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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
To Gail, for trusting me
To Jack, for believing in me
To Jane Austen, for inspiring me (and every other romance writer who’s ever trod the globe!)
Chapter One
By the time she was thirty, Karleen Almquist had signed three sets of divorce papers, at which point she decided to make things easier on herself and just get a hamster.
After all, hamsters didn’t leave their clothes scattered all over kingdom come, watch endless football or stay out till all hours. And their itty-bitty paws were too small to mess with the remote. True, they weren’t of much use in the sack, but then the same could be said of most of her husbands.
Unfortunately, also like her husbands, hamsters didn’t exactly have a long shelf life. Which was why Karleen was burying yet another of the critters underneath the huge, gnarled cottonwood at the back of the large yard of the aging Corrales adobe she’d kept after her last divorce, seven years ago. Each tiny grave was marked by a miniature cast-stone marker engraved with the rodent’s name, ordered from this place online that promised a two-day turnaround, if you were willing to pay extra for FedEx overnight service.
Karleen sank the marker into the soft soil, praying the neighborhood cats wouldn’t disturb Mel’s rest, although he was probably fairly scavenger-proof in the little metal floral can from Hobby Lobby. Then she stood, making a face as she peeled off her gardening gloves. Fond of Melvin as she’d been, it had taken the better part of an hour to glue on these nails and damned if she was going to ruin them for a dead hamster.
A cool, dry breeze shuddered through the veritable orchard of apple trees lining the far wall, sending a shower of white blossoms drifting across her dusty pool cover. The peaches, apricots and cherries would bloom in a few weeks. By mid-summer, the ground would be a holy mess with rotting fruit. But right now, her heart lifted a little at the sight of all those blossoms glowing against the brilliant New Mexico sky, the twittering of dozens of redheaded finches scouting out the assortment of brightly colored birdhouses suspended from the branches—
What was that?
At the giggling, she swung around in time to see a pair of pale blond heads vanish behind the low wooden fence separating her yard from the one next door.
“Boys!” boomed an off-stage male voice. “Get over here!”
Karleen zipped as fast as her beaded slides would carry her back to the house, dumping the gloves on a tempered-glass table on her flagstone patio as she went. Once inside, she scurried across the brick floor through the house, twisting open the slightly warped verticals in her living-room window to get a better view. And indeed, through the assortment of glittery, spinning porch ornaments hanging from the eaves, she saw a great big old U-Haul van backed in the next driveway.
The house was the largest of the four on their little dead-end road, a two-story territorial/adobe mutt centered in a huge pie-shaped lot crammed with a forest’s worth of trees—cottonwoods, willows, pines, silver maples. The property hadn’t been on the market more than a few weeks (the old owners had gone to live with one of their kids in Oregon or Idaho or someplace), so the new owners must’ve paid cash for it, for closing to have gone through that quickly.
The little boys—twins, it looked like—raced around the side of the van, roaring in slightly off-sync unison (and loud enough to be heard through a closed window), “Daddy, Daddy! The house next door has a pool!”
Just shoot her now.
Karleen thought maybe they were a little older than her best friend Joanna’s youngest, around four or so. Jumping up and down like that, it was hard to tell. God bless their mother, was all she had to say.
Then a Nordic god walked out from behind the truck, sunlight glinting off short golden hair, caressing massive shoulders effortlessly hefting a giant cardboard box, and her brain shorted out.
Not so much, however, that she couldn’t paw for the pair of long-neglected binoculars on the bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and doodads behind her. She blew off the dust, then held them up to her eyes, fiddling with the focusing thingy for a second or two before letting out a soft yelp when The God’s face suddenly filled up the lens.
Lord, it was like trying to pick a single item off the dessert cart. The jaw…the cheekbones…the heavy-lidded eyes…the mouth.
Oh, dear God, the mouth.
She licked her own, it having been a long, long time since she’d had a close encounter with one of those. Although this mouth was in a class by itself. Not too thin, but not one of those girlie mouths, either. Just right, Goldilocks, she thought with a snort.
