The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Can’t say that I have until now, but it seemed like the neighborly thing to do. I assumed, given I’ve only seen ten seconds of your face when just about everybody else in this town has been at my door since my arrival, that maybe you were too busy to tame this jungle.”
Smart-ass.
* * *
Whoops.
Dean knew it was the wrong thing to say and that he wasn’t going to win her over with sass, but he couldn’t help himself. Making trouble was in his nature.
Madeleine’s expression chilled. “It isn’t a jungle. Maybe I’m growing out the yard.”
“For what? You got a horse stashed around here?”
“Maybe.”
Her defiant stare dared him to challenge her, so he decided not to push it. The neighbor across the road—he thought her name was Ellie or Elle, something like that—had warned him Madeleine could be difficult to befriend. She’d broken that bit of news while dropping off a tray of sinfully good chocolate chunk cookies.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said carefully, “if my assistance isn’t welcome. Your uncle mentioned sometimes you get carried away with work, and he asked if I’d look out for some of the things around here. I had the free time, and I’d just finished my yard, so I decided it couldn’t hurt to make a pass through this area too.”
“Oh.” Those full lips pressed together, pink and perfect and tempting. He watched her mouth, wondering what it would be like to slide his cock between them. That was a fantasy he didn’t need to have again.
Down, boy, he directed his dick. Just because it had been a while didn’t mean he had to sexualize the neighbor woman and come off like a lecherous creep.
“Anyway, I’ll just get out of your way then—”
“It’s fine. If you really do have the time…if it’s not a bother.”
“It isn’t,” he assured her.
She studied him for a moment longer. Just when he thought she’d storm away, she offered a hand. “Madeleine.”
“Dean Ca—McAvoy. Pleasure to meet you.”
Her fair brows rose a mile, but she didn’t question his verbal stumble. She didn’t smile either. “Well. I should return to work. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He watched her walk away, appreciating the scandalously short shorts just shy of revealing a hint of cheek. They were full and so round all he could imagine was what it would be like to grab two handfuls and slide his—
Christ!
Displeased with his roaming, increasingly perverted thoughts, Dean turned away and started the mower again. Once, he thought he saw Madeleine peering at him from a window, but chalked it up to his imagination.
This woman was under his skin, and he didn’t even know why. It couldn’t be her looks alone—her neighbor Ellie was equally gorgeous, long-legged and built like a 1920s pin-up girl before thin became in.
And her daughter was fucking adorable, like a little ray of blonde sunshine.
“Misser McVoy!” a child’s voice called, snapping him back to the present. He jerked away from the shed and saw Emma hurtling down the yard the speed of light with a brown Sonic sack in one hand and a large slushie in the other. “We brought you food!”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
The child stopped in front of Dean and thrust the sack at him. “I ate one of your cheese sticks.”
Dean crouched down and grinned. “That’s fine. You can have another if you want,” he offered as the girl’s mother turned the corner and came into view holding another sack.
“Sorry about the stolen cheese stick. She got into the bag before I could tell her which belonged to who.”
“It’s fine. I have five nieces and nephews. I know how it goes. Besides, you didn’t have to get me anything at all.”
“Ha! You really didn’t have to mow our yard too. You saved me a hundred dollars. A couple seven-dollar bacon double cheeseburgers is the least I can offer.” Her warm smile brightened. “So, thanks.”
“Any time you need something, just let me know. I’m not bad with a wrench and screwdriver either.”
“I’ll keep that in—”
“Mommy’s sink is leaking.”
“Emma.”
And since he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be helpful, he followed the girl’s comment with, “I’ll be over to look at it in an hour.”
Ellie tried to convince him it wasn’t necessary and that she had a plumber scheduled to visit the next day.
“Hey. You fed me, and I’m still full of energy. Let me help.”
And that was how he wound up across the road under Ellie’s kitchen sink after devouring his burgers and showering.
“All right. Easy and cheap fix. I need to run down to the hardware store for some—”
“Let me give you some cash for that.” Ellie fished in her purse, but he put out a hand to stop her.
“Super cheap. Don’t worry about it. Everything I need costs less than the Sonic’s you bought me.”
Ellie put on a phony scowl on her pretty face. She reminded him of his sister, and maybe that was why he couldn’t lust over her the way he ached for her friend. “Are we doomed to doing favors for each other in a never-ending loop?”
“Looks like it. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor. The internet guy isn’t scheduled to come out until next Friday, and my phone service is too sh—terrible,” he blurted out, cutting off his swear since big, blue, innocent eyes were watching him, “for Netflix to work.”
And he sure didn’t have anything else to do in the quiet community.
5
Nothing but baked goods could salvage Maddie’s bullshit morning. Eager for a lunch not made by her own hands, she parked her trusty Ford Escort outside of Glazed and Confused then marched inside to the counter.
“Hey, girl!” Eleanor greeted from the back, pouring fresh maple glaze over cooled doughnuts on a wire rack. The maple bars were one of her specialties, served with diced thick-cut maple bacon on top.
