“Stop.”

The word came out harsher than he intended, a fact that
became even more
apparent when the woman put both hands on her hips and shot
him a feisty
look. The decking shifted subtly beneath his body at the
additional
weight. He jack-knifed to his feet. “You can’t be out here.”

“It’s my yard,” she intoned over the music.

Jackson shook his head and tried to shoo her back into the
house. “I
know,” he returned, just as forcefully. “But it’s not safe
with all the
damage. You could get hurt.”

“I’m barely a foot from the door,” she said, refusing to
budge. Man, she
was infuriating.

“The deck isn’t structurally sound. Ma’am, please—”

The woman rolled her pretty brown eyes. “If that’s the case,
you’d better
get off it too.” Her sarcasm rang through like church bells
on Sunday.
Too bad for Jackson, she was right. He’d been pushing it to
walk on the
deck in the first place.

“Okay.” Jackson turned toward the wooden steps to get to the
yard, but
the now-loose decking he’d upended with his boot stood smack
in his path.
He started to tiptoe around it, but the adjacent boards gave
an ominous
groan under his weight.

“Oh, God.” The woman’s eyes went wide, as if she’d realized
all at once
that he wasn’t just blowing smoke. She motioned toward the
house, the
sleeve of her bathrobe flopping around her elbow. “I thought
you were
exaggerating. Okay, come this way. Don’t fall through the
boards or
anything.”

Jackson covered the newly damaged space in one long stride
and followed
her into the living room. “Thanks. That was more eventful
than I’m used
to,” he said, fighting to be heard over the still-pumping music.

“What?”

“I said—”But she cut him off mid-sentence, moving toward the
radio to
silence it with a swift crank of her wrist.

Jackson’s ears rang in the unexpected hush. “What I said
was, that’s more
eventful than I’m used to.”

The woman frowned and crossed her arms over her chest,
pulling her chin
up to look at him. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like
that, you know.
It’s not very polite.”

She had to be kidding.

“I rang the bell, twice actually, before coming around here
to check out
the damage.” Jackson took a step toward her, noting that she
only came up
to his chest. “I can’t help it you were a little hard to miss.”

“I…I was listening to the radio!”

Note to self: the blush? Insanely hot.

“Yeah, I got that.” Okay, so he was messing with her a
little. It
couldn’t be helped. “Whatever that was is probably toast.”
Jackson
gestured to the mangled black shrapnel at her feet. Despite
her tiny
stature, she sure packed a wallop.

“Huh? Oh.” The woman danced up to her tiptoes, sock-feet
pressing into
the edge of the area rug beneath them. “That was the remote
for the
stereo.”

“Here, let me help you.” He lumbered toward the hardwood at
the exact
moment she bent low to retrieve the broken pieces, and their
foreheads
knocked together with a startling clunk. Her hands flew to
her head, and
she wobbled for a second before falling smack on her butt in
the middle
of the living room.

A slice of panic streaked through him from conscience to
chest. “God, I’m
sorry. Did I hurt you?” Jackson reached for her instantly,
cradling her
elbow in his palm even though the pain in his own was still
banging away
like a nine-pound hammer.. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She blinked, and both her focus and her quick
frown
suggested she was indeed in top working order. “Are you?”

Relieved and dazed, Jackson bent lower to try to regain some
clarity. The
scent of something earthy and fresh filled his nose, like
the flowers in
his mother’s garden, and he blinked as he breathed it in. In
her tumble
to the carpet, the woman’s bathrobe had fallen all the way
open to reveal
that infernally sexy, nearly see-through tank top. As his
eyes raked
lower, Jackson couldn’t help but get an eyeful of her white
cotton
panties. The no-frills fabric hugged the fold where her
tanned legs met
her body, showing off the curvy flare of her hips with just
enough
suggestion to spike his blood.

Forget trying to focus. Now he just wanted to keep from
passing out.

“You, uh…your, you know…bathrobe is kind of…”

Okay. While he might earn a point or two for being a
gentleman, he sure
as hell wasn’t going to score high in the suave category.
Not that he was
trying to impress her or anything. Christ, he wasn’t still
seeing stars,
was he?