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Jami Alden

T
aylor pulled her pillow over her head, but the harsh mechanical whine pierced the thick down. She pulled the comforter up, willing to risk overheating if it meant she could get an extra hour of sleep. But it was useless. Why did her neighbor have to decide that this, of all Saturday mornings, was a great day to get up at the crack of dawn to do yard work?

Flinging back the comforter, she staggered to the window and inched aside the shade, recoiling as bright sunshine stabbed at her retinas. Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t precisely the crack of dawn, but close enough. She squinted in the direction of her neighbor’s house, and sure enough, a shirtless man expertly wielded a weed whacker along the other side of the fence that divided their lots. His head was bent, covered by a ball cap, and her annoyance waned momentarily as she admired the sleek muscles moving under acres of smooth, tan skin. The gardener from
Desperate Housewives
had nothing on this guy.

Still, after working until four
A.M.
this morning to put the finishing touches on a huge venture financing deal, she was in no mood to tolerate a noisy gardener, even if he did provide grade-A eye candy. Pulling a robe over her camisole and panties, Taylor slipped on a pair of rubber flip-flops and strode purposefully over to her neighbor’s front door. Though the house had sold several months ago, Taylor had been so busy with work she hadn’t met her new neighbors. Unlike most of the houses on her cul-de-sac, no toys littered the beautifully landscaped front yard, so she doubted a family had moved in. She took a moment to admire the pristinely trimmed hedges and planters full of bright flowers that bordered the front steps. Her own yard, she thought guiltily, needed only a car up on blocks to complete its Ma-and-Pa-Kettle, white-trash motif. But she’d barely seen her own house in the daylight for the past six months, so calling a gardener or landscaper was beyond her capability. Hmm. Maybe she’d hire the shirtless wonder working on her neighbor’s yard, since he seemed to know what he was about. But only on weekdays, when Taylor wasn’t desperately trying to put a dent in her perpetual sleep debt.

She rang the doorbell, aware of the warm morning sun penetrating the thin cotton of her robe. She probably should have gotten dressed, but if she had her way, after she spoke to her neighbor, she was crawling right back into bed in blessed silence. Several seconds passed with no answer. She looked around. The only vehicle in the driveway was a large white pickup with
TIERNEY’S LANDSCAPING AND OUTDOOR DESIGN
printed on the door in big green letters. But then, most people in the neighborhood parked their cars in the garage while they were home. She pressed the doorbell again, following it with several sharp raps.

“Can I help you?”

Taylor jumped as the speaker’s deep voice sent an electric current down her legs. She turned and faced the gardener, her eyes locking first on his bare chest, then traveling covetously up the muscled expanse to a perfectly delicious-looking neck, and finally settling on a face so gorgeous that Taylor swore she heard angels singing as his ridiculously vivid green eyes crinkled in a smile. Her mouth went dry as she took in the most stunningly perfect man she’d ever seen. She mentally sighed, knowing that under the short, gold-streaked brown hair, his head was no doubt full of landscaping gravel.

“I was hoping to talk to the owners.” Heat crept up her neck and face as his intense gaze raked her from the tips of her pink-painted toenails, up her bare legs, and over the thin cotton robe—the only thing standing between his frankly assessing gaze and her flimsy blue cotton camisole and panty set. She licked her lips and smiled as though it was perfectly proper for her to be standing on her neighbor’s front porch in a robe that left most of her legs bare.

He cocked his head to the side as though confused. “The owners,” she repeated, enunciating every word in case his grasp of English wasn’t optimal. “Do you know when they’ll be home?”

His thick brows furrowed, and his mouth quirked into a puzzled smile. “I am the owner.”

Taylor couldn’t keep the surprise from her face. “You are?”

His smile faded a little at her disbelief. “Yeah, I moved in almost six months ago. Joe Tierney.”