Karleen lowered the binoculars, shaking her head and thinking, Well, doesn’t this suck toads? only to brighten considerably when she remembered there was, in all likelihood, a Mrs. God. So he was somebody else’s problem, praise be.
While she stood there, trying to hang on to her newfound cheer, an SUV rumbled past, parking behind the van and disgorging a pair of dark-haired hunks. Or rather one hunk and one hunk-in-progress, a teenager not yet grown into his long arms and legs. The two men did the buddy-palm-slapping thing, then got to work unloading the van while the little boys concentrated on staying underfoot as much as possible and being cute enough to get away with it.
For the next, um, twenty minutes or so, she watched as plaid Early American wing chairs and sofas and brass lamps and sections of a dark wood four-poster bed and one of those bland landscape paintings people hung over their sofas marched from van to house. Occasionally she caught snatches of flat, midwestern speech and thought, Yeah, that figures. And as the minutes passed, she wondered…so where was this wife, already? Shouldn’t she be flitting about, directing the men where to put everything?
About this time Karleen noticed the mail truck shudder to a stop in front of her mailbox at the edge of her yard. The carrier got out, took stuff out of the box, slammed down the painted gecko flag, stuffed stuff into the box, then walked around to the back of the truck and retrieved a package. Which, instead of carrying up the walk to Karleen’s front door, she tucked into a nest of weeds at the base of the post. Oh, for pity’s sake.
Karleen yanked open her front door and headed toward her mailbox, blinking at the dozen or so jewel-toned pinwheels bordering her walk, happily spinning in the breeze. Halfway down, however, she realized that all movement had ceased next door. While she had to admit she felt a little spurt of pride that, at thirty-seven, she still had what it took to render men immobile, there was also a ping of annoyance that she couldn’t go to her damn mailbox without being gawked at. However, if she didn’t say anything, she would be forever branded as The Stuck-Up Bitch Who Lived Next Door.
And that would just be wrong.
So she fished her mail out of the box and the box out of the weeds, then wound her way over to the fence through her ever-growing collection of lawn ornamentation.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “I’m Karleen. You guys my new neighbors?”
She might even have pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for the eyes.
Bimbo.
The word smacked Troy between the eyes like a kamikaze bee. Followed in quick succession by blonde, stacked and oh, crap.
It wasn’t just the eighties retro hair. Or the Vegas makeup. Or even that she was dressed provocatively, because she wasn’t. Exactly. The stretchy pants rode low and the top rode high (and the belly button sparkled like the North Star), but the essentials were more than adequately covered. No cleavage, even. A delicate gold chain hugged her ankle, but that was pretty much it. She was just one of those women that fabric liked to snuggle up to.
Men, too, no doubt.
Beside him, Blake cleared his throat. Troy came to and extended his hand; Karleen shifted everything to one arm to reciprocate, an assortment of fake gemstone rings flashing in the sunlight. Jeez, those fingernails could gut and fillet a fish in five seconds flat, a thought that got a bit tangled up with the one where Troy realized that her breasts seemed a little…still.
“And I’m Troy. Lindquist.” Her handshake was firm and brief and he suddenly got the feeling that she wished this was happening even less than he did, which irked him for some reason he couldn’t begin to explain.
“You’re kidding?” She hugged her mail with both arms again, her deep blue eyes snaring him like Chinese finger traps. “My maiden name’s Almquist.”
“Swedish,” they both said at once, and everybody else looked at them as though they’d totally lost it, while Troy noticed that Karleen’s mouth said friendly and her eyes said pay no attention to the mouth.
“Anyway,” Troy said. “These are my boys Grady and Scott, and this is Blake Carter, my business partner, and his son Shaun.”
She said all her hello-nice-to-meet-yous, very polite, very careful…and then she turned that glistening smile on the boys, and Definite Interest roared onto the scene, huffing and puffing. Because people tended to have one of two reactions when confronted with his sons: They either went all squealy and stupid, or got a look on their faces like they’d stumbled across a pair of rattlesnakes. Karleen did neither. Instead, Karleen’s expression said, Anything you can dish out, I can take and give back ten times over, which Troy found disturbingly attractive and scary as hell at the same time.
