The walls were silver and contrasted beautifully with the pink curtains and the mahogany stained floors. The floors were heated throughout the house and this was one of the features that had attracted her to the house.

On the far side of the room was a sitting area that consisted of a charcoal colored micro suede sofa, a grey colored micro suede chair and ottoman with a shag earth tone rug sitting in front of the fire place.   

Her king sized platformed bed was dark brown with matching nightstands and storage room below. The bedding was a soothing floral design in grey and pink iridescent cotton sateen,

Noelle pushed back the covers and swung her feet out onto the lip of the bed; she sat for a moment and thanked God for another day.  

Noelle decided as she sat there that this would be a great day of renewal and life for her. She thought of all of the Saturdays that had been spent with her parents going to the home improvement store to buy supply for the renovation projects that they were constantly doing on the house that had been bought at auction.  

The house had been seized by the bank from the owners and sold to pay off their taxes. Noelle parents had seen the potential in the three bedroom house and had invested all that they had been saving to buy the family their dream home.   

The house had needed major repair, but her father and mother had not been afraid to tackle the hard work that had been required to make the house a show place.  

Those days were long gone unfortunately, but with this being such a beautiful morning Noelle wanted to do something in honor of her parents’ memory. After this long hard winter her yard was very much in need of work. 

She had left her laptop on the sofa last night as she had done some research and measured the area where the plants would go and wanted the information so that she wouldn’t seem lost at the greenhouse. She would print out the information to take with her. 

Noelle’s thoughts went to the naked man she had ogled last night, Mr. Trey Powell by name. Fortunately she didn’t ogled naked men on a regular, but he had fueled some very vivid erotic dreams last night and she felt a little languid this morning.                

She finished her morning rituals and went into the kitchen and made a cup of coffee and popped a whole grain bagel into the toaster before grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl.

Her mind went right back into the gutter and Noelle remembered the thick, long... she shoved the banana back into the bowl as her phone began to ring and she snatched it up before it could ring twice.  

“Morning Noelle.” said Monet Jean-Charles.   

For a moment Noelle was tempted to tell her best friend what had happened to her. 

“Hey, girl. Good Morning. You sound upbeat this morning what’s up?” Noelle asked.

She put the cordless phone between her ear and shoulder before removing her bagel out of the toaster and taking the cream cheese and orange marmalade out of the stainless steel refrigerator.  

“Not much, I have a big society wedding today so I’ve got my running shoes on as usual.” Monet answered.  

Monet’s family owned one of the largest banquet venues in Washington D.C., that hosted parties, weddings, conventions and other social events. Like Noelle, her grandparents had also come from the Caribbean back in the early part of the last century to make a better life for themselves and their offspring.

They had moved to D.C. like so many other West Indian families and opened a restaurant that proved to be very popular with not only people from the Caribbean islands, but the community at large. That was the beginning of their successful banquet business.  

“So what do you have planned for today?” her friend asked and her gaze went to the backyard that she was now ready to tackle.  

“I’m going to drive over to Johnson’s Nursery on Wisconsin Ave. to pick out some plants to make my yard look like a yard and not the Gobi Desert.” she said.  

Her imagination was running wild thinking about the plants she had seen last week at the garden section of the home center.  

“Sounds good, I maybe I can come over to see what you've done sometime this weekend.” Monet said. 

Noelle could hear a female voice over the phone. 

“Monet, excuse me can you give me the seating counts again?” asked her sister Giselle in the background. 

"I’ve got to run, Noelle. Giselle needs me. I’ll check in with you later, ok?” Monet said. 

“Yeah, call me later and tell Giselle I said 'good morning'. I’ll probably call Marissa, see if she wants to take a ride with me.” she replied before saying goodbye and they both hung up.  

Noelle sat looking at the bare yard, feeling inspiration flow and quickly finished the bagel before she got up. 

She took a shower, before getting dressed in the clothes she had laid out earlier. Noelle had inherited her mother’s love of color and her yellow halter top and hipster blue jean shorts were soon paired with Cell Puma running shoe and no show socks.

She ran a brush through her long dark hair. She had cut it short after her parents died but had let it grow back and now it was halfway down her back where it had been four years ago. The short and curly look had been cute but she wanted a more grown up look and longer hair did that for her.  

She had also inherited her mother’s backside. Turning around to peer into the mirror at it  shook her head, thankfully she also had the trim waist and nice, if muscular legs and she was going to show them off today.

Noelle went through the utility room into the garage where her baby was sitting and patted the Audi before she slid into the driver’s seat.  

She dialed Marissa knowing that if the other woman was up the time it took her to get ready would equal the time it took her to drive to her home.  

“Rise and shine sleepy head.” she said brightly after she heard a muffled hello. 

“If you weren’t my best friend I would kill you.” Marissa Flores groused sleepily. 

“It’s a glorious morning in D.C. what are you still doing in bed?” she asked.  

