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“I
f you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going to pour this in your new bag.” Taylor’s head snapped up from her computer as Jenna plopped down into one of the leather armchairs on the other side of Taylor’s desk, holding her coffee cup threateningly over Taylor’s new Louis Vuitton. Jenna crossed one leg over the other and began impatiently bouncing her foot.

Calling Jenna’s bluff, Taylor did her best blank look.

“Is it Steven? Did something happen with him again? Because Monday you were a little spacey, but yesterday you were fine. But now today you’re all jumpy and…” Jenna relinquished Taylor’s bag and flailed her arms around, perfectly capturing Taylor’s rather spastic morning. “If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t even notice, but you…”

She didn’t have to continue. Taylor knew what she was going to say. Taylor was always perfectly composed. Taylor could pull an all-nighter in the office, shower and change in the locker room in the building’s fitness center, and look like she’d had a full eight hours. Taylor could take a red-eye, spend the entire flight studying a business plan and due diligence documentation, and still negotiate killer terms without missing a beat.

Yet today, for the second time this week, Taylor was jumpy and absentminded, losing track of a task or conversation as soon as it began. And once again, it was all Joe’s fault.

All because she was ferociously horny.

One would think that after last night’s bedroom acrobatics, they both would be satisfied for at least a few weeks. But no. This morning, as soon as her breathing had changed, Joe had tried to put his impressive morning erection to good use. But Taylor had held him off, determined to stick with her regular routine of an early morning run before work.

“Great, I’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.” And there he’d been, dressed in running shorts that showed off the thick, well-defined muscles of his legs and a T-shirt that hugged the massive width of his chest. As she followed him on her usual four-mile loop around the neighboring Stanford campus, she’d been mesmerized by the flexing and rippling of his leg muscles, by the high, round firmness of his ass as his pace kept him slightly in front of her. Never had she regretted the end of a run more.

And even though the dampness of her own shorts wasn’t entirely due to the run, she’d been determined to stick with her one-night plan. Last night had been a freebie, like the obscene sundae from Ghirardelli Square that she allowed herself once a year when she flew her mother out to visit. A succulent indulgence that was in no way good for her. So when Joe had pushed himself into her entryway and suggested a joint shower, Taylor had fended him off, at the time feeling very proud of her restraint.

But now she was starting to regret that decision, because all morning she’d been plagued by a tight throbbing between her thighs, an itchy restlessness that would either have to be satisfied or waited out. Taylor wasn’t sure she could afford the lack of productivity that waiting it out would require.

“You’re doing it again,” Jenna snapped, pulling Taylor sharply from her fantasies of a soap-slicked Joe pinning her up against the wall of the shower.

“What?” Taylor asked.

“Totally spacing out. Where did you just go anyway?” She waggled her dark brows suggestively. “From the look on your face, it must be nice.”

Jenna wasn’t going to be put off. And truthfully, Taylor was dying to confide in someone. Normally, she would never divulge details of her love life to a coworker, but Jenna was known in the business world for being honest, discreet, and not playing politics. Taylor knew Jenna would never use any personal information against her. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

Delight suffused Jenna’s face at the realization that she was about to receive a particularly juicy tidbit. She finger-painted a cross over her chest and leaned forward in the chair as Taylor spilled, omitting most of the more intimate details.

“That’s it?” Jenna had the nerve to look disappointed. “From the way you were acting, I thought maybe you were doing one of the partners.”

Taylor’s nose wrinkled at the thought. “Ew. Besides, they’re all married.”

“Doesn’t stop most of them.”

“But, Jenna, he’s a landscaper. And now he’s my landscaper.”

“So you hired him to plow your yard and now he’s plowing you.” Jenna laughed at her own joke.

“I’m sleeping with the help. It’s so tacky.”

“This isn’t Victorian England, Taylor, and he’s hardly the ‘help.’ Personally, I think this is exactly what you need.”

Taylor scoffed. “I don’t see how that could be.”

“You’re always so worried about work, so worried about dating a status symbol. Why not have a little fun with a guy who obviously knows how to push all your buttons?”

