Chapter One

Megan

“Are you Megan?”

The sun is warm on my back as I crouch at the edge of a water pond at the plant nursery where I work. February in southern California is temperate enough for shorts, and the air feels refreshing on my legs. But up top, in my denim shirt and industrial rubber gloves, with the temperature rising, I’m working up a sweat. The guys in the yard call me Ariel because of my long, wavy, copper-colored hair, which is tied back, but it never stays in place, and strands are sticking to my forehead.

The net result—although it’s only mid-morning, I must look like I’ve been in the rain forest for a week.

I slip off my mucky wet gloves, push back a corkscrew curl, and stand to face the customer calling me.

Holey moley. My head literally falls backward to take him in. He’s got hickory brown hair long enough to muss, and cheekbones that could cut granite. He’s half a foot taller than me, and I’m five feet seven inches, plus I’m guessing he’s in his late twenties, like me. He’s wearing a navy blue T-shirt that stretches across his chest, showcasing arms to dream about, with dark blue work pants and broken-in black work boots.

I ease down my chin.

“I’ve got trouble with my plumbing,” he announces.

We plant-people have an earthy sense of humor, pun intended. I can laugh at the yard guys’ off-color remarks, but we’ve worked together for years. I don’t expect a customer to take such liberties. I notice him checking the name sewn on my shirt as I formulate a reply.

“Sorry, Megan.” He runs a hand through his hair, tousling it. “That didn’t sound right.”

My name has never sounded better than it just did rolling off his tongue. An unexpected jitter flips through me.

His forehead furrows. “I know better than to make pronouncements about…plumbing.”

I’m about to answer, but the way he looks at me, with those long-lashed dark blue eyes, empties my brain. I can feel the standard furrow of concentration forming between my brows. For a moment, we’re in a frown off.

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m a fireman, and I’ve fielded more remarks about big—” His eyes widen.

He’s backed himself into a corner. Again. I can’t help it. I guffaw. And a word finally emerges from my mouth. “Hoses?” I’m rewarded with a devastating grin. His teeth are perfectly white, but they’re not perfect, and that makes him all the more attractive.

“Thank you. Yes.” He looks over at the fountain spraying from the center of a nearby pond and gestures. “My aunt’s pond fountain isn’t working, and I’m hoping to fix it. The woman inside, with the flowers, told me you could help?”

I stifle a snort. I’m sure she did. That would be our nursery florist, my friend Sara—soon to be Sara Thomson-Blankenship—a person on a crusade to find everyone else partners and pending wedded bliss. No doubt she fell all over herself sending this guy out here. “Do you know what you need?”

“I need a replacement—”

Alarm flashes through his eyes.

Then his mouth curls up on one corner and pulling his hand from his pocket, he reveals a section of black hose. “This.”

“Okay.” I take the hose from his hand.

“Please tell me you know the diameter so we don’t have to discuss…”

Measuring my hose. How could I not finish it in my own mind? I suppress another chuckle. “I know the diameter,” I say, but I can’t help adding, “but how much, er, length?” I press together my lips, but I know the mirth spills into my gaze.

“Really?” His eyebrow quirks.

He’s not only incredibly handsome, he’s adorable.

He huffs out a breath. “Six feet.”

“I can do that.” I realize what I just said, and heat rises in my face. Enough of this. I’m worse than the yard guys. I bob my head and turn away. “I have to get it in the shed.” In the cool shade inside, I get back on task. Selecting a roll of black tubing, I measure six feet, pick up a hacksaw, and start cutting. Out of the corner of my eye, I’m aware of him just outside the doorway. A breeze comes through the opening, with a scent of whatever he’s wearing—soap or aftershave. It’s fresh, and crisp, like myrtle—one of my favorite scents in the garden. My whole body wakes up at this awareness.

I draw a deep breath—through my mouth so I don’t intoxicate myself more—and focus. He could make this cut in quarter time, but I don’t like feeling like the weaker sex. I lean in and push harder—my arm complains—and the job is done. I coil the tubing, fasten a tie, and hand it over.

Our fingers touch. The sensation is like handing him a nest of live wire. The connection is shocking.

I replace the master roll on the shelf and catch my breath. “Anything else you need—?”

“Jason. I’m Jason.”

His blue gaze engages my hazel one. My mouth goes dry. I swallow and manage to ask, “Anything else, Jason?”

“How about connecting?”

Connecting? A rush goes through my body. I’m titillated and alarmed. Is he asking what I think he’s asking? After a few minutes of innuendos about his hose? I purse my lips. This guy’s gone too far. Harassment happens here in the nursery yard, but never with a guy that looks like this, a guy who could probably get most any woman with a waggle of his finger, or his…I stop myself. Enough.

