Claimed by the Hunk

Chapter 12

Cassandra watched him work, arms crossed over her chest. She’d never been attracted to redheaded men except once earlier, but there was no denying this man’s appeal. His hair was a deep chestnut, more of a reddish-brown than a true red. As for his body… She would have cast him as a love interest on Time and Again in a heartbeat if his audition had come across her desk. He had the kind of body women fantasized over—broad shoulders, deep chest, flat belly, tight, firm little backside…

He pushed his hair out of his eyes, then turned to say something to his dog. There was a smile lurking around his mouth. Both times she’d met him she’d had the sense that he was a man who laughed easily. One of those comfortable-in- his-own-skin men. She wondered idly if he was married.

He seemed like a married man to her. Hard to put her finger on why, but she usually had good instincts about that sort of thing.

He glanced up, his gaze locking with hers across twenty meters of garden and fence. Feeling caught, she took an instinctive step backward, then realized retreating only made her look guilty and furtive. She forced herself to stand her ground and hold his gaze. After a beat, he broke the contact, refocusing on his work.

She escaped to the kitchen, feeling oddly rattled. She wondered how long he planned to hang around. She hoped it wouldn’t be for long. She didn’t have time for distractions.

The painkiller was starting to make the world go fuzzy at the edges, but it didn’t ease the panic left over from Gordon’s phone call. She returned to the living room and sat in the corner of the couch.

If she lost her job—

She clamped down on the thought. It wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. That job was her life.

No way was she letting it slip through her fingers.

Samael fixed two of the holes in the fence before he’d exhausted the small stash of nails he’d had in his tool chest.

He’d taken the precaution of packing it and a few power tools before he left Sydney, based on the assumption that Aunt Marion’s place might need a few hinges fixed. He hadn’t expected to be getting down and dirty on his first day. There were still holes to patch, but he decided they could wait until tomorrow and packed his gear away for the night.

He got takeout from the local Chinese restaurant and spent the evening staring into the fire he built, downing a six-pack of beer and feeling disconnected from the world in general.

Since distancing himself from his old life had been the whole point of his trip, he figured he was off to a good start.

He woke to overcast skies and the realization that he should have turned on the water heater last night. An icy cold shower left him shivering and pissy. He whistled for Strudel to get in the car then drove into town, wondering if he had a chance of getting the remaining holes in the fence repaired before it started to rain. Judging by the dark, moody-looking clouds overhead, probably not.

He spotted a small, soberly clad woman the moment he entered the hardware store. For a few seconds he thought it was his surly neighbor, then the woman turned and he saw she was much older than Cassandra. Just as well. He wasn’t in the mood to be polite this morning. Not that Cassandra seemed overly concerned about social niceties.

He remembered the look they’d shared across the fence yesterday as he trawled the shelves for nails. He’d felt her watching him before he’d glanced up. Not that he’d known he was being observed per se; he’d simply known that something was not quite right. And there she was, watching him from her window, a slim figure, arms wrapped tightly around herself as she studied him.

She was one of those people who had perfected the art of giving nothing away—expressionless face, emotionless eyes. She’d held his gaze, cool, unreadable. Assessing.

He made a rude noise in the back of his throat. She’d probably been congratulating herself on getting her fence repaired for free. Certainly she hadn’t seemed in a hurry to do anything about it when they’d spoken, and she hadn’t rushed out to offer her assistance yesterday, either.

Belatedly he recalled her scar and the labored way she’d gotten to her feet. Maybe she wasn’t in a position to offer her assistance, physically speaking. He immediately dismissed the notion as he remembered the lean strength of her body and the fact that she’d clearly finished a workout when he’d first knocked yesterday.

She probably simply considered manual work beneath her, in the same way that common courtesy seemed to be beyond her.

Aware that he’d let himself get bent out of shape over her once again, he concentrated on his search. By the time he’d completed a tour of the small store, he still hadn’t located the nails and he gave in and approached the elderly man behind the counter.

“If you’re looking for sandbags, we’re all out, sorry,” the salesclerk said before Samael could open his mouth.

“I guess it’s just as well I’m looking for nails, then,” Samael said, more than a little bemused by the man’s opening gambit.

“What sort?”

“I’m repairing a fence.”

“You’ll want bullet heads, then.”

Samael followed the man to the far corner of the store and selected a carton of nails.

“Had a run on sandbags today, have you?” he asked as they returned to the counter, more to make conversation than out of real curiosity.

“People having conniptions over the weather report. Bloody drama queens, those people in at the weather bureau. Storm will probably pass out over the water and not even touch us. Same as usual.” The clerk shook his head, clearly unimpressed with modern science.