“Hey, guys,” she said in a perfectly normal voice, with a perfectly normal smile, which was when he realized she was around his age and that she hadn’t had any work done that he could tell. Not on her face, at least. “Let me guess—y’all are twins, right?”
Scotty, slightly smaller than his brother, stuck close to Troy’s leg while the more outgoing Grady clung like a curious little monkey to the post-and-rail fence separating the yards. Still, clearly awestruck—and dumbstruck—they both nodded so hard Troy was surprised their heads didn’t fall off. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Blake elbowing Shaun. “Breathe,” he said, and the sixteen-year-old turned the color of cranberry juice.
“How old are you guys?” Karleen asked, not looking at Shaun.
“Four!” they chorused. Then Grady leaned closer and asked, “You got any kids?”
Karleen shook her head, tugging a straw-colored hair out of her lipstick. “No, sugar, I sure don’t.”
“Then how come you gots all that stuff?” Grady said, jabbing one finger toward her yard. Which looked like an annex for Wal-Mart’s lawn-and-garden department. And no, he did not mean that in a good way. Surely all those whirligigs and stone raccoons and such hadn’t been there before? Was that a gnome over in the far corner?
“’Cause it’s fun,” Karleen said with a shrug. “I like sparkly stuff, don’t you?”
More nodding. Then Scotty piped up. “You got a pool, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. Disconcertingly cute, that. “But I haven’t used it in years.”
“How come?”
“Okay,” Troy said, slipping a warning hand on the boy’s shoulders. “Too many questions, bud.”
“It’s all right,” Karleen said, meeting his gaze, apparently forgetting to switch from kid-smile to I’m-only-doing-this-because-that’s-how-I-was-raised smile, and his lungs stopped working, painfully reminding him how long it had been since he’d done the hokeypokey with anyone. Then, thankfully, she returned her attention to the child. “It just got to be too much of a bother, that’s all.”
“Oh. Daddy said we couldn’t have a pool ’cause we’re too little an’he didn’t wanna hafta to worry ’bout us. But if we learned to swim, then he wouldn’t hafta worry ’bout us.”
“Yeah,” Grady put in with another enthusiastic head nod, after which, as one, both blond heads swiveled to Troy with the attendant you-have-ruined-my-life-forever glare. But then Troy pulled his head out of his butt long enough to realize that that was the most Scotty had ever said to anyone, ever, at one time.
Karleen laughed. A low, from-the-gut laugh. Not a ditzy, tinkly, bimbo laugh. Definitely not a laugh Troy needed to hear right now, not with this many neglected hormones standing at the ready to do what hormones do. He glanced over to see Blake looking at him with a funny, irritating smirk, and he shot back a What? look. Chuckling, Blake poked Shaun—twice, this time—to help him unload the leather sofa for the family room, as Karleen said, “Your mama must sure have her hands full with you two,” and Troy thought, Oh, hell.
“We don’t got a mama, either,” Scotty said, but with less regret than about the pool. “She died.”
Karleen’s eyes shot to Troy’s, even as her cheeks pinked way beyond the makeup. “I am so sorry—”
“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “They’ve never known her.”
“But you did,” she said, then seemed to catch herself, the flush deepening.
“Hey, Troy,” Blake called from the house. “You wanna come check out the sofa, make sure it’s exactly where you want it?”
“Yeah, sure, be right there.” He turned again to Karleen, who was already edging back toward her house. “Really, it’s okay,” he felt compelled to say, and she nodded, said, “Well. It was nice to meet you, welcome to the neighborhood,” and hotfooted it back across her yard.
“I like Karleen,” Grady said, still hanging over the fence. “She’s pretty.”
“Yeah,” Scotty said. “She’s nice, too.”
But Troy didn’t miss that she hadn’t said to feel free to ask if he needed to know anything about garbage pickup and the like.
He also didn’t miss the lack of panty lines underneath all that soft, smooth, snuggly fabric.
