Real Men: Rugged Rebels: Watch and Learn / Under His Skin / Her Perfect Hero

“Sorry for the intrusion, Ms. Jacobs,” he said, his voice low and as smooth as her worn wood floors. Still, her throat contracted in alarm.

“How do you know my name?” Her maiden name … her old name … her new name as mandated by a formal order in the divorce papers.

“It’s on your mail,” he said, extending a white envelope. “I found this blowing around in my yard.”

She took the long envelope, feeling contrite. “Oh … I must have dropped it. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He nodded curtly and made a movement to go, but after her abrupt greeting, she felt compelled to reach out to him. “Did you say your yard?”

“I’ll be living in the house for about a month, until it’s ready for resale.”

So he was planning to turn a quick profit, then be on his way. “It’s a beautiful place,” she offered.

He nodded. “I’ve had my eye on her for a while, but it took some time to close the deal.”

Speaking of eyes, he had nice ones. The color of raw umber thinned with the tiniest amount of golden linseed oil. She hadn’t thought of her paints in years. “I’ve always admired the bones of the house. I’m glad someone thinks it’s worth renovating.”

“Chev Martinez.” This time he extended his bronzed hand.

After a few seconds’ hesitation, she put her hand in his. “Gemma Jacobs.” Her old name—her new name—rolled off her tongue with astonishing ease. Conversely, the physical contact set off distress signals in her brain. His hand was large and callused, but his grip was gentle … the hand of a man who was accustomed to coaxing a response from whatever he touched. Awareness shot up her arm, and she realized with a jolt that he was looking at her with blatant male interest. She withdrew her hand, suddenly conscious of her appearance, sans makeup and wedding ring. She wasn’t sure which made her feel more naked.

“Do you live here alone?”

She knew what he was asking—if she was single … available. According to the papers she’d just received, she was indeed single, but was she available?

The sounds of summer imploded on them. The buzz of the honeybees drawing on the neglected ginger plants, the caw of birds perched in the fan palm trees overhead. “Yes, I live here alone,” she said finally.

Another nod. “If the construction noise disturbs you, let me know.”

“I will.”

“Guess I’d better get back to work.” He half turned and descended her porch steps.

“So … you’re in real estate?”

His smile was unexpected, white teeth against brown skin. “No. I’m a carpenter, but I sometimes flip houses. How about you?”

An expert wife. “Unemployed art historian, which is why I fell in love with your house.”

“Maybe you’d like a tour sometime.” He was backing away, but still looking at her—all of her.

“Maybe,” she said, hedging. Now that he was out of arm’s reach, she was regaining her composure. There was something dangerously magnetic about the man. In a matter of minutes, he’d demonstrated an uncanny knack for extracting the truth from her.

He lifted his hand in a wave and walked away, his long legs eating up the ground. From the safety of her shade-darkened porch, Gemma watched him cross her yard to his, drawn to the way he moved with athletic purpose. His broad back fell away to lean hips encased in dusty jeans with a missing back pocket. He stopped next to a silver pickup truck parked in the broken-tile driveway and from the bed lifted a table saw, stirring the muscles beneath his sweat-stained T-shirt. He carried the unwieldy tool to the front door of his house and disappeared inside.

Gemma wet her lips, conscious of a foreign stir in her midsection—arousal?

Then she scoffed. That was impossible.

Stepping back inside, she closed the door and turned the dead bolt lock for good measure. Her reaction was mere curiosity … and pleasure that the house next door seemed to have acquired a good caretaker for the time being.

She liked the way he’d referred to the house in the feminine sense, as if he were restoring honor to a once-grand lady. The affection in his voice for something that he’d been willing to wait for left Gemma warm and wondering. Between his benevolence and his … bigness, the man was an intriguing addition to the local scenery.

Not that she knew many of her neighbors. Even though she and Jason had lived in the neighborhood for two years, their social circle had remained with Jason’s law cronies and state government associates. Gemma had made a few acquaintances while working in her flower beds, but nothing past small talk and vague promises to get together sometime for a cookout. She’d known that if Jason won his bid for attorney general, they would be relocating anyway.

Now it looked as if she’d be living alone at 131 Petal Lagoon for the foreseeable future.

She sighed and glanced at the envelope her neighbor had handed her. Her maiden name and the street address were typed neatly in the dark font of a laser printer. The return address was a post office box in Jacksonville—no doubt a mailing from Covington Women’s College.

Gemma gave a wry smile and tossed the envelope onto the table with the rest of the mail. She’d have to defer her annual donation to her alma mater until after she found a job and paid down her bills. With that goal in mind, she retrieved the bundled newspapers. While the logistics of finding a job seemed overwhelming at the moment, the idea of having her own career sent a flutter of nervous anticipation through her chest. How long had it been since she’d given her own ambitions more than a passing thought?

