All she wanted was some peace and quiet. That’s why she built out here. Peace and quiet. Not to hear some damn riding lawn mower buzzing by along the fence. She looked toward the noise, but the privacy fence was too high for her to see over. Yeah, she’d put the privacy fence up in the first place because of him. Six feet tall was the standard, but she’d wanted ten. Her builder talked her down to eight. Frankie popped over all the time, attempting to flirt with her. He annoyed the hell out of her. So…up went the fence, well before the house was even finished. He was probably still pissed about that.

She sighed. They had a couple of acres over there, mostly lawn. She imagined it would take an hour or so to mow it. She tipped off her float and swam into shallow water, then took the steps out.

“Be right back,” she called to no one in particular.

Claudia was engrossed in a conversation with the two young women she’d invited. Claudia worked with Angie. The other—Yvonne—was Angie’s girlfriend of two weeks. And Cassidy had absolutely nothing in common with either of them. Truth was, she had nothing in common with Claudia either. Of course, after this weekend, she wouldn’t be seeing Claudia anymore. No, she was thinking of asking Larson out. She’d met her at a party a couple of weeks ago. A party Claudia had dragged her to.

She stopped to pull a T-shirt over her head, then slipped on her flip-flops. She contemplated going inside for shorts but didn’t want to take the time. She walked down to the edge of her driveway, punched in the code for the gate, waited impatiently for it to open, then walked along the road to the Morrison place. She stopped. Flowers? She hadn’t seen flowers here before. Seeing her obnoxious neighbor mowing in the back, she walked across the freshly mowed lawn, around the house, waving at him.

As he got closer to her, she realized the person under the ball cap wasn’t Frankie after all. It was a woman. She scowled as the woman cut the blades off but kept the mower running.

“Do you mind?” she yelled, pointing at the machine.

With an exaggerated sigh, the woman turned the mower completely off.

“Yeah…thanks.” She pointed across the fence. “I live next door.”

The woman nodded. “I live here.”

“Okay. Well, I was wondering if perhaps…you could stop mowing. It’s Saturday. I have guests out by the pool. It’s virtually impossible to have a conversation with this noise.”

The woman stared blankly at her. “And this affects me how?”

Cassidy narrowed her eyes. Really? “Yeah…so where’s Frankie?” she asked, thinking maybe she could negotiate with him instead of this woman.

“Frankie? He died.”

“Died? When?”

“Several weeks ago. Why?”