Part 5 (1/2)
”No, thanks. I'm counting calories.”
While Hailey clacked up to the front, her heels. .h.i.tting the reclaimed fir floors, he looked around. The place was packed. Two old men at a corner table talked politics; one wore a blazer, as though he'd spent so many years dressing for the office that he couldn't stop even in retirement.
A trio of young mothers gossiped while their offspring dozed in strollers or gummed some kind of food from a reusable plastic container. A young guy with earphones on typed frantically into a computer. Two Asian women sat in a corner with textbooks and open notebooks.
Change the faces, the clothing and the language, and you could be in any public meeting place in the world, he thought.
”It's funky, isn't it?”
He turned back to Julia. ”Yeah. Lots of character. I like it.”
”Wait until you taste the coffee. It's so much better than anything you can get in a chain.”
He nodded, thinking how people always seem to say that whether it's true or not. ”You working?”
”No. Taking an email break.” She blushed. ”I'm like a teenager. It's ridiculous. He calls me sweetie. Isn't that romantic?”
A guy calling a woman sweetie might have trouble remembering names, but he kept that thought to himself.
”Have you done much online dating?”
”No. This is my first time. I can't believe I lucked out first time.”
Hailey arrived with two steaming china mugs, and placed one down in front of him.
”Thanks.”
Hers was some frothy drink. ”I got an umbrella,” she said to Julia.
He glanced over half expecting that the baristas had taken to putting paper parasols into coffees now. It would hardly surprise him. Every time he came back to the States there seemed to be some new and crazier innovation-Earl Grey lattes or raspberry flavoring or some d.a.m.n thing. It turned out though that they were talking latte art. The barista had decorated the foam with the outline of an umbrella. He checked the surface of his own coffee before taking a sip but found it blessedly manly, black and decoration-free.
He drank and found the brew gratifyingly strong.
”I was just telling Rob that my engineer calls me sweetie in his emails.”
”Oh, that's so cute.”
Julia s.h.i.+fted forward in her seat. ”I've already lost two pounds. I think I can lose another one before we meet. Do you think I should go for jeans and a sweater for our date? Or do I put on a dress? I can fit into that red one I wore to your birthday last year.”
Hailey seemed to ponder the choices the way a judge might consider a felon before a sentencing. ”Where are you going on your date?”
”I'm not sure. He asked me which are my favorite restaurants so I a.s.sume he wants to go for dinner. He said he's getting his Mercedes tuned up so he can pick me up.”
”He drives a Mercedes,” Hailey said, sounding impressed.
”Or says he does,” Rob mumbled into his coffee. When Hailey moved her chair slightly, he caught her scent again, even over the coffee, or was he imagining that cool citrus underlaid with something hot and dangerous?
”I want to look my best, but I don't want to seem too eager.” Julia turned to him. ”What do you think? Jeans or dress?”
He wanted to bolt to the other side of the coffee shop and talk politics with the old guys. Instead he tried to recall to the last actual date he'd had. It would be dinner with Romona, after work but before bed. Romona looked hot in jeans, dresses, fancy gowns, and best in nothing at all.
Which didn't seem like information he wanted to share with two women he'd only just met.
”It depends where you're going for the date, I guess. But I like a nice dress on a woman.”
Both women listened to him as though he might have the answer to life's greatest mysteries.
”It's more about chemistry than clothing. If you click, you click. It's a bizarre and unpredictable fact of life that sometimes you meet a woman and there's no spark, and sometimes, for no reason at all, there's this huge attraction between you.”
Instinctively he glanced at Hailey. The inconvenient attraction was sizzling between them even now, in this crowded coffee shop with steamy windows from all the damp coats and sweaters drying off from the rain. Just the way her body curved into the chair turned him on. The way she held her coffee mug with two hands like a little kid. The way her head tilted when she listened. The sound of her laughter, the shape of her legs. ”You have no control, even when it's the last person you want to be attracted to.”
Their gazes locked and, as he felt the heat traveling back and forth between them, her lips parted, giving him a glimpse of white teeth and pink tongue.
She blinked and turned away, taking a quick drink from her china mug.
Julia gnawed some of her lipstick off. ”I feel a huge attraction to this guy and I haven't even met him. I can't imagine what will happen when we do meet.”
”Neither can I,” Rob mumbled.
Hailey reached over and touched her friend's hand while simultaneously kicking him under the table. Luckily his bad leg was on the side farthest from her. ”I really hope this works out. He sounds perfect.”
As opposed to this huge and inconvenient attraction he felt for Hailey that was far from perfect.
A smart man would keep his distance.
HAILEY RECEIVED A CALL the next morning from Diane, who said she had clients who might be interested in Bellamy House.
Hailey cleared it with Rob and showed up half an hour before Diane and her clients were due, to make sure he was as neat as he claimed he was.
After checking the downstairs rooms and sighing with relief that all she had to do was hide a coat and some boots in the closet and give the kitchen sink a quick polish, she hurried upstairs.
She walked into the master bedroom and discovered Rob had done away with the designer cus.h.i.+ons Julia had placed on the bed. She unearthed them from where he'd stuffed them-under the bed.
As she was bending over, fluffing them as close to their original pristine state as she could get them, a voice said behind her, ”Are you going to put mints on the pillows and turn down the bed?”
She turned abruptly. ”Rob, what are you doing here?” And then her eyes widened. He'd emerged from the master bath in nothing but a towel loosely tied around his hips. His hair was wet, his chest hair clung in damp, dark curls to his skin and one water droplet slid down his shoulder in a way that fascinated her.
He smelled of soap and toothpaste but she could swear she got a whiff of hot, star-filled nights under a desert sky.
”You need to go. I've got a Realtor coming in twenty minutes.”
”Her name Diane something?”