The Vengeance Affair

Jaz raised dark brows. ‘Such as?’

‘Such as a labourer of some kind to do the heavy work,’ he bit out impatiently.

‘Ah.’ Jaz straightened knowingly, realizing that her five feet four inches in height were far from imposing. ‘A man, you mean?’

‘Well, of course I mean a man,’ he came back with barely constrained irritation. ‘I had no idea that you intended doing all this heavy work yourself.’

‘Mr Garrett—’

‘Beau,’ he snapped.

‘Beau,’ she complied with a nod. ‘Apart from old Fred at the garden centre, I don’t have anyone working for me. I’m a one-man band—’

‘One-woman band,’ he corrected grimly.

‘And that’s the problem,’ she guessed ruefully.

‘Of course that’s the problem!’ he snapped. ‘I can’t possibly allow you to collect all this rubbish up and carry it out to the skip—’

‘I’m using a wheelbarrow,’ she pointed out practically.

‘Wheeling it out to the skip, then,’ he corrected with no show of a lessening of his impatience.

She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I realize I’m not very big, but I’m really quite strong, you know.’

His gaze raked over her scathingly, obviously not at all impressed with her height or her size-ten frame. ‘You may be,’ he allowed skeptically. ‘But there’s no way I’m going to let you clear all this lot on your own.’ He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all the rubbish still scattered about the weed-engulfed garden.

And there was no way that Jaz was going to use some of the precious money he had given her in order to hire a labourer for a couple of days to help with the clearance! Especially when she knew she was perfectly capable of doing it herself.

‘I’ll help you,’ Beau told her dryly as he seemed to read at least some of her thoughts.

But hopefully he couldn’t read the ones she was having now!

Beau Garrett, television star, urbanely elegant man, always voted in the top five in the ‘sexiest men on television’ poll that came out each year, was going to shift stones and debris like some common labourer?

Worse—he was going to shift stones and debris like a common labourer alongside her!

She may have given up any interest in love and marriage, but that didn’t mean she was immune to men, that she couldn’t be totally aware of one in a sexual way. As she was totally aware of Beau Garrett…

Top five ‘sexiest men on television’ be damned—this man was too lethally attractive for his own—or anyone else’s!—good.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea—’

‘Why not?’ he rasped impatiently.

Jaz had no intention of telling him the real reason ‘why not’ the truth being that, dressed in disreputable denims and a ragged sweater, her face hot and sweaty from lifting heavy weights, she felt about as feminine as one of the rusted bicycles she had thrown in the skip!

Not that she thought a man like Beau Garrett would have looked at her twice even if she were looking her best, but she still had her pride, even if he did think she made ‘a scarecrow look well dressed’.

No matter how determined she may have been on Monday afternoon not to let him see how hurt she had been by that insulting remark, it had definitely hit a raw nerve…

She shrugged. ‘My insurance wouldn’t cover any injuries you—’

‘Insurance be damned,’ Beau Garrett cut in scathingly. ‘This is my garden, and as such my rubbish, and if I choose to help clear it away then that’s my problem, not yours.’

Jaz could clearly see the challenge in his gaze. ‘I’m not sure an insurance company would see it quite that way—’ She broke off, knowing her protests to be completely wasted as he moved determinedly to pick up one of the larger stones that littered this particular corner of the garden.

‘Where could all these rocks have come from?’ he muttered disgustedly as he dumped it into the wheelbarrow.

‘My grandmother’s rock garden…?’ she suggested with a grimace.

‘I should have guessed!’ Beau shot her a rueful glance as he continued to load the rocks into the barrow.

‘Mmm,’ Jaz nodded, blue eyes glittering mischievously. ‘She was very fond of her rock garden.’

He paused before bending to pick up another rock, one dark brow raised over mocking grey eyes. ‘Are you going to help or just stand there watching me all day?’

Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment. ‘Sorry. I—I just can’t believe you’re actually doing this.’ She gave a dazed shake of her head even as she moved to pick up one of the smaller rocks.

‘Believe it,’ he muttered through clenched teeth as he dumped another huge rock none-too-gently on top of the others. ‘Besides…’ he straightened, running his hands down his denim-clad thighs to remove the dirt ‘…you don’t seriously think, now that I’ve seen you’re managing here alone, that I could just calmly go back into the house and read the newspaper, do you?’ His expression was grim.

Jaz gave a shrug. ‘You could always try pretending that you hadn’t seen me.’

‘No,’ he bit out, ‘I couldn’t.’ A frown furrowed his brow as he looked down at all the rocks still remaining on the ground. ‘If we put all these in the skip there won’t be any room for anything else.’

‘Oh, but they aren’t going in the skip,’ she assured him happily.

His frown deepened. ‘In that case, what do you intend doing with them?’

‘Don’t worry.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not the sort to steal them to use for another job!’

Beau gave a disgusted shake of his head. ‘I didn’t for a moment think that you were!’

Jaz grinned. ‘Then, in answer to your question, I’m going to store them in the greenhouse.’

He gave a grimace. ‘The last time I looked in there it was full of cigarette butts and empty beer cans; I think some of the local kids have been using it to hold small parties!’

‘Already disposed of in the skip,’ she assured him, prevented from wheeling the barrow over the garden to the greenhouse as Beau neatly took over the handles.

‘And exactly why are we keeping these particular rocks?’ he prompted impatiently, barely breathing hard from the effort of lifting the heavy weight across the garden.

‘So that I can eventually make another rock garden.’ Jaz studiously ignored his disapproving frown as she helped transfer the rocks to the greenhouse. It was what he was paying her for, after all!

‘Right,’ he acknowledged self-derisively.

They worked in companionable silence, after that. Well…as companionable as it could be for Jaz when she was aware of everything about him, from his tousled dark hair, lithe body, to the long muscular length of his legs.

If anyone had told her a week ago that she would be working alongside Beau Garrett, of all people, she would have laughed in their faces!