Nora Roberts - High Noon

"While your face and mine take the punch," she tossed back.

"I'm sorry that insult's been added to injury. I expect you'll handle it."

"I considered flipping them the bird and going into business as a therapist. Maybe marriage counseling." She watched his lips quirk. "But considering my own track record in that area, I rejected it and mused on the more entertaining notion of going to a voodoo practitioner and buying a curse. I'm still weighing the pros and cons of that."

"Let me know which way you decide. It's smoke, Phoebe. You know that."

"Smoke can leave stains and smears. And it kills. Haven't you been paying attention to the surgeon general?"

"Sergeant Meeks pulled some strings. He's got his son a job as a security guard. That's a hard comedown for a man like Arnie. It's a hard comedown for his father to see what I have no doubt he considered his legacy broken into very ugly bits. He's getting some of his own back." He swiveled again when she said nothing. "As long as you hold your line, he won't even get that. Go on home, put this away. It's bad enough you're about to face the multiplication tables or the hell of long division."

No point in argument or debate, she thought, especially since he was right. All she had to do was hold the line. "Monday is, invariably, vocabulary. Carly has such a damn good one it annoys her to be told what words to learn. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to finish up here, go home and have a beer with my Hungry-Man dinner."

"Come on to dinner. You-" She stopped, felt both temper and grief rise up when she saw the expression on his face. "Is that how it has to be? Because of this insulting stupidity? We can't be friends now?"

"Of course we're friends. Nothing changes that, and nothing ever could. But it's best, for the moment, that I stick with my Hungry-Man.

Let the smoke clear, Phoebe. When it does, I promise you it's not going to leave a stain on either of us."

"I'm thinking more seriously about finding that voodoo queen."

He smiled at her, in that calm, patient way she loved, she depended on. "We do good work here. We're going to keep right on doing it. And speaking of that, you did good work at the college today."

"It was bogus. Report was the coed had barricaded herself in the dorm with a knife, a rifle and a bottle of pills. When I talked her out, what she had was manicure scissors, an unloaded twenty-two and a bottle of goddamn Turns."

"It could have been a loaded gun, a bowie knife and a bottle of barbs. You know that. You talked her out, that's what counts. Go on home."

Some days, she thought as she walked out to her car, it felt like it counted more than others.

It was odd, wasn't it, Ava decided, for the man her friend was seeingwas in fact having dinner with that very night-to ask to see her?

She wasn't sure why she'd agreed to meet him. Maybe it was curiosity, or manners, or that easy charm of his. Likely all of that, she admitted as she walked to Whitaker Street.

She'd decided not to drive. Parking could be such a nightmare, and besides, you couldn't window-shop in a car, could you? Or not safely in any case.

And she did love to window-shop. Between her and Essie, she supposed they'd completely corrupted Carly.

Anyway, it wasn't all that far. And Savannah was just gorgeous in April.

She loved Savannah. She loved MacNamara House-and deep in the core, it had been home more than anywhere else. Of course, she'd loved her pretty little house in West Chatham. Picture-perfect life, or so she'd thought. With a successful husband, a delightful little boy. Even the requisite golden retriever.

But there'd been nothing perfect about it, and what a hard blow that had been. Serial adultery wasn't pretty-especially for the blind wife who'd missed all the signals, all the signs until they slapped hard into her face.

So it had been back to MacNamara House. Minus the husband and the dog. She did miss the dog, she thought with some amusement. And she was grateful she'd had a place to go, a place where her son could thrive, where she could be useful.

And if she still wished, occasionally, that the cheating bastard would die in some fiery car wreck, she'd mellowed considerably from the days she'd actively prayed for him to be decapitated by a runaway train. That was progress.

She was lost in her own thoughts and nearly walked right by the house.

"Hey! Ava!"

She stopped, glanced over, and there was Duncan coming down the steps of some poor old house left to ruin.

Talk about window-shopping, she thought with pure female appreciation. It was hardly a wonder Phoebe was taking a lot of looks at this particular piece of merchandise. Rangy build, tousled hair, killer smile. Though she hadn't proven herself the best judge of men, she was betting this one lived up to his packaging.

"Sorry. I was daydreaming. Oh my. Is this the place you bought? The place you told Essie about?"

"Yeah." He looked back at it as a man might a beloved old aunt. "She needs some help."

"Yes, she certainly does."

Boards blinded half the windows while the front veranda sagged like an old pair ofjowls. The paint-what was left of it-curled off the wood in a sickly yellow.

"You have your work cut out for you," she commented.

"That's half the fun. And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that."

"About what?"

"Come on up a little. The steps are fine." He took her hand, drew her up. "Structurally it's in pretty good shape. Some this, some that. But mostly it's cosmetic."

"It's going to take a lot of Max Factor, Duncan."

"Max… right, right. Got it. Yeah, it needs a lot of makeup, but

I've got ideas about that. One of them's about curb appeal, you could say. Your place-MacNamara House?-it's got excellent curb appeal. I hear you do all the gardening around there."

"Most of it." She pulled a bottle of water out of her purse, offered it. "You carry water in your purse?"

"I could open a small sundry shop with what I carry in my purse. I have no idea how you men get along with just pockets. Would you like it? I have two."

"No. Thanks. I'm good. Ah… gardening. Your gardening."

"Mmm." Taking a sip of water, Ava noted the tangled mess of the front lawn, and the viciously healthy bindweed that dominated. "Essie putters a little. Phoebe barely has time to do more than yank a few weeds now and then. I enjoy it most, so I do the most."

"I like to garden."

"Do you?" Now she looked at him with a smile.

"Found it out when I started fooling around with the house I-the house I live in. I'm not too bad. You're a whole lot better. So I thought maybe you might be able to help me out here."

"Here?"

"I'm thinking we'll have to start pretty much from scratch. Mostly what's here has gone woody, or it's dead, except for the weeds, of course. They need a good killing. We'd want some new foundation plants for sure and something splashy. Maybe a dwarf blooming somethinglittle weeper maybe-on the side there. A trailing vine up the trellis." Baffled, Ava studied the sorrowful house. "What trellis?"

"The one I think we should put up. Or an arbor. I got a fondness for arbors." Imagining, he jiggled the change in his pockets. "Then there's pots and window boxes. A lot of big-and let's go splashy again-pots and window boxes. And there's a space around the back? It's small, and I'm thinking a little patio with a pretty little table and chairs, that kind of thing. Needs a couple of beds to frame it in. Potted trees, so on so on. So, think you can help me out?"

"I'm confused. You want me to help you landscape this place?"

"I'm looking to hire you to landscape this place."

Because the breath stuck in her throat, Ava took a long drink to clear it. "Duncan… Why would you think I could take on a project like this? I'm not a landscaper. I just do some gardening."