Katherine Parrish glanced up at her client,
offering him an encouraging smile, and caught him staring at her
oddly. No—he was staring at her shirt. Which was odd, because
it wasn’t low-cut or sexy. It was just an old t- shirt with
leopard spots on it.

"Um… well…" he said, and the stammering was
also odd. She’d known Darren Greene since high school, and he’d
always been one of the popular kids, the jock with cheerleaders
dripping off him. She saw him around the small town of Swift Creek,
Virginia on a regular basis nowadays, constantly flirting and
laughing with women. He never got tongue-tied, as far as she could
tell.

But right now, he hardly seemed able to get
a syllable out.

"Let’s start with the basics," she said.
"What color were you thinking of?"

"Um… I guess…" He looked at her shirt once
more, then closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear the
sight of it. She wondered if she’d spilled grape jelly on herself
this morning, or what. "Um… green."

"Of course," she said, nodding. Since Darren
ran a lawn care business called Greene Thumb, that was
inevitable. She should have guessed. But she was a little nervous
herself. She’d been running Web Sights since she graduated from
Virginia Tech, but ordinarily clients didn’t come to her home
office, and when they did, they weren’t gorgeous, dark-haired,
muscular towers of sex that she’d been lusting after forever.

"Okay," she said, shoving her glasses up on
her nose. "So let’s make the header green. Let me see… I’ll have to
design a logo…"

"We have a logo," he said,
pointing at his t-shirt, which was emblazoned with the
words
Greene Thumb: Keeping It
Greene!

She looked at him, trying to keep her eyes
on the shirt itself, rather than on the broad, powerful chest
beneath it. "That’s not so much a logo as it is a catchphrase," she
answered. "I think I can come up with something a little
better."

"Um. Okay, that sounds… fine…."

"So we need a header. How about
content?"

He blinked. "Content?"

"Yes. What is your home page going to say?
What do you want on it?"

"Uh… words?"

She almost chuckled, but abruptly realized
that he wasn’t joking. He was still tongue-tied, for whatever
reason, and she didn’t want to embarrass him by laughing at him.
"Usually what we want on the home page," she explained, "is
something that will reel in your potential customer. How long
you’ve been in business, what makes you different from the other
lawn care companies in the area. That sort of thing. Do
you think you could write me up a brief description along those
lines?"

His amber-green eyes went
wide. "
Write
?"

She heard the unmistakable anxiety in his
voice. "It doesn’t have to be professional quality writing," she
said gently. "I’ll do some editing. I just need to know the basic
facts about your company, and then I’ll pretty it up. I mean, I
know you started your business right after high school—"

"Right," he said, nodding. "A long time
ago now."

"—and you have a lot of employees—"

"Thirty."

"Great." She reached for a pen and started
scribbling notes. "You’re the founder of a well-respected business
that’s been around for a decade. That’s just the kind of thing that
will make people choose you instead of the competition."

"Yeah," he said, "except when I started, I
was just a kid with an old lawnmower."

"Well, we don’t have to
put
that
,"
she answered, smiling up at him. "And I know you’ve got a lot of
equipment now, not just one old lawnmower. But maybe we can phrase
it so people know how much your business has grown in only ten
years. That’s the kind of thing that impresses your potential
customers."

"Um. Okay." He looked down at her, his
dark lashes veiling the brilliance of his eyes. "Um, so maybe I
don’t have to, you know, write anything?"

She offered him another smile, trying to put
him at ease. "No, I think I have enough to work with here. For
now, anyway."

"Uh." He shuffled his feet, reminding
her of the way he used to fidget in the one class they’d shared in
high school. Darren Greene had never been able to hold still for
more than five minutes at a time. "Well, if you have enough… I
guess I need to get to work…"

She’d known he must be headed for work.
Ordinarily, when she encountered him in town, he smelled of grass
clippings and gasoline and hard labor. But this morning, he smelled
of pine-scented soap, so she knew he had stopped by her house
first, before getting started for the day. Part of her wanted to
keep him here, but she really had no excuse to have him stay at her
side while she worked.

In fact, she hadn’t really needed him here
at all. Most of her contact with clients was handled over the phone
or via email. But he’d asked to come by, and she hadn’t wanted to
say no.

Oh, hell, who was she
trying to kid? She’d
wanted
to see him. She always
wanted to see him. In fact, she’d been waiting for Darren Greene to
look at her like a female for years now. Back in high school he’d
been one of the cool kids, the star of the football team, while
she’d been a geek. She’d been captain of the chess team, for God’s
sake… hardly the kind of girl gorgeous, broad-shouldered guys
looked twice at.

She knew she’d gotten a little prettier
since high school—thank God all those pimples had finally
cleared up— but she still wore glasses, still spent most of her
time at a computer. In short, she was still a geek, and he was
still the town hottie, with women throwing themselves at him
everywhere he went. And no wonder—with those long-lashed eyes,
movie-star face, and that solid, muscled body, he looked
like a six foot three package of sex. Whereas she herself was
barely passable.