“But this can’t go anywhere. Not only is he a gardener—”

“Landscaper,” Jenna corrected. “He’s redesigning your yard—long overdue, by the way—not dropping by once a week to blow your leaves and trim your hedges.”

“Whatever,” Taylor said. “He’s also younger than me, probably likes to go to sports bars and pick up drunk girls. It can’t go anywhere,” she repeated.

“Why does everything always have to go somewhere? Why can’t you live in the moment and have a little fun for once? You’re right, it probably won’t get serious. I doubt he wants to get involved with an uptight workaholic. But if I had a hot young guy trying to get in my pants, I’d let him until it stops being fun.”

“Am I really an uptight workaholic?”

Jenna’s mouth quirked in an apologetic smile. “Kinda. But that fun side you seem determined to hide shines through enough to make me like you.” At Taylor’s silence she said, “Why don’t you let fun Taylor out to play for a little bit? Think of Joe as a guy aperitif, sent to you from above to cleanse your palate of Steven’s nasty taste. You can worry about acquiring the status husband later.”

“I’m already thirty-two. It’s not like I have much time.”

Jenna shook her head. “A couple of weeks won’t kill you. Besides, I’m afraid if you don’t get laid, you’re going to kill this deal with Medigen. If you do that, I can’t be their new CEO.”

Taylor shook her head in combined amusement and frustration as Jenna left. She wished she had a little more of Jenna’s pragmatism and a lot more of her confidence. Unlike Taylor, Jenna never seemed to worry about doing or saying the exact right thing, yet she was incredibly successful. But Jenna was also brilliant enough that people would forgive her any social gaffes or eccentricities. Taylor wasn’t sure she could say the same.

Still, as the morning wore on, she couldn’t get Jenna’s words out of her head.
If I had a hot younger guy trying to get into my panties, I’d let him.
She had to admit, Jenna had a point. She couldn’t remember ever having sex this good, and she probably never would again. Why not indulge, give her body a little more of what it had so clearly missed?

Inexplicably, the faces of her high school friends, holding the hands of toddlers though they were scarcely more than children themselves popped into her head. Girls who had no ambition, who had settled for the first guy who came along and fooled themselves into thinking they were in love. They’d been content to stay in their small town with their small lives, never imagining that they could be more, have more.
Be careful, Taylor. Love can trap you and keep you from getting what you deserve from life,
warned that ever-cautious voice, the one that always told her to keep her eyes on the prize, to never get distracted from her goals.

Taylor stifled it. What was she so worried about? It wasn’t like she was in any danger of falling in love with Joe, so how could he possibly throw her off track? Jenna was right. After all these years of hard work and sacrifice, of always making the right choices in pursuit of success, she had the right to stop and smell the roses, if only for a moment.

She picked up the phone and buzzed her assistant. “Nina, if anyone needs me, tell them I’ve gone for an early lunch.”

Joe swung the sledgehammer, landing it with a loud, satisfying
thwack
against the cracked concrete of Taylor’s patio. If you could even call it that. Essentially a crumbling slab, it took up nearly two-thirds of her backyard, leaving the rest to be overtaken by crabgrass and dandelions. So far he’d managed to smash up about one-quarter of it, and after nearly four hours he was covered in sweat and concrete dust. The work would have gone faster with more help, but all of his crew were tied up with other clients who had tighter deadlines. Besides, he liked working alone at the beginning. It gave him time to get familiar with the space and think on what direction the design would take.

He grinned to himself as he looked around, taking in a chaise lounge, a single lawn chair, and the sad-looking plastic table that made up Taylor’s outdoor seating area. Whatever he did, it definitely had to be low maintenance. He didn’t understand how someone so clearly concerned with appearances would allow her yard to fall into such a dismal state. He shrugged, taking up the sledgehammer again. Her neglect was his gain, both personally and financially. There was another advantage to working slow: it gave him an excuse to hang around Taylor for a while longer.

He shouldn’t need an excuse, he thought, frowning, but after this morning it looked like he’d need one. That panicked look, the same one she’d had that first night he’d made her come on his living room couch, appeared the second she’d opened her eyes. She’d been polite but clearly uncomfortable when he’d insisted on accompanying her on her morning run. Rebuffing his attempts to draw her into conversation, she’d run with a fiercely determined expression, as though the run was something to be tackled with each deliberate step.

