His dark eyebrows arched with disbelief. “Well, buddy, in that case you would know the name of the owner of the place.” He folded his arms across his manly chest and stared down his nose at her. The morning sunlight emphasized his wonderful cheekbones and made chiseled angles of his clean-cut jaw.
She smiled at her challenge. At this time of day, still before ten and wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, he could be a doctor, a lawyer, or possibly an architect, but he was most likely a professional sportsman. His clear skin said healthy living and his perfect haircut said money. He looked about the right age to be a footballer. She knew a few lived in this area. If so, he would be married. She didn’t know why she tried to see a ring, but angling her gaze to his left fist took her eyes to the front of his well-packed jeans. She hastily glanced back at his face. His relationship status had no relevance at all to his infuriatingly melting effect on her.
“Buddy,” she repeated, belatedly realizing he thought she was male which capped her indignation. Tallish she might be, and square-shouldered, but she had all the girly bits in all the right places, too. Not that any showed under her stiff shirt. However, no matter how she looked, he had apparently decided that the spray can she still held and had somehow pointed at him, was a weapon. She lifted the can higher, narrowed her eyes, and aimed more directly at him. Her thumb toyed with the nozzle, her lips firm.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said in a deadly tone.
She paused. Of course she shouldn’t. Aside from that, if he wrestled with her for the can, he might knock off her hat, and then he might recognize her. Not too long ago, her picture had not only been splashed across the daily paper, but also flashed on the news screens. At this stage, she couldn’t deal with any more opinions of her character. She drew a resolute breath.
“I’ll have the name of your employer right now.”
She lowered the can. For all she knew, he might be a very good friend of her employer, who trusted her not only with his garden but the keys to his house. She had no business offending a stranger. But to keep her self-respect she couldn’t give in without a show of resistance. “Horace Rumpole.” She raised her chin.
“Try again,” he said through his teeth.
“John Deed.”
“One last try, smart-arse.”
She thought he had relaxed slightly. “Adrian Ferguson,” she said, taking her thumb off the nozzle of the spray can.
His eyebrows lowered as his gaze pierced through her. Finally, he unclamped his lips. “Keep in mind that around here, neighbors look out for each other.” After a terse nod of his head, he went on his way.
She didn’t watch, although she wanted to. That was one hunk of a yummy man, not a dimpled charming man like Grayson, but his polar opposite. Pushing out a huff of self-impatience, she turned back to the garden and sprayed more blue spots onto the lawn, marking out where she expected the string lines to go.
She wished she had checked to see where the neighbor lived. When the judge came back, she could tell him and make the story funny. Then she laughed. The story was already funny. Mr. Neighborhood Watch thought she was a boy.
Then again, for a woman who had been shown only too often that she had no appeal, that wasn’t so funny.
At about one, she stopped work for lunch. The cat had again curled on the couch, leaving the food dish half-full.
“Progress,” Calli muttered, scraping the stale food into the bin. She swallowed a long glass of water, and hacked out a cough, clearing her throat, momentarily.
Hobo glanced in Calli’s direction, but her eyes seemed to be leaking again. Calli made an ick-face. The idea of cleaning gunk from the cat’s eyes made her stomach churn. The idea of being so heartless as to leave the cat in misery caused her to find a couple of cotton balls and wet them.
She gingerly sat beside the cat. “Help me here. I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to wipe your eyes, right? Here goes.”
With a tentative hand under the cat’s chin, she tilted up the little furry face. Quickly she wiped the first eye. The cat sneezed.
“Well, that was easy, don’t you think?” She did the second and, not with any confidence, she squeezed a row of ointment across each of Hobo’s eyes. The cat sneezed again and curled up into a dainty, weary ball. For a bundle of filth, she had elegant pretensions.
Calli washed her hands and picked up her phone, thumbing numbers while she ate her cheese sandwich. First, she confirmed the order for the pavers and the sand. Next, she checked with the paving company she had always used. The job would be a large one, and she had already booked the work team.
“Monday next week,” she said, repeating the date, noting that the more she spoke, the better her voice. After concentrating for a moment, she realized she had hardly spoken to anyone in the past few weeks. Now with all her cat conversations, she almost sounded normal. Use it or lose it seemed to be the cure here, though when she forgot to drink she also did her voice no favors. To make sure of her hydration, she drank another two long cool glasses of water.
“You don’t have any water either,” she said to the cat, and she filled a large breakfast bowl with water for her scruffy companion.
“I’m off now. Keep yourself clean, or wash yourself, because if you aren’t shiny bright when I get back, some time tonight you are having a bath. No one ever got well lying around in their own dirt.” And she gave a reluctant laugh because she sounded like her mother.
After rinsing out her cup, she closed the door behind her and stepped back into a clouded spring day. For a moment she paused, glancing briefly at the dividing fence. The Tudor house remained silent, but a distant clank and the murmur of male voices could possibly be the gang discussing their next hit while rattling their numchucks. Or not. Whatever the business of the people next door, she could mind her own.
However, she was pleased to see that the gangster had left for the day. She knew this because his SUV hadn’t returned. Probably even thugs had regular employment. Nevertheless, her idle speculation about her tattooed, bottle-breaking neighbor could certainly hold elements of truth. He looked like a biker. Tattoos might be trendy, but his didn’t look arty, and the rev of the motorbikes last night had been threatening. Likely he had gathered together the other members of his gang to break bottles on a Sunday night, expressing an antisocial protest against recycling. She actually laughed aloud at her clever cycling pun as she pulled her gardening gloves back on.
Despite the gray sky today, this coming summer was predicted to be as dry as the last. During winter, the judge’s garden had dried out considerably. Calli couldn’t remember the last time she saw rain, and she needed to install a new water-saving irrigation system before the heat set in.
Since the whole garden would be changed, she would also need to change the hose grid. Although the old drippers had kept the garden alive, the new plan using less water would make the garden lush. In the meantime, she ignored the blockages and the leaks, managing to hand water the plants that showed the most wilt. Normally, she supervised the gardens she designed, leaving others to perform the hard slog. These days, she couldn’t afford laborers, but apparently venturing out of her comfort zone was doing her good.
As she had supposed, performing the work herself kept her mind on the job rather than on her woes, the worst of which was caused by her decision to bankroll her partnership with Grayson. The people who cared for her, friends and family, had queried his background, but after the failure of two personal relationships with men from the “right” backgrounds, she had seen this as snobbery. She thought she had made a sensible choice, but she hadn’t.
For the first time since the man she had trusted with her start-up business had left with her money and reputation, she realized that she had begun to relax. She appreciated being offered a chance, and she would certainly give the judge her best effort. He trusted her to do a good job despite her having such a pitiful record. All she wanted now was to reclaim her credibility