Built (7 page)

Real mature, he thought, resisting the urge to do further damage by running the weed whacker for the rest of the day. He’d been obnoxious enough already, and he’d be lucky if Taylor didn’t come up with some way to make his life a living hell. Fortunately, she seemed to work a lot, so she probably didn’t have much time to devote to petty revenge.

He sighed and picked up his garden shears to finish pruning the hedge that bordered his back patio. He’d been trying to figure out a way to introduce himself to his beautiful neighbor for months, but this was hardly how he’d envisioned it going. He clipped his way over to their shared fence and peeked over. No sign of her in the backyard, which was no big surprise since it was basically a big overgrown weed patch with some beat-up lawn furniture and a crumbling concrete patio that fairly cried out to be torn up and replaced. He wondered if the inside of her house looked any better, or if her physical person was the only thing she kept in any sort of order.

Not that he’d ever find out. Even if he hadn’t been completely obnoxious and pissed her off, it was obvious she was a total snob who would never consider lowering herself to date a man who actually worked with his hands.

Too bad, he thought with a pang of regret as he imagined Taylor’s long, lean legs extending from the hem of her robe. If given half a chance, Joe bet he could show a woman like Taylor a damn good time.

“H
ow dare he?” Taylor asked no one in particular as she briskly folded a dozen pair of brushed cotton bikini underwear. Though compelled by rage, she didn’t allow herself to rush, knowing if she didn’t take the time to fold each piece of lingerie into perfect thirds and separate them by color, she’d waste precious time Monday morning when she reached without looking into her panty drawer and pulled out the wrong shade.

“How dare he tell me I need to get laid?” she said to the panties, her shoulders tensing with rage all over again. So what if it was a little too close to the truth? What kind of man was so rude as to say something like that to a woman he’d just met?

Her lips tightened in distaste as she remembered her mother’s last boyfriend—at least the one she’d had the last time Taylor had been home nearly fifteen years ago. Herb, with his beer-stinking breath and sweaty, grabby hands. Supposedly he worked in construction, but the only thing Taylor had ever seen him build was a pyramid of beer cans on the coffee table that occupied the middle of their double-wide’s living room. Herb spent most of his time on the couch, yelling at the TV—that is, when he wasn’t yelling at Taylor, telling her not to be so uptight, to be nicer to him, to come over and sit on the couch with him so he could give her what she needed.

Her skin crawled at the memory, and she looked down to see a pair of black bikini briefs wadded in her right hand. Carefully, she smoothed them out onto the bed and folded them. Her neighbor Joe was just like Herb, just like her mother’s other boyfriends. Callous, rude, the kind of guy who thought the solution to all the world’s problems could be found at the tip of his dick.

She heard a rustling and snapping outside and abandoned her lingerie to look out the window. Joe was back in his yard, trimming his bushes with a pair of lethal-looking hedge clippers. Okay, maybe he wasn’t
exactly
like Herb and his ilk. The only six-pack Herb ever saw was in the refrigerator, and Joe’s perfectly chiseled cheekbones and jawline were a universe away from Herb’s mean, piggy eyes and puffy, ruddy face.

Still, he was the same uncultured, crude jerk, but in a much better-looking package. As though he’d felt her looking, Joe straightened up and glanced up toward her window. Taylor jumped to the side, watching as he pulled a bandana from his back pocket to wipe his face. Something like lust curled in her stomach as she watched his big hand wrap around a bottle of water. She licked her lips, watching the muscles of his shoulder and arm flex as he brought the bottle to his lips.

Yes, he was a jerk, but he was just about the sexiest jerk she’d ever seen. She allowed her eyes to skim down his sweat-slicked chest, to his muscular calves and big feet covered by heavy work boots. Her fingers itched to slide down his torso, to undo the fly of his shorts and see if his cock was as big as the rest of him. Maybe she could take him up here, to her room, tie him to her wrought-iron bed frame and punish him for his rudeness….

He lowered the bottle, his mouth quirking in a half-smile as he raised his hand in a quick wave. Oh, God, he’d caught her staring! She flung herself back from the window, as though that would help matters. Hopefully at that distance, he hadn’t been able to see the lust-crazed light in her eyes and the blush she knew had suffused her face. What in God’s name was wrong with her? She rarely fantasized about sex, and if she did, it never entailed tying a gorgeous naked man to her bed so she could straddle him and take his long, thick, cock deep inside….

