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“Why?” she blurted.
“Excuse me?”
Why couldn’t she just have said good-bye and hung up the phone like a regular person? Owen was looking at her strangely. As if maybe he realized this wasn’t a normal client call and was growing more curious by the moment. “Why do you want me there, specifically, for gopher negotiations? It obviously bothers you that I can’t give a formal time.”
“That’s a very straightforward question for someone so committed to being vague.”
“I’m not . . . committed to . . .” Was she committed to being vague? “Please just satisfy my curiosity.”
“Is your friend Owen still there?”
Was he? She glanced up, passing a tight smile to Owen, who was definitely attempting to eavesdrop. “Yes, he is. Why?”
“Just satisfying my curiosity.” She could almost hear the ticking of his jaw. Was he . . . annoyed at her being somewhere with another man? No. No way. That didn’t track—not even in the slightest. “Very well. Yes, I want you, specifically, to come back and intervene with the gopher. When you left yesterday, you said, ‘It was really nice to see you again,’ and the fact that I can’t remember how or where we met has shot my concentration to hell.”
“Oh.” Well. She hadn’t been expecting that. In fact, she’d been under the impression he was relieved to see her go and couldn’t care less about greetings and salutations. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was going to be such a big deal.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t be. To most people.”
Hallie thought of the meticulous way he stacked his lecture notes. How precisely he rolled up his shirtsleeves. The way he couldn’t stop writing until the time ran out. “But you need things organized and tidy. Don’t you?”
He expelled a breath. “That’s right.”
That’s all this was. Julian didn’t want to see her again because of an attraction or because he enjoyed her company. He simply needed their acquaintance tied up in a neat little bow so he could go back to his manic typing sprees.
Maybe she needed their relationship, however casual, tied up, too.
The gopher wasn’t the only one who needed moving on.
“All right.” She swallowed the object in her throat. “Maybe I’ll tell you how we know each other later.”
“Vague.”
“Bye, Julian.”
When she hung up the phone, Owen gave her a questioning look. “That was a weird conversation,” he chuckled.
“Right?” She pushed her cart past him slowly. “Gophers put everyone on edge.”
Metal rattled behind Hallie, signaling that Owen had turned his cart around so they could walk in the same direction. Normally that wouldn’t bother her. Not at the nursery, anyway, where colorful flowers shot up out of the dirt everywhere she looked, acting as bright little buffers. But before the call from Julian, Owen had been on the verge of asking her out. And she’d been resigned to saying yes. Now, though? Now she hesitated. Once again, because of Julian Vos.
Man, she really needed to get Professor Forearms out of her head, once and for all. She wasn’t being fair to herself. Or to Owen, for that matter.
“Owen.” Hallie stopped the cart abruptly and turned, looking him right in the eye. Which seemed to stun him. “I know you want to ask me to dinner. On an actual date. And I want to say yes. But I need a little time.” Julian’s intense bourbon eyes blinked in her mind, but instead of stalling her speech, they gave her the impetus to push forward. “That’s asking a lot, considering how much space you’ve given me already. If you say no, I’ll understand.”
“I’m not going to say no.” He scrubbed at the back of his head. “Of course I’m not. You take your time.” A beat passed as he sobered. “I’m just asking you to take me seriously.”
His words hit her like stones. “I will,” she said, meaning it.
Chapter Four
Hallie may have been vague about her timing, but her arrival resounded like a fireworks show. The growl of her truck engine cut out, followed by the slam of her rusted door. One dog started woofing and his buddies joined in solidarity, announcing the entrance of their queen.
Julian sat at the desk in his office printing out an article about a sundial that had recently been unearthed in Egypt. He planned on reading it tonight before bed for research purposes. His hand paused on the way to the printer, and he slowly leaned sideways, looking past his computer monitor to the yard beyond. And when her blond corkscrews—tied up in a white scrunchie this time—came into view, his mouth went bone-dry. A very disconcerting reaction to someone who played fast and loose with arrival times had caused him stress all goddamn day. Coupled with the fact that he’d lost hours of sleep last night trying to figure out how they knew each other? Suffice it to say, his attraction to her was an irritant.
