Life According to Lucy

“Mr. Kopetsky, it was just a little mix-up at the bank.” She followed her landlord back toward the apartment. Could she help it if she hadn’t kept very good track of her finances? It had been all right when she’d been gainfully employed, but the money she brought in doing temp work since she’d been laid off hadn’t been enough to cover the shopping habit she’d acquired in more flush times.

“Ha!” Kopetsky spat into the oleanders that flanked the walk, narrowly missing the gardener who was planting a flat of marigolds alongside the shrubs. “That check bounced all the way to San Antonio. And it wasn’t the first time either.” He started up the outside stairs toward Lucy’s second floor rooms, pausing to lean over the railing to address the gardener, “Make sure you use that big bark mulch so it don’t blow all the way to Del Rio when the wind comes up. I ain’t payin’ for that stuff to blow away.”

“I’ll take care of it, Mr. K.” The gardener rose, all six feet two inches of him, broad shouldered and bare chested. Even given her distress over her current situation, Lucy couldn’t help gaping at him. Her notoriously fickle libido gave signs of stirring, and the only thought that came into her mind was the old soup slogan: Mmm, mm, good!

“Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

Her libido made a hasty retreat and her shoulders slumped. As too often happened, the Greek God spoiled everything by opening his mouth. Not that his voice wasn’t nice enough—rich and appropriately masculine—but the word “ma’am” was the killer. She was not a ma’am. Her mother was a ma’am. Her grandmother was a ma’am. She, Lucy Lake, was light-years away from ma’am-hood.

“Ma’am?” He did it again, and took a step toward her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, and turned away. Any man who would call her “ma’am” was not anyone she could be interested in, no matter how broad his shoulders.

Kopetsky marched past her with a box of dishes. “I’m just doing my job here,” he said. “Don’t take this personal or anything.”

“Oh, of course I won’t take it personal.” She raised her voice as he walked away from her. “Why would I take having all my belongings dumped by the curb personal?”

She was keenly aware of the gardening god standing there watching this little drama. It was bad enough being evicted without having Mr. Bronzed Muscles looking on. She gave him what she hoped was a quelling look, but he annoyed her further by smiling. A gorgeous, white-toothed grin that might have been sexy if not for the fact that it was completely ill-timed.

Kopetsky hunched his shoulders up around his ears and turned to glare at her. “You’d better call somebody to haul this stuff away before trash pickup in the morning.”

She frowned. If she didn’t get her belongings out of here by nightfall, they’d be picked clean long before the garbage men showed up.

Sighing, she gathered up an armful of clothing and headed toward her car, ignoring the curious looks from her neighbors and passing strangers. Didn’t they have anything better to do than gape at her?

Of course they didn’t. An eviction ranked right up there with the Mosquito Festival and the Art Car Parade in her neighborhood. All three were venerable Houston entertainments, though mosquitoes and Art Cars had to settle for being feted only once a year.

Other women might have burst into tears or made a big scene, but Lucy was almost getting used to this kind of setback. Two months ago, she’d lost probably the best job she’d had to date when the software company she worked for went belly-up. Since then she’d worked a series of temporary jobs and drowned her sorrows with hefty doses of shopping therapy.

Okay, so maybe those trips to the mall were a bad idea, but a girl’s gotta find solace where she can, right? It wasn’t as if she had a man she could depend on. Her last steady boyfriend eloped with a cheerleader over a year ago. Stan said she’d always be a good friend, but she wasn’t his idea of the perfect girlfriend. She told him dumping someone was not the best way to keep a friendship going, but he just smiled and chucked her under the chin. Talk about insulting! She hadn’t been chucked since she was nine.

Since Stan split she’d dated a bull rider, a motorcycle racer, a construction worker, a performance artist and one angst-filled musician, every one of whom seemed to think she was great to be with as long as she didn’t want anything from them—say, a wedding ring.

Now, she’d lost her apartment. It hadn’t been much of a place, but the rent was cheap and it did have a nice view of the Transco Tower if you stood on the toilet and craned your head in the right direction.

When was the next disaster going to sneak up and bite her in the butt?

“Where do you want this?” Startled, she looked up to find the gardener standing beside her, holding her television as easily as if it was a cube of foam.

“Uh…just put it in the back seat.” She opened the door and he slid the TV into the car. “Thanks,” she mumbled.

“No problem.” He stepped back and surveyed her car, a bright blue economy model that had seen better days. “You’re not going to get much in there.”

“No kidding.” She slammed the door shut. “I’ll figure out something.”

“I’ve got a truck—”

She didn’t even know this guy. Why was he being so nice? “Look.” She turned to him. “Thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t ask for your help.”

“No, but you need it.”

Great. A know-it-all and a buttinsky. Instead of a gardening god, the man was a gardening geek. Give her a rough-around-the-edges bad boy who knew how to mind his own business any day.

She turned and marched back toward the front of the apartment building. Garden-boy followed. Honestly, some people couldn’t take a hint.

Mr. Kopetsky was depositing a mangy-looking ficus at the curb. “You ought to leave this one for the garbage,” he advised. “It looks dead.”

“It is not dead!” She reached out to steady the little tree and a rain of yellowed leaves fell to the sidewalk.

“Too dry. And probably not getting enough light.” The gardener reached out and felt a brittle leaf. “It’s hard to get the conditions right in these little apartments.”

She rolled her eyes. “Who asked you, okay?”

He held up his hands. “No one. Just trying to help.”

“If I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And don’t call me ma’am.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

“Nothing. Go back to playing in the dirt.”

“My, don’t you have a way with words?” Still grinning, he retreated to the marigolds.

She stared at his back, at the muscles that gleamed with sweat and swallowed hard. Maybe she’d been a little harsh. He was probably a nice guy. Too nice. No tattoos or piercings, hair clipped short. He looked like the poster child for clean-cut American.

Exactly the sort of man her mother would have loved. Mom was big on clean-cut and polite—men, she said, who had integrity. “You can count on a man with integrity,” she’d always said.

Thanks to Mom, Lucy knew what it was like to date an Elvis impersonator, a one-eyed pizza delivery driver and a man who made his living as a sewage plant diver—all of whom were up to their nonpierced earlobes in integrity. She knew her mother’s heart was in the right place, but she’d always preferred guys who were a little more exciting than that. Guys who took risks. The kind her mother never approved of. Her motto was: Life Is Too Short to Date Dull Men.

She stared morosely at the ficus. Okay, so maybe it was a tad unwell. Still, she couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Her mother, in one of her many attempts to improve Lucy, had given her this tree.

Mom had also given her a bread maker she’d used once, a sewing machine that had never been out of the box and a complete set of the works of Beethoven. She couldn’t bear to get rid of any of them either. Now that Mom was gone, she cherished everything associated with her, from half-dead plants to impractical appliances.

Mostly what Mom had given her was advice. “Be patient and one day you’ll find the perfect career. One that takes advantage of your unique talents.”

“You mean there are jobs out there for women who can read e-mail and talk on the phone at the same time?” she’d asked.

“Your perfect job is out there somewhere,” Mom said, ignoring Lucy’s lame humor. “And the right man is waiting for you, too. All you have to do is open your eyes and look.”

“If I open my eyes any wider my eyeballs will fall out.” Could she help it if the dark and dangerous men who got her motor running weren’t exactly husband material?

Mom gave her that long-suffering look she’d perfected. “You’ll see I’m right one day. I have experience with these things.”

What experience? Her mom got married when she was twenty, had Lucy when she was twenty-five and worked part-time in the county tax office until she got too sick to do it anymore. Her life didn’t look anything like the one Lucy lived.