User - NRoberts - G1 Blue Dahlia

"Oh, shut up."

His hand clamped over hers before she could shove back from the table. "No, you just sit still. It's my turn. If I didn't work the way I do? I wouldn't be able to do what I do, and I sure as hell wouldn't love it. I found that out up north. My marriage was a failure. Nobody likes to fail, but nobody gets through life without screwing up. We screwed it up, didn't hurt anybody but ourselves. We took our lumps and moved on."

"But—"

"Hush. If I'm rude and abrupt it's because I feel rude and abrupt. If I'm accommodating, it's because

I want to be, or figure I have to be at some point."

He thought, What the hell, and topped off his wine. She'd barely touched hers. "What was next? Oh, yeah, you being here tonight. Yeah, I knew why. We're not teenagers, and you're a pretty straightforward woman, in your way. I wanted you, and made that clear. You wouldn't come knocking on my door unless you were ready. As for the meal, there are a couple of reasons for that. One, I like to eat. And two, I wanted you here. I wanted to be with you here, like this. Before, after, in between. However it worked out."

Somewhere, somehow, during his discourse, her temper had ebbed. "How do you make it all sound sane?"

"I'm not done. While I'm going to agree with your take on the sex, I object to the word 'bounce.' I don't bounce anymore than I mosey. I got out of bed because if I'd breathed you in much longer, I'd have asked you to stay. You can't, you won't. And the fact is, I don't know that I'm ready for you to stay anyway. If you're the sort who needs a lot of postcoital chat, like 'Baby, that was amazing'—"

"I'm not." There was something in his aggravated tone that made her lips twitch. "I can judge for myself, and I destroyed you up there."

His hand slid up to her wrist, back down to her fingers. "Any destruction was mutual."

"All right. Mutual destruction. The first time with a man, and I think this holds true for most women, is

as nerve-racking as it is exciting. It's more so afterward if what happened between them touched something in her. You touched something in me, and it scares me."

"Straightforward," he commented.

"Straightforward, to your maze. It's a difficult combination. Gives us a lot to think about. I'm sorry

I made an issue out of all of this."

"Red, you were born to make issues out of every damn thing. It's kind of interesting now that I'm getting used to it."

"That may be true, and I could say that the fact your drummer certainly bangs a different tune's fairly interesting, too. But right now, I'm going to help you clean up your kitchen. Then I have to get home."

He rose when she did, then simply took her shoulders and backed her into the refrigerator. He kissed her blind and deaf—pent-up temper, needs, frustration, longings all boiled together.

"Something else to think about," he said.

"I'll say."

* * *

Roz didn't pry into other people's business. She didn't mind hearing about it when gossip came her way, but she didn't pry. She didn't like—more she didn't permit—others to meddle in her life, and afforded them the same courtesy.

So she didn't ask Stella any questions. She thought of plenty, but she didn't ask them.

She observed.

Her manager conducted business with her usual calm efficiency. Roz imagined Stella could be standing

in the whirling funnel of a tornado and would still be able to conduct business efficiently.

An admirable and somewhat terrifying trait.

She'd grown very fond of Stella, and she'd come— unquestionably—to depend on her to handle the details of the business so she herself could focus on the duties, and pleasures, of being the grower. She adored the children. It was impossible for her not to. They were charming and bright, sly and noisy, entertaining and exhausting.

Already, she was so used to them, and Stella and Hayley, being in her house she could hardly imagine them not being there.

But she didn't pry, even when Stella came home from her evening at Logan's with the unmistakable

look of a woman who'd been well pleasured.

But she didn't hush Hayley, or brush her aside when the girl chattered about it.

"She won't get specific," Hayley complained while she and Roz weeded a bed at Harper House. "I really like it when people get specific. But she said he cooked for her. I always figure when a man cooks, he's either trying to get you between the sheets, or he's stuck on you."

"Maybe he's just hungry."

"A man's hungry, he sends out for pizza. At least the guys I've known. I think he's stuck on her." She waited, the pause obviously designed for Roz to comment. When there was none, Hayley blew out a breath. "Well? You've known him a long time."

"A few years. I can't tell you what's in his mind. But I can tell you he's never cooked for me."

"Was his wife a real bitch?"

"I couldn't say. I didn't know her."

"I'd like it if she was. A real stone bitch who tore him apart and left him all wounded and resentful of women. Then Stella comes along and gets him all messed up in the head even as she heals him."

Roz sat back on her heels and smiled. "You're awfully young, honey."

"You don't have to be young to like romance. Um ... your second husband, he was terrible, wasn't he?"

"He was—is—a liar, a cheat, and a thief. Other than that he's charming."

"Did he break your heart?"

"No. He bruised my pride and pissed me off. Which was worse, in my opinion. That's yesterday's news, Hayley. I'm going to plug some silene armeria in these pockets," she continued. 'They've got a long blooming season, and they'll fill in nice here."

"I'm sorry."

"No need to be sorry."

"It's just that this woman was in this morning, Mrs. Peebles?"

"Oh, yes, Roseanne." After studying the space, Roz picked up her trowel and began to turn the earth in the front of the mixed bed. "Did she actually buy anything?"

"She dithered around for an hour, said she'd come back."

"Typical. What did she want? It wouldn't have been plants."

"I clued in there. She's the nosy sort, and not the kind with what you'd call a benign curiosity. Just

comes in for gossip—to spread it or to harvest it. You see her kind most everywhere."

"I suppose you do."

"So, well. She'd gotten word I was living here, and was a family connection, so she was pumping me.

I don't pump so easy, but I let her keep at it."

Roz grinned under the brim of her cap as she reached for a plant. "Good for you."

"I figured what she really wanted was for me to pass on to you the news that Bryce Clerk is back in Memphis."

A jerk of her fingers broke off part of the stem. "Is he?" Roz said, very quietly.

"He's living at the Peabody for now and has some sort of venture in the works. She was vague about

that. She says he plans to move back permanent, and he's taking office space. Said he looked very prosperous."

"Likely he hosed some other brainless woman."

"You aren't brainless, Roz."

"I was, briefly. Well, it's no matter to me where he is or what he's doing. I don't get burned twice by

the same crooked match."

She set the plant, then reached for another. "Common name for these is none-so-pretty. Feel these sticky patches on the stems? They catch flies. Shows that something that looks attractive can be dangerous, or at least a big pain in the ass."

* * *

She buried it as she cleaned up. She wasn't con-cerned with a scoundrel she'd once been foolish enough to marry. A woman was entitled to a few mistakes along the way, even if she made them out of loneliness or foolishness, or—screw it—vanity.

Entitled, Roz thought, as long as she corrected the mistakes and didn't repeat them.

She put on a fresh shirt, skimmed her fingers through her damp hair as she studied herself in the mirror. She could still look good, damn good, if she worked at it. If she wanted a man, she could have one—and not because he assumed she was dim-witted and had a depthless well of money to draw from. Maybe what had happened with Bryce had shaken her confidence and self-esteem for a little while, but she