“And they’ll tell you that it’s past eight A.M. and that I’m abiding by all the noise ordinances of the city of Menlo Park, California. Trust me—Taylor, is it?—you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
Rage coursed through her, hot, unbridled, and so intense she actually felt the prick of tears. All she wanted was a little sleep. Was that too much to ask for? Instead she said, in her most withering, icy manner, “I suppose I shouldn’t expect basic manners from someone like you.” She whirled and stomped away as he muttered something under his breath. Something that sounded suspiciously like, “Needs to get laid.”
Though that same little voice warned her not to engage, to retreat to her house before she ended up in an all-out feud with her neighbor, she whirled around. “What did you say?”
He sucked his bottom lip in and crossed his arms over his chest. His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed for a moment, as though he was debating whether or not to speak. Honesty won out. “I said, somebody needs to get laid.”
Taylor’s mouth opened and closed like a dying carp. She couldn’t believe he was not only rude enough to think such a thing, but to say it out loud. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything!”
“Maybe if you had a boyfriend to take the edge off every once in a while, you wouldn’t be so uptight. And maybe,” he continued, leaning in closer so she could smell him, all salty sweat and clean man skin, “he could mow that disaster of a lawn of yours and help bring up your neighbors’ property values.”
His scent washed over her in waves, making her nipples harden under the smooth cotton of her camisole and distracting her from the fact that he’d just insulted her landscaping in addition to her sex life. She shook her head. He was a dirty, sweaty, laborer—not the kind of man who should make her nipples tighten and her panties moist! Summoning up the icy hauteur that had become second nature, she snapped, “I have a boyfriend—a rich, successful man who has more important things to do than mow my lawn.”
“No kidding. Your lawn obviously hasn’t been mown for a long, long time.” There was no mistaking the lascivious note in his voice.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Obviously you’re working some double entendre there, but I’ll have you know my relationship with Steven is just fine. What we have goes far beyond sex—”
“Bingo, exactly as I thought,” he interrupted. “‘Beyond sex’ is code for no sex.”
Taylor snapped her mouth shut, embarrassed to have revealed so much. She’d never been the type to share intimate details of her sex life, even with her closest friends. What in the world possessed her to have a conversation like this with a man she just met? “I don’t see that it’s any of your business,” she said lamely. “It hasn’t been that long.” Only four months, but who’s counting? “He travels a lot,” she said in response to his knowing smirk, then mentally slapped herself. Why was she making excuses to him, of all people?
“Let me tell you something, Taylor,” he said, and leaned in closer. Close enough for her to see every dark, ridiculously long eyelash surrounding his stunning green eyes. Close enough to see that the dark stubble of his beard was interspersed with gold strands. Close enough to smell the scent of his shampoo coming off his sweat-dampened hair.
She resisted the urge to flick her tongue out to catch a stray bead of perspiration sliding down the dark column of his throat. “What’s that?”
“A man doesn’t go without sex if he can help it. So trust me, if he’s not getting it from you, he’s getting it from someone else.” He turned and left her sputtering in his front yard, almost too angry to notice that he looked just as good from the back as he did from the front.
From his vantage point around the corner, Joe watched Taylor as she glared at the spot he’d recently vacated, her jaw clenched as though holding back a rage-fueled tirade. After several seconds she whirled around and stomped back to her own yard, offering him an excellent view of sleek thighs and nicely toned calves. He licked his lips, wishing her robe was several inches shorter so he could get an unimpeded look at her tightly muscled ass.
Unlike his neighbor, who clearly had been clueless about him until this morning, Joe had been fully aware of Taylor from the first week he’d moved in, when he caught a glimpse of her coming back from a run at some ungodly early hour. Which was ironic, considering this morning she was complaining about his working at a civilized hour like ten A.M. Even from a distance, he’d seen she was beautiful, with clean, classic features and Nordic goddess coloring. And unlike most women who looked sweaty and mussed after a jog, her hair was still neatly slicked back in a ponytail, her cheeks faintly rosy from exertion, but otherwise she was neat and…tidy. That was the word for her.
