8. Tricky Situations

8

TRICKY SITUATIONS

S aturday afternoon, Easton was outside pulling more weeds and trimming the bushes. It was early to do it, but he was hoping to catch sight of Laurel.

He couldn’t remember the last time he thought of a woman as much as her and didn’t know the next step to take.

He wasn’t sure what her schedule was, but he noticed her SUV was gone from her driveway midmorning. It was close to two now and he wondered if maybe she was working.

Twenty minutes later, he was fed up trying to find things to do outside of a house that wasn’t even his.

Yeah, he grew up here and spent enough time working on it, but he had other shit to do for his job that paid the bills. Abe had already given him crap about not going nuts working on the house.

His cousin wasn’t particular about things, but Abe didn’t want Easton to feel as if he was being taken advantage of.

When he came out of the garage after putting the hedge trimmers away, he saw Laurel pull into her driveway.

They made eye contact and it was probably one of those fate things that couldn’t have worked out any better.

“Hi,” he said when she got out.

She was in a pair of dark jeans, cute little striped canvas sneakers on her feet, an orange fleece jacket that was fitted to her body, and a floral print purse on her shoulder. A big bag. What did women put in those things? He hated Rachelle always had one and if she asked him to get something out of it, he thought he was sticking his hand into a black hole and wasn’t sure if he’d come out with something from 1940.

“Hey,” she said. “Can’t seem to take a day off, can you?”

“Always something to do,” he said.

“Yeah, I know that feeling well. I went home to visit my father and aunt. I haven’t seen them since I moved here back in December. We talk all the time, but it’s nice to see them.”

“New Haven, right?” he asked.

“That’s it,” she said. “I took them to lunch and then came home. They got their lectures in, which isn’t normally the case.”

It was the grin on her face that had him wondering. “I’ve gotten a few of them lately too.”

“I guess it just means that our families love us,” she said.

“That’s a good way to think of it.”

“I try to think of the positive,” she said. “It’s too hard to get sucked into another person’s drama and then we find ourselves creating our own or something similar to theirs.”

“I don’t know that men are like that,” he said. At least he wasn’t, but Rachelle always seemed to adsorb all around her too.

“Probably not,” she said.

He stood there trying to figure out the next thing to say and just blurted out, “Want to get a drink later?”

She lifted her eyebrow at him. “Just a drink, or some food with it?”

“Both,” he said.

“So not a thank you for help around the house?” she asked.

“Considering you didn’t help me do anything today, then that would be a no.”

She laughed. “Good point. Would we call this being neighborly or more along the lines of a date?”

He angled his head. He was pretty sure she was yanking his chain and putting him on the spot to give it a name.

He was wondering where the hell his confidence went with women that he had to pause before he said, “A date unless you want it to be neighborly?”

“A date sounds great to me,” she said.

“Good,” he said. He looked at his watch. “How about five? Or is that too early?”

“Five works,” she said. “If it goes well and we just want to chill out and have another drink, we can come back here. It’s not like either one of us has far to drive.”

“I like your thinking,” he said.

He turned and went back to his place. He’d have enough time to get a bit of work done and shower.

A little before five he realized he didn’t have her number and they hadn’t planned on if they were meeting, which would be stupid since they lived next door to each other.

He was losing his mind not paying attention to the details.

Rather than waste brain power on whether he should make the move or not, he grabbed his keys and his jacket and went next door.

He didn’t even have a chance to knock when she was opening the door. Hell, he hadn’t even made it to the front porch. Guess she didn’t use the back porch much, which was a good thing or they could have been at each other’s house knocking and no one home.

“Hi,” she said. “I was just going to come get you.”

“Beat you to it,” he said. That sounded stupid to his ears, but she only smiled.

They climbed into Abe’s truck. His car was in the garage. No reason to drive it around and he didn’t want to keep moving the truck out of the way to just get his car anyway.

“Where are we going? You know this area better than me.”

He couldn’t very well say he hadn’t been here in a while so turned to say, “You pick this time. I chose the last place.”

“That’s nice,” she said. “How about Mona’s?”

He frowned. He didn’t know where that was. “Mona’s?”

“Oh, you probably know it as another name. It’s the restaurant at Wright Marina. Used to be Whitney Marina.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Hard to keep track. I know where it is.”

He pulled off the street and turned in that direction.

When he got there ten minutes later he was stunned to see how nice the building looked on the outside.

He parked and got out. There were more cars than he expected considering the time of year for the marina, but then he suspected people were just getting ready for an early spring and setting their boats up.

They got to the hostess stand and were directed to a booth.

“Not sure if you know this or not, but Jasmine, who manages the greenhouses and all the flowers for the whole operation at Blossoms, this is her husband’s marina now. They met here when Mona, Wesley’s mother, wanted to set up flowers for events.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t keep up to date on those things.”

“I’m still struggling to get it all straight,” she said. “It seems everyone at Blossoms has some kind of connection to another person.”

“Everyone?” he asked. The server came over and took their drink orders and they got appetizers too.

“Not on the floor per se. But those in the storefront and offices. Lots of sisters or in-laws. Things like that.”

“Must make for some tricky situations then,” he said. “Not everyone can be the boss and someone is bossing around a family member or friend of a family member.”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t witnessed too much of anything other than siblings bickering but never about work. Just life in general but in a fun way. Nothing serious.”

“That’s rare,” he said.

“Very,” she said. “My last job. Good lord. I’m over unions. My father is a supervisor for a utility company. He was a lineman for years and now he manages them.”

“Which is still a union,” he said, smirking.

“Yep. But he has a great deal of respect from his men. Maybe because he was one of them.”

“It’s a different and sometimes an old-school mentality.”

“I bet you’re not like that.”

“No,” he said. “There is always something that needs to get done and work piles up faster than I can sometimes manage.”

Easton wasn’t talking about Cooke Landscaping, but she was most likely reading into it.

He didn’t think he was being deceptive. She didn’t ask much about his job and it was just casual conversation.

Their drinks came out, they placed their food orders, then chatted in general about the changes made to the place from when he was a kid.

He picked up a wing and put it on his plate along with some nachos. For someone so put together, Laurel didn’t seem to have a problem getting messy with food.

He took a bite and watched her do the same. The pale pink of her professionally done nails got some sauce on them, but she licked it off and grinned at him. There wasn’t a ton of makeup on her face but enough for him to know she knew what to accent to work the best.

Not that he felt she needed anything because her hazel eyes were bright and clear against her brown eyebrows and black lashes. Her hair was darker at the roots but not black and there were several shades of blonde and brown blended in.

When she’d taken her jacket off and hung it on the chair, he admired her black silky shirt tucked into the same jeans she’d had on earlier, but this time she had black pumps on her feet rather than sneakers.

He liked that about her. She could turn something simple into sexy rather quickly.

On one hand, she could come off as high maintenance and on the other so easy to be around and not afraid to get dirty.

It was a huge contradiction for a man whose last relationship was with a woman who screeched over an ant on the floor and had him running to protect her from an alien invasion only to have to grab a tissue and take care of it.

“I know that feeling,” she said. “But I’ve learned I can’t do it all at once. I need to pace myself and not rush. When you rush, you miss the important things around you.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “You do.”