"Seasons Change"
By Sister Rose
Rated R
Note: This is a sequel to my AU story "Out of Season." It picks up about four years after that one ended. It is not completely necessary to have read that piece before you read this one – but it would probably help.
All thanks for this story should go to famous99, who kept writing me prodding little notes, asking oh-so-casually what I was working on. Then she proofed it for me. Thanks, famous!
The characters of "The O.C." belong to Fox, and no infringement of those rights is intended in this fictional work.
Chapter 1
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Summer was talking on the telephone.
Well, she HAD been talking on the telephone. Until the loud motor roared up right under her living room window.
"I can't hear you any more, Seth," she said. "I'll have to call you back later after I finish tearing some fool's head off."
"Hey, I thought you were all through with the rage blackouts," Seth said.
"I can't hear you," Summer said, "and since I can't hear you, I can't do what you say. Go boss your boyfriend around, not me."
She dropped the telephone receiver in its cradle on her way to the window.
She didn't really want to kill anyone today, just maim them a little. Not so much that they couldn't work. It was a Saturday, after all. Just enough so they would remember her. She liked having the lawn maintained by someone not herself. Mowing grass was SO not her.
She looked out the window onto a pair of broad, strong shoulders wearing a thin undershirt. Mowing grass was SO sweaty, she thought. Movingly so. Movingly mowing. Mowingly moving. Hmm. Enough of that. Moving on.
So. She moved toward the back door of her house, humming. Everyone at work had been sensible for the last week, giving her no targets for a righteous ripping. If she didn't let some bile out now and then, it built up, like shower scum. She didn't need soapy residue on her soul, thank you very much, so she released her temper regularly.
Summer stopped at the door for a pair of clogs. She looked at the edges and bottoms as she slid the shoes over her toes. Were they looking a little worn? Maybe she should get a new pair of garden clogs. Or maybe not. It wasn't the best use of her clothing discount, and the only people who ever saw her in them were Seth and Luke and her dad and her stepmother. And Zach six months ago.
OK, check that. New garden clogs, first thing Monday. This pair was headed for the garbage. As soon as she finished peeling a strip of hide off a miscreant.
Summer charged through the door, letting it slam behind her. No sense in having solid-wood doors if you couldn't slam them now and then.
The slam wasn't loud enough to disturb the man wielding the string trimmer by the back door. He jumped when she tapped him on the shoulder, cutting off the string trimmer's motor as he turned around.
"Who's in charge?" she said, saving her wrath for the deserving rather than the unfortunate.
"No habla," the string trimmer operator said.
"Donde esta el senor?" Summer said slowly.
"Alla," the man said, following it with a bunch of words that Summer didn't know. That was the trouble with two semesters of Spanish. You learned enough to ask the questions but not to understand the answers. Luckily, the man pointed.
Umm. Toward the sweaty shoulders Summer had spied earlier. Score! She had always liked sweaty, working men. She could ogle Mr. Brawny Shoulders while giving him a well-deserved piece of her mind.
Summer marched toward him around the edge of her new swimming pool, the roar of the pump motor too loud for Mr. Shoulders to hear his impending doom.
She tapped him on the shoulder then moved her hands to her hips, the better to look menacing. People who are only 5-foot tall have to take every advantage of body language. She had learned that at her job, along with an assortment of other unpleasant realities about women in the workplace.
Mr. Shoulders glimpsed her as he turned around, because he turned back and made a slicing motion with his gloved hand across his throat toward the man on the other side of the pump. He turned back around and took off his gloves and his safety glasses, dropping his blue eyes to the ground in front of her.
Summer knew that pose instantly. She knew those shoulders. She knew those blue, bluer, bluest eyes. She knew every bit of that hard body intimately, including the soft, soft heart. She knew him.
"Atwood," she breathed.