Since then, he’d found himself watching for her in the mornings when she left for work, always perfectly put together in a suit or other business attire. He didn’t know what it was about her, but he loved watching her priss in and out of her car, so cool and self-contained in her own little world. Obviously she was some kind of high-powered executive type, with her shiny black five-series BMW, not to mention the house she lived in—alone.
He wondered about this alleged boyfriend, the one whose car was never in her driveway, as far as he could tell, and who clearly didn’t give Taylor what she so obviously needed. If ever there was a woman in need of a long, hard fuck and about a half dozen or so orgasms, it was prissy little Taylor Flynn. His groin tightened at the thought of being the man to help her out. Close up, she was even better-looking, her skin pale and flawless without a stitch of makeup, her mouth rosy and delicate, even when pursed in an angry pucker. For once, this morning her hair was loose, hanging in silky blond strands that made his fingers itch to thread through them. But even though she was obviously just out of bed, she looked cool and composed, like one of those icy blond heroines in the Hitchcock movies his mother used to watch.
At least she had been cool and composed until he brought up her sex life, he thought with a smirk. He wasn’t a rude person by nature, and under most circumstances would never consider speaking like that to any woman, much less one he was attracted to. But he had the same reaction to Taylor that he’d had to Jennie Douglas in the third grade. Jennie with her perfectly matched designer outfits and neatly braided hair, who had looked down her tiny perfect nose at him when he’d offered to share a package of powdered donuts with her and wrinkled her nose while staring in disgust at his hands, dirty from digging for worms during recess.
The next day, Jennie had found one of those worms in her lunch box and had been “accidentally” shoved into a mud puddle as Joe ran by her to catch a football.
When Taylor had refused to shake his hand, offering just the barest tips of her fingers, he’d felt a surge of the same childish, irrational anger. But instead of pushing her into the mud, he’d insulted her sex life.
Real mature, he thought, resisting the urge to do further damage by running the weed whacker for the rest of the day. He’d been obnoxious enough already, and he’d be lucky if Taylor didn’t come up with some way to make his life a living hell. Fortunately, she seemed to work a lot, so she probably didn’t have much time to devote to petty revenge.
He sighed and picked up his garden shears to finish pruning the hedge that bordered his back patio. He’d been trying to figure out a way to introduce himself to his beautiful neighbor for months, but this was hardly how he’d envisioned it going. He clipped his way over to their shared fence and peeked over. No sign of her in the backyard, which was no big surprise since it was basically a big overgrown weed patch with some beat-up lawn furniture and a crumbling concrete patio that fairly cried out to be torn up and replaced. He wondered if the inside of her house looked any better, or if her physical person was the only thing she kept in any sort of order.
Not that he’d ever find out. Even if he hadn’t been completely obnoxious and pissed her off, it was obvious she was a total snob who would never consider lowering herself to date a man who actually worked with his hands.
Too bad, he thought with a pang of regret as he imagined Taylor’s long, lean legs extending from the hem of her robe. If given half a chance, Joe bet he could show a woman like Taylor a damn good time.
2
“H ow dare he?” Taylor asked no one in particular as she briskly folded a dozen pair of brushed cotton bikini underwear. Though compelled by rage, she didn’t allow herself to rush, knowing if she didn’t take the time to fold each piece of lingerie into perfect thirds and separate them by color, she’d waste precious time Monday morning when she reached without looking into her panty drawer and pulled out the wrong shade.
“How dare he tell me I need to get laid?” she said to the panties, her shoulders tensing with rage all over again. So what if it was a little too close to the truth? What kind of man was so rude as to say something like that to a woman he’d just met?