So the fact that she’d
wanted to see him was not surprising. Any woman in her right mind
would like to look at Darren. The real mystery was why he’d wanted
to come by her office. She wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t just
emailed her… but she was absolutely certain it wasn’t because he
had a crush on
her
.

And yet there was something strange in his
eyes, something almost hungry, as he looked back down at her
shirt…

*****

Spots.

He was seeing spots. And he liked them.

Dare tried really, really hard to focus on
the header that Katherine was already working on, and not on her
wildly patterned t-shirt. But he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze
away from her. He wasn’t sure why. He’d always had a thing for
Katherine, but he’d never acted like such a world-class dork in her
presence before.

It had to be the spots. She’d always been
gorgeous, with long, wavy blonde hair and a curvy body, but with
the spotted shirt clinging to her amazing curves, she was
incredibly sexy.

He’d been trying to work up the courage to
really get to know her for ten years now. But as easy as it was for
him to talk to other women, he couldn’t ever seem to find anything
to say to Katherine. She was smart as hell—she’d aced AP and honors
classes, and graduated as class valedictorian—whereas he himself…
well…

"How’s that?"

He blinked and dragged his
gaze away from her shirt, looking instead at the header she’d begun
to create, using a stock photo of a velvety green lawn as the
background. "Uh," he said, and instantly wanted to smack himself.
He’d never heard so many
uhs
and
ums
come out of his own mouth
in a ten-minute period. "I mean, I like it. But you
misspelled
thumb
."

She glanced back at the screen, cocking her
head. "I don’t think so, Darren. It looks right to me."

He stared at the word for
a long, embarrassing moment before he remembered that
yeah,
thumb
had a B in it. And then he could have smacked himself
that much harder. Of course she hadn’t misspelled the word. She was
a freaking genius. He was the dyslexic one.

"Looks great," he muttered, feeling his
cheeks grow hot. This was why he’d never dared to make a move on
her. He’d come up with the idea of having her design his website as
an excuse to talk to her—but talking to her didn’t do any good if
every word out of his mouth just proved how dumb he was. Someone
like her was not going to be impressed by a moron.

"Terrific," she said, apparently oblivious
to his embarrassment. "Let me work on it some more. I have a lot on
my schedule, so the site won't be completed by tomorrow, but I can
have the header done by then. Do you want to come by tomorrow
before work and see what you think?"

What he really wanted was to stand here all
day and look at the spotted shirt stretched across her magnificent
chest, but he knew they both had work to do. It was early summer,
and there were a whole lot of lawns out there waiting for him.
Reluctantly, he stepped backward, away from her.

"Sure," he said. "Tomorrow."

*****

Kathy was not thinking about Darren’s visit
tomorrow. Really, she wasn’t.

She'd gotten all her projects for the day
done, so she’d knocked off work early. And then she’d decided to go
to Swift Creek’s small downtown area and do a little shopping,
simply because she seriously needed some new clothes.

The fact that she was standing here in the
lingerie department, looking at leopard spotted underwear, had
absolutely nothing to do with Darren Greene.

She reached out and took a spotted bra off
the rack, remembering the look in his eyes when he’d stared at her.
Something strangely feral had flared in his eyes, as if he were a
lion and she an antelope.

But that was silly. He’d known her for years
and years, and never noticed her. She’d had a huge crush on Darren
since the day he’d walked into U.S. Government, the only class
they’d shared in high school. He’d sat down next to her and flashed
a careless grin in her direction, and her heart had instantly
melted. But she’d soon realized he flashed that same gorgeous grin
at every girl in the school.

He’d never talked to her much, despite her
few shy efforts to strike up a conversation. He talked easily
enough with other girls—cheerleaders, athletes, all the popular
girls—but he didn’t seem to have anything to say to her. She’d
quickly subsided into silence.

She’d kept watching him, though—she hadn’t
been able to stop somehow—and she’d noticed that he couldn’t sit
still, that he spent most of his class time fidgeting and staring
out the window. And his exams usually came back marked with big red
Cs, while hers came back with A+s. It was obvious, she thought,
that he’d rather be out on the football field, running around. Some
people had to move all the time, and he was clearly one of
them.

But despite his grades, she had the feeling
that he was pretty smart. Every so often he made a point in class
that caused the teacher’s eyebrows to shoot up.

But he’d never looked at her, not really.
She’d been invisible as far as he was concerned. And yet she’d
thought of kissing him so many times…

She sighed, and looked down at the spotted
bra she held. It hadn’t been the spots he was looking at this
morning, surely. It hadn’t even been her boobs. It must have been
some food she’d spilled, or something.

And yet her shirt seemed perfectly
clean.

She held the bra in her hands for a moment,
undecided, and then reached out and grabbed a couple more spotted
items. She knew that she was just dreaming, that Darren
would never, ever see her underwear.

But it was a very pleasant dream.

Chapter 2

BOOK: Seeing Spots

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