The yard guys will step in when they see we’re having trouble with a male customer, but no one is in sight. I grit my teeth, and then, right before I make a complete and utter fool of myself, I realize he’s staring at the tubing.

“I should probably pick up some new connectors, too. Don’t you think?”

He’s not talking about the two of us behind the shed. Hello, Megan. He’s connecting the new hose so he can fix the pond. My cheeks burn like I’ve baked them in a 500-degree oven. From a low shelf, I retrieve a kit.

He jiggles the pieces around in the plastic bag so he can see them all. Then he nods. “Great, thanks.” He points at the potted plants near the pond where I was working. “That purple flower there? Looks like an iris?” he questions. “Is that for a pond?”

I nod. “It is. Water iris.”

“My uncle’s been gone one year tomorrow.” He walks over and picks up one of the pots of iris.

I have to drag my gaze off his biceps as he picks up the iris plant.

“My aunt likes purple. You think she could grow this?”

He’s buying a plant for his aunt on the anniversary of his uncle’s passing? The lump in my throat makes answering difficult. I swallow hard. “I think she could.”

****

Sara accosts me an hour later—big surprise. I’m pulling a water hose across the yard to one of the far ponds. I tell her I have more pressing things to think about than one fleeting customer which isn’t true. The instant connection with Jason is the most exciting thing that’s happened in a long time. I am still thinking about him, and my palms are sweating even when my gloves are off. I predict I’ll be thinking about him for some time to come. He’s a firefighter somewhere, not much to go on. Sara would have extracted more information.

My friend groans. “Come on, Megan. I saw him. A cadaver would perk up for McDreamy there. You can’t pretend he’s a run-of-the-mill event.”

I scowl at her. “You’re almost married. Why so fixated on the eye candy?”

Stupid remark. I don’t talk like that. I don’t think like that. I’m road blocking, sending her another way. Sara’s piercing gaze drills me. Ignoring this wiry determined woman with her jet black Cleopatra cut, bracelets that take up half her forearm, and bright red capris is hard. “You’re protesting too much.”

Under Sara’s scrutiny, I feel my cheeks heating again—the bane of the redhead.

“And to answer your question, I’m focused on you. More than a year had passed since you’ve dated anyone. Come on, Megan. You’re giving the deadbeat former boyfriend way too much power for way too long.” She tilts her head, narrowing her gaze. “Not all men are liars.”

I know not all men are liars. And cheaters. And frauds. Like the last guy I went out with, for three entire years, only to discover he’d had additional girlfriends for at least two of those years, and he used the oldest excuse in the book. Those late nights he told me he was at work, he was hard at work for sure—just not at his job. Mostly, I keep the book shut tight on this chapter of my life.

And anyhow, Jason’s smoking good looks weren’t his most attractive feature. I would have noticed Jason if he’d been asking me from inside a hazmat suit about buying an iris for his grieving aunt.

I would have noticed his heart.

I shove a potted shrub someone left in the walkway back in place with my foot. “But my fraud radar sucks,” I remind Sara. “Not to be trusted. We know this for a fact.”

Sara brushes aside her Cleopatra bangs, her engagement ring sparkling in the sunlight. “That was then. This is now.” She caresses a stray wisp back off my forehead until she reaches my ponytail, and then she tugs.

The pull doesn’t hurt, but her concern does and creates a pang in my chest.

“Come on, sweetie. Let someone treat you nice. Dress up pretty, if just for an evening.”

Sara can’t fathom wearing a uniform of khaki shorts, denim shirts, boots, and mud every day like I do. I don’t mind. The outfit is efficient for what I do, and designing and creating water gardens never ceases to fill me with wonder.

But I’d be lying if I claimed I hadn’t wished, more than once in the past year, that I had an occasional reason to ditch the work clothes, dress up, brush out my hair, and have a man give me the kind of attention he gives to a woman he cares about.

“Would just one date kill you?

The original topic of this conversation, Jason, fills my senses in 3-D. Myrtle-scented Jason. One date, with him? Only one, and then no more? Yea, that could do me in. I yank on the hose, taking a few steps away to search for what it’s snagged on.

“Sara!” One of the high school cashiers is leaning out the door of the nursery building. “Customer in floral.”

“Got it!” Sara calls back. “Think about it,” she intones.

Again, I yank at the stubborn hose, harder this time. I follow the length, my own boots as heavy as if they’re filled with water now, too. Darn Sara.

But it’s not Sara who’s stirred up old wounds, and I know it. Jason is the trigger.