1
“I don’t suppose you know anything about babies,” James said as Harper Broussard swung her door open.
He watched her gaze go from his to the white blanket in his arms. Her eyes widened. “A baby what?” she asked, her tone and expression wary as she leaned back.
Holy shit, he almost laughed.
He had not expected that.
From the moment his boot had hit the landing at the top of the steps, his night had been completely off kilter. The second his eyes had landed on the pale blue laundry basket outside his apartment door, he’d known that his plan to pick up where he and Harper had left off two nights ago was out the window. But he’d been expecting a basketful of kittens. He really had. Which had immediately led to him thinking that he’d be able to cross the landing to Harper’s door to ask for help with yet another life that needed intervention. This was hardly their first rodeo.
They’d probably curl up on her super-comfy couch and watch reruns of NCIS: New Orleans—her addiction—while they bottle-fed a lapful of kittens. He’d watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and lick her lips, and every time she shifted on the cushions, he’d see her shirt pull up to expose that strip of skin on her side he was obsessed with.
But when he’d looked down into the basket and saw the face of a human, he’d felt his world tip and a very deep, sincere sense of oh fucking hell go through him.
In the past, the tree, the lizard, the drunk girl, and the dog had all been reasons to talk to and interact with the out-of-his-league woman who lived across the landing from him. He’d sauntered over, knocked, flashed her a grin, and asked for her help each time, slowly wearing her down with his charm and his see-I’m-a-good-guy-that-people-trust-with-other-living-things shtick.
Tonight he’d sprinted to her door and pounded on it like his ass was on fire.
Her soft, French-accented voice always worked to make him feel calmer—and yeah, horny. At the moment, his heart was thudding so hard he hadn’t believed either of those emotions could possibly make it through the ones swirling in his system. But they did.
He actually felt the corner of his mouth curl just slightly. “A baby boy.”
Her eyes flew to his. “How did you get this baby?”
Okay, that was a fair question. He didn’t think for a second she was insinuating he’d stolen the kid. He was certain she knew fire stations were safe havens—specified places where people could leave infants without question or penalty—which begged the question: why hadn’t this person left this baby at the fire station?
“He was in that.” James leaned to the side so she could see the basket still sitting outside his door. “I just got home and found him.”
Her eyes, amazingly, got even rounder. “Oh my God!” She reached out, grabbed James’s arm and pulled him into her apartment.
James couldn’t help but compare that reaction to the first time he’d ever knocked on her door and asked for her help with something.
Six months ago
“I don’t suppose you know anything about ficus-ing?”
James Reynaud watched his across-the-hall neighbor raise a single eyebrow. God, she’d even come to the door with her hair up in a messy bun and the red-framed glasses perched on her nose. He felt his cock stir. He didn’t go for staying-in-reading-in-my-favorite-chair-with-a-cup-of-tea types. But his body wasn’t listening. Every time he saw Harper Broussard—Professor Harper Broussard—across the outdoor landing that separated their front doors on the third floor of their building, he thought damn.
She was a freaking linguistics professor at Loyola, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t even entirely sure what linguistics was. She had the librarian thing going strong though. She was a little older than him. Definitely classier and smarter than him. And entirely unimpressed by him. In spite of the fact he’d left his work boots out by his door so she’d note he was a firefighter. In spite of the fact that he’d fixed stuff in her apartment with his shirt off. Twice. In spite of the fact that he’d left his window open so she’d hear him practicing on the piano. He was good, dammit. Really good. But none of that had seemed to do much for her.
Yet here he was, asking her about trees.
He might have been running out of ideas to get the professor to notice him.
And he never had trouble getting women to notice him.
So why did he care if she noticed him? He didn’t go for the bookworm type anyway.
It was a challenge, pure and simple. Probably. That had to be it.
“Pardon me?” Harper asked.
“Ficus-ing. Taking care of ficus trees.” He leaned to the side so she could see the four-foot-tall potted tree behind him. “I’ve become a father to a tree. And I don’t know much about them. I don’t suppose you do?”
She tipped her head, took in the tree, then looked back up at him. She had to look up about four inches. “I do, actually.”
He grinned. “Awesome.”
“Did you think that ficus-ing sounded like innuendo and would come off as flirtatious?” she asked.
James felt his grin dim. “Uh… yeah. Maybe a little.”
“It didn’t.”
Got it. “Duly noted.”
“Ficusing isn’t a word, of course,” she went on. “And it doesn’t really sound anything like fooling—as in fooling around—or fucking.”
He blinked at her. Had the seemingly uptight professor just said the word fucking?
“Just because the words start with the same letter, doesn’t mean that inserting ficus into that sentence makes it seductive.”
James sighed. “Okay. Thanks for… that.”
She just looked at him.
He had no idea why he was going to pursue this, but he said, “Will you help me with it?”
“Will I help you take care of a ficus tree?” she clarified.
“Yeah.”
“Sure. Let me know when you get one.”
He blinked at her, then looked over his shoulder. “That’s not a ficus?”
“That is an olive tree,” she told him. “An Arbequina olive tree, to be precise.”
She had this lilting voice, with a soft French accent around the edges, that made his gut tighten. His grandmother was a French immigrant and spoke her native language ninety percent of the time. He supposed he associated that accent with love and comfort and exasperated affection. And that was as far as he was going to go into why he thought this woman and her accent turned him on, thank you very much, Dr. Freud.
“I like olives.”
She nodded. “Probably a good thing.”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about taking care of an Albuquerque olive tree?”
“No.”
“Is that different from taking care of a ficus?”
“I don’t know what an Albuquerque olive tree even is,” she said.
He looked at the tree again then back to her.
She just watched him, patiently-ish. Wow, this woman didn’t give an inch. “What’s it called again?” he asked.
“An Arbequina olive tree.”
“Arbequina. I was close.”
“Because there was an A and a Q in both words?” she asked.