Once again, Riley found himself with nothing to say. After a moment David shrugged and went on with his artfully aimless exploration, head tilted to one side like a potential buyer in a not-very-interesting art gallery. When he’d made a complete circuit of the room, he put a hand on one hip, gave Riley a sideways look and inquired with a poor attempt at nonchalance, “Don’t you have a computer?”

“I do,” Riley responded with a nod. “I keep it at my office.”

“Oh.” David’s eyes shifted as he tried hard to hide his disappointment. “How come?”

“I keep it there because my secretary is mostly the one who uses it.”

“Oh.” The boy’s shoulders sagged, then hitched upward in another of those brave little shrugs. “I used to have a computer when we lived in California. My dad used to play with me all the time.” He turned suddenly, his face alight with an enthusiasm overpowering enough to carry him right to the edge of Riley’s desk. “You can do really cool things on a computer, did you know that? There’s all kinds of stuff, especially if you have a CD-ROM drive. Like, I had this encyclopedia, you know? And-oh, yeah, there’s Puzzle Wizard-I really like that one, there’s all kind of neat puzzles you can solve. And there’s games, too. My dad gave me a whole bunch of games one Christmas-Battle Beast, Mech Warrios-only Mom wouldn’t let me play with most of ’em. She said they were violent and gross, and she made my dad take ’em back. She was pretty mad at him.”

“Hmm,” said Riley, who was only half paying attention. He was watching, out of the corner of his eye, the evil-looking creature that had just slunk around the edge of the door-which David, naturally, had neglected to close. The boy’s monologue faded to a background hum; the focus of Riley’s attention had narrowed to the cat’s silent progress toward him across the Persian rug. The last thing he saw before it disappeared behind his desk was the moth-eaten tail held aloft like a plume waving over the head of a rather seedy potentate.

Riley felt himself tensing up. Where in the hell was the beast now? More important, what was it doing? A moment later, he had his answer. There came a horrid scratching sound and what felt like about a dozen needles pricking him in the legs. Something heavy landed squarely in the middle of his lap. Riley gripped the arms of his chair and pressed himself backward as the cat, her expression disdainful, casually sniffed his chest and then turned herself around, managing to trod heavily on some sensitive parts of his anatomy in the process. A loud wheezing, grinding noise began to emanate from her as she slowly stretched herself out and placed her front paws on the desktop. After carefully sniffing out the area, she swiped Riley several times in the face with her tail, then hauled her hind half stiffly up and onto his newspaper. There she crouched, staring intently at the door.

Riley had heard David’s mother calling but was holding his breath to avoid inhaling cat hair and couldn’t answer. While he sat frozen, not breathing, her advance guard, the dog Beatle, came dashing headlong through the narrow gap in the door, caught sight of the cat on top of the desk and skittered to a halt The cat lazily arched her back. The dog gave a yelp and scampered back the way she’d come, while the cat placidly arranged herself like a mildewed stole across Riley’s newspaper.

An instant later, Summer stuck her head through the door. The smile on her lips vanished like the sunlight when a cloud gets in the way, and she closed her eyes and softly breathed, “Oh, Peggy Sue…” She pushed the door wide and started forward.

Riley let his breath out and held up a hand like a traffic cop, stopping her there. He rose, one eye on the drift of cat hair that scuttled across his desk, blown by the breeze she’d made, and said briskly, “Never mind-I was done with it, anyway. David mentioned waffles?”

She stepped quickly back, giving him a lot more room than he needed. Oh, yeah, she was avoiding him, all right-why was that beginning to annoy him?

Her smile returned, though, as she gestured toward the kitchen. “I left some for you. But I was coming to ask you-where do you keep your lawn mower?”

“Lawn mower?” He had to stop and think for a moment. “Lord, I don’t know. In the gardener’s shed, I imagine-that’s the door down at the far end of the garage-but I couldn’t tell you what kind of shape it’s in. My gardener generally uses his own, I believe. Why on earth do you want to know?”

“Because,” she began in the same patient tone he’d heard her use with her children, “I noticed your lawn needs mowing. And since I figured your gardener was probably on paid vacation, too, I thought I’d mow it for you. If that’s okay.” And all the while she was saying that, a rosy flush was creeping across her cheekbones.

