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her kitchen. It would be lovely to put her hands around Sandy’s throat. “This is just great. I had a meeting with Mikaris to get the landscaping job for the model of these custom farmettes he’s building near Washington’s Crossing. It’s called MeadowHill.”
    “I didn’t know that. I mean I know about MeadowHill. Marty’s one of Nick’s backers. But I didn’t know you were up for the landscaping job.”
    “Your wonderful husband Marty recommended me!” Jess resisted the urge to scream in frustration. Anyway, she’d done that on the two-hour drive home, and it hadn’t helped.
    “But you didn’t tell me, and neither did Marty,” Sandy wailed.
    “I didn’t tell you because I have this stupid superstition that I’ll jinx a job if I blab.” Jess rubbed her forehead. “I was going to tell you after I got it. I don’t know why Marty didn’t tell you.”
    “He probably thought you would want to be the one to tell me. He’s like that, the idiot. Jess, I’m sorry the joke backfired. Really sorry. Look, it’s not that bad. Just explain to Nick—”
    “Sandy,” Jess interrupted, “I thought the man was gay! If he didn’t have a sense of humor on that one, he’s certainly not going to be Mr. Understanding about the rest of it.”
    “You thought …” Sandy burst into laughter. “Lord, Jess! You must have hit him in his male pride. Nick’s got a lot of that.”
    Jess groaned. “I doubt that it was the high point in his life. But, dammit, Sandy! This is all your fault!”
    “I wasn’t the one who thought he was gay, Jess.”
    “I don’t mean that part!” Jess wished she could forget that she’d ever thought it of Nick. “Everything would have been fine if you’d found a more reliable participant than Tony. He’s the one who made the switch.”
    There was a long pause before Sandy asked, “Are you planning on speaking to me ever again?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I forgave you when that damn mariachi band played for four hours on my anniversary, Jess,” Sandy wheedled. “At one in the morning. Believe me, that wasn’t easy, especially when they interrupted our reenactment of the wedding night.”
    Jess giggled.
    “Four hours, Jess. No amount of money would buy them off, either. I thought Marty would go crazy. But I forgave you. Really and truly, in my heart of hearts, I forgave you for that one.”
    “Since you put it like that …”
    When Jess finally hung up the phone, she stared at it in disgust. What a disaster. It was obvious that Sandy had planned an entirely different ending to the joke, but it hadn’t worked out that way.
    She pulled out a stool at the kitchen counter and sat down. Dammit! She had really wanted that job on the Mikaris model. It would have established her as a legitimate landscaper. Nick Mikaris wasn’t someone who would hire her only so he could say afterward, “Would you believe it? Jess Brannen laid my sod.”
    None of her friends or family took her landscaping business seriously. To an extent, she couldn’t blame them. After all, she’d grown up with three trust funds. Arranging flowers was an acceptable hobby for someone with her background, but spreading fertilizer wasn’t. She’d already done the acceptable thing—prep school, college, marriage, charity work. It had taken a humiliating divorce before she’d realized that the acceptable wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Jess smiled wryly. Her mother had warned her.
    Shortly after the divorce, she had needed something normal. Something that wouldn’t raise eyebrows or be splattered in the gossip columns of the newspapers. By accident, she had discovered landscaping. Nothing was more satisfying for her than to take the bare earth and create pleasure for the senses from it. All she asked for was a little respect while she was doing it. When Sandy’s husband, Marty, one of Mikaris’s investors, had suggested she see Nick, she’d jumped at the chance. After a couple of years in operation,