Meeting Mr. Right. Deb Kastner

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      Vee Bishop.

      What was she doing here? She hadn’t mentioned visiting his parents when they’d been talking the prior evening.

      She had her back to him, her slender figure accentuated as she stood on tiptoe on the top rung of a stepladder, precariously reaching for a flowerpot that dangled just out of her reach on a hook next to the patio door. She thought she was alone, as evidenced by the fact that she was humming aloud to the tune of the small mp3 player she had clipped to her belt.

      “Beethoven?” he called. With his mind busy creating and discarding reasons why Vee might be in his parents’ backyard, he realized only after he’d spoken that she couldn’t have seen him approach and that the sound of his voice might startle her. She’d managed to unhook the basket with the tips of her fingers, but she didn’t have the basket firmly in her grasp and she overreached her mark at the sound of his voice. Wavering in a futile attempt to balance herself, she put one hand out to grasp for the wall, but nothing was there to stop her from falling backward. She squeaked in dismay, and her arms flailed wildly as she attempted to right herself against the ladder.

      Ben acted instinctively, darting forward to sweep Vee into his arms before she hit the pavement. He barely felt the weight of her frame as he protectively flexed his biceps to curl her into the safety of his embrace, but he was intensely aware of the moment she wrapped her arm around his neck. The hook of the hanging basket she’d managed to hold on to dug deeply into his shoulder. The sensation didn’t register as pain, maybe because his adrenaline was so high. Her free palm rested against his chest, directly over his rapidly beating heart. He wondered if she could feel the pounding staccato rhythm of his pulse.

      Crazy woman. What had she been thinking? It was a good thing for her that he’d arrived when he did. He hoped she realized that he had barely averted a disaster.

      She could have had broken bones. Been knocked unconscious. Suffered a concussion. He could easily tick a dozen frightening scenarios off on his fingers.

      He didn’t immediately release her, giving them both time to get their bearings. For a moment she just stared up at him, her cheeks flushed a pretty crimson. Her dark eyes first flared with surprise and then simply sparkled with what Ben suspected was mirth, though he couldn’t imagine what she considered to be funny in this situation.

      “Mozart,” she informed him, wriggling out of his grasp as if she only now realized that he was still holding her up. She stood to her full height, but even so, the top of her head didn’t reach Ben’s shoulder. “And you should be ashamed of yourself, sneaking up on a person that way. You nearly scared the life out of me. I could have really been hurt there!”

      “I didn’t sneak,” he responded, trying to keep his jaw from dropping. Why was she chewing him out? She should be eternally grateful for his efforts on her behalf. “What I did was save you from a major catastrophe just now. You should be thanking me, not railing on me. And you should know better than to stand on the top rung of a ladder. It’s dangerous.”

      “It’s just a step stool,” she rejoined with a scowl. Now that was a familiar expression from her, especially combined with her backing away from where his outreached hand tried to offer her some support. Although she’d landed in his arms and had not—thanks to him—taken a digger on the ground, she brushed off her jeans as if she’d hit the dirt on both knees.

      “Maybe,” he conceded. “But you’re still begging for an accident by name. In case you’re not aware of the rules, you’re not supposed to stand on the very top rung of a ladder, step stool or otherwise. You can’t balance that way. Didn’t anyone ever teach you better?” He kept his tone light and hoped his words sounded like banter and not a reprimand.

      It partially worked. Her frown eased a little, though it didn’t go away. She rolled her eyes and took another step back. “Are you kidding? With an overprotective dad and two big brothers, I’ve had every lecture in the book and then some.”

      “Any reason why this lesson didn’t stick?”

      She tilted her head thoughtfully and shrugged. “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. I’m pretty independent. I’ve been told I’m stubborn, too, if my brothers have an opinion about it.”

      Her response seemed serious, and she was still frowning at him. Ben wasn’t sure what to say or why the woman was so determined to be angry with him when he’d just saved her from breaking her neck.

      He shifted from foot to foot, measuring his words before speaking to the overly testy woman. Speaking suddenly felt like a new and difficult skill, one of which he was nearly incapable. He hadn’t yet sorted out words in his brain, much less found the faculties necessary to utter them from his lips, before she spoke again.

      “Climbing to the top rungs of ladders is just one of many of the perils of being short,” Vee explained. She waved the hanging basket in front of him. “At least I got the basket, thank you very much.”

      “Right,” he agreed, but he was shaking his head. “We wouldn’t want you to have to climb back up on that ladder and risk putting life and limb in danger again.” He paused and cocked his head, staring at her speculatively. “So tell me why, exactly, are you stealing flowerpots from my parents’ backyard?”

      Her frown deepened, and for a moment he worried that she’d taken his teasing seriously. She was always pretty quick to think the worst of him. To his relief, she relaxed after a moment instead. “Of course I’m not trying to steal anything. Your folks asked me to come here to do a little spring landscaping for them.”

      “Why would they do that? If they want some work done, I can do it for them.”

      That, and the fact that of all the people on the planet they’d chosen to work on their yard, it had to be the one woman he had trouble working with at all. And he would be working here, now that he’d discovered his parents’ plan. But there was no reason why Vee had to stay. All he had to do was to talk his parents out of this decision, which shouldn’t be that difficult, right? Then Vee could go on her merry way.

      Her eyes widened and she stared at him like he was slow on the uptake. Could she really blame him? He was still reeling from the nearly averted disaster of catching a plunging-to-the-pavement woman. His heart was still pounding heavily in his chest, stoked by adrenaline. He couldn’t set it aside as easily as she appeared to have done.

      “It’s my job, remember?” she pointed out in a pithy tone of voice. “I work at Emerson’s Hardware. Lawn and garden. Ring a bell? I know I’ve waited on you at least a few times over the years.”

      “No, of course I know you work at Emerson’s,” he said, quickly backtracking. Was she making fun of him? “What I meant was, why are you here, in my parents’ backyard, trying to release flowerpots from their hooks? They didn’t mention any gardening projects. I’m surprised they didn’t consult me first.”

      “Why would they?”

      Ouch. She had a point, and she hadn’t made it softly, either.

      His parents didn’t need his permission to landscape their yard, but it disturbed him just the same that they hadn’t asked for his help. He was more than willing to lend a hand. And seriously, what could Vee do for them that he couldn’t do himself?

      “I can dig in the dirt as well as anyone. For free,” he added with extra emphasis. His parents were paying good money when they didn’t need to be.

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