Good Lord! All this time she’d assumed a childless couple or, judging from the neatly tended flower beds, a gay man had moved next door. Never in her wildest imaginings did she think that six foot three inches of sweaty male perfection had been living right next door. She was getting distracted by that chest again, which was rippling with muscle, little beads of sweat dampening the soft line of hair bisecting his perfectly chiseled abs. She suddenly realized he was standing there expectantly with his hand out. It was a big, tough-looking hand, with long fingers crisscrossed with tiny scars. A vivid image popped into her brain of her grasping that hand and flinging him to the ground to have her way with him.

Where in the world had that come from? Thank God her boyfriend, Steven, was coming home tomorrow. Clearly the lack of sleep—not to mention sex—over the past several months were conspiring to send her heretofore subdued libido into overdrive. All she knew was that if she let this hunk of burning love touch her, she couldn’t be held responsible for the consequences.

Still, it would be rude to refuse to shake his hand. “Taylor Flynn,” she said, and offered just her fingertips. Even that slight brush of her smooth, perfectly manicured fingertips against his callused ones was enough to send a jolt of pure electricity to a spot between her legs that had lain dormant for the past three months.

She snatched her hand back as quickly as possible, rubbing it against the side of her thigh in an effort to force the tingles she had no business feeling into submission.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, his businesslike tone snapping her brain back into focus.

Using all her flagging energy, Taylor schooled her face into a polite, beseeching smile, and summoning the sweet, cajoling tone that had convinced many a start-up CEO to hand over a significant percentage of his company to Taylor’s venture capital firm, she said, “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind holding off on your yard work until a slightly more civilized hour.”

His smile stayed put, but his eyes were flat as he squinted into the bright morning sun. “It’s ten
A.M.
”

Her own smile slipped. “Well, that may be, but I had a very late night and—”

“I’m sorry if you can’t be bothered to drag yourself out of bed after a night of partying, but I have a lot to get done today.”

“I was working,” she said, tired frustration melting her smile into a tense glare, “until four
A.M.
And if you can’t bring yourself to be courteous enough to stop with the heavy machinery, I’m not above calling the police.”

His only reply was a rude snort.

“I’m serious,” she snapped, realizing somewhere in the back of her mind that she should maintain some hold on her temper, which had grown progressively shorter as she’d worked herself nearly to death in recent months. But his rudeness, combined with the unwelcome sexual sparks that were flying between them, sent her headlong over the edge. “I’ll lodge a noise complaint—”

“And they’ll tell you that it’s past eight
A.M.
and that I’m abiding by all the noise ordinances of the city of Menlo Park, California. Trust me—Taylor, is it?—you don’t have a leg to stand on.”

Rage coursed through her, hot, unbridled, and so intense she actually felt the prick of tears. All she wanted was a little sleep. Was that too much to ask for? Instead she said, in her most withering, icy manner, “I suppose I shouldn’t expect basic manners from someone like you.” She whirled and stomped away as he muttered something under his breath. Something that sounded suspiciously like, “Needs to get laid.”

Though that same little voice warned her not to engage, to retreat to her house before she ended up in an all-out feud with her neighbor, she whirled around. “What did you say?”

He sucked his bottom lip in and crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed for a moment, as though he was debating whether or not to speak. Honesty won out. “I said, somebody needs to get laid.”

Taylor’s mouth opened and closed like a dying carp. She couldn’t believe he was not only rude enough to think such a thing, but to say it out loud. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything!”

“Maybe if you had a boyfriend to take the edge off every once in a while, you wouldn’t be so uptight. And maybe,” he continued, leaning in closer so she could smell him, all salty sweat and clean man skin, “he could mow that disaster of a lawn of yours and help bring up your neighbors’ property values.”

His scent washed over her in waves, making her nipples harden under the smooth cotton of her camisole and distracting her from the fact that he’d just insulted her landscaping in addition to her sex life. She shook her head. He was a dirty, sweaty, laborer—not the kind of man who should make her nipples tighten and her panties moist! Summoning up the icy hauteur that had become second nature, she snapped, “I have a boyfriend—a rich, successful man who has more important things to do than mow my lawn.”

