One Summer’s Knight

there was something intensely erotic about the sight of that particular woman pushing a powerful machine around his backyard. She’d only been at it a few minutes, but she was already drenched with sweat, her face flushed and shiny with it, loose strands of her hair lying on her neck and cheeks in wet corkscrew curls, the soft material of his old shirt sticking to her body in dark patches. Her body moved with the unstudied grace of the naturally strong and healthy, the muscles in her legs bunching and relaxing as she pushed and pulled and maneuvered the heavy machine through tight spots, the sunlight turning the fine hair on her thighs to golden down…

Riley’s stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t gotten around to eating the breakfast Summer had left for him. But it wasn’t blueberry waffles he was hungry for, not then.

Scowling, he turned and stalked back into the gardener’s shed. There was no point in trying to go back to his study, not with the cat having usurped his newspaper, and with Summer putt-putting around out here he’d never be able to stay inside and concentrate, anyway. And, if he remembered right, he’d seen-yes, there they were-a pair of hedge clippers. Old-fashioned hand clippers, nothing power-driven, thank you-his ego had taken about all the beating it could stand for one day. He took them down from their hook and gave them a few practice snips to make sure they were in working order, then carried them outside.

Way off down in the back beyond the wooded slope, he seemed to recall having seen some bushes that had looked as if they could use a trim. Hell, he thought, might as well have a go at them, since the morning was otherwise shot. Lord knew he could use the exercise-not to mention a way to work off some of this unanticipated sexual tension-and there was the additional perk that, since there were so many trees down in that part of the property, he’d be working in the shade.

The bushes-he had no idea what kind they were, but they did have some rather nice flowers in the spring-were as rampant as he remembered. Obviously the gardeners hadn’t been in this part of the grounds in a while, which made him feel the more valiant and enterprising, precisely what his bruised male ego needed. Riley surveyed the clump and mapped out his plan of attack. He’d start at the sunny end, he decided, then work his way toward the trees and into the shade. Whistling tunelessly, he set to work.

He’d been at it maybe fifteen minutes or so, long enough to work up a good sweat, and was maneuvering underneath a good-size magnolia, whacking away and feeling good about the progress he was making, when all of a sudden the bush he was chopping on emitted an earsplitting shriek. That startled him so he let go of the clippers, which landed, points down, on his instep at the precise moment a voice a few inches from his ear yelled, “Hey, you’re cutting down my fort!”

Pain stabbed through his foot. He straightened violently, unfortunately right underneath a sizable branch of the magnolia tree. Riley’s head met the branch with a considerable amount of force, and then for a short while his world became mostly bright lights and dark blotches.

When his senses returned to normal function, he found that he was lying on his back in some prickly leaves, gazing up at the face of a small, blond angel, who kept poking his cheek with her finger and saying solemnly, “Are you dead? Huh? Are you dead?”

Before Riley could put together an intelligent response to that, the face abruptly vanished. He heard the crunch of footsteps and the crashing of underbrush, and a voice of diminishing volume yelling, “Mom! Mom! Mr. Riley’s bleeding!”

Was he? Riley sat up slowly, swearing as he fought off a wave of nausea. Yes, dammit, he was; he could feel the trickles working their way through his hair in several directions-toward his forehead, his ears, even down the back of his neck. Damn. In another minute he was going to look like an ambulance case. There were already spots of blood on his shirt. He groaned, as much in mortification as in pain, as he pulled the shirt off, wadded it up and pressed it against his head.

As if that weren’t enough, his foot hurt like bloody hell. He was wearing an old pair of canvas boat shoes with no socks, which was what he always put on for his Saturday of reading and relaxation. He knew he should have changed into heavier work shoes before tackling those bushes. But he hadn’t And as a result, it appeared he’d stabbed himself in the foot with the damned hedge clippers. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at the result.

