Page 54 of Marrying the Gardener
“Woof,” Kaleb murmurs.
I roll my eyes at them all.
“I wouldn’t mind being leashed.” Kaleb’s smile stretches as he snuggles my shoulder. “Not by you.”
“Oh, will youpleasebehave yourself?”
Daria laughs. “I think the boy needs a shock collar.”
“Willing.”
“Kaleb,” I snap.
Vivia giggles, sitting on the edge of the pool and kicking her feet in the water. “You’re so lucky, Crimson. Kaleb is an angel.”
Something tugs on my heart. “Yes, I suppose I am lucky.”
“Not at Monopoly,” he whispers in my ear.
I’m going to kill him.
“So how did you two meet?” Vivia asks, spurring Kaleb to wax poetic about how he saved me from ruffians outside his office building. Here, his tale is different than when he relayed it to my father, though.
According to this rendition, he caught sight of my red hair in the sunlight as he was heading up the sidewalk to his work. The vision of me struck him through his soul, and he stood—watching—for longer than was perhaps gentlemanly. When the ruffians showed up, he considered it fate that he’d been blessed with an excuse to meet me.
The rest of the story is pretty standard to the script.
I wanted to thank him, so I invited him out to dinner.
It was the best dinner of his life.
He asked for my number.
He couldn’t get me out of his head.
From the first moment he saw me, his world has been glazed by cherry-colored glasses.
And the only thing he ever wants to see going forward isred.
?
“So,” I broach carefully, fully aware that neither Kaleb nor I are particularly awake tonight.
It is three in the morning. After painting pictures of a love at first sight that deepened with every minute, Kaleb stayed on his lounge chair while I swam with the girls. I thought he was going to pass out from how little he was breathing when I pushed myself out of the water near him and asked if he could get me another virgin something, maybe a pina colada, but he managed to maintain consciousness throughout the ordeal.
Graciously, neither of us drank alcohol tonight, which means this two hour trip back home to Sunset can be a team effort. And, right now since I’m a little loopy from the sugar that was in my drinks, he’s driving.
Kaleb cuts a look at me, raking it away before his attention falls toward the bathing suit I’m still wearing. I didn’t have the energy to change earlier, so I just wrapped myself in a towel until my bikini dried off.
“So?” he prompts, voice low, rough.
“Redheads?” I ask.
He cusses.
Relaxing in the passenger seat, I cross my ankles on the dash. “Isthat a thing you’re into?”
His attention latches onto my bare legs, slides down to my thighs, jerks back to the road. “Feet off the glove compartment,” he chides. “It’s dangerous.”
