Chapter Fifteen

The plan to ignore it failed. For the past few days, Lexi hadn’t been able to think of anything else.

Frustrated, she stabbed at her empty yogurt container, then decided to take out her excess energy on exercise. She got off the sofa, tossed the empty yogurt container in the recycle bin, and grabbed her yoga mat.

One way or another, she was going to forget she ever had carnal knowledge of Matt Freeman.

But when she returned to the front room, she saw the universe had something else in mind.

Matt, shirtless, pushed a lawnmower across the front yard. Did the grass even need to be mowed? As far as she could tell, there wasn’t a blade out of place. And was he flexing? His grip on the mower didn’t usually cause his muscles to bulge quite like that.

Their eyes met and he had the audacity to hit her with a shit-eating grin.

Lexi snapped her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes. He wasn’t even pretending not to goad her, but the worst part was that his sex-on-a-stick routine was working. Her entire body heated, melted, drowned. Luckily, her head was above water, though, and there was no way he was going to see her thrashing around in that wave of desire he’d kicked up.

That big picture window worked both ways. Determined to fight fire with fire, she stripped off her shirt and sweat pants, leaving a sports bra and a tiny pair of shorts, and plopped her yoga mat directly in front of the window. She was probably going to have the cramp to end all cramps from not first warming up, but seeing the smirk fade from Matt’s face would be 100 percent worth it.

Something that proved true seconds later when he caught sight of her standing split and almost fell over his lawnmower.

It was all Lexi could do to keep a straight face. Then she thought about how they’d gotten there, how he’d been inside her, and almost hit the ground herself. Seeking equilibrium, she switched legs, centering herself, thinking about the position and not the fact that a very skilled man stood outside the window, gawking.

Certainly not that she was able to do that to him.

Definitely not that he was doing it right back.

…

Matt didn’t care that he’d cut the grass three days prior. He was almost certain he’d seen a dandelion, and any idiot knew you had to mow those suckers down before they seeded and hauled their fluffed-out asses all over creation. It had nothing to do with Lexi or the likelihood that she’d see him through that giant picture window at the front of the house. It was responsible horticulture.

It was hell.

His plan had backfired, big time, when she appeared in the window, nearly naked, body tight and curves dangerous. So much so that Matt walked the mower directly into a sapling…in the neighbor’s yard. The one with all the pretty flowers. He looked down to see the battered, colorful remains of her blooms shooting from under his mower and dread filled the pit of his stomach. Old Mrs. Crump must have been watching him through her window to react as quickly as she did, because he hadn’t managed to back the self-propelled machine before she was on the porch, waving and shouting at him. He glanced down, realizing that in his recovery he’d mowed right over her petunias.

“I’m sorry,” he called out. “I’ll replace them.”

“Purple ones,” she shouted in her feeble, angry old lady voice. “I want purple ones, and they need to be the same size. You can’t have them not matching.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, glancing back through the window at Lexi. Her back was arched, breasts jutting against a scrap of cloth that barely passed for an undergarment, let alone something she should show off to the public. He backed the mower out of Mrs. Crump’s yard, eyes glued to Lexi, who lifted one leg toward the ceiling and walked her hands back toward the foot that remained on the ground.

What the hell was she doing?

He stared for a moment, realizing in the crux of it that she was sending an awful lot of glances in his direction. Son of a…

She was doing this on purpose.

He, at least, had a legitimate lawn to mow. She…she was just trying to drive him crazy. And thanks to a phenomenal bit of sex, it was working.

So much so that he’d just mowed six feet of sidewalk.

And she wore the slant of a grin when she saw it.

Undeterred, he killed the mower engine and reached for the hose. It was hot as hell and that had precious little to do with the ambient temperature and everything to do with the goddess on the other side of that plate glass. And she wasn’t the only one who could play that game.

He kicked on the faucet and doused himself in what turned out to be brutally cold water. His breath punched out of his chest, he gasped, almost certain he’d drown. Until he saw her face.

Sultry poses clearly forgotten, Lex gaped at him through the glass. He grinned. She scowled, but he barely saw it because she immediately eased into another position that absolutely had to be an intentional goad. If she wore one fewer stitch of clothing, he’d be able to see exactly what had been driving him crazy long before he had her against a wall, but now that he knew…

The speed at which she sent him to a raging erection, cold water be damned, impressed him. But he didn’t spend much time dwelling on that part, because he caught her watching him again and, with cold water streaming down his chest, he unhitched the button at his fly and let the water slough into dangerous territory. It should have cooled him off, but instead he was almost certain there was actual steam rising from the front of his jeans, and his erection was trying too hard to break through the denim and the glass to care one whit about the chilly water sluicing uselessly down his front.

Lexi had given up the pretense of doing anything but stare, which he considered an open invitation to barge into the house. Screw forgetting this thing between them. If she shut him down, she shut him down, but there was no way he was passing up the chance to feel that woman’s body envelop his.

He didn’t want anyone but Lexi.

He’d figure out later what that meant.