eating her most likely cold food while she wallowed in embarrassment.
The lawn mower started to move again. Soon, she was done eating and washing her used plate. Then, she heard the sound of the lawn mower moving closer to the sliding doors of the kitchen's back entrance.
He was mowing their yard!
Kennedy ran to the glass doors and peeked through the blinds in time to see him push the heavy machine across the end of their back porch.
There was no fence dividing the properties, but surely he knew where his ended and theirs began? She stared at him for a few seconds as she took in his appearance.
Under the flattering sunlight, she could see that his hair was so dark that it could be called black. It gleamed in various places as the light shone on it contrasting beautifully with his tan skin. Stray wisps of it fell on his face as he moved.
Another few seconds passed and she found herself walking to the remaining pile of pancakes without realizing she had decided on it. She served a few on a clean plate to be heated. Then placed it on a serving tray, along with a saucer of syrup, a pitcher of lemonade, a glass full of ice, some napkins and a fork.
Kennedy walked out to the back porch with the tray in hand and wondered if the heat had affected her brain in some way, because she would’ve never done something like that in her right mind. At least, that was what she kept telling herself as she set the tray down on the outdoor table and turned to find him looking at her.
She had never heard the mower stop.
“Good morning!” She sounded like a fool, but what else was she supposed to say?
He just stared at her as if trying to decipher what she had said. It occurred to her that she wasn't speaking in the island’s native tongue. Maybe he didn’t speak English. So she tried again, in Spanish that time.
“¡Buenos días!” Kennedy smiled expectantly, but her cheeks hurt after a while and the guy just stood there looking as if she had spoken in some unknown language. She could feel her face start to redden in shame and headed back into the house.
“Good Morning.” She stopped dead in her tracks. So the guy could speak English after all? She turned back to find him standing near the bottom step of the porch.
“Uh, hi.” Way to go Kennedy! Now he was going to think that she was retarded or something.
“Hello.” Judging by the slow way that he said it while he gestured with his hand in mimic of a greeting, he definitely thought her mentally challenged. She wanted the ground to open at her feet and swallow her whole.
“Yes, well I thought you might be hungry after all that work so I brought you some pancakes, just in case I was right.” The whole sentence came out in the huff of one breath and he stared at her as if she was crazy.
She inhaled deeply and continued. “Because I saw you were mowing our yard too and I wanted to say thank you, but now I see that you’d rather not be disturbed, so I’m gonna shut up and go inside and never bother you again.” Kennedy wanted to cry. Lauren always told her that she didn’t make any sense when she was nervous, but that had bordered on ridiculous.
She needed to get away before she broke down, but she spun around so fast that her feet tripped on the raised edge of one of the floorboards.
It was amazing how in just half a second her brain had time to register the fact that her face was on it's way to become well acquainted with the wooden boards that paneled the outside deck.
A sharp tug on her arm let her know that the guy was faster. He'd caught one of her flaying arms in time to pull her back so she stood balanced on her feet again.
“Thank you.” She stared dumbly at his hand. It's touch was an alien burning on her forearm. He quickly removed it and shoved it into one of his pockets. Her skin tingled strangely where his hand had been. She wanted to flee, but was afraid of moving at all as her eyes started to water.
“I’m sorry. You caught me a bit off guard. I did not expect anyone to be home. Are you well?” The way he spoke was so proper, like the gentlemen in the old black and white movies that her mother liked to watch, and he did look like one too. She couldn’t help but to be mesmerized by his deep voice and the undecipherable accent that it held.
“Miss?” Crap!
“Yes, I’m okay.” No, she wasn't, she had blanked out in front of him.
“Excellent. So, pancakes, you said?”
“My mom made a big stack before leaving. They’ll probably go to waste if you don’t eat some.”
“And you will not? That seems awfully ungracious of you.” Had he just called her an ingrate? She wanted to slap him but she wasn’t sure.
