LITMIR.BIZ

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marched past her with a box of dishes. “I’m just doing my job here,” he said. “Don’t take this personal or anything.”

      “Oh, of course I won’t take it personal.” She raised her voice as he walked away from her. “Why would I take having all my belongings dumped by the curb personal?”

      She was keenly aware of the gardening god standing there watching this little drama. It was bad enough being evicted without having Mr. Bronzed Muscles looking on. She gave him what she hoped was a quelling look, but he annoyed her further by smiling. A gorgeous, white-toothed grin that might have been sexy if not for the fact that it was completely ill-timed.

      Kopetsky hunched his shoulders up around his ears and turned to glare at her. “You’d better call somebody to haul this stuff away before trash pickup in the morning.”

      She frowned. If she didn’t get her belongings out of here by nightfall, they’d be picked clean long before the garbage men showed up.

      Sighing, she gathered up an armful of clothing and headed toward her car, ignoring the curious looks from her neighbors and passing strangers. Didn’t they have anything better to do than gape at her?

      Of course they didn’t. An eviction ranked right up there with the Mosquito Festival and the Art Car Parade in her neighborhood. All three were venerable Houston entertainments, though mosquitoes and Art Cars had to settle for being feted only once a year.

      Other women might have burst into tears or made a big scene, but Lucy was almost getting used to this kind of setback. Two months ago, she’d lost probably the best job she’d had to date when the software company she worked for went belly-up. Since then she’d worked a series of temporary jobs and drowned her sorrows with hefty doses of shopping therapy.

      Okay, so maybe those trips to the mall were a bad idea, but a girl’s gotta find solace where she can, right? It wasn’t as if she had a man she could depend on. Her last steady boyfriend eloped with a cheerleader over a year ago. Stan said she’d always be a good friend, but she wasn’t his idea of the perfect girlfriend. She told him dumping someone was not the best way to keep a friendship going, but he just smiled and chucked her under the chin. Talk about insulting! She hadn’t been chucked since she was nine.

      Since Stan split she’d dated a bull rider, a motorcycle racer, a construction worker, a performance artist and one angst-filled musician, every one of whom seemed to think she was great to be with as long as she didn’t want anything from them—say, a wedding ring.

      Now, she’d lost her apartment. It hadn’t been much of a place, but the rent was cheap and it did have a nice view of the Transco Tower if you stood on the toilet and craned your head in the right direction.

      When was the next disaster going to sneak up and bite her in the butt?

      “Where do you want this?” Startled, she looked up to find the gardener standing beside her, holding her television as easily as if it was a cube of foam.

      “Uh…just put it in the back seat.” She opened the door and he slid the TV into the car. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

      “No problem.” He stepped back and surveyed her car, a bright blue economy model that had seen better days. “You’re not going to get much in there.”

      “No kidding.” She slammed the door shut. “I’ll figure out something.”

      “I’ve got a truck—”

      She didn’t even know this guy. Why was he being so nice? “Look.” She turned to him. “Thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t ask for your help.”

      “No, but you need it.”

      Great. A know-it-all and a buttinsky. Instead of a gardening god, the man was a gardening geek. Give her a rough-around-the-edges bad boy who knew how to mind his own business any day.

      She turned and marched back toward the front of the apartment building. Garden-boy followed. Honestly, some people couldn’t take a hint.

      Mr. Kopetsky was depositing a mangy-looking ficus at the curb. “You ought to leave this one for the garbage,” he advised. “It looks dead.”

      “It is not dead!” She reached out to steady the little tree and a rain of yellowed leaves fell to the sidewalk.

      “Too dry. And probably not getting enough light.” The gardener reached out and felt a brittle leaf. “It’s hard to get the conditions right in these little apartments.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Who asked you, okay?”

      He held up his hands. “No one. Just trying to help.”

      “If I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”

      “Yes ma’am.”

      “And don’t call me ma’am.”

      “What do you want me to call you?”

      “Nothing. Go back to playing in the dirt.”

      “My, don’t you have a way with words?” Still grinning, he retreated to the marigolds.

      She stared at his back, at the muscles that gleamed with sweat and swallowed hard. Maybe she’d been a little harsh. He was probably a nice guy. Too nice. No tattoos or piercings, hair clipped short. He looked like the poster child for clean-cut American.

      Exactly the sort of man her mother would have loved. Mom was big on clean-cut and polite—men, she said, who had integrity. “You can count on a man with integrity,” she’d always said.

      Thanks to Mom, Lucy knew what it was like to date an Elvis impersonator, a one-eyed pizza delivery driver and a man who made his living as a sewage plant diver—all of whom were up to their nonpierced earlobes in integrity. She knew her mother’s heart was in the right place, but she’d always preferred guys who were a little more exciting than that. Guys who took risks. The kind her mother never approved of. Her motto was: Life Is Too Short to Date Dull Men.

      She stared morosely at the ficus. Okay, so maybe it was a tad unwell. Still, she couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Her mother, in one of her many attempts to improve Lucy, had given her this tree.

      Mom had also given her a bread maker she’d used once, a sewing machine that had never been out of the box and a complete set of the works of Beethoven. She couldn’t bear to get rid of any of them either. Now that Mom was gone, she cherished everything associated with her, from half-dead plants to impractical appliances.

      Mostly what Mom had given her was advice. “Be patient and one day you’ll find the perfect career. One that takes advantage of your unique talents.”

      “You mean there are jobs out there for women who can read e-mail and talk on the phone at the same time?” she’d asked.

      “Your perfect job is out there somewhere,” Mom said, ignoring Lucy’s lame humor. “And the right man is waiting for you, too. All you have to do is open your eyes and look.”

      “If I open my eyes any wider my eyeballs will fall out.” Could she help it if the dark and dangerous men who got her motor running weren’t exactly husband material?

      Mom gave her that long-suffering look she’d perfected. “You’ll see I’m right one day. I have experience with these things.”

      What experience? Her mom got married when she was twenty, had Lucy when she was twenty-five and worked part-time in the county tax office until she got too sick to do it anymore. Her life didn’t look anything like the one Lucy lived.

      She carried another load of clothes and the battered ficus to the car. She liked to think if Mom had beaten the cancer, she’d have listened to her more. But in her more honest moments, she knew that wasn’t true. She wasn’t the kind of person who took advice, good or otherwise.

      When she got back to the curb, the gardener had disappeared. It figured. A man who was truly interested wouldn’t have given up so easily. In his place, two women in polyester

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