LITMIR.BIZ

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I might agree with that statement!” She sighed. “But sometimes it seems as if I take three steps forward and two steps back.”

      “We all do that. Three forward and two back is still progress. Just don’t underestimate those forward steps. Write them down.”

      “And the backward steps, too?”

      “Let’s just focus on the forward ones. Let the backward steps go. Dwelling on those doesn’t help.”

      Spring unfolded.

      Then summer.

      And then—

      “This is Ben Radford,” said a male voice on the phone on a Monday morning in September. “Are you still interested in working on the garden at my Santa Margarita Ranch, Dr. Madison?”

      Ben Radford. Good-looking, wealthy, cynical, forbidding Ben, who’d made Rowena brave enough, in the space of one morning, to want some danger in her life.

      Rowena sat heavily into her swivel chair, the brimming mug of coffee she’d just made for herself splashing a small puddle onto the desk in front of her. “I sent you the draft plan and costing for the project six months ago,” she said blankly.

      There was a short, impatient silence down the phone, then, “I take it that’s a no.”

      “Um, n-not exactly a no.”

      “Then what?” More impatience. “Your estimate has doubled?”

      “Not that, either. More of a let me consider.”

      “If you’re fully booked with other projects, I can wait. Just give me an exact timetable.” His deep, liquid English voice seemed ridiculously familiar, even though they hadn’t spoken in so long. Thank heaven we never had children. The line had echoed in her head for weeks afterward. How often had she heard a man express that degree of emotion in his voice?

      She’d been listening to other men’s voices lately, but they hadn’t made her forget Ben Radford’s. She’d been on several dates, and although they hadn’t led to long-term relationships, they’d been a success in her own terms.

      She hadn’t panicked, canceled or run. She’d been able to eat and talk and ask questions. She hadn’t felt her own emotions and reactions like the throb of a sore, swollen thumb, the way she used to. She’d relaxed and enjoyed herself. She’d kissed two men, smiled and said good-night to them without feeling that she had to make some stammering, apologetic explanation about not going to bed on the first date and…

      Yes.

      Progress. Forward steps, which she’d measured and made note of, as Jeanette had suggested, while letting the backward steps go. It was great.

      And it all seemed to evaporate in an instant at the sound of Ben Radford’s voice, bringing back all too familiar sensations of breathlessness and agitation that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

      “I’m booked, but there are some windows,” she said. “It’s just…” She trailed off, then found the professionalism that always helped her through. “Most people don’t take six months to make up their mind on whether a design proposal is acceptable, Ben. What’s going on?”

      “I decided it was best to get my divorce and property settlement finalized first,” he said. “It took longer than I expected.”

      “Oh. Of course. I’m sorry.” Sorry that she’d pushed for his reasons.

      “But things are a lot better now.”

      For me, too, she almost said.

      Although maybe that wasn’t true, because a familiar impulse to cut and run, which she thought she’d dealt with, suddenly surged again inside her. It was all she could do not to gabble without pause for breath while starting to sweat. I’m sorry, I’ve just looked at my schedule, I am fully booked for the next fifty-three years, you’d better find somebody else, goodbye.

      Don’t do it, Rowie. Didn’t you want the danger?

      “Let me look at my calendar,” she said instead, after a deep breath. Still more flustered than she wanted to be, she dived at random into the ledger-size planner on her desk and found her time heavily booked for the week after next, and the following two weeks after that.

      “First, can I ask how you plan to proceed?” he said, before she could turn the pages of her planner again.

      Despite the many and varied garden proposals she’d put together since seeing Santa Margarita, Rowena found that her memory of Ben Radford’s place was detailed and acute.

      “We’d need to work in at least two phases, and probably three,” she said. “First, I’ll have to see what we’re working with. An exploratory phase, clearing out the jungle that’s there now. Then I’d be able to return here to put together a detailed plan, which is likely to be split between a hardscaping phase—putting in any new structures—and then a planting phase. Costing’s included in all of it, of course.”

      “And the exploratory phase could take place when?”

      She flipped her planner again, backward this time, to confirm what she’d been ninety percent certain of all along. Apart from two site visits, which she could easily reschedule, the pages in her planner were blank between the day after tomorrow and the end of next week.

      He’d been right to wait, Ben concluded two days later, when he saw Rowena Madison cross the tarmac at San Diego Airport’s small commuter terminal down near the water.

      If he’d tried to proceed with the garden project while dealing with the messy details of his divorce and property settlement, he would have ended up hating every flower and every paving stone, and probably thoroughly disliking Dr. Madison herself—if she’d managed to last on the job. He would very likely have sent her packing with his negative moods, his distance and his distracted mental state before the project was even half-finished.

      And if he’d gone with a larger local landscaping company, he would never have experienced this astonishing kid-in-a-candy-store feeling welling up inside him now.

      He realized that he was itching to get started on this thing, and began to understand how much it had to do with the painful failure of his divorce. He wanted the validation of something new, something fabulous, something that worked.

      He’d cleared his schedule as much as he could for the next nine days. Just a few business meetings and conference calls, as well as a couple of evening commitments. Dr. Madison might envisage him supervising her ideas from a safe distance with the occasional stroll around the perimeter of the dirty work, but he had a very different plan in mind. He was going to shed his heavy business suits like a snake shedding its skin. He’d put on jeans, T-shirts and work boots, and get his hands dirty right along beside her.

      She saw him as she came through the door and into the terminal building, and she smiled. Carefully professional and a little wary, he saw. She had a gorgeous mouth but the smile was wobbly, and her deep-blue eyes were shadowed by her tension-tightened lids.

      Well, he couldn’t blame her for the wariness, if her memories of their morning together six months ago were as fresh as his were.

      They’d rattled each other that day.

      They’d gotten right under each other’s skin.

      They’d told each other far too much.

      Now they shook hands. The sober gray cuffs of her jacket were too long. They hid her wrists completely, but couldn’t hide the way she’d had to work at her hands to get rid of the garden stains. Manicured in clear polish and softly moisturized, they nonetheless had a slight roughness to the palms that told him she had every intention of getting dirty, too.

      “Thank you for meeting me in person, Ben,” she said, visibly struggling with the informality of his first name. “You really didn’t have to. In fact I expected—” She frowned.

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