Daring Dylan (The Billionaire Brotherhood Book 2) by Jacie Floyd Page B

washing windows. All of the panes of glass sparkled in the sunlight, and
the ladder was gone. To locate her, Dylan followed the sound of MacDuff’s bark.
    He
discovered her planting a border of flowers along the garden path. The Scottie
bounded about, the end of his leash looped around a bench leg. A wheelbarrow
containing a flat of plants and a bag of potting soil sat nearby. A garden hose
curled beside Gracie’s knee and emitted a thin stream of water.
    The
afternoon sun shone with unusual firepower for a spring day in Maine. Gracie’s
skin glowed pink around the edges of her tank top. Pausing to push the hair off
her forehead with her wrist, she stretched upward with an arch of her back. The
innocently erotic gesture left Dylan’s mouth watering.
    The sudden
surge of interest annoyed him. “You’re getting sunburned.”
    She spun
around at the sound of his voice. Her knee came down on the hose. The plastic
tube undulated like an angry snake. Its nozzle spit water onto her face and
chest.
    “Well,
shoot.” Moving her knee off the hose, she pulled the soaked material away from
her skin. “Why is it that every time I’m around you I end up getting wet?”
    And just
like that, Dylan got hard. He rejected his first six responses. Any one of them
was likely to earn him a slap in the face. “Basic chemistry?”
    She
scrunched her nose in puzzlement for a moment and then her eyes widened. “Not
that kind of wet.”
    Her
grinned. “You need a towel?”
    “No,
thanks. The water feels good, and the sun will dry me off soon enough.” Turning
back to her task, she picked up a trowel and a pink flower.
    “People
were planting those all over town.” He came to stand beside her.
    “They’re
begonias. It’s this year’s spring blossom.”
    “For the
annual festival?”
    “Yep. It’s
always the weekend before Memorial Day. It used to be just an ice-cream social
for the town, but then someone came up with the idea of having a full-blown
event.”
    She worked
as she talked, digging, planting, pressing the soil, scooting down a couple of
inches, and starting the process again. Tendrils of hair escaped her French
braid and curled on her neck and cheeks. Bees buzzed in and out of the colorful
perennials, and a hummingbird sipped at a feeder suspended from the gazebo.
Small birds flapped and chirped in a birdbath a few feet away while gulls
soared high off in the distance.
    Dylan felt
a prickle in his brain and recognized this as one of those sensory moments that
would stay tattooed on his memory forever. A freeze frame in the video of life
that included feelings and scents, emotions and sounds. A déjà vu scene of
perfect clarity that he would revisit in the years to come.
    He had a
few other mental snapshots that stayed in his brain. His father, windblown and
sunburned, on their boat the summer before he died. His mother engrossed in a
children’s theater performance of The
Nutcracker Suite . Natalie with her newborn son. Uncle Arthur being sworn
into office. At the peak of Mount Everest with The Brotherhood.
    But those
instances all involved significant people in his life. The idea of retaining
the simple image of Gracie planting flowers made him squirm.
    Looking up,
she caught him staring. “You might make yourself useful. If the terms of your
trust fund preclude getting dirt under your fingernails, there’s another pair
of gloves by the wheelbarrow.”
    Dylan took
exception to her tone. Determined to dig the biggest and best hole she’d ever
seen, he surprised them both by dropping to his knees beside her. “I’ve gotten
my hands dirty before.”
    He plunged
the trowel into the soil, putting some muscle behind the motion. She leaned
back on her heels to watch and admire. “I want to ask you about my sister’s
pregnancy.”
    “I’m not an
obstetrician, you know.”
    At the look
of interest on her face, he dug deeper. “But you’re a doctor, right? And a
woman. And I’m worried.”
    “Then she
should see