Her lips tightened in distaste as she remembered her mother’s last boyfriend—at least the one she’d had the last time Taylor had been home nearly fifteen years ago. Herb, with his beer-stinking breath and sweaty, grabby hands. Supposedly he worked in construction, but the only thing Taylor had ever seen him build was a pyramid of beer cans on the coffee table that occupied the middle of their double-wide’s living room. Herb spent most of his time on the couch, yelling at the TV—that is, when he wasn’t yelling at Taylor, telling her not to be so uptight, to be nicer to him, to come over and sit on the couch with him so he could give her what she needed.
Her skin crawled at the memory, and she looked down to see a pair of black bikini briefs wadded in her right hand. Carefully, she smoothed them out onto the bed and folded them. Her neighbor Joe was just like Herb, just like her mother’s other boyfriends. Callous, rude, the kind of guy who thought the solution to all the world’s problems could be found at the tip of his dick.
She heard a rustling and snapping outside and abandoned her lingerie to look out the window. Joe was back in his yard, trimming his bushes with a pair of lethal-looking hedge clippers. Okay, maybe he wasn’t exactly like Herb and his ilk. The only six-pack Herb ever saw was in the refrigerator, and Joe’s perfectly chiseled cheekbones and jawline were a universe away from Herb’s mean, piggy eyes and puffy, ruddy face.
Still, he was the same uncultured, crude jerk, but in a much better-looking package. As though he’d felt her looking, Joe straightened up and glanced up toward her window. Taylor jumped to the side, watching as he pulled a bandana from his back pocket to wipe his face. Something like lust curled in her stomach as she watched his big hand wrap around a bottle of water. She licked her lips, watching the muscles of his shoulder and arm flex as he brought the bottle to his lips.
Yes, he was a jerk, but he was just about the sexiest jerk she’d ever seen. She allowed her eyes to skim down his sweat-slicked chest, to his muscular calves and big feet covered by heavy work boots. Her fingers itched to slide down his torso, to undo the fly of his shorts and see if his cock was as big as the rest of him. Maybe she could take him up here, to her room, tie him to her wrought-iron bed frame and punish him for his rudeness….
He lowered the bottle, his mouth quirking in a half-smile as he raised his hand in a quick wave. Oh, God, he’d caught her staring! She flung herself back from the window, as though that would help matters. Hopefully at that distance, he hadn’t been able to see the lust-crazed light in her eyes and the blush she knew had suffused her face. What in God’s name was wrong with her? She rarely fantasized about sex, and if she did, it never entailed tying a gorgeous naked man to her bed so she could straddle him and take his long, thick, cock deep inside….
There she went again! Taylor grabbed a stack of panties and took them to her dresser to put away. As she pushed aside a stack of beige panties to make room for the black, she caught a glimpse of ice-blue satin, pushed all they way back in the left-hand corner. She pulled out the blue satin garter belt, along with the matching thong and demi-cup bra. She’d bought them last spring for the romantic weekend she and Steven had planned in Big Sur. It had been over a year ago, and even then, Taylor had sensed something was missing, had felt compelled to do her part to spice up their rather bland sex life.
But Steven had spent the previous two weeks on a grueling overseas sales trip and had spent nearly the entire weekend sleeping off his jet lag.
Needless to say, the garter, the thong, and the bra all still bore their original price tags.
Where had her libido gone? Where had Steven’s? As she’d admitted to Joe, sex had never been the most important part of her relationship with Steven, but she certainly hadn’t been asexual. She simply hadn’t been trying hard enough. That was the problem. After two years together, of course their sexual attraction had waned a bit, and she’d been working so hard she hadn’t really put much thought or effort into rekindling those fires.
Well, no longer. Regardless of what Joe Tierney thought, she could be a sexy, sensual woman who kept her man satisfied. She looked at the clock. Eleven twenty-two. Steven was arriving later this evening from a trip to New York, but they didn’t have plans to meet up until brunch tomorrow.
She quickly showered and dressed in a knee-length linen sundress. She had just enough time to get waxed, smoothed, and polished to perfection before Steven came home and found her ready, waiting, and wanting on his big California king.
