She’d played him with the oldest trick in the book Thursday night. Seduction. And it pissed him off. Heat steamed from his pores and his body switched to red alert at the mental replay of her hot, wet mouth pulling a response from him. One he’d wanted to deny but couldn’t.
Cursing his inability to block the images from his memory, he closed his laptop, and gave in to the temptation to look at her again.
What was it about Tara Anthony that made him ignore rules and good sense?
Tara swiped a hand across her forehead, driving Rand’s gaze to the outside thermometer hanging by the back gate in the flower-flooded garden. Eighty-eight degrees. He drummed his fingers on the desk.
He’d been cloistered in his bedroom working for most of the day. And he wanted to stay here, avoiding Tara, avoiding the sexual craving her proximity caused, avoiding the memory of her talented, lying mouth. Avoiding the relationship he wanted no part of but she seemed insistent on forcing.
But his conscience wouldn’t let him, and he couldn’t concentrate with her making all that racket. He shot out of his chair, headed downstairs and plowed open the back door. He slammed into a humid wall of heat the second he hit the patio.
Tracking the engine noise, he stepped off the hot flagstones and around a hedge of tall green shrubs loaded with pink blooms and buzzing bees, and jerked to a halt when he spotted Tara bent at the waist with one hand on the mower handle. The curve of her backside pointed in his direction, and her shorts rode up to expose paler crescents of flesh beneath the ragged hem.
His muscles seized and his eyes gorged. A burn unrelated to the evening sun baked his skin. He fisted his hands by his side against the urge to trace those untanned curves. Most women hated tan lines, but he loved them. That pale flesh signified something taboo, an area meant to be concealed.
Tara scooped up a yellow ball, straightened then tossed the toy over the six-foot wooden privacy fence separating her yard from her neighbor’s. She resumed mowing, her long, lean leg muscles flexing with each stride.
“Tara.” She either didn’t hear him or ignored him. “Tara,” he shouted.
She spun around so abruptly the noisy engine died. “What?”
The closer he got to her, the drier his mouth became. Her blue underwire top cupped and lifted her breasts like lingerie or his hands would, and her denim shorts were so old and faded it was a wonder they hadn’t split at the seams when she’d bent over. On second thoughts, they hadn’t torn because they were too large and barely clung to her hips. The waistband gaped to reveal her navel. Frayed bits of bleached fabric danced along the tops of her thighs in the slight evening breeze. A sheen of sweat glistened on her body, and a rivulet ran from between her breasts to disappear behind her loose waistband.
One tug and Tara’s denim cutoffs would be tatters. Rand’s fingers twitched. He swallowed, but the gesture did nothing to wet his dry mouth or douse the fire behind his fly. Neither did his gulps of suntan-oil-and-fresh-cut-grass-scented air.
“Why don’t you have a lawn service?” The unwanted attraction pissed him off and his anger came through in his clipped words.
She shrugged, removed her hat and wiped her forehead with her forearm. “Too expensive.”
“Not with the salary I’m paying you.”
“That money is earmarked for something else.”
“What?”
She shifted and the shorts slid south a fraction of an inch. Another wiggle of her hips and they’d hit the grass.
Was she wearing panties?
Was prancing around out here in her skimpy clothing part of her hook-a-husband plan?
As if she’d guessed his thoughts, she hitched up her pants. “Most of it’s going toward my mother’s medical bills. If I don’t get them paid off soon the creditors are going to put a lien on the house.”
“The house she wanted you to keep.”
“Yes.”
“Just in case your father came looking for her,” he said, repeating her ridiculous story. “What kind of woman loves a man who walks out on her?”
“The kind who vowed to love, honor and cherish until death parted them. We never had proof that my father died. Mom kept her vow.”
So had his mother, he realized. The sobering thought knocked Rand back a step. His mother had loved her jackass of a husband despite his repeated infidelities.
Tara sighed. “Rand, did you need something? Because I’d like to get this finished before the forecasted thunderstorms roll in.”
As if to reinforce her point, thunder rumbled in the distance. Sweat glued the fabric of his polo shirt to his torso. “I’ll hire a landscaping crew and have them onsite first thing Monday. You don’t have to do this.”
She shook her head. “Yes, I do. The yard is something my mother and I always worked on together. I need to do this. For her. For me.”
Crap. Another Hallmark moment.
It was bad enough that pictures littered the flat surfaces in the house—pictures of the happy kind of childhood Rand and his siblings hadn’t had. Pictures of the kind of life Tara had told him she wanted five years ago. With him.
Face it. She lied about loving you and you fell for it. Get over it and move on.
Curses ricocheted around his skull and every instinct told him to retreat inside and get back to work. She was sucking him into suburbia and into a relationship against his will.
He did not want to share her home, her chores or her life. But he could hardly sit inside in the air-conditioning while Tara toiled away in the summer heat. He wasn’t a freeloader.
And since you’re not paying your way with sex—
Dammit. He wasn’t pissed off that she hadn’t approached him since the night she’d blown his … mind. He didn’t want to be her gigolo.
“How can I help?” The words clawed their way up his throat.
She tilted her head and considered him for several seconds. “If you’ll mow, I’ll handle the Weed Eater.”
Rand studied the machine. He knew nothing about lawn-mowers or mowing grass. Kincaid Manor had always employed a team of gardeners. Since moving out of the family house more than a decade ago, he’d lived in high-rise urban condos surrounded by concrete. If there had been any plants in his complexes, he hadn’t noticed them.
But he’d spent one summer working in the engine room of a 160,000-ton cruise ship. He could handle one small push mower. “Okay.”
Tara’s gaze drifted over his shirt and khaki pants. She did that often—looked him over from top to bottom. And his body reacted predictably. Every time. He resented the ease with which she pushed his buttons when no other woman’s come-hither looks did a thing for him—unless he allowed it. Fighting the unwanted response, he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“You’ll need to change first. You’ll roast in long pants.” Without waiting for his reply she walked away.
His gaze remained riveted to the sway of her behind until she disappeared into the shed that looked like a small chalet in the back corner of the property. Cursing silently, Rand returned to his bedroom, changed into an old sleeveless T-shirt, gym shorts and running shoes and went back outside.
Even before he finished reading the instructions printed on the machine’s handle, he’d sweated through his shirt. He peeled off the soggy, clingy cotton and tossed it onto the patio, then bent and pulled the mower’s cord. The motor sputtered but didn’t start. He cursed and tried again. Another sputter. Another curse.
A slender