Maddie

My cheeks were burning. Could he tell? I hoped he couldn’t. My blood had rushed to my face earlier anyway from staying crouched for so long. How could I get so flustered just because he was looking at me? I redid my bun for the hundredth time today. Damn hair! I went to get a haircut yesterday. My ends were split, and I told her I just wanted a trim.

“Oh, honey, of course. I’ll just shave off a few,” the hairdresser had assured me.

No clue what she was referring to by few, but clearly not inches, because she cut off a lot from the front. Now the front was at that weird length between bangs and random strands, and it fell out of my bun. It was the last time I’d trust anyone with her roots died blue and her ends pink to come near my hair with scissors. I liked wearing a bun on top of my head, not at the base, but I’d have to use pins until my hair grew back, and I didn’t like feeling scraps of metal or plastic on my scalp.

I spent half the day with my ass up in the air, walking along the horizontal base the guys dug for the timber pole, checking it was the right width and depth. The smell of freshly turned earth filled my nostrils. I stopped and took out my earbuds around midday, when Sevi and Jacob went on their lunch break. My ears popped a little. In the eerie silence, Landon’s voice echoed through the yard.

“No, we agreed on the KPI targets already. There’s no negotiating now.”

I groaned. It was my second day on my spy job, and I was already failing. How long had he been working?

I laid down my hand trowel and skittered to the porch to police Landon. He was sitting at the wooden picnic table, deep lines marring his forehead, his jaw set. I moved until I was right in front of him, placed my hands on my hips, and narrowed my eyes, giving him my most stern, no-nonsense look, which had the unexpected effect of making him grin.

“I’ll call you back later,” he said into the phone, then clicked off.

“What do you mean, I’ll call you later? I believe you meant ‘I will not be calling you over the next two weeks. Forget I exist.’”

Landon shrugged, his grin still in place. “I relaxed all morning. I thought I’d take a break from taking a break during lunch.”

“Val was right. You really don’t know how to vacation, do you?”

“I’m out of practice, that’s all. I have a competent team, and an acting CEO I’d trust with my life, but it’s hard to disconnect.”

“Well, I suppose business empires aren’t built by taking vacations often. When’s the last time you had a proper vacation?”

“Four years ago.”

His answer tugged at a memory. Val had told me Landon’s wife died four years ago. Now I understood Val’s determination to make sure he relaxed. I was determined not to fail at my spy job again.

“Are you eating lunch with your crew?” he asked.

“No, I don’t eat lunch.”

He drummed his finger on the wooden table. “Why not?”

“I mostly forget. It’s inconvenient eating on site. My hands are dirty, and packing lunch is a drag.”

My stomach churned loudly at that exact moment.

“Your stomach seems to disagree,” he said.

“It usually does.”

“Have lunch with me today. Come on, you’re starving.”

“The work won’t finish itself.”

“Maddie, you need to have lunch. And I’d love your company.”

Ah, his tone held that polite bossiness from the first day again, and poof, my resolve vanished.

“Oh, I don’t know. Even though, if I do eat with you, I might distract you from calling back your business partner.”

The corners of his lips twitched, as if he were laughing at a private joke.

Landon rose from the bench and motioned with his head toward the house. “By all means, go ahead and... distract me.”

The way he said it, in a lower, huskier tone, made it sound dirty. I parted my lips, exhaling. Was Landon flirting with me? Or was my mind playing tricks on me because I’d been perving at him since he arrived? That look he gave me earlier, though... I thought he’d been doing some perving too. In any case, the smart course of action was to remain outside, work through lunch.

Instead, I wanted to follow him inside. Everything about him beckoned to me; the pull I felt toward him was almost magnetic.

“You win. What are you feeding me?” I asked.

“Something delicious.”

He wasn’t lying. We ate heated-up roast beef leftovers at the kitchen table, and it was the best thing I’d eaten in a while. The meat was tender, and I thought I tasted a hint of cinnamon in the gravy. I’d somehow managed to get gravy on my fingers too.

“Val is an excellent cook,” I exclaimed.

“Always has been. She picked up the best tricks from Mom.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been, raising your brothers and sisters.”

“It wasn’t easy. We knew how to be their oldest siblings, but parenting them was an entirely different thing. You should’ve seen Val and me giving them an earful when we caught them sneaking out of the house. Guess who’d taught them the trick?” He pointed with both thumbs at himself, laughing.

“Did you ever regret giving up college and soccer? I think you were at Harvard, right? Val mentioned it once.”

“Yes, it was Harvard. I never regretted it. I was needed here,” he said simply, and I believed him. Nothing in his body language contradicted his words. I admired him for not shunning responsibility and commitment.

“How did you manage financially?” I asked.

“Val and I ran Dad’s pub for a couple of years while we took classes at a local college. We gave it up as soon as we got decent job offers. We wanted to keep it because it reminded us of our parents, but it wasn’t feasible. Dad opened it when he came over from Ireland,” he said with a melancholy smile.

