Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

BENNETT

I could admit the humiliating truth.

Well, I could admit it to myself, at least. Silently . And with caveats.

The only thing still keeping me in the tiny town of Copper County, New York, this summer was the chance to ogle my very young and very… well-formed … yard man every Friday afternoon.

Caveat one: I went to some lengths to make the situation less… well, pervy. I made it a point not to actually speak to the guy and avoided him in real life, so it wasn't like I actually knew him. I mean, yes, you could argue that I lived in the world's smallest town, next door to perhaps the second-smallest, and that everyone in both towns knew everyone else, but I reasoned that knowing him wasn't the same as knowing him. You know?

Also, I kept my pervy watching to the upstairs windows while partially hidden behind the edges of curtains.

Like a fucking gentleman.

Caveat two: I owned my own company, and it wasn't so strange that I'd want to continue working from my lake house in the summer instead of moving back to the city, even if I didn't have my own personal appointment with pervitude at the end of every work week. Remote work was in demand for a reason, right? It made people happier and more productive when they could labor in a beautiful, comfortable setting. And with the summer sunshine glinting off Copper Lake right outside my window and a pool in the backyard just ready for me to take a refreshing dip, I couldn't get more beauty or more comfort than I did right here.

Caveat three: my niece Vega had only left to spend the summer in Lisbon with her mom a few days ago, so it was reasonable that I needed a vacation after being a temporary stand-in parent for nine months. Before I bought it, this lake house in Copper County had originally been my parents' vacation home and my grandparents' before that, so you might say vacationing in Copper County was in my blood. A family tradition. One that transcended my newfound voyeuristic hobby.

And caveat four, which was really the most important and inarguable caveat: summer wasn't going to last forever. There were a finite number of lawn-mowing days. And for any human attracted to the male physique—which I was—to move back to their apartment in the city and miss a single opportunity to bear witness to nature's greatest triumph would be wasteful.

Theo Ross was that triumph.

And I was not a wasteful man.

Theo was tall and lean. Muscular. Though it was only June, he was already sporting a summer tan, which made his blue eyes seem somehow brighter. The messy brown mop on his head seemed to go perfectly with his well-worn ball cap, flicking carelessly out from under the brim whether the cap was on forward or backward.

The man had no idea what he did to me. None.

When he arched, and stretched, and pulled his T-shirt up to mop his sweaty brow, I whimpered in my silent house. When he bent over to tie his shoes like he was presenting his ass for approval, I bit my fist. When he'd accidentally doused himself with water from the hose one time, making his shirt translucent and his shorts cling to him in the best possible way, I'd spilled iced tea down the front of me, ruining a perfectly good shirt.

And then there was his newest trick. The one that had begun two weeks ago when my car was in the shop. He must have thought I was away from home because after he'd finished mowing, he'd kicked off his shoes, stripped off his shirt, shucked off his shorts, and cannonballed into my swimming pool with nothing but his boxer briefs and a whoop .

I'd stared open-mouthed—literally, jaw dropped and mouth breathing—as he'd flown through the air, the afternoon sun turning his skin golden. The water splashing up had sparkled like a handful of coins tossed by an indulgent royal. He'd done that hair-flipping thing guys do—well, hot ones, at least—when they come out of the water, and my cock had suddenly remembered all the boys I'd lusted after at summer camp.

And maybe, I'd thought at the time, maybe that was all this was. Residual teen angst. Unsown oats from a time when I'd been too scared to embrace my true desires.

But then he'd done it again the following Friday afternoon, and my cock had tried peeking over the windowsill to get in on the action.

This was no teen angst. I was thirty-seven years old, for fuck's sake. And Theo, despite being younger than I was by too many years, was definitely a grown man.

What I had was adult angst, pure and simple. Lust. Desire. Throat-clogging need.

