Free The House On The Creek by Sarah Remy

thighs.
     
    Abby’s own hands shook and more oil splattered. Infuriated, she tossed brush back into bucket and reached for a mop-up rag.
     
    When she turned back the paintbrush had sunk to the bottom of her bucket.
     
    She nearly kicked bucket and brush and oil clear across the deck and into the James.
     
    “Too much sun, Abby,” she told herself, breathing heavily. “Never get a thing done if you carry on like this. Fumes will drive you batty.”
     
    She glanced at her watch. Nearly half past four. The sun would be easing up soon. She’d get another good two hours in before Chris needed a ride home from school. Two hours closer to finished.
     
    She knelt again alongside her bucket, reaching into the oil for her paintbrush, and then hesitated, feeling again the phantom vise of his hand, a bracelet around her wrist. His grip had burned, rough with rage or passion.
     
    And she’d missed his touch when he withdrew.
     
    It wasn’t the sun or the stink of the teak oil that made her head swim. It was the memory of his touch, and the white daisies drooping on the deck. And -
     
    “Unfinished business,” Abby admitted to herself reluctantly, and with a good deal of fury. Even as a boy, Everett had done wild things to her temper.
     
    And apparently he still thought he had a right to know her secrets.
     
    Abby hoisted the bucket and the sodden paintbrush and, resigned, started down below to clean up.
     
    Because her conscious wouldn’t let her rest.
     
    Abby heard the mower through the open car window before she turned onto the drive. She couldn’t make out the lawn through the overhang of tree branches until her Mercedes was half way up the drive. Then she saw him, dressed only in a pair of sweats cut off at the knees and ratty blue boat shoes.
     
    The shoes had definitely seen better days, and the shorts made her mouth go dry.
     
    He turned when he heard the car, and stopped the mower. Leaning on the handle, he watched her as she climbed out onto the pavement. Abby couldn’t read his expression.
     
    “Looks like hot work,” she said in greeting. Sweat slicked his brow and collarbone. “Guess I supposed you’d hire someone to do the yard.”
     
    He shrugged. “I like my privacy. And every man should mow his own lawn.”
     
    “Yeah, well. You’ve got one front and back, and they’re both huge. Take you all day. I should know.”
     
    She crossed her arms, tucking fists under her elbows to squash a nervous urge for knuckle cracking. “Where’d you get the mower? It looks like a relic.”
     
    “Hardware store in town.” Everett regarded her with veiled impatience. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Abby.”
     
    “I came looking for you.” She gritted her teeth at his raised brow. “Obviously. Got a minute?”
     
    “Let me finish up here.” When she started to protest he tilted his chin toward the house. “Go inside. Get something cold to drink. I’ll be up in a moment.”
     
    She knew he wanted to annoy her. She nodded anyway and started up the drive.
     
    Her tulips were doing well. And the climbing rose she’d planted alongside the chimney was already starting to lean against the bricks.
     
    “Abby?”
     
    Distracted by the heartening maroon shoots on her rose, she glanced back. “What?”
     
    “Take off your boots before you go inside. Leave them on the porch. Looks like you’ve been tromping through a pig sty.”
     
    He managed to prick at her even when he wasn’t trying. “They’re my work boots!”
     
    But he’d already turned his back and started the mower.
     
    She found she couldn’t look away.
     
    He’d grown muscle in the last twelve years. Of course he would, Abby knew that. He’d gone from boy to man. But the beauty in that change surprised her.
     
    Lean cords of sinew and tendon moved whip tight along his spine as he pushed the mower over grass. More muscle bunched along his shoulders and knotted in his calves. Perspiration glistened at the small of his