Free Built by Jami Alden, Bonnie Edwards, Amie Stuart Page A

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