A couple of hours later, he and Blake sat on Troy’s redwood deck, legs stretched out in front of them, nursing a couple of Cokes as well as their sore muscles. The twins and Shaun were gone, off on an exploratory hike of the new neighborhood. If it hadn’t been for the Sandia Mountains on the other side of Albuquerque peeking through the just-budded-out trees, he could almost imagine he was a kid again, on vacation at the Wisconsin lake where his parents would drag him and his brothers every summer. Letting his eyes drift closed, Troy took advantage of the moment to sink into the padded patio chair, soaking up the spring air, and the peace.
“That neighbor of yours is something to behold,” Blake began in his Oklahoma drawl, and Troy thought, So much for peace.
He scrunched farther down in the chair, his Coke resting on his stomach. “I suppose. If you like that type.”
“Not talking about me. Obviously. I got me my woman,” his partner said with a noisy, satisfied stretch. “Now we need to start thinking about plugging up the gap in your life. And don’t even think about giving me some crap about how you’re just fine, the boys are all you need, it’s not time yet, blah-blah-blah.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Troy said quietly, his eyes still closed.
He could tell he’d caught Blake off guard. After more than ten years of working together, a rare occurrence.
“You saying you’re ready to move on?” Blake finally said.
“You sound surprised.”
“Try flabbergasted.”
“Why? It’s been four years.” Giving up on dozing, Troy sat forward, his Coke clasped in both hands between his spread knees. “I loved Amy. I’ll always love Amy. But I’m tired of being alone.”
“And you miss sex.”
Troy’s mouth pulled tight. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Blake was quiet for a moment. Understandable, considering how wrecked Troy had been after his wife’s death, how adamant he’d been that there’d never be anyone else. Even now, the pain still lurked, even if these days it tended to stay curled up in its corner, like an old, weary dog. But for every inch the grief receded, emptiness rushed in to take its place.
“Sounds like you’ve been chewing this over for a while,” Blake said.
Troy held up his soda can, squinting at the shiny metal in the late afternoon light. “A year or so. Ever since we started talking about relocating the business down here.” He lowered the can. “I don’t know, I guess the change finally rattled something loose. That maybe I’d like to think about another relationship while my working parts are all still in order.”
The dark-haired man crossed his arms, fixing Troy with a far-too-astute gaze. “Any idea what you intend to do about that?”
Troy released a weighty sigh. “None whatsoever. Amy and I were together for thirteen years. And she’s been gone for four.” He shook his head. “Saying I’m a little out of practice is a gross understatement.”
“It’ll come back to you, I’m sure,” Blake said dryly.
“I’m not talking about that, dirtwad. I’m talking about dating. Starting a new relationship. It was bad enough in my teens when at least I had youth to hide behind. Now I’m supposed to know what I’m doing.”
One side of Blake’s mouth tilted up. “You’re not exactly indigent and you still have all your teeth. My advice? Leave it up to the women. They’re born knowing what to do.”
Both men jumped when overloud country music knifed the silence; just as suddenly, the volume receded. Not, however, fast enough for Troy.
“Like that one, for instance,” Blake said when Karleen appeared in her yard, practically hidden by an umbrella-sized straw hat. A minute later, she was walking back and forth, head down, pushing something—a spreader, maybe?—singing enthusiastic backup with the female vocalist. Her cell phone rang; she stopped, answered it, that damned low, warm laugh carrying over the fence on the slightly chilly breeze.
Staring, borderline miserable, Troy shook his head.
“Why the hell not?”
“Her front yard?”
“At least there’s no junkers on cement blocks. Or toilets.”
“That we can see. Anyway, then there’s the hair. And the nails. And the…” He rolled his hand. “Attributes.”
Blake frowned. “I’m not following.”
Her call finished, Troy waited until he heard the rhythmic groan and squeak of the spreader before he said, “The woman’s not real, Blake, she’s a hallucination brought on by sexual deprivation. And I’m not looking for a hook-up. Which is all that would be. If anything.”
“Oh, believe me, buddy, anything it would be.” Blake took a swig of his soda, chuckling. “Something is what that would be. I half expected the grass between the two of you to ignite.”
“That’s crazy. And do not—” he jabbed his soda can in Blake’s direction “—shake your heading pityingly at me.”