Since before Jason … since college.

Squinting, she tried to remember her goals before she had allowed herself to be absorbed into Jason’s life plans. They must have been flimsy, she acknowledged ruefully, if she had been so willing to cast them aside. There had been many trips to art museums, she recalled, to make notes on traveling exhibits that she might never get to see again. Where were her journals? And she’d volunteered her services to catalog tedious bits of obscure collections that might or might not prove valuable someday, such as hand-drawn elevator door designs from the late 1800s and the tools used by mason workers to cobble the streets of Saint Augustine. Being around old things comforted her—the permanence, or at least the history, of objects made her feel as if everything in the world had some significance, herself included.

But the last time she’d been to an art museum had been for a political fund-raiser, where bleached smiles and glad-handing had overridden the more meaningful backdrop.

She opened a week-old newspaper and, after glancing over the headlines that she’d missed, turned to the Help Wanted ads.

“Art, art, art,” she murmured, skimming the columns with her finger, thinking that a curatorial position would be nice, or something in art preservation. Or maybe teaching. Her finger stopped on an ad for an executive assistant for the director of a local museum. She smiled—maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all. The job description sounded interesting and challenging. Then she skimmed the requirements and pushed her tongue into her cheek. A master’s degree, two to four years experience, and proficiency in computer programs she’d never heard of.

Still, it was worth a phone call. She dialed the number listed and after a series of automated selections was finally connected to a live person in human resources who informed Gemma that the job had been filled through an employment agency the same day it had been listed.

After browsing the ads of other, less appealing jobs available in the “arts” field and realizing that she was woefully underqualified for all of them, Gemma pushed to her feet. Crossing the kitchen, she fought a panicky feeling that was becoming all too familiar lately—the feeling that the exit she’d chosen in life had no reentry back onto the freeway.

In a word, she felt … stupid. And angry with herself. Thirty-two years old and she was suddenly ill equipped to live her own life.

Hoping that a pot of java would improve her outlook, she filled the coffeemaker and listened to it gurgle as she stared out the window at the house next door. With its shutters, doors and windows thrown open, the house looked vulnerable. Indeed, it seemed to be sagging in self-consciousness, as if the old girl were resigned to the idea that before she could be restored, she first had to be stripped of her pride.

And from the dust clouds buffeting out of the second-story windows, Chev Martinez appeared to be the man for the job. She craned for a glimpse of him, but the rude beep of the coffeemaker interrupted her idle musings.

Which was just as well.

CHEV MARTINEZ PAUSED and leaned on a push broom to allow the dust in the room—and in his head—to settle. He’d been anticipating this day for months, since he’d first spotted the Spanish-style house sitting abandoned, a fading exotic bloom in an otherwise bland but upscale neighborhood. Since that time, he’d driven by countless times, just to reassure himself that the place was still standing, still waiting for him.

And he’d become accustomed to seeing the fresh-faced blonde next door tending to her flower beds. He’d seen the husband’s name on the mailbox, knew the man’s title and position, and had tried to put her out of his mind. But there was something about the woman that spoke to him—the grace of her lithe body, the big hats and colorful gloves she wore gardening, the fact that she always looked as if she were humming.

She was … happy. Chev had envied the man who came home to her sunny smile every day, had imagined that she possessed a wicked sense of humor and was a great lover. The kind of woman who presented a proper appearance for the political scene and her suburban neighbors, but came undone in the privacy of her own bedroom.

When he’d pulled up today, he’d known something had changed. Her yard was untended and newspapers were piled on the porch. Her house was dark and quiet. His first thought was that she and her husband had taken an extended vacation, but then he’d seen a light go on in an upstairs room, had seen her solitary figure moving around. Knowing she was there had left him feeling antsy all morning. Finding the stray letter in his yard had given him a legitimate reason to knock on her door, but he’d paced around like a kid before working up his nerve.

With good reason.

Seeing her up close had sent his vital signs galloping. Her red-rimmed eyes and damp cheeks had confirmed his suspicion that something was wrong, and the tan line on her ring finger had given him a clue as to what. Her response that she lived alone cinched his suspicion that the woman’s happiness had been brought to a halt by a sudden end to her marriage.

The knowledge both saddened and unnerved him. He’d met plenty of women for whom he’d felt a physical attraction, but there was something so … appealing about this woman that it disarmed him. He could see in her eyes how broken, how vulnerable she was, and while his first instinct was to get close to her, he didn’t want to get involved with a woman who lived only a few steps away from his work site … and who was still holding a torch for her ex. Besides, he was only responding to the wild fantasies he’d spun about the woman. She was probably nothing like he’d imagined.