“Holy cow!” Berry gasped, covering her face with her hands. Her heart jumped to her throat, she lost her balance and went over backward, tail over teakettle, frantically grasping for branches as she fell, her leg scraping against a lower limb as it cracked under her falling weight. Then whump! She landed flat on her back, knocking the air out of her lungs. Little black dots floated in front of her eyes, and the ocean was pounding in her ears.

A few seconds-or was it hours?-later, Berry blinked at the hunk of masculinity that bent over her. “Am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

“I feel dead. I must be bleeding. My back is all warm and sticky.”

The hunk squatted beside her and looked more closely. “I don’t see any blood, just some pizza sauce oozing through this crumpled box. Lady, you’ve squished this poor pizza to smithereens.” He extracted the pizza box. “Is this mine?”

Berry nodded. She was relieved to find that he was fully clothed in a pair of jeans and a navy hooded sweatshirt. She made an attempt to sit up and began a methodical check of any bones that might be broken.

“What happened?” he asked. “I heard something crashing around out here, and there you were, flat out on my pizza. Are you okay?”

He picked bits of bark from her tangled hair. He glanced at the profusion of broken branches scattered on the ground and his attention turned to the tree, his gaze traveling up the height of it, resting on the large limb just outside his bedroom window. Incredulity registered on his face.

“Lady, you must be kidding! You can’t be that hard up to see a naked man.”

“I’m not hard up at all,” Berry said with a toss of her head. “I’ve seen lots of naked men.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Lots?”

“Well, maybe not lots. A few. Actually, not too many.” She threw her hands into the air in frustration. “Well, dammit, I’ve been busy. I don’t have time to go around looking at naked men. I have a pizza business to run. I have old ladies to take care of. And anyway, you’ve got this all wrong. I was rescuing a kitten.”

They both looked up at the tree. No kitten.

Berry pointed. “There was a kitten up there!”

“Uh-huh.”

The hunk didn’t believe her! Of all the nerve. Berry tipped her nose up and gave him her most withering look. Well, phooey on you, her most withering look said. I don’t care what you think, anyway. She retrieved the crumpled pizza box and thrust it into his hands. “Here, this is yours. Seventeen ninety-five, please.”

He looked down at the flattened box that was oozing pizza sauce. “Shouldn’t I get a disaster discount?”

Berry had to admit, seventeen ninety-five was a little high for a smashed pizza. “Fine,” she said, “it’s on the house.”

“Thanks. The strip show is on the house, too,” he said, smiling. “Now we’re even.”

Berry looked at him. Two eyebrows, nice nose, suspicious brown eyes. And a mouth that looked like it might be laughing at her. His mouth wasn’t too big, and wasn’t too small, and it was slightly turned up at the corners. Truth was, it was probably the greatest mouth she’d ever seen.

“Are you going to kiss me?” he asked.

Berry snapped to attention. “Certainly not!”

Laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. “You were staring at my mouth.”

“I thought it might be laughing at me.”

He looked at her tangled blond curls, big blue eyes, and cute little nose. And he looked at her mouth. Full and soft. Not smiling. His gaze moved south over her red down vest, long-sleeved shirt, and faded jeans. She was slim. Maybe five-five. Hard to tell her age. Somewhere between sixteen and thirty-two, he guessed. He hoped she wasn’t sixteen because he was having thoughts about her that would be inappropriate if she was sixteen.

“Jake Sawyer,” he said, extending his hand. “How old are you?”

“I’m too close to thirty.”

“I suppose you’re the owner of that dilapidated Jeep.”

“That Jeep is not dilapidated. That Jeep is almost in A-one condition.”

As if on cue, there was a loud spronnnng at curbside, and the Jeep slowly began rolling backward, down Ellenburg Drive.

Berry gasped. “My Jeep!”

The Jeep picked up speed on a downhill curve, jumped the curb, merrily bounced over a grassy area, and headed for an opening between two large birch trees. Berry took off running and raced alongside, trying to get a grip on the door handle. Her fingers had just touched metal when Sawyer tackled her, and they both went down to the ground. She picked her head up in time to see the Jeep squeeze between the two trees and catapult itself off a twenty-foot cliff.

“Get off!” she said, twisting under Sawyer. “You must weigh two hundred pounds.”

“One-eighty and it’s all muscle.”

