LITMIR.BIZ

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the day. Don’t answer the phone or doorbell.” She tugged on Elmo’s leash. “Come on, boy.”

      STACY STALKED back to her house and tried to continue working with the recalcitrant Elmo. For some reason, the little weasel was completely enamored with Barrett. He kept glancing longingly toward the hedges and whimpering. “He doesn’t do dogs,” she said in a low voice. “Or babies. Or even romance!” Perfectly good reasons not to be interested, if she needed more than the disparate intelligence factor. So that swirling feeling inside her at the thought of him must be the ovulation countdown. She had a deadline for her project, too.

      It was hard to actually imagine herself as a mother. Particularly a single mother.

      Forget that part. Just think about the baby part.

      She hadn’t started converting the second bedroom into a nursery yet. She didn’t want to alert the neighbors. But she knew exactly what it was going to look like—bright yellow, the flowers-with-faces theme she’d seen at the department store.

      Elmo made the dash to the hedge once again, yanking her out of baby daydreams. She tried to grab the end of the trailing leash, but weasel boy was gone before she could reach it. Then she heard a soft oof from the other side, and then, “You again, huh?”

      He probably thought the same thing whenever he saw her. With resignation, she walked around the hedge to the backyard where Barrett sat at the table with all his notes, charts and his laptop computer…and Elmo sitting on his lap, his insanely long tongue flicking toward Barrett’s chin. Barrett was shrunk back as far as the chair would allow.

      “I’m officially renaming him Weasel Boy,” she said. “He does look a bit like a weasel, doesn’t he? You know, I haven’t seen that dog take to anyone in the whole time he’s been at the Humane Society.”

      Weasel Boy gave up on the licking and curled up on Barrett’s lap, an enviable position to say the least. She only let herself dwell on that particular fantasy for a moment before she realized he’d said something. “What?”

      “How long has he been at the shelter?”

      “Five months. The problem is, when people come in looking for a dog, they want pretty or cute. Weasel Boy is the cute kind of ugly that baby birds are. And snails. He won’t come to anyone, hardly eats, whines all the time, looks lost…” She tilted her head. “Well, until now.”

      Barrett studied the dog. “Why is he in there?”

      “God supposedly told his owner to join the Peace Corps. Weasel Boy had been with him since he was a puppy. He took it hard, naturally. Dogs bond with their pack leader, their owner. He does seem to adore you for some odd reason. Not that you’re unadorable, because you’re not. Are. Not that I think you’re adorable. Or that you’re not.” If only she had some mashed potatoes she could stuff into her mouth. “Anyway, that dog obviously adores you.”

      After trying to make sense of her senseless barrage of words, Barrett tilted his head at Weasel Boy. “I’ve never been adored before.” He picked him up and handed him to her. “Nevertheless, I must relinquish him to your custody.”

      “You’ve never been adored?” she asked.

      “Well, in third grade there was a girl who called me adorable all the time. Then again, I was a couple years younger, the smallest kid in class. She stopped adoring me when I got an A and she got a C, so I don’t think that counts.”

      She took Weasel Boy from him. He’d never been adored, not really. How sad, how…wait a minute. She’d never been adored, either. Better not to dwell on how sad and pitiful it was.

      “So what other kinds of things do you research? All kinds of critters?”

      “I’ve only been studying—” he smiled “—critters since I got my PhD in biology a couple of years ago. My father is professor and chairperson of the department of biology at the University of Miami. I thought that field might be interesting.”

      “So you went and got a PhD in it, just for something to do?”

      He missed the sarcastic tilt to her voice. “Right.”

      “What about before that?”

      Too bad he wasn’t geeky-looking. A man that smart shouldn’t be gorgeous, shouldn’t look so good in blue jeans and a wrinkled blue cotton shirt that set off his eyes. A man who looked like that should be dumber than a box of hair. It just wasn’t right.

      “I got a BS in mathematics and studied time.”

      “Time? How does one study time, exactly?”

      “I worked with a team on leading-edge research on an optical time standard that relies on laser light and a single atom of ytterbium.” He was really getting into it, using his hands and everything. “We needed to find something with a regular motion, like the pendulum on a clock. What we used was the movement of the laser’s light wave. The trick was, of course, to make sure the light was oscillating at a precise frequency. Enter the ytterbium atom, which worked wonders by absorbing the light of a defined frequency. Now that was magic. Once we…” He took in her expression. “I’m boring you again, aren’t I?”

      “Sorry. You’re talking to three-point-oh grade average, no college here. You lost me after the first ytterbium.”

      Barrett leaned forward, and she caught a scent of woodsy aftershave. “Don’t apologize.”

      “So you studied time for…a time, and then what?”

      “Then I got bored with physics and got a degree in botany.”

      She would have disliked him on principle except there wasn’t a trace of pretentiousness in his voice. As though that’s what everyone did.

      “So, botany’s your thing.”

      “I lost interest in that and switched to biology.”

      “Ah…I see.” Not. “So biology is your chosen field then. Tree snails for now.”

      “I work on various short-term projects. Keeps things interesting.”

      “Sounds like you get bored easily.”

      “I just haven’t found what I’m looking for yet.”

      “I used to feel that way, too.”

      He looked genuinely interested. “What did you do to remedy it?”

      She almost wanted to tell him about her plans, but with his baby fears, he wouldn’t understand. “I changed what I wanted.” Or at least she thought she had, but looking into those eyes of his, she realized she hadn’t convinced all of herself that she didn’t want a man in her life. She pushed herself to her feet. “Come on, Weasel Boy, let’s leave the scientist dude to his work. See you.”

      He smiled. “I see you, too.”

      She smiled back and started to carry Weasel Boy around the hedge to her yard.

      “Howdy, Stacy.” Jack Nelson walked around the side of the house. “No wonder no one was answering the door. Just wanted to introduce myself to our temporary resident.”

      He aimed his perfect white smile at Barrett. “I’m Jack Nelson, king of Sunset City.”

      Barrett dutifully walked from the table and accepted Jack’s outstretched hand. “King?”

      “No need for formalities. I stopped requiring people to curtsy years ago. Hear you’re a frog doctor. Pretty interesting. I used to wrassle alligators myself.”

      Between being a fighter pilot and a professional surfer, Stacy thought, but held the words. Let him indulge in his harmless fantasies. At least his were more harmless than hers.

      “Tree snails,” Barrett said.

      “Mighty fine eating, them. Well, gotta go. Duty calls, as you’d imagine it does with someone in my position. Stacy, remember, taxes

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