty. “He’d locked himself in his office. And he wouldn’t come out.”
“Oh no. Poor guy,” Hallie murmured.
Julian gave a brief nod. “He had some personal issues I wasn’t aware of. Instead of dealing with them head-on, he’d taken on a heavy course load and . . .”
“It was too much.”
“Yes.”
One of the dogs approached Hallie, nuzzling her face. She received the lick, absently patting the animal on the head. “Is he doing better now?”
Julian thought of the relaxed phone conversation he’d had with his colleague three days prior. Garth had even laughed, which had relieved Julian, while at the same time filling him with a certain envy. If only he were as resilient and quick to get on the road to recovery as his friend. “He’s taking some much-needed time off.”
“And . . .” She picked up her trowel again and started creating a completely new hole. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t even finished with the first one. “The situation with Garth made you want to take a break as well?”
A rock formed in his throat. “We’ve been teaching the same length of time,” he said briskly, leaving out the fact that he wasn’t without his own—unacknowledged—personal issues. Many of which had to do with their current surroundings. Memories of the tendons in his throat constricting, a weight pressing down on his chest. The dizziness and inability to find roots in his current surroundings. Julian determinedly shuffled aside those thoughts, returning to the matter of Garth. “We had the same course load with very little leeway. Stepping back just seemed like the wise thing to do. Thankfully, I’d left some flexibility in my schedule.”
“Your ten-year plan.”
“That’s right.” He looked back at her truck, noting the bright blue-and-purple script reading Becca’s Blooms. “As a business owner, surely you have one.”
She rolled her lips inward and gave him a sheepish look from her position in the dirt. “Would you settle for a one-hour plan?” Her hands paused. “Actually, scratch that. I still haven’t decided if I’m picking up dinner from the diner or Francesco’s on the way home. I guess I have a ten-minute plan. Or I would if I knew where these flowers were going. Boys!”
The dogs descended on her, snuffing happily into her neck. Almost like she’d called them over with the express purpose of derailing her train of thought.
“Who is Becca?” Julian asked, wincing at the slobber left behind on her shoulder. “Your truck says Becca’s Blooms,” he explained a little too loudly, trying to drown out the odd pounding of his pulse. He’d never seen anyone so casually muddled in his life. In the dirt with her flowers and dogs and no plan.
“Rebecca was my grandmother. Becca’s Blooms was established before I was born. She taught me how to garden.” She tilted her head a little, didn’t meet his eyes. “She’s been gone since January. Just . . . heart failure. In her sleep.” A shadow moved across her features, but she brightened again quickly. “Now she would have put your flowers an equal distance apart.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said, stopping when he realized she’d planted three big gatherings of red blooms and their accompanying greenery. It had happened so quickly and organically as they spoke, he didn’t even notice. Stepping back, Julian framed up the plantings with the house and found she’d sort of . . . anchored the empty spaces in between the windows with flowers. Like filling in gaps. Did she do it unconsciously? There seemed to be a method here that he couldn’t decipher. Still, the spacing was way off-kilter and already she was positioning the next one way off to the left, prompting a throbbing behind his eyes. “Would you mind just putting it closer to the others? You’re right on the brink of a semicircle. If I tilt my head. And squint.”
A lot like in their initial meeting in his office, he sensed her disappointment even though she kept right on smiling. “Oh.” She bobbed her blond curls. “Sure.”
“Never mind.”
The words were out of his mouth before he realized he’d spoken.
But she’d already put the flowers closer to their counterparts. Patted the dirt around them and turned on the hose to give them some water. And now she was gathering her things, sliding the trowel into a pocket it hadn’t been in earlier, if he recalled correctly. The dogs were circling her, sensing their imminent departure, dancing on their paws.
Yes, they were leaving.
Thank God. Right? Now he could get back to work.
What time was it, anyway?
Had he actually lost track of the minutes since Hallie’s arrival?
Julian was so startled by the rare possibility that Hallie was halfway to the truck with her fan club before he realized it. “Bye, Julian,” she called, tossing her tool bag into the open cab of the truck and prying open the creaking driver’s-side door, stepping back so her dogs could pile in. “Good luck with the book. It was really nice to see you again.”
“Wait.” He froze. “Again?”
She started the truck and drove right out of his driveway without answering.
They’d met before. He knew it. Where? How?
The stillness that fell in the wake of Hallie’s hectic presence eventually reminded Julian that he had a purpose for being in Napa. The cursor was blinking on his screen inside. Time marched forward. And he couldn’t spare any more thoughts on the pinup earth mother or the fact that she was extremely pretty. She’d caused a disruption to his routine, and now it was over.
He should be grateful.
No, he was.
Perhaps he’d been momentarily fascinated by someone so wildly different from him, but on a regular basis? That kind of disorder in another person would drive him up the wall.
“No, thank you,” Julian said to himself on the way back inside. “Not happening.”
About the Author
#1 New York Times bestselling author TESSA BAILEY can solve all problems except for her own, so she focuses those efforts on stubborn, fictional blue-collar men and loyal, lovable heroines. She lives on Long Island, avoiding the sun and social interactions, then wonders why no one has called. Dubbed the “Michelangelo of dirty talk” by Entertainment Weekly, Tessa writes with spice, spirit, swoon, and a guaranteed happily ever after. Catch her on TikTok @authortessabailey or check out tessabailey.com for a complete list of books.
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By Tessa Bailey
Secretly Yours
Unfortunately Yours
Bellinger Sisters
It Happened One Summer
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Hot & Hammered
Fix Her Up
Love Her or Lose Her
Tools of Engagement
The Academy
Disorderly Conduct
Indecent Exposure
Disturbing His Peace
Broke and Beautiful
Chase Me
Need Me
Make Me
Romancing the Clarksons
Too Hot to Handle
Too Wild to Tame
Too Hard to Forget
Too Close to Call (novella)
Too Beautiful to Break
Made in Jersey
Crashed Out
Rough Rhythm (novella)
Thrown Down
Worked Up
Wound Tight
Crossing the Line
Riskier Business (novella)
Risking It All
Up in Smoke
Boiling Point
Raw Redemption
Line of Duty
Protecting What’s His
Protecting What’s Theirs (novella)
His Risk to Take
Officer Off Limits
Asking for Trouble
Staking His Claim
Serve
Owned by Fate
Exposed by Fate
Driven by Fate
Beach Kingdom
Mouth to Mouth
Heat Stroke
Sink or Swim
Standalone Books
My Killer Vacation
Window Shopping
Unfixable
Baiting the Maid of Honor
Off Base (with Sophie Jordan)
Captivated (with Eve Dangerfield)
