Home to Eden by Dallas Schulze Page A

but he underestimated her.
    "Nick."
    He winced at her flat tone. "Hello, Kate."
    'I'm here to see Mr. Wallace."
    "I know." Nick slid his hands in his pockets and tried a half smile. It was met with a cool stare. Not that he could blame her. He hadn't exactly done anything to endear himself to her the last time they'd met. "Harry's in the house. He probably heard the car so he'll be on his way out."
    Kate nodded and looked away, focusing on an overgrown pittosporum. Pride kept her where she was, though every instinct urged her to run. Fight or flight, she thought ruefully. When confronted by danger, the human animal still responded on the most primitive level. The danger Nick represented wasn't physical, but that didn't make it any less real, and her instinct was still to flee.
    "This was Gareth's idea," she said abruptly, throwing him a quick, challenging glance.
    "Yeah, I know. He said you'd be perfect for the job." Nick's broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. "I told him the decision was Harry's to make. I'll handle the work on the house but, when it comes to the landscaping, I'm completely useless. To tell the truth, I wouldn't know a parsnip from a petunia."
    He made the confession with a self-deprecating half smile that, at another time, Kate might have found charming, but her memories of their last conversation were still vivid and she was in no mood to be charmed by him. She returned her attention to the pittosporum.
    Nick's smile faded in the face of her chilly silence. He pushed his hands deeper in his pockets and contemplated the difficulty of coming up with an adequate apology.
    ''Kate, I—''
    "Good morning." Harry's greeting preceded him down the steps. Kate and Nick turned toward him. They were both grateful for the interruption though for different reasons. "You must be Kate Moran. According to Gareth, you're the greatest landscape designer in the state of California."
    "He's a little biased," she said, smiling as she took his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wallace."
    "The pleasure's mine." His handshake was pleasantly firm, his smile warm. "Call me Harry, please. If you're going to be digging up my yard, I think we should be on first-name terms."
    Before Kate could protest that she hadn't agreed to work for him yet, he turned his faded blue eyes on Nick. "Don't you have something you're supposed to be doing? I'm not paying you to stand around chatting with every pretty girl that comes along, am I?"
    "I wasn't aware you were paying me at all."
    "Some jobs are worth their weight in gold in experience alone." Harry's faintly pompous tone was at odds with the twinkle in his eyes.
    "You're too good to me, Harry," Nick said dryly.
    "Yes, I know." Harry set his hand under Kate's elbow and led her toward the side of the house. "Pay no attention to his whining," he said in a tone pitched loud enough for Nick to hear. "He's spent the last five years working on Wall Street, a parasite sucking the life from the common man. I'm probably saving his soul from eternal damnation by providing him with the opportunity to do some honest work."
    Nick's quick bark of laughter was cut off as they turned the comer of the house.
    Kate's first impression of Harry Wallace was that he looked like an unmade bed. Everything about him was rumpled. His thick gray hair was a little too long for neatness though not long enough to be a fashion statement. He wore a dark blue shirt that looked as if he'd pulled it out of the dryer and put it on immediately. His faded gray pants looked much the same. Scuffed leather loafers and mismatched socks completed the look of gentle disarray.
    But his eyes were at odds with the image. The clear blue had faded a little with time but there was a shrewdness in them that made it clear that age might have slowed Harry's body but it had done nothing to slow his mind.
    "I'm not a gardener," he said, leading her past an apple tree that looked as if it hadn't been pruned since the last world war. Seeing her