Driven To Distraction. Tina Wainscott

since Granny passed on.” Wait a minute. Why wasn’t anyone trying to match her up with the yummy snail doctor? These people were like her family, right? That’s what had bugged her about Arlene’s question. She wasn’t even considering Stacy a contender. “Let’s eat, shall we?”

      “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”

      She slid onto the stool next to him. “Yeah, me, too. I miss her like the dickens.” She opened the containers and spooned out coleslaw and mashed potatoes. When she spotted a tree snail slithering up a branch, she walked over to investigate.

      The swirled shell was banded in yellow, white and brown. The snail itself wasn’t so pretty, gray and slimy-looking, but it looked kind of cute in a snailish sort of way. Little eyeballs were perched on the ends of two long tentacles. Two smaller ones felt along the branch like a blind man using a cane.

      “That’s cingulatus, one of the forms of liggus fasciatus.” He was standing so close behind her that his breath tickled her neck.

      When she turned to ask him, “Huh?” they bumped noses.

      “All tree snails are liggus fasciatus. The one you’re looking at is cingulatus. That’s the name of its color form. There are fifty-two different color forms. See the white one in the back with the faint green and beige bands? That’s septentrionalis. The one moving across the rock with the multicolored bands is vonpaulseni.”

      Her knees were going weak. It was partly because he was close and because he smelled really nice. But part of it was those snail names. Or more precisely, him saying those snail names. “Wow,” she said at the realization of how strange that was.

      “They’re called the gems of the Everglades,” he said, obviously mistaking her reverence. “Their populations have been decimated by collectors and by development of their habitats, primarily hammocks. The purpose of the study I’m working on is to obtain more land for protected environments.”

      “So why do you have some here?” The first snail she’d spotted, cingu-something-or-another, had transferred to the glass. She could see its tiny T-shaped mouth searching for food.

      “These are from a collection a botanist raises in his yard to help propagate the species. They’re here to keep me in the mind frame.”

      Except he was looking at her. His hands were braced on the table beside hers. She caught herself inhaling his aftershave and covered by saying, “They’re kind of cute. They look like some creature you’d see in a Star Wars movie.”

      He regarded the snail. “Cute. Never thought of them that way.”

      “You probably never noticed how beautiful they were, either.”

      “Er…no, I suppose not. I think they’re an essential link in the food chain and should be preserved.”

      She gave him an admonishing look. “You need to stop and smell the snails, fella.”

      “Smell…?”

      “It’s an expression. Well, sort of. Like stop to smell the roses. Stop to admire the snails. Notice what’s around you!”

      He was, only it was her he seemed to be noticing.

      She pointed to one of the snails. “What was the name of that one again?”

      “Cingulatus.”

      “Mm—I mean, mm. As in interesting, mm.” Not as in, I love the sound of your masculine voice saying that foreign-sounding word, especially right next to my ear.

      She abruptly stood and returned to her task of spooning out food. Forget about the way his voice sounded around those words, how his breath felt against her neck. “How smart are you, anyway? I mean, what’s your IQ? Or is that one of those improper questions, like how much do you make or do you wear briefs or boxers?”

      “I…” He glanced down. “My IQ is one eighty-five. And why would anyone want to know whether I wear briefs or boxers?”

      He really didn’t have a clue, which made him so cute, she wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him silly. Get hold of yourself. You’re not looking, remember? Only desperate women look. Sure, she wanted romance, wanted a man in her life who would cherish and appreciate her, but she’d passed desperate so long ago, she was in a whole new state—acceptance.

      “It’s a…woman thing, I guess. Probably like the way men try to figure out if a woman wears a T-back or regular panties.” She waved the image away and grabbed a chicken leg. Tried not to picture him in briefs or boxers. Tried not to picture herself sitting on his lap kissing him silly. Not doing a good job of either.

      “Briefs,” he said with a nod. “In case you were wondering.” He bit into a chicken thigh as innocently as if he hadn’t set her imagination off on a Barrett-in-whitebriefs tangent.

      “I wasn’t,” she blurted. “Wondering, that is.” She stuck a big spoonful of mashed potatoes in her mouth so no other dumb words could come out. It had been so long since she’d seen either on a man, other than at the men’s underwear section of the department store. But she’d never admit to detouring through the section just to ogle the models on the packages.

      Gawd, she was pitiful. She did draw the line at stopping to look, however. She had standards of conduct, after all. It was only a fly-by gawking.

      “What’s a T-back?” he asked.

      She nearly choked on her spuds. “You know, a thong. A panty that has more material in the front than in the back.” She took a sip of her lemonade and hoped that would be the end of that particular conversation.

      “What about you?” Again, he looked totally innocent. “Thong or regular?”

      She choked on her drink this time, a mere degree from spewing liquid. Could she really be discussing underwear with a guy she’d only just met? Well, heck, they were moving faster than any date she’d been on in the last four years.

      “Thong.” She pushed the word out at last, since he actually looked interested in knowing. She wiggled her fingers to the bucket of chicken. “Eat up, go on.”

      “What are the advantages and disadvantages of regular versus thong? Has anyone ever undertaken a study?”

      “Uh…huh?”

      He shrugged. “It’s what I do, study and research. I’m afraid I look at everything with an eye to analyzing it.”

      “I thought you were a snail scientist.”

      “I’m a research scientist at the biology department at the University of Miami. The Liggus project—tree snails,” he added at her blank look, “is a one-year grant project on the survival and propagation of tree snails in the Everglades. I have to analyze population changes over the past year, species propagation, variant temperatures of the water…I’m boring you, aren’t I?” He gestured to her face. “The blank stare and open mouth are always a giveaway.”

      “I wasn’t bored, just absorbing.”

      He took another bite and changed the subject. “So, are there strings attached to your meal?” he asked. “Obligations?”

      You could give me a long, wet kiss in gratitude. She blinked and hoped those words had only been in her head. What was wrong with her? “No strings. Just being nice.”

      “Nice like making T-shirts for Arlene’s dogs and leading the workout classes?”

      “Yeah, just like that.”

      Totally, unselfishly nice. No ulterior motives at all. He was way out of her intellectual galaxy, for one thing. And he had an important project to finish, for another thing. It would be unfair to expect him to fall madly in love with her when he was under deadline.

      He was looking at her mouth. Not in a sensual way, exactly, but a curious way. Oh, geez, there wasn’t a piece of chicken sticking to her face, was there? How gross would that be? She grabbed up