Luke, the only other employee qualified to open the place, completed a drive-thru window order and turned a genuine smile on Maddie. “Hey, Mads. What’s up?” He was one of those guys constantly busting masculine stereotypes, muscled and gorgeous—yet somehow entirely not Maddie’s type—but able to bake and decorate a cake like nobody’s business.
“Everything.” She laughed. “What’s good today?”
“Everything’s good every day if I made it. Better question is, ‘What are you in the mood for?’”
Madeleine had spent most of the previous evening on the phone with the acquisitions agent from Ani and Daughters. Hannah had wanted one hundred and fifty mugs in one style, only to change their order and demand for them to have fifteen different hand-painted slogans, quantity of ten each.
That was not part of the original deal. But the company had Maddie by the figurative balls when she looked at the contract she’d foolishly signed without a lawyer’s oversight. As the client, they retained the right to demand up to two revisions during the process, which meant starting her painting all over from scratch.
During the fucking process, after they’d already given the okay on the initial design.
God, she’d been so silly. So fucking stupid not to question that, but she’d been so excited for her first big commission from a worthwhile company it didn’t occur to her that they’d slip predatory language into the deal.
The worst part? They could walk away if the revision wasn’t done up to their standards.
“I just spent hours repainting samples for my asshole clients, my fingers are cramped, and I’m starving.”
“Oh, it’s one of those days. Go have a seat. I got this.”
Leaving her order to Luke, Maddie sank into a chair then dropped her forehead against her folded arms on the table. She remained that way for a while, even as the bells tinkled and chimed signaling other customers had arrived.
“Any strawberry jelly doughnuts?” came a low and
familiar baritone. She’d heard that smooth and deep voice from time to time in the road outside playing with Emma.
“All sold out, man. Sorry. There’s some fresh lemon cream if that’s your thing.”
“I love lemon. I’ll take one of those and whatever sandwich you recommend.”
“I make a mean croissandwich,” Luke replied. “Which are also sold out, but if you can wait a couple minutes, I’ll prepare you one fresh.”
“Sweet.”
“Sausage or bacon?”
“Why not both?”
Luke chuckled. “A man of culture, I see. I like how you think. That’ll be six-fifty.”
Maddie tilted her face and cracked one eye to see the dark hair and broad shoulders of her outrageously attractive neighbor. Dammit. He passed Luke a ten.
“Keep the change.”
Generous, too.
“Thanks! Though technically I feel like I should be buying you breakfast since you fixed my nan’s garbage disposal. I’ve been promising to swing by and do it for a week, and you fixed it in half an hour.” Luke shook his head. “Way to show me up, dude.”
“You’re in summer school, man. Don’t worry about it. She understands that you’re busy.”
“Yeah. True.”
Maddie watched him linger at the counter to chat longer with Luke and then with Ellie, vision blurred by her lashes. She quickly shut both eyes when he excused himself and headed her way.
Boots paused by the table, then chair legs scraped against the floor.
No, he was not inviting himself to her table.
“Good afternoon, Madeleine.”
She hated the way he spoke her name like a purr. Maybe it was childish, but she’d gone out of her way to avoid him in the two weeks since his arrival, because having a sexy neighbor next door, with whom she shared a mutual attraction, was like having a box of Thin Mints in the pantry while on a diet.
It could only end in disappointment.
Groaning, she lifted her head. “Hi, Dean.”
He was still standing, a hand on the back of the chair. “Okay if I sit here?”
Fuck. And he had the manners to ask permission, instead of helping himself to her table.
“Sure.”
As far as neighbors went, she had hit the jackpot, and might have had someone way worse like Marcus or Mrs. Leary. The former let his dog shit all over her yard and rarely ever picked after the hound. The latter was a widow who lived in the house on the other side of Maddie for years until recently moving to enjoy her final days in Florida. She’d never missed an opportunity to tie her neighbors up at the mail box giving unsolicited advice.
Dean did neither of those things. In fact, earlier that week she’d forgotten to take the garbage cans to the road the night before trash day and she overslept. She awoke to find him bringing her empty cans back in. On top of that, he’d kept up the yard during a season when the grass needed to be cut twice a week.
Tall, dark, and handsome slid into the chair and set his brawny arms on the table. “Long night?”
“The longest. I have an unpleasant client who made a lot of extra work for me.”
“That sucks,” he said softly, brown eyes immediately filling with sympathy. She liked them, a welcome change in a community where blue was the majority.
“Yeah. But it’s fine. I’ll get through it.”
“I’m sure you will.”
Luke arrived with two plates, serving them each a sandwich filled with egg, cheese, and meat alongside their doughnut orders. In addition to her sandwich, he’d brought a foot-long kolache and a maple bar. The glaze was still gooey and warm.
“I didn’t ask for a kolache.”
“Ellie says to eat it or else. She noticed you’re getting thin.”
“Dammit.”
As if the sandwich and doughnut weren’t calories enough. Later, she’d get Ellie back, most likely by buying Emma something obnoxiously noisy, or getting her into a messy craft hobby.
“You and Ellie know each other a long time?”
