All things considered, things hadn't turned out to badly for Clare. She still missed Roger on occasion, but those occasions were few, and she'd found that most of what she missed about him could easily be supplied by the men she picked up in the bars and supper clubs that surrounded Hidden Lake, and in a quantity and quality far more to her liking than anything Roger had ever been able to provide. He'd left her well-off financially, though, with his pension from the university and a nice annuity, as well as the house in town and this lovely, brand-new luxury A-frame on the lake, completed not long before his final heart attack. It was a shame he'd hardly ever gotten to use it, and often when Clare stepped out on the big redwood deck to have her morning coffee or take the sun, she thought of him and tried to do it fondly. But those occasions were growing rarer too. She was still a very good-looking woman and had a lot of life ahead of her and she intended to make the most of it. There was really nothing to be gained by dwelling on the past.
Cory Beckwith was calling to her from the far edge of Roger's garden, way back by the woods, calling to her and waving to attract her attention. He had his shirt off, which was encouraging, and Clare took a moment just to admire him, that lean young body and soft, sun-bleached curls. She could have had the Mexicans plow up Roger's garden and sod it over, but in a stroke of genius she'd hired Cory to do it. As far as she was concerned, the vegetables could lie there and rot, but this gave her a convenient excuse to have the young college student over for some nice, sweaty, outdoor work, and from the way she caught him looking at her as she stretched out on the deck in bikini top and shorts to take the warm autumn sun, he might soon be doing even more.
But right now he was calling her, and Clare sat up and lowered her sunglasses against the glare. A drop of perspiration ran languidly down between her breasts as she got to her feet and went to the rail.
"What is it, Cory? I can't hear you!"
He was yelling something to her, but she couldn't hear a thing over the roar of the crew swarming over the Zimring's lawn next door, cleaning up leaves and trimming and edging. She pointed to her ears and shrugged to show she couldn't hear, and Cory raised his arms in exasperation and began trudging back through the ruined and wilted garden. Clare watched him come and carefully adjusted the straps on her top and wondered if she had time to give herself another quick coating of oil, but she was already sleek and glistening from the last application, so instead she turned her back to him and pretended to be fussing with getting her clogs on so he'd at least get a good shot of her back and the thong that emerged from the low waistband of her tight shorts.
The roaring of the leaf blowers stopped just as Cory approached her, and the sudden silence was jarring.
"Perfect timing," he joked, and Clare smiled. He cleared his throat and called up his adult voice and pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "You know, the garden there runs beyond the far fence," he said. "You didn't tell me that. There's more stuff out there outside the fence, like growing wild. Pumpkins and stuff. You want me to do that too?"
Clare had been looking at him and it took her a moment to focus on what he was saying. "Oh? It does?"
"Yeah. Thins out by the fence there, then starts up again and runs right up into the trees at the edge of the woods, even back into it a little ways."
"Oh? Oh my!" She put on her helpless-widow face and looked down as if she were thinking, but he was so close she could see the fine line of hair that ran like a little beard from just below his navel to down into his low-hanging jeans. "Oh, I didn't know! But yes, of course. Can you take care of that for me too? I'll certainly pay you extra."
"Sure, Mrs. Brendt, no problem. I just don't know how far you want me to go. Here, come have a look. I'll show you."
"Clare," she corrected. "Please call me Clare. Mrs. Brendt makes me feel like an old lady!"
He smiled apologetically. "Clare," he repeated. "Okay."
And to show him that she was in no way anything like an old lady, she made a little show of slipping into her thin white shirt, arching her back as she slid her arms into the sleeves to make herself bulge over her stretched top.
It worked, and his eyes slid down to her chest for a good long moment, and when he looked up he was smiling, a funny little grin that gave her a thrill, and made her exult inside. Yes! It was going to happen. She could tell from that grin. She just had to play her cards right and drop a few more hints, and it would happen. Cory wasn't the dumb piece of beefcake he might look.
He turned and walked down the stairs with Clare following, sorry she hadn't gone first so he could watch her ass.
The October sun was warm, and hotter down in the bare dirt of the garden than it had been up on the deck. The plot was large and ambitious as befitted a professor of biology who'd always itched to grow his own food, and Clare found walking on the dead weeds and raw turned earth unpleasant, as if she were walking on a grave. She tried to ignore the feeling and instead kept her eyes on the twin dimples on either side of Cory's spine just above his belt. She thought idly about what it would be like to press her nipples into those dimples just for fun, but she knew that would be too weird for him. He was just a kid and wouldn't appreciate the strange urges and fancies of a mature woman.
They reached the fence and Cory pointed at the ground beyond. "Here," he said, waving his arm in a vague arc, and Clare saw what he was talking about. There were low weeds outside the fence, and scattered among them she could see some fat pumpkins and gourds, rotting and half sinking into the ground, and even the decrepit remains of what must have been home-made trellises, now being held up by thick tangles of dying vines that clung to them like survivors of a shipwreck.
"There. And all the way into the tree line there and even into the woods. You want me to clean all this stuff up too?"
Clare looked at the mess in distaste. The jumble of dead weeds and rotting vegetables and blackened, writhing vines made her vaguely nauseous. She'd never liked gardens and had never particularly liked plants, but there was something actually unpleasant about the way these fat, hairy stems wound among the decaying produce and plunged snakelike into the earth, still in search of sustenance to feed their dead and decaying fruit.
