“I’m sorry. It’s been made painfully clear recently that I am not a team player.”
He grinned. “Funny, my lieutenant says the same thing about me.”
But Faye wasn’t laughing.
“Look, I don’t want to bother you,” Aleksy said. “I just need your permission to hang around for a few days.”
“A few days,” she repeated.
“Yeah.” Or a couple of weeks or however long it took to nail Karen’s murderer.
“Why?”
“I’ve got to keep an eye on some things and your place is convenient.”
“What kind of things?”
The hippie skirt and big lost eyes were deceptive. Under that flyaway blond hair, Faye Harper was sharp and stubborn. But when Aleksy was on a case, he was steel. He rubbed his jaw, pretending to consider. “I’m thinking the less I tell you about that, the less likely you are to be involved. You know?”
She frowned at having her own words turned back on her. “You promise I won’t be involved?”
Aleksy smiled, satisfied he had her. “You won’t even know I’m here,” he promised.
He lied, Faye thought three days later as she readied her paper for painting.
She couldn’t glance out her window or take out her trash without spotting Aleksy Denko ambling toward her woods or fishing from her dock. Even when he wasn’t there, the possibility that he might appear hurried her heartbeat and diffused her focus.
She pulled a half sheet from the soaking tray, holding it by one corner to drain the excess water.
It wasn’t that she was looking for him, she assured herself, giving the paper a gentle shake. Well, it wasn’t only that she was looking for him. Tall, dark and in-your-face was tough to miss.
She placed the sheet on the drying board and smoothed it from the center to remove air pockets, taking comfort in the familiar gestures and the flat blank page. Her painting might be lacking these days, but her preparation was faultless.
Clackety clackety clackety clackety clack.
Faye started, nearly tearing a corner of the wet paper. What on earth—?
The racket continued outside her windows, close to the house. Metal on metal, clackety clack. Wiping her hands on her skirt, she edged to the sliding doors and peered out.
Aleksy Denko, stripped to the waist, paraded across her strip of lawn, trundling her aunt’s old push mower in front of him. The rusty blades made a terrible sound.
But it wasn’t terror that dried Faye’s mouth and quickened her pulse. It was the sight of all that gleaming, hot male flesh five yards away outside her window.
Close enough—her breath stuck in her chest—to touch.
He passed her. The lovely long lines of his back disappeared into the damp waistband of his jeans. She could see his buttocks flex. He leaned over the mower, head bent, shoulders taut, putting his back into the job the way he would work a woman.
He reached the end of the row and turned, revealing his sweaty, abstracted face and his deep, powerful chest with its shadow of hair. Not a boy. Not just a man. All man.
My goodness. Teaching high school hadn’t prepared her for this.
His complete unawareness of her was both seductive and infuriating. He was a man mowing the lawn. Her lawn. And both the normalcy and the familiarity of the act pushed all her buttons.
It was intimate.
Unexpected.
Intolerable.
Ignoring the paper drying on the table, Faye rattled open the door and stepped out on the deck. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Aleksy stopped. He looked up, his dark gaze colliding with hers. Something—desire? anticipation? dread?—fluttered in Faye’s stomach.
He dragged his forearm over his sweaty face. “I’m mowing your grass.”
“I can see that. I want to know why.”
His full lips quirked in a smile. “Because it needs cutting?”
He was right. The lawn was disgracefully overgrown. And she’d meant to get around to it. Eventually.
“It’s not your responsibility,” she said, keeping her gaze on his face. Avoiding that hot, powerful chest.
He leaned on the mower handle. “So what? It makes your life easier. It makes my job easier, too.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s good cover. I’m less conspicuous mowing your grass than lurking around your house.”
Her eyes flickered over his bare, broad shoulders, still winter pale, and his deep, muscled chest. He had a line of black hair, startling against his fair skin, that ran down his stomach and disappeared into… She jerked her focus back up.
“Not to me,” she said crossly. “You’re bothering me.”
“Am I?” His tone was amused. Satisfied. Dangerous.
Her face burned. “The noise,” she clarified. “The noise bothers me.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry. “You want me to stop?”
Leaning against the rail above him, Faye caught the mingled scents of cut grass and hot male. She had another funny tummy flutter. “Well…”
“It’s going to look bad if I quit now.”
Faye surveyed the partially mown yard. He was right. “Well, I guess you could finish.”
“Good.” He grinned at her. “I hate to leave anything half-finished.”
Her pulse pounded. That sounded like a warning. Or a dare.
Possibility expanded in her like orange pigment spreading on wet paper. Three months ago, she might have taken up his challenge. Three months ago, she had a naive faith in herself and an inflated sense of her own ability to deal with things.
Faye stepped back from the deck rail, instinctively hugging her right arm against her chest. She couldn’t deal with things anymore. She certainly couldn’t handle whatever this hot, half-naked man was offering.
“I’ll let you get back to it, then,” she said, and reached behind her back to fumble with the sliding door.
His gaze sharpened. His smile faded. “Faye—”
“I have work to do.” She turned tail and bolted like the coward she was.
It wasn’t just cowardice, she told herself. She needed to get that sheet taped down before it dried or her morning’s work would be wasted.
The pretty landscapes on the wall mocked her. Flat water. Empty sky. Her work was wasted anyway.
She pushed the thought away.
She cut the lengths of paper tape —clackety clackety, from the corner of her eye, she could see Aleksy, pushing, sweating—and pressed them to the edges of the drying sheet to stretch it —clackety clack as he passed the cottage again—and pinned the corners with thumb-tacks.
Silence.
Faye straightened. Her back ached. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Was he gone?
Pressing a hand to the small of her back, she walked to the doors. The sun beat down on the green, empty strip