Was it due to a dry spell? Potentially. I hadn't even considered looking for a hookup after getting the call from my sister to take care of Vega and deciding almost immediately that it would be better for her to finish out her last two years of high school in a close-knit community rather than move her to my place in Manhattan. That meant it had been more than half a year since getting any kind of naked attention from another man.

But I suspected it was at least a little bit due to the tempting morsel currently shaking his ass to whatever music was streaming through his earbuds as he used long-handled loppers to clip a few scraggly branches off the junipers at the edge of my property.

I'd already banged my shin on the wooden crate Vega kept her schoolbooks in at the end of her bed, and now I was shamelessly hanging sideways from one of the pencil posts on her bed to keep from knocking everything off her bedside table.

This was the only window that provided a view of the property line where Theo was working. And he obviously needed… supervision… while handling such a dangerous tool. What if the loppers slipped and cut him? If no one was watching, who would be around to rush him to the nearest…

My thoughts scattered like cherry blossoms as Theo reached high enough to cause his shirt to ride up. The elastic band of his shorts, coupled with the one from his underwear, had inched lower as he'd worked, and now there was a scant view of…

A cleft.

I squinted my eyes at the shadow.

Yes. A definite clefty shadow. And just above it were two perfectly placed lower-back dimples.

My kryptonite.

I closed my eyes on a groan as I imagined placing my thumbs in those divots as I held his hips in front of me.

Fucking Christ.

A crash sounded from right in front of me. I blinked open my eyes to see I'd knocked over a picture frame and a ceramic mug that had been full of half-chewed pencils and pens.

Fuck.

I scrambled to pick everything up and put them back the way Vega had them. If she knew I'd been in her room while she was gone, she'd accuse me of "infringing on my personal agency, Uncle Bennett. Have a care for my human rights, if you please." And the resulting lecture on "benevolent sexism in parenting" was not worth the hassle.

Besides, this was humiliating even for me. My poor landscaping guy didn't deserve to be objectified in this disgusting manner, much less spied on by a lecherous old man.

I sighed and left the room, making my way back downstairs to my office. The Petersen-Parke job needed a complete overhaul of its southeastern elevation now that the homeowners had decided to add an outdoor kitchen.

The coffee on my desk was cold by now, so I swung by the kitchen to fill a glass of water. Clean, fresh, unlikely-to-stain-clothing water. Maybe it would douse my libido and clear my head.

I returned to my drafting table with determination. Overnight, I'd had some ideas on how to integrate the outdoor kitchen with the existing gable design. I wanted to draw them by hand first before moving to CAD.

My concentration playlist was still going strong through my Bluetooth speakers, and within moments, the energetic rhythm of Wagner's Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin had returned me to the right kind of focus to get my work done and ignore the sexy man who'd been playing fast and loose with my sexual fantasies for the past several weeks.

I worked…

Until I heard a familiar whoop followed by a splash through the open office window.

My brain wasn't in top form after all because before I knew it, I'd leapt up from my drafting table and bolted to the nearest window in time to see Theo emerge from the pool and shake his head.

His grin was wide and easy, as if the man didn't have a care in the world. While I didn't mind him using the pool, I was surprised to see him taking advantage of it without at least asking first, especially since I was obviously home now. My car had only been in the shop for a week.

It only took me a minute to remember I'd put my car away in the garage after it had come back from the shop. In a momentary burst of summer energy, I'd decided to use my bike for any transportation needs as long as the weather continued to hold.

Maybe Theo thought I was still away from home.

I wondered whether to offer him a blanket invitation to swim whenever he wanted, but in the end, I decided that conversation would inevitably be awkward and embarrass both of us. Better to simply return to work and pretend I hadn't noticed.

As soon as I moved away from the window, I heard a sharp intake of breath. When I looked back, I saw Theo staring at me. I quickly made my way to the door and around to the pool.

"It's okay," I said, offering my friendliest smile. "I meant to tell you to help yourself to a swim if you needed to cool off."

