She’d begged Pauline not to ask Asher over. Barely two days had passed since their disastrous dinner at his house… two days during which she’d dodged his calls and stayed away from the placita, claiming she had to meet with restaurant suppliers (which was true) and didn’t have time to drop by the store (which was not). She wasn’t ready to deal with her landlord yet—if she ever would be after his romantic revelation and her cowardly absconding act.
Pauline, however, wasn’t concerned with Sera’s finer feelings, as today’s awkward get-together proved. She’d asked some rather pointed questions of her niece when Sera had arrived home the other night, tear-streaked and still visibly trembling. Sera, having no intention of telling her aunt what had happened, had merely assured her that Asher had done nothing wrong, and that Pauline could put away the ball-skinning knife. When Sera proved stubborn in her silence, Pauline had turned crafty, inviting the Israeli over to help bed down her garden for winter. Never mind that Hortencia had volunteered for the job (she was no slouch with a spade, and had been tending her own gardens for fifty years); no one would do for Pauline’s little patch of earth but her favorite foliage whisperer.
Sera didn’t know what to make of Asher’s apparent eagerness to take up that invitation. He’d arrived mere hours after Pauline’s call, with mulch and gardening tools in the back of his meticulously maintained Land Rover. Sera had planned to invent an errand and escape before he got there, but Pauline had foiled her—she’d told her niece Asher was coming at two, but asked Asher to show up at one.
So now the three of them were gathered in the little adobe-walled garden behind Pauline’s house; Sera wondering if she could successfully disappear down a gopher hole, Asher looking impossibly manly with a rake in one hand and his leather hat shading his eyes as he surveyed the little plot of land, and Pauline sitting on a stump, wearing a set of Hortencia’s knitted leg warmers (and a pair of arm warmers as well) along with her faded “Professors Do It in the Classroom” sweatshirt and a much-patched calf-length denim skirt. It was a bit of a Mexican standoff, Sera thought—Asher at one point of the triangle, Sera and Pauline staking out the other two, as if none of them quite trusted what the others might get up to.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. Pauline could be trusted to thoroughly embarrass her niece.
Sera shot her aunt a fulminating glare. “Aunt Pauline, I swear I will never forgive you if you don’t shut your trap,” she growled. “I’m really sorry, Ash,” she muttered, barely able to look at him where he stood beside a pile of pungent compost, clad in ancient jeans and a soft heather-green V-neck that complemented his eyes absurdly well.
But Asher seemed okay with it. “It’s all right, Bliss.” He turned to her aunt. “Miss Pauline,” he said gently, “I think that’s something the two of us can sort out on our own. We’re grown-ups. And besides, I think your niece appreciates a bit of delicacy in these matters, if I’m not mistaken.”
My hero.
Sera shot him the most grateful look of her life. Still, her blush, if anything, only intensified… because he hadn’t denied the possibility of them “bumping uglies.” But incredible as it was that Asher really, sincerely seemed interested in her, she couldn’t risk their budding friendship—or her delicate, still-healing self-esteem—on a fling that was destined to end badly. Facing him day after day at the placita once he learned how lacking she was as a woman… Sera shuddered at the thought. Oh, Ash. Don’t you understand, I’m no good for you? She thought she’d made that sad fact abundantly clear the other night. How many shrubs must a girl slay before a guy gets the hint? She still owed him a lavender bush. Now, if she could only convince her aunt to let it alone, she could go be miserable and unfulfilled in peace.
“Yes, please, Aunt Pauline,” she gritted out. “A modicum of delicacy would be nice.”
“Harrumph,” Pauline harrumphed. “Well, I’m just concerned for your health. It’s not good for you to go as long as you have without a nice, thorough climax, kiddo. And I suspect it’s been awhile for you, too, handsome.” She jerked her head toward Asher, who shifted his weight and tried to look as though people commented on his climactic status every day.
Unexpected tears flooded Serafina’s eyes. Maybe it was her aunt’s well-intentioned humiliation, or perhaps it was the certainty that she’d never know what it was like to “shag” a guy like Asher senseless, but suddenly she couldn’t stand to stay in that garden another second. “Excuse me,” she said in a small, choked voice, rising from the flower bed and bolting for the house.
Asher caught up to her in the kitchen. Sera was scrubbing blindly at the dirt under her nails, shoulders stiff, water running full blast. But she sensed him coming anyway. Lately, she’d had Asher-radar so acute she felt like she could pinpoint his location with GPS accuracy, any time of the day.
He put his scarred jeweler’s hands exactly where the tension resided, where her shoulders met her neck, kneading with a gentleness that only made her want to cry more. Sera shrugged away, refusing to look at him.
“She means well, Bliss.”
“Stop calling me that,” she mumbled.
“What, ‘Bliss’? But why?”
“Because I don’t know the meaning of the word!” she wailed, half-angry, half-despairing. She flung herself around, grabbing a dishtowel and wringing it between her hands as if it were her aunt’s meddling neck.
Asher didn’t understand. “Of course you do,” he chided. His hand rose to push back the errant lock of hair that teased her cheek, then fell away as she flinched from the gesture. He’d removed his hat and left it on the tile-topped island in the center of the kitchen. Sera could see the faint indentation the band had left along his hairline, and she had the absurd urge to smooth it. His long, lean frame edged closer, subtly crowding Sera against the counter by the sink as he took the towel from her hands and set it aside. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he pointed out. “Pursuing your dreams. Opening that bakery is all about bliss. One taste of your confections, and that’s all a man needs to know about satisfaction…”
For some reason, his kindness set off her anger. “Satisfaction? Ha! You don’t get it, Asher Wolf,” she interrupted. “Just like I don’t get it. There’s no such thing as satisfaction with me. You wanna know why? Because I can’t have an orgasm.”
“You can’t…” Asher looked disbelieving. Or perhaps aghast was more like it.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Serafina had totally lost her cool. And though she knew she was dooming any chance of ever hooking up with this delectable guy, she plowed on. It felt good to get the source of her shame off her chest. Liberating. “That’s right. I’m goddamn frigid. Never had a climax. Don’t know what all the fuss is about. My hoo-ha is broken, get it?”
Asher appeared to be mouthing the word “hoo-ha” to himself. Perhaps they didn’t have it in Hebrew.
“You know, my vagi—”
“Yes, I get it, Serafina,” he said quellingly. “I simply don’t believe it.”
And with one whirlwind swoop, he grabbed her up and set her bodily on the counter. His body followed hers, lean hips crowding into the space between her jeans-clad legs, one arm clasping her back to hold her steady and keep her as close as two people could get. Sera could hear the furious beating of his heart—or was she feeling it? She smelled again that wonderful Asher smell—earth and fire, pure intensity. His breath was hot against her face, a vein pulsing in his neck where she could almost reach it with her lips. His eyes, green lightened almost to gold now with emotion, searched her startled gray ones.