“I already had some and as I told you, it was a big stack. More than I could eat. So I thought I’d share instead of throwing them away. But, if you don’t want them, then I guess they’re going in the trash.” Kennedy huffed and picked up the tray angrily from the table.
He snatched it away before she could even blink. She stared stupidly at the empty space that the tray had occupied between her hands.
“When you put it that way, I think that I can make room for a few of these mouth-watering pancakes.” He moved around her to sit on a chair in front of the table and put the food down on it. He gave her a crooked smile as he took the first bite.
“Mm, delicious.” He made a fuss of rolling his eyes as he savored the mouthful.
Kennedy stood in the sun, not knowing what to think. Sure, he was extremely good looking. He was also uncouth and obnoxious. Nevertheless, the heat of the sunlight was getting to her, so she moved to sit down on the chair across from him.
There, under the cover of the colorful umbrella’s shadow, she allowed herself to relax a little. He ate in silence while she tried to look at anything besides him. She didn’t dare set her eyes on him again, scared that she wouldn’t be able to tear them away afterward.
“Do you always welcome strangers so warmly?” Her eyes shot up to his as an involuntary response to being addressed.
“Not really.” It was the honest truth, and she had no idea why she said it. She wasn’t really interested in the reason behind her actions, but rather the intense blue shade of his eyes.
“Is it because I am so handsome then?” His direct question snapped her out of her gawking and made her flush. Apparently, modesty was not one of his greatest attributes.
“I don’t know. I mean, whatever good looks I might have thought you had disappeared the second you opened your mouth.” He was sarcastically frank and so she could be as well.
“Ouch. I guess that I should say that the feeling is mutual, but I think it would just lower your opinion of me even more.” She was almost positive that there had been a compliment hidden somewhere in that sentence.
“It’s not like I’m grasping at straws here. I’m just going by what I see.” Kennedy kept her head high and tried to appear as confident as she sounded. In truth, her hands were balled into sweating fists that rested hidden on her lap under the table.
“And what you have seen so far is not very flattering at all. I guess that I can understand why you would think me rude.” He actually looked like he was considering his actions. She didn’t know what to make of him.
“Not exactly rude, more like overly blunt.” She tried to take the sting out of her earlier implication and was amazed at how sincere she actually was.
“Whatever your impression of me, it sure is not a good one. I apologize for my discourtesy. I am not a very sociable person.”
“I can see that.” He raised a sharp eyebrow at her muttered comment.
“Even so, your gesture is well appreciated.” He said and Kennedy let out a very unladylike snort in response.
“Where do you come up with this stuff? Nobody talks like that anymore, at least not since the nineteenth century. You sound like you swallowed a dictionary.”
“Well I do, don’t I – he added a contraction to his sentence – would you rather I spoke in the same vulgar speech as you?” That did it!
“Hold on a minute. Yo
u have no right to insult me in my own house and vulgar is something that I am not!” She didn’t care how handsome he thought he was, she sure as hell wasn’t going to let him talk down on her like that.
“I did not say that you were vulgar, I was referring to your verbal communication skills.”
“Great, so now I’m stupid too.”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Listen mister, I don’t know who you think you are–”
“Damien.”
“What?” She was stunned. There she was, telling him off in the middle of an angry tirade while he just stared calmly back and said a name.
“You said that you did not know who I was and that is my name, Damien Leoni.”
“Oh.” Damien Leoni, even his name had a pompous sound to it. She tried ineffectively to suppress a laugh.
“And as delightful as our conversation has been, I believe it is time that I head back and finish the yard. Unless you want it to be left like that?”
“It’s not so bad. We can say that a visionary landscape architect found a way to express himself through our grass and flower beds.”
“Fine then, it was a pleasure.” He started to rise from his seat, but stopped, turned and addressed her once more.
“A word of advice though, you should learn to breathe in between sentences – she sputtered and began a retort that died in her lips as he spoke again – I expect we will meet again, Kennedy.” He stood and headed back to continue with his earlier task.
It wasn’t until later that she realized that he'd never