“I’ll shake my head any damn way I want. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I should go back and double check the van, make sure you didn’t leave your brain inside it. The woman’s pretty, likes kids, seems reasonably conversant in the English language and looked like she had her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth for a while there. No, wait—that was you.” Blake pushed himself back on the chair, grinning. “Not real sure I see what the problem is.”
“Just because she doesn’t have kids doesn’t mean she’s single,” Troy said before he caught himself.
Blake tapped his own wedding ring. “No ring.”
“So she could still have a boyfriend, you know. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not interested. Oh, come on, Blake…you know as well as I do that ‘opposites attract’ stuff is a crock. Yes, she strikes me as a nice enough woman, but I’m looking for something with some substance to it.”
“Like you had with Amy.”
“Exactly. What?” he said when Blake shook his head again.
Dark-brown eyes met his. “They call it starting over for a reason, dumb-ass. There’s never gonna be another Amy, and thinking that’s even possible isn’t fair to anybody. Especially you. But aren’t you jumping the gun a little here? Thinking you’re gonna find the next Mrs. Lindquist right off the bat without taking a couple of test drives first? Why limit your options by automatically tossing out any woman who doesn’t immediately make you think wedding bells?”
“Because it’s a waste of time? Because…” He glanced toward Karleen’s house, then lowered his voice even further. “Because the enhanced look has never done it for me?”
“Must’ve been one helluva trick of the light, then, that poleaxed look on your face. And anyway, what makes you so sure they’re not the genuine article?”
“Educated guess.”
“Huh. Never realized MBA stood for Master of Boob Authenticity. Hey!” Laughing, he ducked when Troy threw his empty soda can at him, the crushed aluminum making one hell of a racket as it bounced across the wooden deck. Karleen jerked her head in their direction. They both waved. She waved back. A little reluctantly, Troy thought.
“And anyway,” Blake said, “haven’t you always wondered what fake ones feel like?” only to laugh again as he dodged Troy’s smack upside the head. Then, hearing the boys’ voices as they trooped around the side of the house toward the backyard, Blake stood, checking his watch. “I need to get back, I told Cass I’d be home by five. You ready to drop off the truck and pick up your car?”
“Might as well.”
Which Troy had fervently hoped signaled the end of the discussion. Except, after the U-Haul had been returned and Blake dropped Troy and the twins back by their old apartment to pick up the Volvo, Blake called Troy back to his car.
“So, you gonna put out feelers with Karleen or not?” Blake said quietly over Shaun’s hip-hop on the stereo, and Troy glared at him.
“This is payback for all the grief I gave you when you were trying to get back with Cass, isn’t it?”
Chuckling, Blake put the SUV in reverse, then gave Troy one final, concerned glance. “No. But I am wondering how you think looking for another Amy is being open to possibilities. Just something to think about,” he said, then backed out of the driveway.
Twenty minutes later, Troy pulled up in front of his new house, the boys springing themselves from their car seats the instant he cut the engine. “Stay in the backyard!” he yelled out the window, a moment before they vanished in a cloud of dust and giggles. Then he sagged into the leather seat, his head lolling against the rest as he looked at his new home, waiting for the dust storm of memories to settle inside his head.
Several years before, when Troy had finally felt confident enough that the business wasn’t going to disintegrate out from under him, that he and Amy could actually apply for a mortgage with a straight face, they’d driven the poor Realtor in Denver nuts, looking at house after house after house. But it had been their first and it had to be perfect. Especially since they’d start raising their family there.
Meaning, the minute they’d walked inside, it had to say home. And the way his and Amy’s tastes had dovetailed so perfectly had almost been spooky. They’d both craved clean lines, openness, light woods and walls—a house nothing like their parents’ slightly disheveled, suburban two-story pseudo Colonials. The house they’d finally fallen in love with had smelled of fresh plaster, new wood, new beginnings, even if they’d filled it with the comforting, muted colors and traditional styles of their childhood.
After Amy’s death, Troy had assumed he wouldn’t be able to bear staying there. He’d been wrong. Instead, the familiar, the routine, had succored him in those first terrible weeks, months, after the unthinkable had happened. The house, and their beautiful, precious babies, had saved his butt. And his sanity. Leaving it hadn’t been easy.