She wasn’t completely indifferent, however. When he’d kissed her in her foyer and tried to muscle her up into the shower, she’d definitely been tempted. He’d felt her nipples peaking even through the dual layers of her sports bra and T-shirt, heard the hungry little sounds in the back of her throat when he kissed her.

Taylor liked him all right, but for whatever reason she seemed determined to resist him. He whacked the concrete again, frowning as he remembered their conversation from the night before. He was pretty sure he knew why she didn’t want to get involved with him. She’d been shocked, scornful almost, of his decision to leave college. That, combined with her references to “someone like him” and “the kind of people he worked for” all added up to reconfirm what he’d known from the moment he first laid eyes on her.

Taylor was a snob. One of those women who had a very specific idea of what sorts of men she would and would not date. And men like Joe, who worked with their hands and didn’t have a formal college education, were most definitely on the “not” list.

He paused to take a swig of sports drink. Though the patio was shaded, he felt like he was going to melt in the noonday heat. The real question was, why the hell was he so determined to change her mind? Joe wasn’t vain, but he knew he was a good-looking guy. If Taylor wasn’t interested in him, he could find plenty of women who were. But he couldn’t help grinning as he thought about the way she tried so hard to keep her cool, while her blue eyes burned hot and practically ate him alive. Then there were those brief moments when she let her guard down; he caught a flash of something warm, something brilliant, that drew him in, left him feeling like he’d been sucker punched in the gut. It was crazy. Even before he’d met her, he’d been drawn to her, like she’d flipped some primitive switch inside him that instinctively knew she was perfect for him, despite all evidence to the contrary.

And then there was the sex. He closed his eyes, savoring the memory of her sliding off his lap, pulling his pants down far enough to free his cock and taking it into her mouth right there at his kitchen table. Prissy, fastidious Taylor, who looked like she would have wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought of performing oral sex, had wrapped her plump baby-pink lips around him and licked him greedily with her tongue as though his cock was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted. When his orgasm had hit with all its toe-curling force, she stroked him hard with her fist, sucked him deep into her throat until she’d wrung him dry of every drop of come.

Joe opened his eyes, trying to scour away the images that brought him to rock-hard, uncomfortable attention. Smashing concrete was a good way to work off sexual frustration, but in this condition he might actually do himself harm.

Then, as though he’d conjured her, Taylor emerged from the sliding-glass door off the kitchen. He rubbed his eyes, not entirely convinced that his brain wasn’t plaguing him with an erotic hallucination.

Her pale, slender hands went to the buttons of her blouse, efficiently unfastening them to reveal an inch-wide swath of silky ivory skin. He swallowed hard, deciding that if this was a hallucination, he’d happily succumb to insanity. As she neared, he caught a whiff of her perfume, fresh and floral, reminding him that he was in sore need of a shower. The intrusion of reality was enough to jump-start his brain. None of this made sense. After the cold shoulder this morning, why was Taylor here, stripping in her backyard when she should be at work?

“What’s going on, Taylor?” he asked bluntly. “After this morning, I expected to have to work a lot harder if I wanted to get you naked again.”

Her hands faltered, the seductive curve of her mouth turned uncertain. Clearly she hadn’t expected any questions. “I don’t know about you, but after this morning, I found myself…unsatisfied.” Her voice was low, husky, but he could hear the tremor of nerves underneath. There it was again, another glimpse of vulnerability that took his breath away, obliterated any questions about her motives he might have harbored.

Taylor was incredibly beautiful but obviously had—in his mind—baseless doubts about her sexual allure. He wanted to find her idiot ex-boyfriend and pound him for shaking her confidence. On the other hand, he should maybe thank him, since the idiot’s rejection meant Taylor was using Joe to build up her sexual self-confidence. And Joe wasn’t above being used, especially by a gorgeous woman who seemed to have an inner nympho begging to be set free. If she let him have her body, someday he might also have her heart.