“Wait, are you lot Irish?”

“Half Irish. The Connor part didn’t tip you off?”

“Not really. Neither of you has that Irish brogue.”

Thank God he didn’t. One thing Landon didn’t need was more help being sexy as hell, and the brogue was hot.

“That we don’t. But we did inherit a solid work ethic, an interminable list of oddball sayings my dad insisted were Irish—though I’ve never found proof of that—and a tradition for Friday night dinners. Dad always told us he got together with his folks every Friday before moving across the ocean, and we adopted that tradition. My siblings get together every week. I was part of it before moving to San Jose.” The melancholy was mirrored in his eyes.

“And you miss it.”

“A lot. I think coming here reminded me just how much. But enough about me. Tell me about your business,” Landon said. “Why landscaping?”

“I studied architecture, but after I got my degree, I realized that I like transforming outdoor spaces. So I branched into landscaping, and also took courses about plants and flowers. I mostly work on people’s personal yards. I like putting together beautiful spaces where they can come home and relax, you know?”

Landon had drawn his chair nearer to mine, and our thighs were touching under the table, which sent my senses into a tailspin.

“That’s great thinking. Everyone needs a place to disconnect and recharge.”

“Exactly. And I love it when I have a huge space to work with, like here. There’s so much I can do. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, and since my parents knew we wouldn’t permanently live there, we rented small spaces. During summer holidays, we traveled in a trailer. It was very claustrophobic, and the outdoor space was always a parking lot.”

“Why were you moving around?”

“My parents traveled to music gigs across the country, and there was no one they could leave me and my sister with.” That nomadic existence had been exhausting. It had been hard to strike any meaningful relationships at school since we moved so often.

“Do they live in LA now?”

“No, they’re still traveling around. But I set up roots here. My sister’s in town too.”

I wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know or if he was just being polite, but suddenly I was feeling very chatty. Usually I was the exact opposite, especially around men I’d just met. But Landon made me lower my guard.

“Why LA?”

I shrugged. “I moved here with my ex. The relationship didn’t work out, but I’m happy here. I lived in Miami before, went to college there, but I like it here much more. Less humidity.”

He grinned. “No alligators.”

I grinned back. “Always a plus. In Miami, every time someone who lived near the water asked me to landscape their property, I kept looking over my shoulder.”

“Did you own your own business there too?”

“Yes. I like the independence, even if the income varies so much, especially in between projects. Do you ever turn off your business brain?”

“Ah, that’s a definite no.” He smiled, and damn if I didn’t want to keep this man smiling.

As I chewed on my last bit of beef, a strand of hair caught at the corner of my mouth. I moved my hand to push it away, but I had a little gravy grease on my fingers, so I only managed to stick the strand to my fingers.

I groaned, and Landon laughed.

“Had a haircut disaster yesterday. The front is too short for a bun. I had it in my face all day.”

“Wait, I’ll unstick you.”

He brought a wet cloth from the sink, rubbing my fingers clean and then the corners of my mouth. The gesture felt intimate, especially because Landon was looking closely at my lips. I licked them almost unconsciously, and he drew in a sharp breath, snapping his gaze up. We were so close that I felt his breath on the skin above my upper lip. It electrified my entire body. His right hand was still touching my cheek as he rubbed the right corner of my mouth clean. The way he looked at me... God, I was buzzing with awareness. When he pulled away, returning with the cloth to the sink, I felt cold.

“Thank you for feeding me. I’ll help you clean up.”

He held up a hand. “Nothing to help me with. I just have to put the plates in the dishwasher.”

“Okay, I’ll let you get back to relaxing, then.” I emphasized relaxing with a wiggle of my finger. The corners of his lips tilted up. I loved making him smile. It was a good look on him. Scratch that—it was a drop-dead-sexy look that made his mouth even more appealing. Oh, that mouth. I bet he could do delicious things with it.

“I plan to relax, don’t you worry about me. I’m meeting some old friends this week, but always in the evenings.”

“Oh, you should stop by the bar where my sister works. They have live music every Tuesday and Thursday.”

“Band any good?”

“They’re really good. I sometimes go too. Gives me a chance to catch up with her.”

“Where is the bar?”

I told him the address, and he jotted it down on his phone.

“Will you be there this week, Maddie?”

“Yes, on Thursday.”

“Then I’ll stop by too, with my friend.”

I clapped my hands, then rubbed them together. “Excellent. You’ll have fun.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “You promise?”

I swallowed, feeling a little light-headed. Oh, what those gorgeous green eyes and those tempting lips did to me.

“I promise.”

Was I imagining the chemistry between us, the hot look from before? I had my answer when Landon’s gaze traveled up and down my body. Tingles spread through me. It was a scorching-hot look.