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He had no idea what she meant until an especially enormous gust of wind engulfed them both.

The porch leaves re-commenced their tornado’ing.

His hair became as airborne as the flaps of her coat.

Branches creaked in all the nearby trees as if in pain.

Even the dogs froze mid-wag as they squinted their eyes against the dust-filled plumes.

Nico bent his head, protecting himself from the dust too until, from somewhere very nearby, he heard a crack, crack, craaaaaaack , followed by…still air and silence. And it was not just any silence. It was the most silent silence he had ever beheld.

Sure, he could still hear that gust howling off to harass the people in the next neighborhood over.

He could even faintly hear a car alarm whaling somewhere far off.

But what he could not hear was a certain song by a certain large-mouthed, hip- swinging, British rock star.

The lack of that song produced a deafening quiet.

He looked around, startled and confused. “Where did the music go?” She was just standing there, casually removing her earplugs. The half-smile crooking her lips sent his tone into accusatory mode. “What did you do?”

“Me? How could I have done anything? I was right here with you.” She tilted her head as she brought a finger to her chin.

“But” she said, her voice upbeat and tantalizing, “I’ve got a hunch the answer is behind the house.

” She winked at him, then hooked her thumb in a backwards motion.

“Let’s go see, shall we?” Turning, she started walking jauntily away, the dogs trotting after.

Feeling a vague sense of dread, he followed.

All his life, the backyard had been taken up almost entirely by his mother’s vegetable garden, and what a garden it had been.

Several varieties of tomatoes held up by sturdy wire lines grew like aromatic hedgerows in one section, while another was all basil plants, each one as big as a city mailbox.

He pictured her holding out her apron like a sack as she filled it with the luscious red fruits and mildly licorice-scented leaves.

Later, Aunt Celia, the chef of the family, would smack his hand with her spoon as he tried to sneak tastes of the enticing red liquid bubbling on the stove.

But the backyard was all scraggly lawn now. Nothing remained of the once-verdant scene but remnants of the broken bricks they’d used to demarcate garden from not-garden.

Toward the rear of the lot, the large oak that Nico and his brother had so often raced each other to the top of still stood.

The tree was bigger, but it didn’t look particularly healthy.

A quarter of its branches were bare, and a deep, age-darkened split was visible half-way up the trunk.

Leaning against said trunk was the same paint-stained ladder Ginny had been perched on at their first meeting.

Giving him a self-satisfied, I-told-you-so sort of smile, Ginny pointed up toward a place along the trunk where one of the tree’s largest branches was missing.

In its place was a nearly clean cut, as from a chain saw.

Sure enough, the machine lay in the grass next to a pair of yellow safety goggles.

No doubt the blonde-colored detritus, still stuck here and there to Ginny’s jacket despite the wind, was oak sawdust.

But the clean cut was only partial. A splay of long, sharp splinters the length of Nico’s forearm poked out at all angles from the base of the cut.

Near as he could tell, the branch had been severed almost completely through by the chain saw, but not all the way.

The gust of wind must have finished the work.

The branch itself—enormous and leafless—had fallen straight down, hitting the electrical line that had once swooped from the nearby pole to the back corner of Mrs. Donovan’s old house.

The line had snapped in two as neatly as if it had been accomplished with wire cutters, silencing Mick Jagger faster than even a heart attack ever could.

Ginny lowered her arm to pat the top of her head cartoonishly. “Seems I’m not under your thumb anymore.”

“You cut the power to that house?”

Her jaw dropped and her eyebrows raised in theatrical alarm. “Heaven’s, no! All I did was trim a dead branch. In fact, I only got part way through, because you showed up and interrupted me. The sweet Santa Ana was kind enough to do the last bit.”

“I can get that wire repaired, you know.”

“I’m sure you can, but Edison is going to have quite a backlog after all this wind, and an empty house is hardly a priority.” She lowered her eyelids and clicked her tongue in pretend disappointment. “It could take weeks.”

If the exposed end of the wire had been nearer to the ground, the repair might have qualified as an immediate safety hazard, but it dangled a good fifteen feet in the air.

Just his luck.

The roll of legal papers, which Nico had somehow managed to keep careful hold of during the almost dog attack and the straight-line winds, crumpled into an hourglass shape in his grip. “And did the winds tame these dogs, too?” he snarled.

She grinned at the dogs, who responded with renewed wagging and leaping.

“Naw. Veggie dogs did that, didn’t they, my little honkytonkers.

” She launched into baby speak so sickly-sweet it made Nico long for repetitive, ear-splitting rock music.

“You can tame anyone wid enough veggie dawgs. Can’t you my widdle poochers?

My thwee widdle stoogies.” She stopped and twisted her head toward Nico, looking up at him with impish eyes.

“I don't suppose you’re hungry for a veggie dog? Very good for taming.”

Desperate to regain control over his temper and the situation, Nico forced his gaze to the sky.

Clearly, his first attempt at torturing her into submission hadn’t worked.

At all. But as he struggled to devise a new way to pressure her into at least looking at the papers in his hand, his mind felt as functional and focused as the empty plastic shopping bag tumbling in a zigzag high over their heads.

And yet, he still needed to get this deal done.

He only planned to stay another week or so and didn’t want to change his itinerary if he didn't absolutely have to.

