“Nate?”
He dropped his calipers.
“I’m sorry,” Kristi said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Oh. No, you didn’t.” Like hell she didn’t. His imagination had been on the verge of conducting a closer examination of those legs. He hoped his red face didn’t give that away. “I’m just clumsy,” he lied.
Her laugh sounded completely genuine. “Clumsy is my middle name. I’m afraid I spilled your dog’s water bowl. It was in front of the door between the dining room and the kitchen, and I can’t find anything to clean it up.”
He bent down to pick up the calipers, came face-to-knee with the hem of her skirt and jolted himself back to the upright position. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come in and mop it up.”
“So, this is your greenhouse,” she said, looking around. “It’s not what I expected.”
“It’s technically not a greenhouse. It was built as a pergola and the previous owners converted it into a pool house by adding the change room at the back. We don’t use the swimming pool.” He gestured at the bright blue cover. “So I closed this in with heavy-gauge plastic and use it as a greenhouse instead.”
“I see.”
He could tell she didn’t, but at least she hadn’t called it an eyesore like his mother-in-law had.
“You have a lot of plants,” she said. “Is this what you do for a living?”
He surveyed the rows of asters. “I teach botany at Washington U. I’m collecting data for a senior undergraduate course I’ll be teaching this fall.”
“So, you’re a university professor.” She was still looking at the plants as though she wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.
“Yes, and I also do research.” Oh, geez. As if she would care.
“What are you researching?” she asked, probably because she felt she had to say something.
“The poor reproductive barriers in species of angiosperms.”
“Really?” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t think plants had sperm.”
Nate laughed. “I said angiosperms. That’s the botanical term for flowering plants. You’re right that plants don’t have sperm. At least not in the strictest sense of the word.”
Her cheeks flared pink. Her comment had been innocent enough and he wished he had let it go.
“I thought you might be a gardener,” she said.
Now it was his turn to be puzzled.
“You were wearing garden gloves when you answered the door and your T-shirt—” She glanced at his chest and away again. “So…”
He liked that she was still blushing.
“It’s the equation for photosynthesis,” he said. “I got this at a conference I attended last year.”
“I thought so. I mean, that’s what it says on the back. So, about the mop…” She hiked her thumb toward the house. “I need to clean up the water I spilled and finish looking through the other rooms.”
He also liked that she was outwardly more flustered than he felt on the inside. “I’ll clean it up. It’s my fault for leaving Gemmy’s bowl in front of the door.”
He set the calipers beside the next plant he needed to measure, saved the spreadsheet and closed his laptop. “Molly? Martha? I’m going inside for a couple of minutes.”
“We’re playing school,” Molly yelled back. “An’ I’m the teacher.”
“Good for you. I’ll be right back. Gemmy, stay,” he said, giving the dog the palm-out signal for “stay.” She rolled onto her side with her back firmly pressed against the playhouse door and her eyelids slowly slid shut. She wasn’t going anywhere and neither were the girls.
“I take it Gemmy is a girl,” Kristi said as they circled the pool together and walked toward the house.
“She is. It’s short for Hegemone.”
“That’s an unusual name. I’ve never heard it before.”
“Hegemone is the Greek goddess of plants. The botany connection seemed like a good idea when I got her. Then the girls came along and they couldn’t pronounce it so they shortened it to Gemmy. She also responds to Gem. And Milk-Bone treats.”
“My dog’s name is Hercules. That’s a Greek god, too. I think.”
“Roman, actually. Borrowed from the Greek Heracles, son of Zeus. He was half mortal and half god.”
“Oh. We thought he was the god of strength or something.”
She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring so he’d assumed she was single. The “we” implied otherwise.
“He was, among other things,” Nate said. He resisted the urge to elaborate. She probably already thought he was a complete nerd. No point sounding like a walking encyclopedia and removing any doubt. “What kind of dog is Hercules?”
“A Yorkshire terrier.”
He laughed. “Good name. Does he live up to it?”
He slid the patio door open for her and waited for her to go inside.
“Only in that he has me and my daughter completely wrapped around one of his tiny little paws.”
“But not your husband?”
She met his gaze head-on. “I don’t have a husband.”
“I see.” He had wanted it to sound like an innocent question. It was anything but, and they both knew it. For a few seconds they stared awkwardly at one another, then she looked away.
“So…I’ll just grab the mop.”
He left her waiting in the family room and sidestepped the massive puddle on the kitchen floor. He looked in several places before he located the mop in the mudroom and the bucket in the garage.
In the kitchen, Kristi stood at the end of the peninsula that separated the kitchen from the eating area. She had set her enormous cupcake bag on the counter next to her and was looking at the monitor of the camera in her hands. The bag was a light purple color and printed with wildly colorful cupcakes, which the girls had gushed over. It was also large and completely stuffed. He’d heard all the jokes about the contents of a woman’s handbag, but this was over-the-top. How much stuff did one woman need to carry around with her?
“You have a great house,” she said, without looking up from the camera.
“Thanks.” You have great legs, he thought as he quickly looked down and up again, past the purple skirt and short, matching jacket with the big black buttons, relieved she wasn’t watching him.
He set the bucket on the floor, and Kristi reached for the mop.
He shook his head. “I’ll look after it. It was my fault anyway. I keep the door closed, so I put the water there because it was out of the way.”
As he ran the mop over the floor, he kept a surreptitious eye on Kristi. She wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead something on the fridge door had caught her attention. The latest strip of pictures of him and the girls from the photo booth at the mall.
“Cute photographs,” she said.
“Thanks. We started taking them when their—” When their mother was dying. Daily visits to the hospital had become too much of a strain for her and too stressful for the girls, so he’d started taking the photographs to her instead. He couldn’t tell that to a stranger. “We started taking them a couple of years ago. It’s sort of become a tradition.”
“I think