Her Final Fling. Joanne Rock

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СКАЧАТЬ you usually get paid for doing this?” He’d be surprised if she didn’t get hauled off to jail. Was she exercising squatter’s rights by moving into his house and making it hers?

      He had to stifle an absurd urge to laugh as she seemed to genuinely consider his question.

      “Honestly, sometimes I don’t get paid because I’m very new at this, but I studied horticulture with the best landscape designers in California and now I’m ready to bring that knowledge to southern Florida.” She busied herself by filling a paper cup with water and pouring the contents over the plants in his sink. “Your yard is my first large-scale production as a solo artist, but I’ve worked on bigger undertakings with other designers.”

      He leaned against the light wooden cupboards in the kitchen where he’d toasted his first Pop-Tart, weary with the way she seemed to talk in circles. For all he knew, his tired brain could be making it sound as though she was talking in circles when she was being perfectly rational.

      “And just what did my uncle hire you to do here?” He made a mental note to call Giuseppe as soon as possible and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing jumping in to hire help for Vito without asking.

      For that matter, why did Vito’s whole family have to tiptoe around the fact that Vito was now a multimillionaire and could damn well afford to hire his own help? And his brothers were no better, paying to take care of every repair needed on the family home instead of letting him know when he needed to pitch in. According to Renzo and Nico, Vito had already given enough to the family coffers while they were growing up.

      “I’m landscaping the property.” She set down the paper cup and turned to face him, her back against the wine cabinet his brother Renzo had built long ago. “Your uncle said he wanted this place to be gorgeous by the time his niece’s wedding rolls around, so I’m developing a large-scale overhaul.” Pausing, she bit her lip, automatically drawing his gaze to that soft expanse of pink. “Do you know anything about this wedding, or is your uncle…you know…losing it?”

      “He’s not losing it.” And even if he were, Vito would never let on as much to an outsider. He did wonder if Giuseppe really intended to pay Christine, or if he was leaving that up to Vito. He needed to discuss that matter with him when he called, too. “He probably wanted to surprise me. He didn’t mention anything about me coming home while you were working?”

      “Not so much as a whisper.” She rearranged a length of ivy along a countertop, her hands treating the delicate vine with tenderness. “Believe me, I would have remembered that part.”

      No wonder she was a landscaper. She was obviously damn good with plants even if she didn’t know squat about brooms or mops. Something about her gentle touch as she handled her foliage made him wonder…

      He stopped himself cold, allowing her words to sink in. Could it be a coincidence that his uncle had hired a young woman who, Vito was beginning to realize, was actually very attractive underneath all that grass stain? And could it be random accident that Giuseppe had invited a woman to sleep in the house when he knew damn well Vito would be coming home for his sister’s wedding?

      Not a chance in hell.

      “I’m afraid I have to apologize.” Setting his empty lemonade glass on the counter, Vito thought he had a better handle on this whole bizarre situation now. Uncle Giuseppe, eternal matchmaker, strikes again.

      “My uncle is a notorious family cupid and I have the feeling that he set us up to stumble on one another like this. Once he hired a pool boy for my aunt Lorraine who didn’t even own a pool. Another time he wrote love poetry for his brother to help him land a woman. He takes a lot of joy putting people in one another’s paths and seeing what happens. And since I’m way past marrying age in Uncle Giuseppe’s book, I’ve apparently become his new target.”

      “Wait a minute.” Christine frowned, her wide blue eyes turning a shade darker. Her shoulders straightened and her cheeks flushed pink. “Do you mean to imply your uncle only hired me as a potential hookup for you and not because of my landscaping skills?”

      “Hell no.” His uncle had been raised in a culture that didn’t approve of hooking up. He approved of marriage. Kids. Family. But Vito wasn’t about to share that with this gardening goddess who looked mad enough to spit nails. Although he had to admit that her pink cheeks were turning him on and making him think of wholly inappropriate other ways to make her flush like that. “He probably just wanted me to meet some more nice women—”

      “I am not a nice woman.” The female who’d been so gentle with her ivy plant and so protective of her fire bush looked ready to personally take him out if he dared to suggest otherwise. “And I will sue your uncle for breach of contract if he thinks he can pawn me off on some overgrown, flashy playboy who is so far removed from nature he wouldn’t know what to do with a bag of birdseed if he tripped over it.”

      “Now wait a minute.” Vito had always prided himself on having more patience than his hotheaded brothers who made a habit of speaking before thinking. But where did this woman get off calling him an overgrown playboy? And did she have any idea what it made a guy think when a woman told him she wasn’t nice? “I don’t think we need to start launching personal attacks to solve this. I was simply trying to share with you my uncle’s motivations.”

      “Well you can tell him I don’t appreciate being hired for my ass and not my professional assets, okay? I agreed to a job, not a blind date.”

      And before he could think of a comeback, Christine Chandler pivoted on her heel and walked right out the kitchen door.

      If that didn’t beat all.

      Of course, Vito couldn’t help moving to the kitchen window and watch the ass in question saunter away, hips twitching with her snappy walk down the drive-way. He felt a little bad for enjoying the view and the residual sparks in the air when she was clearly mad, but hell, wasn’t the urge to ogle tattooed across the Y chromosome?

      Reaching for the door to follow her outside, hormones kicking to life, it occurred to him he didn’t feel tired anymore.

      2

      CHRISTINE HATED to muck up her big exit by simply digging her hands right back in the dirt to continue working for a guy who saw her presence as pure fluff.

      Then again, what choices did she have? Pausing in the middle of Vito Cesare’s driveway, she scanned her brain for more options. Her beat-up secondhand truck was parked in the carport, so she possessed the means to leave. But where would she go?

      She had no ready cash, and she was between apartments. Actually, she hadn’t even thought about looking for a new apartment for another month since this job was supposed to have taken at least that long. And if she left now, she could kiss her dreams of owning her own landscaping business goodbye. If she went bankrupt, no one in their right mind would ever give her a loan to start up again.

      Peering around the yard for inspiration, her gaze landed on the fire bush already wilting in the Florida heat. She couldn’t just let the plant die so she could make a great exit.

      Swallowing her pride, she trudged across the tilled up ground that would one day be a lush flower garden. As she finished securing the bush into the ground and giving the shrub a nice long drink, she couldn’t help but think of the fat investment account her older brother had started in her name.

      She had the СКАЧАТЬ