Free Feuding Hearts by Natasha Deen Page A

blinded me. I stood, intending to change seats. Through the window, a flash of movement caught my vision. My eyebrows pulled together. I moved to the pane, peered through the slits of the rose-colored slats. My heart rate kicked into over-drive and my skin tingled as though I’d been zapped by electricity.
    A man who had to be in line for Sexiest Gardener Alive pushed a wheelbarrow across Mr. Garret’s back lawn. He turned.
    I leaned closer to get a better look, smacked my nose on the window pane, and set the Venetian blinds rattling.
    The man’s biceps pulsed as he heaved a bag of dirt off the wheelbarrow and on to the ground. A lock of dark hair fell across his tanned forehead. His sigh made his chest puff out.
    I sighed right along with him.
    He squinted upwards.
    Looking for a cloud in the too-blue sky? Hoping for rain? I didn’t know…I didn’t care. The column of his neck captivated me; the sexy bump of his Adam’s apple had me licking my lips. When he reached down and pulled off his T-shirt, I lost feeling in my legs. Miles of taut abs, and a chest so hard I could break wood on it.
    “Angel, are you listening to me, girl?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said, not really listening at all, my breath fogging the pane.
    “What are you looking at?”
    She came my way and I stepped back. “Assessing the damage on our lawn.”
    “Oh.” She walked to the table and sat.
    I followed suit. “Weeding your garden sounds like a lovely thing to do.”
    A sigh puffed past her lips.
    No doubt, she figured I was the dullest grandbaby God ever made but she loved me anyway.
    “Harrison Garret is eighty-five, half-blind, and completely arthritic. He wouldn’t know a weed if it had a sign next to it. That… man pulled up all of my lovely azaleas.” Her voice hitched.
    “Oh.” Maybe in another year, the mention of azaleas wouldn’t make my throat clog or my heart weep, but right now, it still hurt. “I am sorry, sugar.” My fingers slid along the smooth tabletop, reaching for hers. “He couldn’t have known they were granddaddy’s favorite flower.” I smiled and blinked back the tears for the man who’d been the only father I’d known. “Would you like to go to the store and pick up some new ones?”
    “No.”
    She handed me a mug of steaming coffee, the sleeve of her fuchsia blouse brushed my bare arm with its silky caress. The bouquet of her perfume—magnolia, lychee, and ginger—curled in lazy tendrils, and glided past my nose.
    I took the cup and tried not to compare her perfectly manicured coral-pink nails to my short, naked and desperately-in-need-of-a-mani ones. “Come on. We’ll have lunch at the rib place you love so much.”
    Her mouth compressed into a hard, compact line, her jaw tightened to tooth-breaking tautness.
    Once before, she’d given me that glare, when she’d tried to make me sign up for Dairy Princess. This was before we’d discovered I was lactose intolerant. We’d realized that fact at the Dairy Princess Meet and Greet. I had two ice-cream cones and threw up on the judges. Chin held high, she’d whisked me away and declared we’d never again buy milk products from those suppliers on account of their obvious disregard for expiry dates. That was Nana. That was family—even when it was our fault, even when we were wrong, we stood by each other.
    “What I want,” she paused, “is for you to sue him.” She leaned back, and one eyebrow arched in challenge.
    My throat constricted and black coffee tried to exit my nose at the same time the liquid tried to slide down my esophagus. I coughed and reached for a rose-printed paper napkin. “Sue him? Sue nice, sweet, old Mr. Garret? When’s the last time you ate—are you going into hypoglycemic shock, sugar?”
    “Don’t ‘sugar’ me.” Her bracelets jangled as she rapped her knuckles on the table. The gold bangles bumped against the table top. “I am tired of broken bird houses—”
    “He thought a raccoon had invaded