There she went again! Taylor grabbed a stack of panties and took them to her dresser to put away. As she pushed aside a stack of beige panties to make room for the black, she caught a glimpse of ice-blue satin, pushed all they way back in the left-hand corner. She pulled out the blue satin garter belt, along with the matching thong and demi-cup bra. She’d bought them last spring for the romantic weekend she and Steven had planned in Big Sur. It had been over a year ago, and even then, Taylor had sensed something was missing, had felt compelled to do her part to spice up their rather bland sex life.

But Steven had spent the previous two weeks on a grueling overseas sales trip and had spent nearly the entire weekend sleeping off his jet lag.

Needless to say, the garter, the thong, and the bra all still bore their original price tags.

Where had her libido gone? Where had Steven’s? As she’d admitted to Joe, sex had never been the most important part of her relationship with Steven, but she certainly hadn’t been asexual. She simply hadn’t been trying hard enough. That was the problem. After two years together, of course their sexual attraction had waned a bit, and she’d been working so hard she hadn’t really put much thought or effort into rekindling those fires.

Well, no longer. Regardless of what Joe Tierney thought, she could be a sexy, sensual woman who kept her man satisfied. She looked at the clock. Eleven twenty-two. Steven was arriving later this evening from a trip to New York, but they didn’t have plans to meet up until brunch tomorrow.

She quickly showered and dressed in a knee-length linen sundress. She had just enough time to get waxed, smoothed, and polished to perfection before Steven came home and found her ready, waiting, and wanting on his big California king.

Joe propped his hands on the end of his shovel and let out a low whistle. Taylor’s pale blond head whipped around. “Do you have something to say,” she asked, arching one perfectly groomed eyebrow, “or are your communication skills limited to catcalls?”

He straightened up like a chastened schoolboy. Maybe this was a chance to undo some of the damage from earlier. “You look very nice, Taylor.” Which was an understatement. She looked phenomenal. Simultaneously sexy and classy, in a pink sleeveless dress made out of some kind of floaty material that hit her right at midthigh, showing off her amazing legs. As he looked more closely, he could see that she wore nylons, even though it was still about ninety degrees out. He thought she’d looked hot earlier today when she’d hightailed it out of the driveway, her hair in a prim bun and in another more casual dress.

But now she looked incredible. Though the V-neck of her dress wasn’t cut particularly low, it called attention to the ripe curves of her breasts. Her pale shoulders gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight, making him wonder how it would feel to trace his tongue along the silky line of skin and muscle. He wondered what she would do if he walked over and pulled the flimsy strap of her dress down her arm and slid his hand inside her dress to close over her tit.

Probably smack him in the face and look at him like she was looking at him now—like he was so far beneath her it was a wonder she even noticed his existence. Which really pissed him off. “Got a hot date?” He smirked. “Just so you know, the uptight-bitch look isn’t much of a turn-on.” Her eyes narrowed, but he refused to flinch. Hey, he’d tried to be nice, to give her a compliment, and she’d given him a look like he was lower than dog crap. As far as he was concerned, if there were a mud puddle around, Taylor would be facedown in it.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said as she opened her car door, “but my boyfriend is coming back tonight from a business trip, and I have a very nice surprise for him.”

Something about the snooty way she tossed her head made him grin. “Good. Maybe he can help you get the stick out of your butt.”

She muttered something about an immature bonehead, slammed the door, and peeled out of the driveway.

Joe watched, laughing as her car disappeared around the corner. Damn, what he wouldn’t give to throw Taylor down and dirty her up a little bit.

Taylor reapplied her lip gloss, checking her reflection one last time in the rearview mirror. Did she really look like an uptight bitch? She’d really tried to look a little sexier, a little more casual this evening. Maybe Joe was right.
Why do you care what he thinks? His idea of sexy is probably too much makeup, a skirt that could double as a belt, and an IQ that matched a woman’s bra size. Steven thinks I’m attractive—sexy even. We’ve just fallen into a bit of a rut.

She smoothed the skirt of her silky chiffon dress and ran her fingers through her hair one last time before letting herself in the front door of Steven’s town house. The air-conditioning hummed, the startling cold making the skin of her arms prickle and her nipples tighten against the satin of her bra. Built in air-conditioning was one perk, she conceded, of living in a cookie-cutter town house. While Taylor loved her old two-story craftsman home and her quiet cul-de-sac, it, unlike Steven’s two-year-old town house, needed several upgrades. Flaws and all, she’d adored it from the moment she’d first laid eyes on it. Cozy, cute, with its own fenced yard, it was the kind of home she’d always dreamed of. One that was a universe away from the double-wide she’d shared with her mother in a dusty trailer park in southern New Mexico. When she’d bought her first house, she felt like she’d put her past behind her once and for all.

