Chapter 5
Four hours of sleep. That must have been a mid-project record for him; usually he went for days on four hours of sleep. But he didn’t feel refreshed or rested at all. Probably because he’d spent all night dreaming about a nurse, coming into his room and making him feel all better.
Sexy nurse dreams. Was he twelve?
The worst part was, they were not just sexy nurse dreams, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise. He was having sexy nurse dreams about Pollyanna. Of course she worked with the elderly and infirm. Walker had seen her the day before when he’d dropped Myron off at Shady Grove. He saw her through the glass doors, waiting in the foyer for Myron to come in, and he peeled out of the parking lot so she wouldn’t see him. So he was a total chicken, and she was freakin’ Mother Teresa.
Which, unfortunately, did nothing to deter his sexy nurse dreams.
Everything about this is wrong, he told himself as he poured an extra scoop of coffee into the coffeemaker. He needed diesel fuel this morning. He needed a lobotomy. Or, he thought as he trudged upstairs to throw on some clothes, he just needed to get to work. Everyone has an inappropriate sex dream every now and then. When he was fifteen, he had a sex dream about his history teacher, who wore orthopedic shoes and cat sweaters.
She was pretty cute, though.
At least in his dream.
He didn’t do so great in history that year.
It didn’t matter. Mother Teresa was his tenant. She was also in charge of the care of his only friend. An entanglement with her would mean nothing but complications, and he didn’t need complications. His dealer wanted him to be part of a group show in New York, and a New York show meant he had to have new work, and new work meant he couldn’t spend all night having weird sex dreams about nuns with bad taste in couches. It would take months to create the piece. Even with a clear idea of how he wanted it to look, the actual end product was up in the air. He hated that fluffy sort of artist talk, but it was true: he just had to feel it.
Before he could feel anything, though, he needed coffee.
Jeans on, boots on, mug in hand, he headed out the back door to the garage to wait for inspiration to strike.
Instead of inspiration, though, he got a dose of Mother Pollyanna in shorts and a tank top, hands on hips, glaring at the remains of Myron’s garden.
She must have heard him step stealthily off the back porch (damn work boots), because she turned to him.
And smiled.
God, she had a great smile.
Walker took a sip of his coffee.
“Morning,” she said. He gave a little wave and headed toward the garage.
“Oh, hey,” she said, holding out a hand to stop him as he passed. “I’m really sorry about the other day. About waking you up with that couch?” she added when he looked confused.
“That’s okay,” he said, trying hard not to remember the different ways he had considered murdering her and Josh McGuire.
“I used to work nights. It totally messes up your sleep schedule, right? They did not make blackout curtains strong enough to convince me that it was possible for me to sleep during the day.”
She was being sweet. She needed to stop being sweet. Or he needed to remember that he didn’t do sweet. He liked a woman with a hard edge and a mean streak. He didn’t like women who apologized for their mistakes and wore purple short-shorts.
“Anyway, I’ll try to be more quiet.” She gave him that million-dollar Pollyanna smile again. “I’m Lindsey, by the way.”
He shook her hand, then retreated quickly to the coffee.
“You’re Walker, right? I mean, I’d hate to think this whole time I’ve been . . .” She trailed off.
This whole time she’d been what, exactly?
“It’s just funny that we haven’t met since I moved in, is all. You’d think with sharing the number of walls we share that we’d run into each other more often. I guess our schedules are really different.”
Walker eyed the garage door. He was so close . . .
“So . . . Mary Beth tells me you’re an artist. That’s so interesting. I saw some pictures of your work online but I’d love to see . . .”
He didn’t hear the rest of it. He never talked about his art in progress with anyone. Anyone except Myron, and barely that. He didn’t even talk anything beyond vague concepts with Madison, and she was the one who signed the checks. So he definitely wasn’t going to suddenly start talking about it with Pollyanna in her purple shorts and her messy ponytail and her great legs.
He grunted, which meant good-bye, and stalked into the garage to hide from the pretty lady, and, hopefully, to get some damn work done.
Lindsey watched Walker’s retreating back as he stalked into the garage. It was a nice back. The whole view was nice. Too bad he was such a . . . what was he? Maybe he just wasn’t a morning person.
Or maybe he was a jerk.
She didn’t like that. They didn’t need to be besties, but a cordial relationship would be nice. Maybe, over time, he’d mellow out and just be unpleasant.
But, man, she wanted to get into that garage.
No. It was none of her business, and he had made it abundantly clear that she was not welcome.
Or had he? Maybe he was just shy! Maybe he’d had a rough life on the streets and didn’t know how to accept people’s kindness! Maybe he secretly wanted to show off his work, but his fear of rejection was so great that it paralyzed his social skills!
Or maybe he wasn’t making art at all. Maybe he was making meth.
