Free Just in Time by Rosalind James

I was staring. At his shirt, open at the neck to reveal a triangle of smooth brown skin, glimpsed for a single glorious instant before he turned to stand beside me. Which gave me a great view of the perfectly tailored black suit jacket that clung to his broad shoulders and narrowed to his trim waist.
    It took me a moment to register what he’d said, and not just because I was stunned to be standing beside him. It was the accent. I’d heard it in interviews as well as at the shoot, but all the same, the clipped tones and New Zealand vowels fell strangely on my ear. But there was nothing a bit strange about the low voice. As creamy as chocolate, as deep and rich as his skin. As hot as a New Zealand summer. Well, what I imagined a New Zealand summer would be.
    “How did you know?” I asked, struggling to focus on what he’d said.
    “I make it my business to know everything. Because it is my business.”
    The elevator came to a stop, the doors glided open, and he put a hand out to hold them. “Here you are.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “Wish me luck.” Then I could have kicked myself. Why was I talking to him like that? Like he was…anybody?
    A faint smile warmed his brown eyes for just a moment, lightening his expression so he wasn’t the cold, forbidding figure he’d seemed at the shoot, and then the mask had slipped back into place, and my heart was fluttering, beating out a fierce tattoo.
    “I don’t think you’ll need luck,” he told me. “I have a feeling you’re going to knock them dead.”

    Shoot , Faith thought. Shoot, shoot, shoot . This wasn’t paying her own bills. And she was fresh out of inspiration for the Roundup. She just couldn’t get excited about simulated sex on the mechanical bull, not when she had simulated sex of her own to write about.
    Because hers had a story , that was why, and it was a story that was itching to be told. Who was Hemi, underneath? And who knew that Hope was desperate for this job? Faith did, that was who.
    An hour later, she’d given up on the Roundup, but at least she was working on something practical again. And she was sweating.
    “Don’t you have somebody to do that?” she heard from behind her. That same dark-chocolate voice, and too bad she wasn’t in an elevator, and that he wasn’t about to make all her financial worries go away.
    “I do.” She continued to saw, because she needed to finish this, now that she’d started. She still had one more tree to go. “Me.”
    “You do the gardening? That’s pretty heavy work.”
    The thin-bladed, long-handled wooden saw bit through the final bit of tough, spiky stem, and she leaned back. “Watch it,” she warned. “Sharp edges.”
    The heavy frond fell to the ground to join its fellows, the wicked teeth along its edges missing him as he jumped back.
    “I don’t do all the gardening,” she said, turning on her stepladder to look at him. He was in a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes, a damp vee of sweat darkening the light-gray fabric down his broad chest, but she wasn’t looking at that. Well, hardly at all. “I have a service to do the grass and the basic stuff. But this is too expensive. And, hey. It’s a whole lot worse when it’s 110 out.”
    “So…” He kicked at the pile of fronds at the base of the tree, looked around at the two others she’d already pruned. “Need a hand?”
    “No, thanks. Besides, you already worked out today.”
    “Do me a favor.” He sounded pained. “I think I could manage that without straining myself.”
    “I don’t have gloves that would fit you,” she said, eyeing his hands. Which, as Calvin had already noted, were big. The better to touch you with. “And my insurance won’t cover it if you get hurt. No.”
    He sighed in obvious exasperation. “What d’you do with all these? The fronds?”
    “Put them in my truck,” she said reluctantly. “Take them to the dump. There you go. My afternoon plan, at least part of it, before I get back to my real