“Stop.”

The word came out harsher than he intended, a fact that became even more apparent when the woman put both hands on her hips and shot him a feisty look. The decking shifted subtly beneath his body at the additional weight. He jack-knifed to his feet. “You can’t be out here.”

“It’s my yard,” she intoned over the music.

Jackson shook his head and tried to shoo her back into the house. “I know,” he returned, just as forcefully. “But it’s not safe with all the damage. You could get hurt.”

“I’m barely a foot from the door,” she said, refusing to budge. Man, she was infuriating.

“The deck isn’t structurally sound. Ma’am, please—”

The woman rolled her pretty brown eyes. “If that’s the case, you’d better get off it too.” Her sarcasm rang through like church bells on Sunday. Too bad for Jackson, she was right. He’d been pushing it to walk on the deck in the first place.

“Okay.” Jackson turned toward the wooden steps to get to the yard, but the now-loose decking he’d upended with his boot stood smack in his path. He started to tiptoe around it, but the adjacent boards gave an ominous groan under his weight.

“Oh, God.” The woman’s eyes went wide, as if she’d realized all at once that he wasn’t just blowing smoke. She motioned toward the house, the sleeve of her bathrobe flopping around her elbow. “I thought you were exaggerating. Okay, come this way. Don’t fall through the boards or anything.”

Jackson covered the newly damaged space in one long stride and followed her into the living room. “Thanks. That was more eventful than I’m used to,” he said, fighting to be heard over the still-pumping music.

“What?”

“I said—”But she cut him off mid-sentence, moving toward the radio to silence it with a swift crank of her wrist.

Jackson’s ears rang in the unexpected hush. “What I said was, that’s more eventful than I’m used to.”

The woman frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, pulling her chin up to look at him. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that, you know. It’s not very polite.”

She had to be kidding.

“I rang the bell, twice actually, before coming around here to check out the damage.” Jackson took a step toward her, noting that she only came up to his chest. “I can’t help it you were a little hard to miss.”

“I…I was listening to the radio!”

Note to self: the blush? Insanely hot.

“Yeah, I got that.” Okay, so he was messing with her a little. It couldn’t be helped. “Whatever that was is probably toast.” Jackson gestured to the mangled black shrapnel at her feet. Despite her tiny stature, she sure packed a wallop.

“Huh? Oh.” The woman danced up to her tiptoes, sock-feet pressing into the edge of the area rug beneath them. “That was the remote for the stereo.”

“Here, let me help you.” He lumbered toward the hardwood at the exact moment she bent low to retrieve the broken pieces, and their foreheads knocked together with a startling clunk. Her hands flew to her head, and she wobbled for a second before falling smack on her butt in the middle of the living room.

A slice of panic streaked through him from conscience to chest. “God, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” Jackson reached for her instantly, cradling her elbow in his palm even though the pain in his own was still banging away like a nine-pound hammer.. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” She blinked, and both her focus and her quick frown suggested she was indeed in top working order. “Are you?”

Relieved and dazed, Jackson bent lower to try to regain some clarity. The scent of something earthy and fresh filled his nose, like the flowers in his mother’s garden, and he blinked as he breathed it in. In her tumble to the carpet, the woman’s bathrobe had fallen all the way open to reveal that infernally sexy, nearly see-through tank top. As his eyes raked lower, Jackson couldn’t help but get an eyeful of her white cotton panties. The no-frills fabric hugged the fold where her tanned legs met her body, showing off the curvy flare of her hips with just enough suggestion to spike his blood.

Forget trying to focus. Now he just wanted to keep from passing out.

“You, uh…your, you know…bathrobe is kind of…”

Okay. While he might earn a point or two for being a gentleman, he sure as hell wasn’t going to score high in the suave category. Not that he was trying to impress her or anything. Christ, he wasn’t still seeing stars, was he?