“Since we were toddlers. Her family moved here before I turned two. We grew up alongside each other. Went to school together. Graduated college together, too.”
He nodded. “That’s cool.”
“So, we’re practically sisters even though we don’t have a drop of blood between us. She won’t allow me to pay for my food, but I sneak a twenty into the tip jar every so often when she isn’t looking.”
They fell silent for a while after that, too busy consuming their delicious lunches to make small talk. She sipped a glass of orange-papaya juice while Dean popped open a bottled Starbucks Frappuccino from the bakery’s fridge.
The town’s police chief came and went, lingering at the counter to chat for way too long with Ellie. Chief Montgomery had the kind of smile that belonged on the cover of GQ. He was already too hot on his own without wearing a sexy black cop uniform. Pair that with wavy chestnut hair and gorgeous hazel eyes, and the guy was definitely fuckable.
Well now, Maddie thought, observing Ellie’s shy smiles, and the fact that the guy had been standing there with his doughnuts way longer than necessary. How long has this been going on?
“I love when a woman doesn’t care about eating in front of other folk,” Dean commented idly.
Maddie took a huge, deliberate bite out of her sandwich, probably smearing bacon grease and butter on her mouth. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Chill. It’s a compliment. I mean, usually when I’m sitting across a table from a lady, she’s picking at a salad and behaving like I plan to grade her on how tidily she can consume a pile of leaves and vinaigrette.”
There must have been a God in heaven, because Maddie swallowed seconds before laughter overtook her instead of dribbling chewed croissant or choking on it. “Oh, no. You’ve seen these thighs. I like food too much for that. I’m not—” She cut herself off, seconds from saying she wasn’t a rabbit shifter.
His mouth quirked in a sly grin. “I have. They’re nice thighs, so keep up the good work.”
The way he licked the inside of the doughnut planted all kinds of dark and sinful thoughts in her head. Maddie shifted in her seat, irritable with where her mind went.
Before she could convince herself she was imagining the lewd innuendo, Maddie degloved a portion of her sausage and cheese kolache, nibbled a few bites of the pastry, then slid the sausage into her mouth. Slowly.
Dean stared.
Two could play at this game.
“Are you both seriously doing this?” Ellie demanded.
Startled, Maddie bit the end off the sausage and chewed hastily. “Doing what?” She forced a note of innocence into her voice, too poor an actress to fool the woman who knew her best.
“You’re both doing things to these doughnuts and kolaches that should only take place with an audience when someone’s videoing an adult film. Knock it off before customers come inside and some old lady has palpitations.”
Dean had the good graces to laugh. He devoured his remaining food in three bites and rose from the seat with his trash piled on the plate. “Maybe your imagination is what’s dirty. I was just enjoying lunch with my neighbor.”
“Uh huh.”
“Anyway. You ladies have a pleasant day. You too, Luke.”
“Later, man.”
Dean waved and headed out.
“That,” Eleanor said, staring at him through the window as he mounted his bike, “is a man who knows how to use his tongue. Holy shit. Did you see that? You saw it, right? Of course you did; you were sitting less than three feet away from him demonstrating how well you can blow a foot-long sausage.”
The sun shone golden-red against his hair before he donned the helmet. No, not all of it. Only the roots and the fine hairs around his temples. She’d never noticed that before. “Hey, if you want my unsolicited advice,” Luke called over from the counter. “Go get him, Maddie. Nan says, and these are her words, ‘He’s single and ready to mingle.’”
“But why is she telling you that?”
Luke shrugged. “She thinks I’m gay and says I won’t find the man for me if I don’t look for him.”
“Okay, but that man is not gay.”
“Yeah, but she’s learned a lot from the internet and said even the most masculine men are exploring their sexuality these days. Don’t ask. It was a very awkward five-minute discussion I never, ever want to have again with a ninety-year-old woman.”
6
A rhythmic tapping dragged Madeleine out of a restless sleep in the early hours of the morning. It couldn’t have been too long past sunrise.
At first, she was positive the sound had to be a woodpecker, since those little bastards could wake the dead when they were really going to town in search of food. Then she realized the tempo was off.
No. This was the sound of a man performing home improvement. And she hated him for doing it at—she glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand—a quarter after eight in the morning.
After tossing and turning a while more, she crawled from bed, raked her fingers through her bedhead, and stalked outside. Even though it wasn’t yet nine in the morning, Texas summer had two equally oppressive modes from April until mid-October—dry and scorching, or so hot and wet a person could drown by merely existing outside. Right now, it was humid and sticky out, and there were big clouds of gnats swarming in the air.
Maddie shielded her eyes from the sun and moved into the shade beneath her peach tree.
Dean had dumped a pile of roof litter and shingles on the grass, along with a moldy, rotting sheet of wood. He worked on his hands and knees, his body sweat-glossed and bare from the waist up. Maddie wasn’t convinced that the man owned more than the one shirt he’d worn in the bakery. And if she had to be honest with herself, truly honest, the world was a much better place for him having the confidence to strut around in only a pair of fitted jeans.
Appearing to sense her, he twisted around to peer down at her. “Good morning!”
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