Okay. Now we’re getting crazy, she told herself. Detective Lindsey could sometimes go into overdrive and become Crazy Paranoid Lindsey. What she really needed to do was respect his wishes, and if Walker came around to wanting her in his studio, he’d invite her in. She could be patient. She could wait, and she could accept that it might never happen.
She could!
That’s why she was shouting at herself! Because it was totally true, and not at all because she needed convincing!
Whatever. At least she had a cute apartment, and she was getting to try her hand at gardening. As long as Walker didn’t mind. She should go into the garage and ask him. No, stop, she told herself. You’re just being nosy. Just stalk him on the internet like a normal person. Besides, the lease said she had access to the garden, which to her meant she could tear the whole thing up if she wanted to.
She did not. When she wasn’t researching her landlord for her own peace of mind (she told herself), she’d been all over the internet looking for gardening tips. The Willow Springs Public Library had a great list of online resources that gave her hope that she wouldn’t have to start the garden from scratch. In fact, that was a bad idea. She even downloaded a free gardening app that Gladys turned her on to. Since she was going to leave Walker alone, she stood there with her phone out, trying to identify various green things poking out of the dirt. According to her research, some of it might be salvageable. With her starting kind of late in the season, she wanted to save all that she could.
She practically jumped up and down with glee. Late in the season. She’d never had a season to be late in before!
It was not too late for tomatoes. Zucchini would be fine, eggplant maybe. She couldn’t tell if she had melon or pumpkin, which was embarrassing, but fortunately no one was there to see her squat down and try to figure it out.
She wished she could talk to the man who’d planted the garden. She imagined he’d have some good advice for her. But more than that, the garden was clearly a labor of love. Beneath the weeds—she was pretty sure those were weeds—she could see neat rows laid out inside a border of wildflowers. She wanted to show him that, just because he’d moved away, a part of him remained in Willow Springs. Maybe, once she got it whipped into shape, she could invite him over. Make him some apparently terrible iced tea. Or maybe Walker was still in touch with him, and he could keep the guy updated. Or she could ask Walker to invite him over and the three of them could have lunch. And, if Walker spoke actual words to her, it might be more fun than a root canal. That would be an amazing step forward in their relationship.
Not that they had a relationship.
A girl could dream.
And this girl maybe did dream. About an angry man in boxers.
Oh, Lord, those boxers.
She shook her head. No. No no no no no. She was on a Fresh Path to Independence, not a Do-Dumb-Stuff-with-Your-Landlord-Even-If-It-Looks-Super-Fun Path. And taming that angry bear who lived next door would definitely be trouble. She didn’t want trouble. She didn’t want to reform a bad boy. That stuff was not for her. If the bad boy wanted to change, he’d change. A person can only be who he is. That’s how she’d ended up getting anxiety hives when her last boyfriend talked about marriage. She was not a homebody. She was not a stay-local kind of gal, and she’d been living her whole life as if she were.
She had enough trouble trying to figure her own stuff out; she didn’t need to try to figure out someone else’s.
No matter how tempting it was.
No amount of head-shaking could convince her that she did not want to see what those flexing muscles looked like up close. Fortunately, he was clearly a jerk.
But what a hot jerk.
A hot jerk with a secret.
Not only was he a jerk, but he was clearly disgusted by her. Which was not really fair. He hadn’t exactly seen her at her best. She looked down at her worn cotton shorts. Definitely not her best. And the last time he saw her, she was wearing different old shorts and being bested by blue velvet. But that shouldn’t matter. Dad always told her not to judge a book by its cover. “Wait until someone gives you a reason to dislike ’em,” he always said.
All she had to do was pay her rent and stay out of his way. What was she trying to do, sleep with him?
That had her pausing over a squash blossom.
No, of course not. That would be a terrible idea. He was her landlord. That was like sleeping with your boss, she told herself. Bad bad bad idea.
But he wasn’t really her boss. What was the worst that could happen? He could evict her if it didn’t work out. That would suck.
But that back. Those hands.
There were other apartments in the world.
No, no. No sleeping with Grumpy Walker. She was here to be independent, to work hard, and to make her own mistakes without a parental safety net. She had a big, demanding job that would take up all of her energy. She would be way too tired for ill-advised sex.
She also had a mess of a garden.
Lindsey bent over the plot and pulled out a weed. There were a lot of weeds. That was okay. She wasn’t afraid of a few weeds. Or a few thousand weeds. She kneeled down at the edge of the plot and started pulling.
What was she doing out there? From his hiding spot under the porch, he could hear her making noises. It sounded like she was playing in his jungle. He started to wag his tail. He wanted to play with her! He started to wiggle his way under the boards, and the cold dirt floor felt so good on his belly he almost gave up his mission and sat there wiggling. But then he got a good look at what she was doing. She was pulling his jungle apart! She was tossing big green pieces over her shoulder into a pile!
Actually, that pile looked like it would be fun. He’d just wait down here until she was gone, then he’d have the pile all to himself. In the meantime, this dirt wasn’t going to roll in itself...