In the year and a half since she’d moved in, she’d spent a lot of money on making it her dream home but hadn’t gotten around to installing AC before the warm weather hit. Steven seemed to have left it on while he was out of town, which was good since Taylor didn’t want to start sweating until they got to the really good stuff.

She started up the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the sound of the stereo playing. Had Steven left it on while he was out of town? That was so unlike him. Come to think of it, so was the air-conditioning. Even though he probably made over a quarter-million dollars a year, he was completely anal when it came to household expenses. No way would he be so careless as to leave the air-conditioning, not to mention a major electronic appliance, on to suck the power grid dry. His cleaning service, which came once a week, must have left it on.

She stopped in the kitchen to put the bottle of champagne in the refrigerator to chill. As she turned, a tight sensation pulled at the back of her neck, telling her something was off, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She did a slow sweep of the kitchen. A water glass, half full and marred by a thumbprint, sat on the counter. But the cleaners would have washed it when they came Thursday….

A bump and a muffled voice came from the master bedroom. Burglars? The same moment that thought popped into her head, she saw the keys to Steven’s Audi on the kitchen table. And she knew she hadn’t interrupted a home invasion in progress.

Knowing, dreading what she was about to see didn’t stop her from going to the master bedroom and turning the knob. Still, when the door swung open, she wasn’t quite prepared for an unimpeded view of Steven’s squarish, somewhat flabby ass as he stood at the foot of the bed heaving and groaning over the woman on all fours in front of him.

All of the restraint, the composure, the impeccable manners Taylor had spent the last fifteen years cultivating flew out the window. “I don’t fucking believe this!”
If he’s not getting it from you, he’s getting it from somewhere else.
Apparently, that someone else was Annemarie, a barely legal junior sales associate Steven had hired last winter. Taylor recognized her as soon as Annemarie’s head whipped around at Taylor’s entrance. “Son of a bitch.” Taylor wasn’t sure if she was referring to Steven, for sleeping with another woman—girl!—under her nose all this time, or to Joe, for being right about the dismal state of her relationship.

“Taylor!” Steven gaped at her over his shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

She threw her hands up. “Well, I was hoping to get laid, but it looks like I’m a little too late to the party.” She took in Steven’s sweaty, naked body with distaste. From the neck up, he was a good-looking man, but it had been so long since she’d seen him in the full light of day, she’d forgotten what he looked like naked. Though he wasn’t overweight, love handles had taken prominent places over his hips. And his butt—Taylor never knew men could have cellulite! His arms were scrawny, his hands pale as they still gripped Annemarie’s hips, too shocked to let go.

Taylor realized with cold, cutting clarity that although Steven was the perfect boyfriend for her on paper, she had absolutely no desire whatsoever to have sex with him ever again. And even if she could summon a kernel of sexual attraction, she would never, ever forgive him for cheating on her.

Turning in disgust, she made it halfway down the stairs to the front door before he caught her by the arm. She turned, bracing herself for a full-frontal view, relieved to see Steven had wrapped a towel around his waist. It emphasized the soft pudge of his belly beneath a nearly concave chest, but at least she wouldn’t have to see the part that had most recently been stuck inside another woman.

“Taylor, I’m sorry,” he said as she jerked her arm away and ran down the last few stairs.

“Oh, please, you’re not sorry,” she spat. “You’re sorry you got caught, and probably sorry that you won’t have an inside contact at our portfolio companies anymore, but you’re not sorry you slept with that…that child.”

“Annemarie’s twenty-five,” he sputtered, gripping the knot of his towel as it started to slip.

“Clearly too dumb to realize that sleeping with you won’t get her anywhere,” she sneered, her hand on the doorknob. “I can’t imagine she’d do it otherwise, since she probably doesn’t enjoy it any more than I did.”

His lip curled in a sneer as he met her attack with his own. “That’s where you’re wrong, Taylor. Unlike you, Annemarie actually knows how to relax and have fun. She’s sexy, and funny—”

“And I’m not?”

He rolled his eyes and snorted. “You’re about as sexy as a burlap sack, Taylor. It’s no wonder I went somewhere else, since sleeping with you is like trying to fuck a bag of ice.”

Ouch. Even though she had no interest in sleeping with Steven anymore, it stung to realize how little
he
wanted to sleep with
her.
The satin garters itched against her legs, and she suddenly felt very, very foolish.

She ran out of the house, nearly breaking an ankle when her high heel caught in a crack in the sidewalk. Tears of humiliation stung the backs of her eyes as she slammed her car door behind her and slipped the gearshift into reverse.
Look on the bright side: At least you didn’t have a chance to go through with your ill-fated attempt at seduction. Think how much worse you would have felt if you’d tried and he’d rejected you.