Life According to Lucy. Cindi Myers

“I was digging a new rose bed for the Lawson sisters just this morning. And Margery Rice calls me at least once a week to come over and see her.”

      Marisel made a face. “The Lawson sisters are old enough to be your grandmothers and Margery Rice should be ashamed of herself, a married woman flirting like that.”

      “Oh, I don’t take her seriously.” He paged through the invoices. Margery Rice was a very well-built forty-year-old who had let it be known he could leave his shoes under her bed any time, but he didn’t have any intention of taking her up on her offer. Still, it had been a while since a woman had warmed his sheets. Marisel was right; he needed to make more of an effort to find someone.

      “I promise I’ll get out and circulate,” he said. “After the art show is over and I win the bid for Allen Industries.”

      “If those people have any sense you’ll win the bid. But your father tried for years to get them as customers and he never could.” She shook her head. “That shows right there they aren’t too smart.”

      He nodded. Yes, his father had gone after Allen Industries for years. But this year, Greg was determined to get the job. “There’s no way they can turn me down. The plan I outlined for them is exactly what they’re looking for, and no one will beat the price.”

      “And then what? You’ll spend all your time making sure the job is done perfectly instead of getting out and having any kind of life.” She wagged her finger at him in a fair imitation of the old man. “You’re too young to be a hermit.”

      “Yes, ma’am.” He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. At six-two, he towered more than a foot over Marisel, but she looked for all the world as if at any moment she’d lay him over her knee and tan his hide.

      “You laugh, but don’t you know the woman for you isn’t going to fall out of the sky?”

      “I was thinking I might find her hiding behind a rose bush one day.”

      “Why would you think a loco thing like that?”

      “Pop always said you could find all the best things in life in gardens.”

      She made a clucking sound with her tongue. “I don’t think he meant women.”

      “You never know. He might have.” The way things were going, Greg figured he had as much chance finding a woman in a garden as he did anywhere else. And he spent more time in gardens. He opened a drawer and shoved the invoices inside. “Come on. I’ll drop you off on my way home.”

      She pulled her sweater close around her. “You don’t have to go to any trouble for me. I can take the bus.”

      He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Come on. If you see any likely looking women on the way, you can point them out to me.”

      She swatted at him. “You are a bad boy, Greg Polhemus.”

      “Yes, ma’am. I work at it.”

      He laughed as she began muttering under her breath in Spanish and led the way to the car. When he’d caught up on some of his jobs, he would make more of an effort to date. That house of his needed a family in it and he was tired of sleeping alone.

      2

      To dig is to discover.

      LUCY COULDN’T BELIEVE she was moving back into her old bedroom at her age. She was supposed to be a strong, independent young woman. So what was she doing letting Dad rush to her rescue? She stared at the antique white bed and dresser her mother had picked out when Lucy turned ten. Her DVD player sat on the dresser next to the ballerina jewelry box Mom had given her for her thirteenth birthday. The bookcase in the corner held her collection of Sweet Valley High books and troll dolls.

      She half expected her high-school best friend, Janet Hightower, to call and ask her for her notes from history, and had she seen that rad new guy in chemistry class?

      She sighed and sank down onto the bed. Somehow, when she’d been planning her future, she’d thought she’d have been past all this by now. In fact, if the diary she’d kept when she was twelve had been accurate, she’d be living in a fifteen-room mansion in River Oaks with two perfect children, a millionaire husband who worshiped the ground she walked on and gave her diamonds “just because” and a silver Porsche in the driveway.

      Which just goes to show that at twelve, she hadn’t known squat about real life.

      She ran her hand along the end of the bed. When she bent over and pressed her nose up against the quilt, she could smell the faint scent of White Shoulders. Her mother’s favorite perfume. What was Mom up to now? Was she a young woman again, swooping around Heaven and flirting with all the men? Was she in some star-dusted greenhouse developing a new strain of tulip? Was she looking down wondering how the heck her daughter had managed to screw up her life—again?

      “I’m going to get it together, Mom,” she said, in case Mom was listening. “I’m working on it.”

      Mom laughed. Okay, it was only her imagination, but she knew if Mom was here, she would laugh. After gardening, Mom’s second favorite hobby was her daughter. “I’m going to find you the perfect man, don’t you worry,” she’d say.

      Lucy groaned, remembering. Her mom’s idea of Mr. Perfect and hers hadn’t quite meshed. Lucy wanted men who flirted with danger. Bad boys who made her pulse race and her heart pound. Her oh-so-conventional childhood had made her long for darkly handsome rebels.

      “Lucy! Where are you?”

      “Back here, Dad.”

      Her father appeared in the doorway, the ailing ficus in his arms. “I think this is the last of it,” he said.

      “Thanks, Dad.” She stood and set the ficus by the window, then stepped back to survey her home-away-from-home. Except for the tree and the DVD player, it looked like she’d never left.

      “So where are you working these days?” Her father took her place on the end of the bed.

      “Um, I’m still doing temp work until I can find something more permanent.” She began unpacking her suitcase.

      Dad made a noise that could have been a grunt. “I didn’t send you to college so you could do temp work.”

      She gave herself credit for not rolling her eyes. “I’m an English major, Dad. Houston is full of English majors waiting tables and tending bar. There just aren’t that many jobs that call for quoting Emily Dickinson and analyzing Thomas Wolfe.”

      “You ought to let me talk to the guys down at the hiring hall. They could get you into an apprenticeship program.” Dad was an electrician. “There are lots of single guys down at the hall,” he said. “You might meet somebody nice.”

      “I don’t want to meet somebody nice.” She deposited an armful of T-shirts in the dresser and reached for the next stack.

      “You want to meet somebody rotten?”

      She smiled and shook her head. “I don’t want to meet anybody.” Not anyone her father would introduce her to. His idea of Mr. Right was probably even more straitlaced than her mom’s.

      He leaned forward, worry lines etched on his forehead. “Honey, is there something you’re not telling me?”

      “What do you mean?” She moved over and unzipped her garment bag.

      “You say you don’t want to meet men. That doesn’t mean you want to meet women, do you?”

      She dropped an armload of dresses. “No! Jeez, Dad!”

      “I mean, not that I would care or anything. Not that I understand that sort of thing, but—”

      “Daddy, I am not a lesbian.” She blushed. This was not the sort of conversation she ever pictured herself having with her father. She slid back the closet door and