Free Instructing Sarah by Anne Rainey Page A

raining all day, otherwise they would have been on a job site. The rain had forced them to put off work, so they’d thought they’d work up an estimate on their next job instead. It had since stopped raining and the sun had begun to shine again, bright and hot. June was
    like
    that
    in
    Chestnut,
    Ohio.
    Nevertheless, Greg was frigging useless so long as he had Sarah Temptation stirring his blood every time she walked out her front door. And it was time he said as much to Greg.

    He moved to the window next to Greg and looked out. Cody whistled low. Sarah was now bent over, pulling weeds out of her miniscule flowerbed. Evidently, she’d decided to take advantage of the wet ground. She wore a pair of old, frayed, jean shorts that had stains on the back pockets and a black tank top. Her blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and she appeared barely old enough to drive. He knew she was somewhere in her twenties, but no one would know it by the looks of her now. “She is a sweet little thing, isn’t she?”

    Greg swung his icy blue gaze towards him for the first time in half an hour and ground out, “Don’t even think it, Cody.”

    Cody allowed a small smile to slip across his face, but then his thoughts scattered as something else caught his attention. In the condominium two doors down from Sarah’s, a man sat on his front patio in a lawn chair pretending to read the newspaper, but Cody realized the man was really watching Sarah. By the carnal glances he gave her, his thoughts were not at all pure or neighborly either. “I think you have a bit of competition, bud.”

    Greg’s brows drew together as he looked in the direction that Cody had pointed. “What the hell?”

    Curious, Cody asked, “You know him?”

    Greg rubbed his chin in contemplation and muttered, “No. He must be new to the complex.”

    “Well, it sure didn’t take him long to discover where the most succulent fruits grew, did it?”

    Greg stared at the newcomer and Cody watched his muscles pump up as he worked himself into a frenzy of possessive rage. Interesting. Cody had never seen his friend act jealous or possessive before. That he was doing it now, over a woman he hadn’t even kissed, was a revelation indeed. The new guy on the block may be just the thing to push Greg into action, which would mean getting Sarah out of his system and his friend’s head back on business where it should be.

    Cody pushed away from the window, slapped Greg on the back, and proceeded to goad him into action. “You’d better get your ass in gear if you want to be the man who tempts sweet Sarah out of her clothes and into the nearest bed.”

    Greg pulled away from the window and smiled. It wasn’t at all a nice smile either, more like a baring of teeth from a mountain lion. “I believe you may be right.
    It’s time I got Sarah all to myself, once and for all.”

    * * * *
    Sarah felt ridiculous standing in the wet mulch as she attempted to yank out one weed after another, but she took pride in her condominium. She’d worked hard to have a place of her own since getting out from under her father’s thumb. He’d been a controlling and condescending man and she alone had taken the brunt of his forceful will. Being the only child with a mother who had skipped out only months after giving birth, Will Templeton had used her to exact revenge upon the woman who’d wronged him. At every turn, Sarah was told how she was exactly like her mother.
    Just as useless, just as unappreciative. It had taken all her will power to realize he was nothing more than a bitter man who didn’t value the joys of fatherhood.

    She wanted a family, lots of kids, and a husband who would dote on them, but, at the ripe age of twenty-five, she was no closer to having that dream come true than she had been at twenty-four or twenty-three. She was the only twenty-five year old virgin she knew and she was pretty damn sure she would be heading straight to old maid status if she