Chapter 8

Riley halted opposite her in his study doorway. Undiagnosed tensions crowded his chest. “You don’t need to do that.”

She raked a hand back through her hair, which, since most of it was caught up in her haphazard ponytail, left the short parts around her face wildly-and rather endearingly-askew. She was wearing a new pair of shorts, he noticed. But with it she wore one of his cast-off shirts with the sleeves rolled above her elbows and the tails knotted around her waist and the top buttons open to show a deep slash of cream-colored throat. For some reason, she seemed to prefer his old clothes to the new ones he’d bought for her.

“Yes, I do,” she said in a low voice, while her eyes begged him to understand.

Well, he did understand. Maybe he understood pride too well. Because he had his pride, too, dammit. He wondered if she knew what it cost him to swallow it now and grudgingly say, “Well, I guess we can see what kind of shape it’s in.”

He stalked past her, down the hall and through the kitchen, through the mudroom and out the back door, mired so deeply in the mystery of his wounded thoughts that he was halfway across the yard before it occurred to him to wonder if he was going to need a key to get into the gardener’s room; it had been that long since he’d had occasion to go there himself. Riley was not in any way, shape or form a do-it-yourselfer, he was accustomed to having his castle run like a well-oiled machine, and he paid people generously to see that it did, and to insure that he personally would never have to concern himself with the details. Somewhere in the back of his mind he supposed he must have realized that eliminating the services of his housekeeper, gardener and pool man was probably going to have some effect on the workings of the machine, not to mention his own participation in its maintenance. Of course he had. He just hadn’t prepared himself for the possibility that a woman-any woman, much less a client and a guest in his house-would be mowing his lawn for him. It didn’t make him proud to discover that he felt that way, either-Lord, he was all for equal opportunity, or sure had thought he was.

To Summer’s relief, the gardener’s room wasn’t locked. She was right behind Riley as he pushed the door open, waved aside a few spiderwebs and stepped over the threshold. She spotted the mower, a green one that looked almost new, pushed over in the far corner but accessible enough. And she was encouraged to see that it was encrusted with a spattering of dried grass, as though it might have seen fairly recent use after all.

“Looks okay,” she said as she dropped to one knee beside the mower. She unscrewed a cap, stuck a finger into the opening, sniffed it and nodded. “Seems to have plenty of gas.” She straightened and took hold of the handle.

But when Riley said gruffly, “Here, I’ll do that,” she let go of the handle and moved aside as quickly as she could.

It had been another near miss. Once again they’d come close to touching…his masculine scent filled her nostrils; his body heat wafted like a breath across her skin. Heart pounding against the arms she’d folded humbly across her waist, she stood and watched him wrestle the mower through the doorway. Her own breath seemed to stick in her throat Oh, dear, she thought, but beyond that her mind simply refused to go.

How was it, she mused, that the man could look so elegant even in tan Dockers and a white polo shirt? And she realized, as she found herself staring at them, that it was the first time she’d ever seen his bare arms. How was it that a lawyer, who presumably spent all his time in offices and courtrooms, could have arms so well-muscled and deeply tanned? Did he play tennis or golf? Enjoy a daily workout at a gym? The idea of Riley Grogan sweating and grunting under a set of barbells was simply mind-boggling.

At the moment, though, he was squatting beside the mower looking like any other perplexed suburban weekend gardener-though surely about a hundred times more handsome than most And it suddenly occurred to Summer to wonder if he’d ever in his life used a lawnmower before. Did he even know how to start it? What should she do if he didn’t? She could hardly shove the man aside and take over, not when it was his lawn and his mower. Not without risking grave damage to his masculine ego-which, she was beginning to realize, to her utter bemusement, was every bit as fragile, for all his strength and confidence, as that of any other man’s.

And yet, how long could she stand here and let him suffer?

As Summer pondered her dilemma, a delicious, quivery feeling came over her. It had been such a long time since she’d felt it, it took her a while to recognize it for what it was: amusement. She suddenly felt an almost overpowering urge to laugh. At Riley Grogan! The only thing keeping her from it, in fact, was the hand she’d had the foresight to clamp tightly over her mouth.