Summer was plowing methodically up and down the lawn when she caught the flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. She cut off power to the mower, wiped sweat from her eyes with her shirtsleeve and said sternly, “Hey-what’s the rule about lawn mowers, kiddo? We wait-” Then she lowered her arm and got her first good look at her daughter’s flushed and sweaty face. Alarm narrowed her focus instantly. Bending closer, she said, “Honey, what is it? What’s the matter?”

Helen was shaking her head and gasping like a netted fish. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, Mommy. You have to come quick, Mr. Riley’s hurt because I yelled and he got scared and poked himself with the scissors and then he hit his head and now he’s just lying there on the ground bleeding and I don’t know if he’s dead, but ’cept his eyes are open-”

“Wait,” said Summer. “Slow down. Take a breath. What are you talking about? You said Riley’s bleeding? Where?”

Helen turned and pointed. “Down there.”

“No, I mean-oh, gosh, never mind-”

David arrived on the scene just in time to inquire in a superior tone, “Oh, boy, what’d she do now?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Helen wailed, scarlet-faced. “He was gonna cut down my fort! So I just screamed, and then he said a bad word and dropped the scissors on his foot and then he jumped, and bumped his head on the tree real hard! But I didn’t mean to hurt him, Mommy, I didn’t, I didn’t!” With that she turned and ran for the house as fast as she could go.

“Hey-” David yelped. “What’d you do to Mr. Riley? You better not’ve hurt him-darn you-hey!” And he took off after his sister.

For a second or two as her eyes followed her offspring, Summer hesitated. Her mother’s radar definitely sensed trouble. But obviously, “lying on the ground bleeding” had precedence over a possible sibling tiff. “Down there,” Helen had said. Summer sighed and started across the grass. After the first few steps, she broke into a run.

Riley was sitting up when she found him, to her extreme relief; okay, Helen did have a tendency to exaggerate, but still… He had his back propped against the trunk of a magnolia tree, one leg drawn up, the other straight, and Lord help her, he’d taken off his shirt. He’d wadded it up and was holding it pressed to the top of his head. And yes, she could definitely see bloodstains on it.

Summer slowed her steps, asking her heartbeat to take its cue from them and do the same. But for some reason it only seemed to accelerate as she drew closer to the injured man. For God’s sake, what was the matter with her? Had it been so long since she’d seen a grown man’s naked torso up close and personal like this? Or was it just that it was this man’s body? This, after all, was Riley Grogan, her lawyer; the oh, so elegant man-about-town Riley Grogan, whose unclothed body she would never in a million years have expected to see.

Oh, God, especially not like this. Alone with him in hot, damp, shady woods that smelled like the dawn of time…his smooth, tawny skin-not suntanned so much as naturally olive-toned-shiny with sweat and speckled with blood, flecks of decayed leaves and bits of grass clinging to the dark hair that patterned his chest and torso, the muscles of his shoulders and belly taut and quivering…

“Well,” Summer said in a voice she had to struggle to keep steady, “you’re alive.” Riley opened one eye and regarded her morosely as she ducked under a limb of the magnolia. “Helen’s sure she killed you.”

He gave a short gust of laughter. “It’s a wonder she didn’t-damn near gave me a heart attack. Scared the… you-know-what outta me when she screamed like that. Thought for sure I’d got her with the damned clippers.”

“How bad is it?”

He hissed and said “Ouch!” when she lifted up an edge of the bloody shirt, then continued in an airless mutter as she bent over him and began to explore his scalp, combing through the soft, dark thicket of his hair. “Well, it rang my bell, that’s for sure. Must’ve opened a cut, because it’s bleeding quite a bit, but I think it probably looks worse than it is-sure did put the fear a’God into your daughter, anyway… Hey-” he drew back, laughing silently “- how come your hands are shaking? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“An animal doctor,” she reminded him. “Hold still, please. I’m not used to working on humans.” His body was so hot she felt on fire…his scent burned like brandy in her throat.