Oh, Lord-she couldn’t go on like this-she really couldn’t. In another second she was going to explode with laughter. Male ego be damned-she had just made up her mind that she was going to have to speak up before she giggled and made things worse, and had peeled her fingers away from her face and cleared her throat in preparation for doing so, when salvation arrived from an unexpected source.

David, whose presence Summer had all but forgotten, pointed and said, “You have to pull on this thing right here.”

Tossing her a look that could only be described as smug, Riley rose to his feet, so abruptly that Summer, who was already leaning forward to point out the necessary steps to achieve ignition, had to spring back to avoid a collision. Meanwhile, Riley took his place at the helm, grasped the ring David had shown him and gave it a mighty tug.

The mower gave a derisive snort and then was silent. Riley pulled the cord again. Same thing. And again. And… yet… again. Finally, with sweat pouring down his face and fire in his eyes, he turned to Summer.

Who once more peeled her fingers away from the bottom part of her face, cleared her throat and stepped forward. “Maybe,” she said carefully, “it would help if you primed it.”

She then reached down, pumped the primer bulb a few times, straightened, adjusted the choke, set the throttle, grasped the ring and pulled. The mower snorted…snarled…and died. Unperturbed, she made a minor adjustment to the choke and tried again. This time the snorts and snarls settled nicely into a roar, which, by easing up on the throttle, Summer soon tuned to a businesslike growl. Without further ado, without even daring a backward glance, she steered the mower onto the lush and overgrown lawn.

And, oh, didn’t it feel good!

She was flushed with success, the June sun was hot on her back, sweat was pouring into her eyes, and she could feel the vibrations of the powerful machine running up her arms and into her chest and belly. She could even feel them in the fillings in her teeth. The muscles in her calves and thighs, arms and back protested…and then rejoiced in the exercise. The grass smelled so sweet she could almost taste it. The air was heavy with humidity, but she felt light. She felt confident and capable. Exhilarated and strong.

And not once today had she thought of herself as poor Cinderella. Or, thank heaven, of Riley Grogan as the Prince.

Back on the path, Riley and David stood side by side in identical poses, hands on hips, watching Summer cut a widening swath through the grass. Presently Riley looked down at David, who returned his gaze with mute sympathy, then after a moment just sort of wandered off, as if he found the whole episode vaguely embarrassing.

Riley knew how he felt. But while his masculine pride had definitely taken a body blow, he was discovering that there was something intensely erotic about the sight of that particular woman pushing a powerful machine around his backyard. She’d only been at it a few minutes, but she was already drenched with sweat, her face flushed and shiny with it, loose strands of her hair lying on her neck and cheeks in wet corkscrew curls, the soft material of his old shirt sticking to her body in dark patches. Her body moved with the unstudied grace of the naturally strong and healthy, the muscles in her legs bunching and relaxing as she pushed and pulled and maneuvered the heavy machine through tight spots, the sunlight turning the fine hair on her thighs to golden down…

Riley’s stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t gotten around to eating the breakfast Summer had left for him. But it wasn’t blueberry waffles he was hungry for, not then.

Scowling, he turned and stalked back into the gardener’s shed. There was no point in trying to go back to his study, not with the cat having usurped his newspaper, and with Summer putt-putting around out here he’d never be able to stay inside and concentrate, anyway. And, if he remembered right, he’d seen-yes, there they were-a pair of hedge clippers. Old-fashioned hand clippers, nothing power-driven, thank you-his ego had taken about all the beating it could stand for one day. He took them down from their hook and gave them a few practice snips to make sure they were in working order, then carried them outside.

Way off down in the back beyond the wooded slope, he seemed to recall having seen some bushes that had looked as if they could use a trim. Hell, he thought, might as well have a go at them, since the morning was otherwise shot. Lord knew he could use the exercise-not to mention a way to work off some of this unanticipated sexual tension-and there was the additional perk that, since there were so many trees down in that part of the property, he’d be working in the shade.

