LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      Hale Crandall really ought to put on some clothes. He looked fantastic without them, though, in Connie’s opinion.

      Sweat spread a bronze sheen across his rugged chest and face, from which exertion had stripped the customary know-it-all grin. A fierce, driving leap…breath coming hard…intensity turning his brown eyes to near-black…

      Then he missed the softball, stumbled across the grass from his yard and plowed headfirst into the pansies and marigolds in Connie’s flower bed. As she drove up, her amusement mutated into annoyance at her havoc-wreaking neighbor.

      Muttering under her breath, she pulled her maroon sedan into the driveway and stomped on the brake. She yanked the door handle too hard, resulting in a chipped fingernail. Well, great! Not exactly Hale’s fault, but she felt even more irked at him, anyway.

      As she marched along the sidewalk—no sense ruining her strappy high heels or her lawn by taking the shortest route—she ignored the group of boys, assorted ages and states of griminess, who’d stopped playing to check on their ringleader. Why weren’t they spending a Saturday in June doing something useful, like studying? Although Connie didn’t have any children, she volunteered to tutor kids struggling in school, and knew how many of them blew off their assignments.

      She stopped a few feet away from her neighbor. “Look at this mess! I hope you plan to replant those flowers.” She barely refrained from adding a well-deserved, “You idiot!”

      A dirt-smeared Hale pushed himself onto the grass and retrieved a clot of nasturtiums from atop his thick, dark hair. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied with his customary sardonic edge.

      With his taste for high jinks, she thought he might plant stink-weeds. “When you’re buying

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