She smiled up at him, dazzled by his gorgeous brown eyes, the darkly tanned skin, the scent of freshly cut grass and the ripple of muscles under her hands.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your hose.”

“Is that like a metaphor or something?”

“Or something.” He kissed her nose and then her lips, lingering for a full minute of pure lip-on-lip contact. “I gotta go.”

She let her hands drop from his shoulders. “I know.”

“I’ll see you around, Jenny the lighthouse keeper.”

“See you around, Alex the lawn mower.”

He kissed her again and was gone, leaving her to sag against the wall as she tried to comprehend what had just happened here. Jenny reached under her tank to adjust her bra, which rubbed against abraded nipples. Through the window, she watched his long stride eat up the yard as he made his way back to the beast. When he bent to retrieve the discarded headset, she zeroed in on the flex of his ass as a bead of sweat rolled down her back.

She might’ve never done anything like that before, but she sure did hope she’d get to do it again. Soon. After all, the grass needed to be mowed regularly, right?

Jenny blew out a deep breath and tried to find her scattered senses as she went upstairs to check on the brownies she’d put in the oven for the lunch she and some of her friends were taking to Sydney Donovan, who’d recently had surgery. Thankfully, the brownies hadn’t burned while she was heating things up with Alex in the mudroom.

Alex… She liked his name. She’d always liked that name. Naturally, she was filled with curiosity about him. Who was he? What was his story? At their age, everyone had one. Some, she knew, were better than others. Of course, she could ask her friends, who would probably know every detail about him and his life. But as she took the brownies out to cool, she decided she’d keep this morning’s interlude to herself. Who knew if it would happen again, and her friends had gone to so much trouble to arrange the dates with Mason and Linc and were working on others. Why would she sacrifice the chance to meet some nice guys because of what would probably turn out to be a one-time lapse in judgment with the lawn guy?

She wouldn’t. It would be stupid to share what’d happened with Alex with her friends. First of all, she’d hate for them to think she was loose or easy, which she wasn’t. At all. Or at least she never had been. Until today. Anyway, she didn’t want them to think she was that kind of girl, and she didn’t really want to be that kind of girl.