The bushes-he had no idea what kind they were, but they did have some rather nice flowers in the spring-were as rampant as he remembered. Obviously the gardeners hadn’t been in this part of the grounds in a while, which made him feel the more valiant and enterprising, precisely what his bruised male ego needed. Riley surveyed the clump and mapped out his plan of attack. He’d start at the sunny end, he decided, then work his way toward the trees and into the shade. Whistling tunelessly, he set to work.

He’d been at it maybe fifteen minutes or so, long enough to work up a good sweat, and was maneuvering underneath a good-size magnolia, whacking away and feeling good about the progress he was making, when all of a sudden the bush he was chopping on emitted an earsplitting shriek. That startled him so he let go of the clippers, which landed, points down, on his instep at the precise moment a voice a few inches from his ear yelled, “Hey, you’re cutting down my fort!”

Pain stabbed through his foot. He straightened violently, unfortunately right underneath a sizable branch of the magnolia tree. Riley’s head met the branch with a considerable amount of force, and then for a short while his world became mostly bright lights and dark blotches.

When his senses returned to normal function, he found that he was lying on his back in some prickly leaves, gazing up at the face of a small, blond angel, who kept poking his cheek with her finger and saying solemnly, “Are you dead? Huh? Are you dead?”

Before Riley could put together an intelligent response to that, the face abruptly vanished. He heard the crunch of footsteps and the crashing of underbrush, and a voice of diminishing volume yelling, “Mom! Mom! Mr. Riley’s bleeding!”

Was he? Riley sat up slowly, swearing as he fought off a wave of nausea. Yes, dammit, he was; he could feel the trickles working their way through his hair in several directions-toward his forehead, his ears, even down the back of his neck. Damn. In another minute he was going to look like an ambulance case. There were already spots of blood on his shirt. He groaned, as much in mortification as in pain, as he pulled the shirt off, wadded it up and pressed it against his head.

As if that weren’t enough, his foot hurt like bloody hell. He was wearing an old pair of canvas boat shoes with no socks, which was what he always put on for his Saturday of reading and relaxation. He knew he should have changed into heavier work shoes before tackling those bushes. But he hadn’t And as a result, it appeared he’d stabbed himself in the foot with the damned hedge clippers. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at the result.

Summer was plowing methodically up and down the lawn when she caught the flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. She cut off power to the mower, wiped sweat from her eyes with her shirtsleeve and said sternly, “Hey-what’s the rule about lawn mowers, kiddo? We wait-” Then she lowered her arm and got her first good look at her daughter’s flushed and sweaty face. Alarm narrowed her focus instantly. Bending closer, she said, “Honey, what is it? What’s the matter?”

Helen was shaking her head and gasping like a netted fish. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, Mommy. You have to come quick, Mr. Riley’s hurt because I yelled and he got scared and poked himself with the scissors and then he hit his head and now he’s just lying there on the ground bleeding and I don’t know if he’s dead, but ’cept his eyes are open-”

“Wait,” said Summer. “Slow down. Take a breath. What are you talking about? You said Riley’s bleeding? Where?”

Helen turned and pointed. “Down there.”

“No, I mean-oh, gosh, never mind-”

David arrived on the scene just in time to inquire in a superior tone, “Oh, boy, what’d she do now?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Helen wailed, scarlet-faced. “He was gonna cut down my fort! So I just screamed, and then he said a bad word and dropped the scissors on his foot and then he jumped, and bumped his head on the tree real hard! But I didn’t mean to hurt him, Mommy, I didn’t, I didn’t!” With that she turned and ran for the house as fast as she could go.

“Hey-” David yelped. “What’d you do to Mr. Riley? You better not’ve hurt him-darn you-hey!” And he took off after his sister.

For a second or two as her eyes followed her offspring, Summer hesitated. Her mother’s radar definitely sensed trouble. But obviously, “lying on the ground bleeding” had precedence over a possible sibling tiff. “Down there,” Helen had said. Summer sighed and started across the grass. After the first few steps, she broke into a run.

Riley was sitting up when she found him, to her extreme relief; okay, Helen did have a tendency to exaggerate, but still… He had his back propped against the trunk of a magnolia tree, one leg drawn up, the other straight, and Lord help her, he’d taken off his shirt. He’d wadded it up and was holding it pressed to the top of his head. And yes, she could definitely see bloodstains on it.