“Is there a storm warning?” Samael glanced out the window.

Sure enough, the sky had grown even more forbidding since he’d left the house.

“So they say. Probably worth clearing out your gutters and downpipes, but I wouldn’t go blowing up your water wings just yet.” The old man laughed at his own joke.

“Thanks for the tip.”

Samael switched on the radio when he got to the car and scanned through the frequencies until he found a weather report. Sure enough, they were predicting heavy rain for the southern part of the Mornington Peninsula, with warnings of flash flooding and high winds.

Awesome. Was it just him, or was Flinders really rolling out the welcome mat? A rude neighbor, a decrepit fence and now imminent flooding. And it was only day two.

Since the rain was holding off, he decided to finish the fence repairs. Strudel kept him company, sniffing around his feet and generally getting in the way. Twice he had to push her aside when he was nailing a board in place. He was about to put her in the house to save both her and his sanity when she trotted off into the garden.

“Smartest thing you’ve done all day,” he muttered.

It wasn’t until he’d finished repairing the second-last hole that it occurred to him to wonder where she’d gone.

He tucked his hammer into his tool belt and went looking. He spotted her the moment he rounded the shed. More accurately, he spotted them. As in plural. As in, two dogs, one silhouette.

“Hey!” he yelled, outraged.

He’d let Strudel out of his sight for five minutes and

Doggy Juan from next door had taken advantage. Unbelievable.

Neither Strudel nor Mr. Smith paid him any attention, the two of them being very occupied with being humped and humping, respectively. Samael searched for the garden hose. It took him half a minute to find it, and by the time he’d dragged it across the lawn Mr. Smith had finished and was simply standing beside Strudel, panting and looking pretty bloody pleased with himself.

“Don’t grin at me, mate. You’re in big trouble.”

“Mr. Smith? Smitty? Here, boy. Mama’s got a bone for you.”

Cassandra’s voice floated over from her yard. Samael scooped up her miscreant dog and strode to the fence. Holding the dog under his arm, he gripped the top of the fence and stepped on the cross rail so he could see into her yard.

“He’s here. Again.”

Cassandra stood on the deck, once again dressed in expensive-looking workout gear. She frowned when she saw Mr. Smith in his arms.

“I didn’t realize—”

“No kidding.”

He waited until she’d crossed to the fence before lowering the dog into her arms.

“You might want to keep him inside until the fence is secure. Since he doesn’t seem good at taking no for an answer.”

She smoothed a hand over her dog’s head. “Sorry?”

“I just caught him humping Strudel.”

“Oh.” She had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Yeah.” He was aware that he sounded like an outraged parent. Frankly, he felt like one. Strudel was barely eighteen months old. Still a puppy, really. She wasn’t in the market for the kind of adults-only behavior Mr. Smith had dished out so enthusiastically.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he was out.”

“You said that.”

Her eyebrows rose as she picked up on his tone. “I know that technically he shouldn’t have been on your side of the fence, but they’re only following their natural instincts. There’s no need to get all prissy about it.”

Prissy? Where did she get off calling him prissy after she’d shut her door in his face not once but twice and then let her reprobate of a dog run loose to do as he pleased?

He fixed her with a hard look. “Keep your dog out of my yard, okay?”

She set the dachshund on the ground and brushed fur off her body-hugging top. “It takes two to tango, you know. I bet Mr. Smith didn’t go where he wasn’t wanted.”

He opened his mouth to respond, then realized he was one riposte away from a schoolyard squabble. He released his grip on the fence and dropped to the ground.

“Keep an eye on your dog,” he said as he walked away.

The only response was silence, but he could practically hear her grinding her teeth. Good. She’d made him grind his teeth more than once in the past twenty-four hours.

Turnabout was fair play.

Strudel once again shadowed his every move as he patched the last gap in the fence, taking every opportunity to lick his hand or rub up against his leg.

“Don’t go sucking up. You barely know the guy. A little bit of restraint wouldn’t have gone astray.”

Strudel eyed him uncomprehendingly and he reached out to scratch her behind her ear. How could he resist that face?

Once he’d finished with the fence, he dragged the ladder out of the shed and inspected the gutters. Sure enough, they were full of leaves and silt and he worked his way around the house, scooping dead leaves and who-knew-what-else out from the gutters. It was a disgusting, messy, smelly job, and by the time he’d reached the front of the house he was well and truly over it.

And then a car came to a stop in front of his neighbor’s door and a little girl looking exactly like him jumped out of the car with hair in pig tails and a powder blue suitcase with Barbie figures on them.

And an instant blow struck him to the gut.

She was his.