The Player Next Door by Kathy Lyons Page B

character by any means. Not because she couldn’t put together the pieces, but because she usually didn’t care. She didn’t want anyone messing around in her emotions, why would she want to do that to anyone else?
    But Mike was someone she wanted to understand, so she put her attention to the question of him. Why was he angry? Why had he left?
    She recalled every moment of their interaction this morning and focused on his body actions, not his words. He’d been rubbing his shoulder and flexing his fingers. Okay, so that probably meant he’d been in pain. And since men were usually the less rational of the species, she deduced that he’d taken out his pain on the nearest target: her.
    Well, that was disappointing, but very human. Plus, she’d done the very same thing to him yesterday when she’d been angry at her sister, so she could hardly throw stones. And on the plus side, he’d left as soon as he’d realized his bad mood so as to minimize the damage. That was very noble of him.
    Next question: what was she going to do about it? When Edward was irritable, she would just ignore him. Eventually, he’d find something else to do other than pick at her. Sadly, she’d spent the last year of their relationship waiting for him to get over his problem and stop harassing her. She didn’t want to repeat that mistake with Mike. That meant she had to address her neighbor’s issue head-on.
    What could she do about his damaged shoulder? Short of discovering a mystical healing spell, there really wasn’t much. And though she had a thorough understanding of various magical systems, she sucked at throwing spells. At least the ones she’d tried had never worked. Which left her go-to choice for improving a man’s mood. It was a two-pronged attack which began with making him laugh and ended in sex. Either one usually worked, but in combination, it was a sure-fire approach. Assuming, of course, she cared.
    That was the biggie. Having finally ditched an unproductive relationship with Edward, did she want to start charming another man just for the hot sex?
    Yes. Because it had been really, really hot sex. So good she hadn’t even thought it was possible. Which meant she was loath to give it up the morning after discovering it.
    Ergo, she was willing to put some effort into charming Mike out of his bad mood. But how?
    Stripping naked in front of him wasn’t going to work. After all, she’d been naked this morning, and he’d still made a beeline out the door. And since she didn’t have any other seduction tricks in her arsenal, she decided to focus on making him laugh.
    Well that was easy. Everyone thought it hysterically funny when she proved herself to be clueless. She wouldn’t purposely make any mistakes. She detested women who hid their intelligence just to soothe a man, but she didn’t have to pretend anything. She was hopelessly out of her depth when it came to renovating her house. She just hadn’t cared because she’d decided to have at it anyway. So all she had to do was keep on as she’d been going and not hide her mistakes from Mike.
    Easy peezy.
    In fact, she’d start right now on her roof.
    She was up there within a half hour, making sure to wear tight shorts and an easily stripped away crop top. She tied herself off, even cleared away the debris in her backyard so nothing would trip him up as he ran to her rescue. Then she started hammering.
    And she did not make a mistake.
    Well, hell. She was pretty damned impressed with herself, even as she was sad that Mike hadn’t come around to save her from idiocy.
    No problem. There was always that afternoon. Surely he would run out to save her from dehydration or something.
    Nope. Which was fine because she had plenty of water. She also had good footing so she never fell off the roof. Not to mention the smarts to rig a pulley system to help her haul those damned tiles up to her roof.
    Wasn’t she clever? She didn’t need any man to come rescue her.
    Which ended