Joe propped his hands on the end of his shovel and let out a low whistle. Taylor’s pale blond head whipped around. “Do you have something to say,” she asked, arching one perfectly groomed eyebrow, “or are your communication skills limited to catcalls?”
He straightened up like a chastened schoolboy. Maybe this was a chance to undo some of the damage from earlier. “You look very nice, Taylor.” Which was an understatement. She looked phenomenal. Simultaneously sexy and classy, in a pink sleeveless dress made out of some kind of floaty material that hit her right at midthigh, showing off her amazing legs. As he looked more closely, he could see that she wore nylons, even though it was still about ninety degrees out. He thought she’d looked hot earlier today when she’d hightailed it out of the driveway, her hair in a prim bun and in another more casual dress.
But now she looked incredible. Though the V-neck of her dress wasn’t cut particularly low, it called attention to the ripe curves of her breasts. Her pale shoulders gleamed in the late-afternoon sunlight, making him wonder how it would feel to trace his tongue along the silky line of skin and muscle. He wondered what she would do if he walked over and pulled the flimsy strap of her dress down her arm and slid his hand inside her dress to close over her tit.
Probably smack him in the face and look at him like she was looking at him now—like he was so far beneath her it was a wonder she even noticed his existence. Which really pissed him off. “Got a hot date?” He smirked. “Just so you know, the uptight-bitch look isn’t much of a turn-on.” Her eyes narrowed, but he refused to flinch. Hey, he’d tried to be nice, to give her a compliment, and she’d given him a look like he was lower than dog crap. As far as he was concerned, if there were a mud puddle around, Taylor would be facedown in it.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said as she opened her car door, “but my boyfriend is coming back tonight from a business trip, and I have a very nice surprise for him.”
Something about the snooty way she tossed her head made him grin. “Good. Maybe he can help you get the stick out of your butt.”
She muttered something about an immature bonehead, slammed the door, and peeled out of the driveway.
Joe watched, laughing as her car disappeared around the corner. Damn, what he wouldn’t give to throw Taylor down and dirty her up a little bit.
Taylor reapplied her lip gloss, checking her reflection one last time in the rearview mirror. Did she really look like an uptight bitch? She’d really tried to look a little sexier, a little more casual this evening. Maybe Joe was right. Why do you care what he thinks? His idea of sexy is probably too much makeup, a skirt that could double as a belt, and an
IQ that matched a woman’s bra size. Steven thinks I’m attractive—sexy even. We’ve just fallen into a bit of a rut.
She smoothed the skirt of her silky chiffon dress and ran her fingers through her hair one last time before letting herself in the front door of Steven’s town house. The air-conditioning hummed, the startling cold making the skin of her arms prickle and her nipples tighten against the satin of her bra. Built in air-conditioning was one perk, she conceded, of living in a cookie-cutter town house. While Taylor loved her old two-story craftsman home and her quiet cul-de-sac, it, unlike Steven’s two-year-old town house, needed several upgrades. Flaws and all, she’d adored it from the moment she’d first laid eyes on it. Cozy, cute, with its own fenced yard, it was the kind of home she’d always dreamed of. One that was a universe away from the double-wide she’d shared with her mother in a dusty trailer park in southern New Mexico. When she’d bought her first house, she felt like she’d put her past behind her once and for all.
In the year and a half since she’d moved in, she’d spent a lot of money on making it her dream home but hadn’t gotten around to installing AC before the warm weather hit. Steven seemed to have left it on while he was out of town, which was good since Taylor didn’t want to start sweating until they got to the really good stuff.
She started up the stairs to the second floor, pausing at the sound of the stereo playing. Had Steven left it on while he was out of town? That was so unlike him. Come to think of it, so was the air-conditioning. Even though he probably made over a quarter-million dollars a year, he was completely anal when it came to household expenses. No way would he be so careless as to leave the air-conditioning, not to mention a major electronic appliance, on to suck the power grid dry. His cleaning service, which came once a week, must have left it on.
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