“No kidding. Your lawn obviously hasn’t been mown for a long, long time.” There was no mistaking the lascivious note in his voice.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Obviously you’re working some double entendre there, but I’ll have you know my relationship with Steven is just fine. What we have goes far beyond sex—”

“Bingo, exactly as I thought,” he interrupted. “‘Beyond sex’ is code for no sex.”

Taylor snapped her mouth shut, embarrassed to have revealed so much. She’d never been the type to share intimate details of her sex life, even with her closest friends. What in the world possessed her to have a conversation like this with a man she just met? “I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” she said lamely. “It hasn’t been that long.”
Only four months, but who’s counting?
“He travels a lot,” she said in response to his knowing smirk, then mentally slapped herself. Why was she making excuses to him, of all people?

“Let me tell you something, Taylor,” he said, and leaned in closer. Close enough for her to see every dark, ridiculously long eyelash surrounding his stunning green eyes. Close enough to see that the dark stubble of his beard was interspersed with gold strands. Close enough to smell the scent of his shampoo coming off his sweat-dampened hair.

She resisted the urge to flick her tongue out to catch a stray bead of perspiration sliding down the dark column of his throat. “What’s that?”

“A man doesn’t go without sex if he can help it. So trust me, if he’s not getting it from you, he’s getting it from someone else.” He turned and left her sputtering in his front yard, almost too angry to notice that he looked just as good from the back as he did from the front.

From his vantage point around the corner, Joe watched Taylor as she glared at the spot he’d recently vacated, her jaw clenched as though holding back a rage-fueled tirade. After several seconds she whirled around and stomped back to her own yard, offering him an excellent view of sleek thighs and nicely toned calves. He licked his lips, wishing her robe was several inches shorter so he could get an unimpeded look at her tightly muscled ass.

Unlike his neighbor, who clearly had been clueless about him until this morning, Joe had been fully aware of Taylor from the first week he’d moved in, when he caught a glimpse of her coming back from a run at some ungodly early hour. Which was ironic, considering this morning she was complaining about his working at a civilized hour like ten
A.M.
Even from a distance, he’d seen she was beautiful, with clean, classic features and Nordic goddess coloring. And unlike most women who looked sweaty and mussed after a jog, her hair was still neatly slicked back in a ponytail, her cheeks faintly rosy from exertion, but otherwise she was neat and…tidy. That was the word for her.

Since then, he’d found himself watching for her in the mornings when she left for work, always perfectly put together in a suit or other business attire. He didn’t know what it was about her, but he loved watching her priss in and out of her car, so cool and self-contained in her own little world. Obviously she was some kind of high-powered executive type, with her shiny black five-series BMW, not to mention the house she lived in—alone.

He wondered about this alleged boyfriend, the one whose car was never in her driveway, as far as he could tell, and who clearly didn’t give Taylor what she so obviously needed. If ever there was a woman in need of a long, hard fuck and about a half dozen or so orgasms, it was prissy little Taylor Flynn. His groin tightened at the thought of being the man to help her out. Close up, she was even better-looking, her skin pale and flawless without a stitch of makeup, her mouth rosy and delicate, even when pursed in an angry pucker. For once, this morning her hair was loose, hanging in silky blond strands that made his fingers itch to thread through them. But even though she was obviously just out of bed, she looked cool and composed, like one of those icy blond heroines in the Hitchcock movies his mother used to watch.

At least she had been cool and composed until he brought up her sex life, he thought with a smirk. He wasn’t a rude person by nature, and under most circumstances would never consider speaking like that to any woman, much less one he was attracted to. But he had the same reaction to Taylor that he’d had to Jennie Douglas in the third grade. Jennie with her perfectly matched designer outfits and neatly braided hair, who had looked down her tiny perfect nose at him when he’d offered to share a package of powdered donuts with her and wrinkled her nose while staring in disgust at his hands, dirty from digging for worms during recess.

The next day, Jennie had found one of those worms in her lunch box and had been “accidentally” shoved into a mud puddle as Joe ran by her to catch a football.

When Taylor had refused to shake his hand, offering just the barest tips of her fingers, he’d felt a surge of the same childish, irrational anger. But instead of pushing her into the mud, he’d insulted her sex life.