The realty company had also made clear that they had emptied their schedule somewhat for him, expecting him to make a huge sale this week or next.

And, of course, there was his brother, who already felt overly responsible for this disaster.

All Nico wanted was to make all these people happy and wealthy.

Even this enigma of a woman would make out like the bandit if she could simply behave like a normal person .

Standing before him with her wind-tousled hair, pink cheeks, and green cotton duck jacket, she may as well be a leprechaun sent here to play evil tricks on him.

“Why won’t you just sign these papers?” he said, unable to keep himself from stomping his foot. “You know I have the resources to outlast you!”

“You are greatly underestimating my inner resources,” she said as she nonchalantly pulled a largish wood chip from her hair, gave it a playful bite as if testing its gold content, and flicked it away into the wind.

“And since we’ve nothing further to discuss and you are trespassing on my property, I would like you to leave. ”

“Your…I…” he stammered. “This is ridiculous!”

“Ya know,” she said, cocking a hip and giving him an exaggerated wink. “You can’t always get what you want.”

Nico’s stromboli might as well have been a sawdust pancake with mud sauce and frog pepperoni for all he enjoyed it, and his meeting at the realty company had been no better.

The listing details and photos they planned to use looked perfect, but all he could think of was how none of it would matter if he couldn’t kick that dog whispering gremlinette out of his house!

Following the meeting, he stormed into Monique’s office.

“Nico,” she exclaimed from behind her desk. “You look upset.” Her eyelids scrunched as her face clouded over. “What has she done?”

Pacing the carpeted floor like a caged cat, he told her about the speakers, the dogs, the chain saw, and the tree branch. With each new revelation, Monique’s rod-straight posture wilted further into her office chair.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, her tone defeated.

“Which part? The dogs? The speakers? That particular song?”

“Yes.” She rubbed her forehead with her long fingers as if she’d just developed a massive headache. “All of that.”

But Nico wasn’t about to accept blame for this.

He’d been told not to touch her or get the police involved, and he hadn’t done either of those things.

He’d simply employed some harmless torture to encourage the mini blonde usurper to leave.

Overall, he thought he’d been clever about it too.

“Look, cute as she is, she has to get out of that house. You saw me play nice. I offered her enough money to start her own free hippie commune, and she flat out refused. So, now—and I don’t care how—she’s gotta move.

A lot of people’s futures are riding on this.

” He stepped toward her, his finger raised in accusation.

“You’re her sister. Tell me what to do.”

Monique shot up from behind her desk. “What did you just say?”

He shrugged, taken aback by her sudden suspiciousness. “Uh…you’re her sister?”

She shook her head. “Before that.”

“I offered her money?”

“Before that,” she growled.

His lips pushed up in consternation. “People’s futures?” He threw his hands up. “I don’t know.”

Monique stepped around her desk as she aimed an accusatory finger at him. “You said she was cute .”

He pulled his lips back in a grimace. “What? I did not.”

“You did. You said she was cute.”

A puff of exasperated air escaped his lips. “Okay, fine. Maybe I did, but it doesn’t mean anything. It…it was a throwaway line.”

Monique punched her hands onto her hips and tapped her foot. She looked like she was thinking hard. Finally, she stared him straight in the face. “I will give you advice on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to promise you aren’t going to marry Ginny Heppner.”

Nico’s bark of surprise was loud enough to ricochet off the rich-red walls of her office.

“Are you crazy? There’s no way I’d marry that lazy grifter!

” He quickly rethought that statement. Ginny was, after all, the woman’s sister.

“I mean, I’m sure she’s a great sister to you and all…

” (He highly doubted that.) “…but, like you said, we’re oil and water.

” Monique’s unblinking stare remained skeptical.

“Trust me. I never plan to marry at all. Even if I did, she is so far from my type she’s like another species entirely. ”

Finally, Monique’s lips relaxed into an amused smile. “Yeah, I’ve often wondered myself if she’s a different species. So, you promise?”

Nico held up the Boy Scout salute. “Homo Ginniens and I will not marry.”

“Alright, then, here’s my advice. Are you ready?” She waited for him to nod, then continued. “When it comes to Ginny, you will catch more flies with honey.”

Nico paused a few beats, expecting further elaboration, but it didn’t arrive. “Can’t I get a little more detail than that?”

She squared her shoulders. “As you know, I am straddling a difficult line of competing legal and familial obligations. Just…from my experience…antagonizing her will only make her stronger. Also, she hates suits.”

“Suits?” he looked down at his clothes. “Business suits?”

“Yes. And really, anything that looks or smells like money.” She turned, walked leisurely back to sit in her desk chair, and shrugged. “Try doing her a favor.”

The mere thought angered him, but if it would get him what he needed, he’d suck it up and try. “Like what?”

“I don't know. Something that a Homo Ginniens might want.”

Nico closed his eyes as he let out a heavy sigh, thinking. What would a woman like Ginny Heppner want? What did she care about? The seed of an idea arrived, and his lip curled like the Grinch about to steal Christmas. He pulled out his phone and started typing.

“Who are you calling?” Monique asked.

“1-800-paleontology,” he said as he searched for the nearest second-hand clothing shop. If Homo Ginniens hated suits, it was time to dress for the job he wanted.