Berry already knew the part about it being all magnificent muscle. Besides being permanently engraved in her brain, she could feel it being firmly pressed into her. His knee was cozily nudged against the inside of her leg, and his delicious mouth was hovering just inches above her own.

“You’re staring at my mouth again,” he said.

And he kissed her. Nothing serious. Just a single, testing-the-waters kiss.

“Jeez,” Berry said.

“Is that good or bad?”

It was terrific, Berry thought. Not that she would admit it to Mr. Large Pizza.

“It was entirely inappropriate,” she said, wriggling out from under him, getting to her feet. “And that was my Jeep. I needed it. I can’t deliver pizzas without it. You had no business jumping on me like that.”

“Are you crazy? You would have killed yourself.”

“Well, fine. Now I’ll slowly die of starvation because I’m deprived of earning a living.”

Good grief, Berry thought, she sounded like an uptight, whining moron. It was so unfair. Why couldn’t she have met this gorgeous guy under more favorable circumstances? Like maybe winning him in the lottery. She turned on her heel and strode off to the birch trees to inspect the damage.

She’d gotten the Jeep two years ago, the day after her divorce had been finalized, and it had never given her a moment’s trouble. Of course, she had to give it a quart of oil every Friday, she thought. And it did look a little disreputable with all that rust and the coat hanger antenna, but those things were cosmetic.

They stood at the edge of the cliff and gazed down at the Jeep, belly-up and slightly squashed in the moonlight.

Berry sighed in morose resignation. “It’s dead.”

“Doesn’t look good.”

Berry was at a loss for words. After all, what on earth can you say when your entire future has just gone over a cliff? What can you say when faced with certain bankruptcy? And I’m not going to cry, she told herself, frowning. I absolutely am not going to cry.

He studied her face in the moonlight. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

“Absolutely not.” A large tear oozed over her lower lashes and streaked down her cheek. “Damn.”

She was pretty, he thought. And she was nice to kiss. But she was a little nutty. Not that he would hold that against her. He put an arm around her shoulders and wiped the tear away with his thumb.

“It’s okay,” Jake said. “The insurance will pay to replace your car.”

Berry slumped and did another sigh.

“You don’t have insurance,” he guessed.

“Not that kind. Only if I run over somebody.” She squared her shoulders and turned on her heel. “Well, good-bye.”

Good-bye? He wasn’t ready for good-bye. He wanted to look at the blond curls some more. He needed to know why she didn’t have insurance. And what was her favorite ice cream flavor? And when was her birthday? And was she really okay after falling out of his tree? And in fact, he wouldn’t mind knowing what she thought of him naked, but probably he shouldn’t rush that one.

He walked beside her. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“That must be miles from here.”

Berry shrugged. “It’s not so far.”

May as well get used to walking, she thought, I’m going to be doing a lot of it. Anyway, she could use the exercise to get rid of the nervous stomach caused by Mr. Large Pizza with the Works and his navy briefs.

No way was she walking home, Jake thought. It was dark, and late. She could get mugged or snatched by a maniac serial rapist. And she smelled like pizza. She could get attacked by a pack of hungry dogs.

“If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll give you a ride,” he said to her.

“Thanks, but that’s not necessary. Besides, I’d get your fancy car all dirty.”

“My fancy car has leather seats. They wash. Wait here.”

Berry kept walking. “Really, it’s not necessary.”

He grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and plunked her into a sitting position on the edge of the curb. “Wait here!”

“You’re awfully bossy.”

“So I’ve been told.”

That intrigued her. She watched him jog away and wondered who else thought he was bossy. A girlfriend, maybe? A wife? She was still wondering when the cream-colored car rolled to a stop in front of her. She removed her vest and carefully placed it on the floor, mozzarella side up.

“This is very nice of you,” Berry said.

“Yup, that’s me. I’m an all-around nice guy.” He cut his eyes to her. “You haven’t told me your name.”

“Berry Knudsen.”

“Berry? Like in holly berry or cranberry?”

“Lingonberry. My mother was inordinately proud of her Scandinavian heritage. So, who else thinks you’re bossy? Your wife?”

Sawyer mumbled something unintelligible.

“Excuse me?”

“My kids,” he said on a sigh.

His kids? He had kids. And a wife. And he’d just kissed her. She was going to go straight home and brush her teeth.

“How many kids do you have?” she asked.

“Twenty-one. This morning they all told me the same thing you did. They think I’m bossy.”