"I… I thought you were gone! Diane at the diner said she'd heard you'd gone back to the city for the summer. And your car…" He glanced back toward the driveway. "Your car isn't here."

I waved in that direction. "Garage. And it's fine. Like I said, you're welcome to use the pool. It's just me here this summer. Vega is with her mom in Portugal."

There was no doubt, given the size of the Copper County/O'Leary community, that Theo had met my niece or at least knew of her. Vega and my sister used to spend a few weeks here every summer, even before she and I had moved here full-time, and Vega was an outgoing, friendly person. The woman could make friends with a tree and often did.

"Oh. Okay. Still… I wouldn't have… I shouldn't have…" He blinked at me. His dark lashes were spiky from the water, and they set off the surreal blue of his eyes. He looked even younger than usual now that his expression was filled with apology and insecurity.

"No, no." I tried reassuring him. "It's fine. When I saw you last week?—"

His eyes widened. "You saw me last week?"

Heat flooded my cheeks. Why had I said that?

"No! I mean… yes. Well. Yes. But I liked it. No! Not that I liked it. I didn't."

"I'm sorry," he stammered.

I held up my hands, palms out in defense of my stupidity. "No. No. I didn't mean I didn't like it, just that… Fuck." I ran my fingers through my hair. "Listen. You're a nice kid, Theo?—"

He lifted an eyebrow, and the corner of his lips quirked up. "Kid?"

I nodded. "And I know yard work is hard, hot work." How was it possible to sound this pompous while inviting someone to swim in your pool?

His grin grew more obvious. "I'm twenty-four, Bennett. How old are you? Sixty? Seventy?"

I began to bluster before I realized he was joking. "Old enough," I said, sounding sixty or seventy.

He laughed, and the very air around him seemed brighter with it. "I see. Well, then. Thanks, Mister Gustafson."

I frowned. "My last name is Graham."

Theo's grin made my heart trip over itself. "No, I know. I was making an old movie reference. It was from the 1990s, so I thought you'd get it."

I closed my eyes and took a calming breath a split second before the reference popped into my head. " Grumpy Old Men ," I groaned.

His laughter lit me up. "Don't take it personally."

I shot him a look. "How am I supposed to not take it personally?"

He shrugged, causing the droplets of water still resting on his shoulder to glisten in the sun. "I'm only twenty-four, and I know the movie."

I rolled my eyes. "I guess."

"They showed it in history class," he added with a cheeky smile before turning around to find his clothes.

And that's when I noticed he was in nothing but soaking wet and very clingy boxer briefs.

Blood pooled in my dick as I made a choked sound only half-recognizable as an "okaythanksbye."

I made my way to the house and hid in an interior powder room while I lectured my inappropriate genital response on the very real implications of a sexual harassment lawsuit on a business owner's future.

It didn't work.

By the time I finally came out of the bathroom, after giving Theo plenty of time to get dressed and leave, my cock was straining against the front of my joggers.

I made my way to the downstairs bedroom and finally gave in to temptation, stripping my pants off and taking myself in hand before I even climbed onto the bed. It felt so good to stroke myself off to the memory of Theo's rounded ass cheeks, his long, lean legs, and his cheeky, teasing grin.

"Fuck," I gasped as my orgasm began rolling through me. I staggered over to the wall and reached out a hand to keep from falling into a crumpled pile on the floor next to last night's discarded pajama bottoms.

When I finally opened my eyes to search for some tissues, I saw movement outside the window.

There, standing with his mouth open and his eyes on me, was my gorgeous yard man.

When our eyes met, he lifted up a piece of paper. "Uh… I forgot to leave you this month's bill…"

Just as I was ready to find the nearest pyre to throw myself on, his mouth widened into the same cheeky smile from before. "But don't worry," he added. "After that show, I should probably consider it paid in full."

Instead of apologizing or stammering out an explanation of any kind, I did what any self-respecting person would do in my shoes.

I dropped straight down to the floor and crawled like a dumbass into the closet before slamming the door closed.