“I was up until nearly three this morning working on a deposition. Call me later Niña. I’m beat.” the red head complained before hanging up abruptly. 

“Well, I guess I’ll do this by myself.” she said and turned on the radio.  

She arrived at the nursery twenty minutes later and saw that other people had the same idea about doing some planting for spring. Noelle loved the idea of having some plants in her backyard but she also wanted something that would give her some fruit.  

“Do you have any Dwarf Meyer lemon trees?” Noelle asked one of the workers as she walked around.   

“Yes we do, they are over by the regular fruiting orange trees in the right hand corner and we just got in some pomegranate trees if you’re interested.” the green smocked worker told her pointing in the general direction.  

She smiled her thanks and walked in that direction the idea of getting a pomegranate tree taking her back to a trip she had made to Trinidad when she was a teenager with her parents. 

Her mother had very little family left and she had been an only child. The same was true of her father but they had also made several trips to Panama during her childhood. As two only children they had gravitated to one another and it was ironic that Noelle herself had been an only child as well.

Their parents had immigrated to the south and Helen and Nathan had actually come up to D.C. to attend college. They had liked being in the cosmopolitan atmosphere and chosen to remain in Washington and had gotten jobs working for the government.

Noelle found the fruit trees and liked the look of the dwarf pomegranate trees and thought she would get two of them; one for each of her parents along with a Meyer lemon because she loved lemonade and cooked a lot of fish and chicken.  

After some discussion with a fellow gardener, Noelle decided on a beautiful azalea in hot pink as they were her mother’s favorite color. She also chose a red crepe myrtle dwarf shrub, three pink hibiscus plants and a few pots of variegated hostas, dwarf pampas grasses, and a dozen accent plants.  

Noelle also added four bags of potting soil and two of mulch which a worker was all too happy to put on her trolley for her.                                                         

~*~*~*~*~    

Trey saw the hot pink azaleas on the cart coming toward him first and barely got out of the way as the driver kept coming unable to see past the lemon and pomegranate trees. 

“Miss, you need to be more careful.” he said in warning as the woman passed him.  

The shrubs on the trolley were taller than her he noted and guessed she was about a foot shorter than his six foot two inch height. No wonder she had a hard time seeing over them.

He looked down into a pair of wide brown eyes and the yellow of her top against her chocolate skin was a startling but beautiful combination.  

“I’m sorry, did I hit you?” she asked worriedly as she ran her eyes over his grey vintage t-shirt and blue jean clad form.                 

*~*~*~*~*

                               “No you didn’t hit me, but it was a near thing.” he answered trying to focus on what she had asked.

Trey most definitely wanted to say, that he really would have like to have been run over by any part of her that she would allow.

The longer that he stared at her more appealing and beautiful she became to him. She was like a work of art. She had the prettiest, smoothest skin he had seen; the color reminded him of his favorite drink as a child, cocoa with lots of milk and sugar.

Her shape was definitely sweet, athletic without being too hard and muscular, what his friend Jacob would call thick. This young woman had a small pert nose and a firm sexy kissable mouth topped off by a head full of long, black silky looking hair.  

As his brain finally started functioning again he realized something that was strange, he swore he could smell the same perfume he had noticed yesterday in his apartment.                                      

“I promise to be more careful.” she said solemnly and then she smiled at him and it was like the sun shone directly from her eyes. 

Noelle was entranced by his serious blue eyes beneath a shock of hair so black it shone with blue highlights and she had always found the Black Irish thing sexy. He looked like something of a bad boy too and even worse she could tell money when she saw it and as casually dressed as he was, this guy had it.

She pulled herself together and continued to push the trolley this time a little more carefully; peering around the plants as she went and swore she could feel his eyes all over her backside.  

He was most definitely a man worth running over just so she could give him some well earned CPR. Just looking at his muscular forearms and legs was enough to start her heart to racing.

This was the second stranger in less than 24 hours that was giving her some very wicked thoughts.  

After having a much needed talk with the head gardener, Noelle finally made her way to the check-out and paid for her items. On the way out the door she grabbed several pieces of plastic sheeting to lay on the carpeting of her car.

As she did that Noelle made a quick scan of the store. She was kind of hoping to catch a glimpse of The Guy, but didn't spot him anywhere. He had certainly brightened her day. 

Making her way across the parking lot to her Audi she noticed that there was now the bigger version of her car parked right next to it.

Noelle thought that the owner must have spotted her car and wanted to park next to her to keep the family together. She sometimes found herself doing the same thing when she went out, it was a cute game and apparently she wasn’t the only one who did it.  

Noelle unlocked her vehicle and climbed into the back passenger side door so that she could put the rear seats down and spread the protective sheeting to load up.  

“Excuse me, would you like some help?” she heard a familiar deep and refined voice ask.  

'Oh God, please tell me that hot man is not standing behind me staring at my ass hanging out in the breeze.' she said to herself.  

*~*~*~*

'Right there', Trey thought to himself, ‘is absolutely perfect!'