Thunk.

It felt good so she did it again

Thunk. Thunk.

Twice.

'That's gotta hurt.'

'And your point is?'

'Just sayin'.'

If shed ever put any thought into it, she might have thought that the front of her refrigerator would be cold, but it wasn't. It felt smooth and cool but definitely not cold. That's because it's insulated, you idiot. The slight mechanical hum vibrating through her skull was pretty soothing though.

Sam finally pulled her head back from the front of her refrigerator and turned towards the back door. Silhouetted by the light behind, he was just an outline on the other side of the screen door.

'Hi.'

'Hi.' He paused. 'Um, I knocked on the front door but you mustn't have heard me.' Nope, can't think how I might have missed that at all. 'I've finished up the front yard and just wanted you to come have a look before I went. See if you wanted to schedule something more regular?'

Sam resisted the lure of the refrigerator against her frontal lobe again and moved towards the door.

'Okay, let's do this. What I saw before looked pretty good.' What? Where the hell did that come from? She rushed on, 'I mean, your work looked pretty good. You obviously know what you're doing, attention to detail, careful when it matters, diligent.' She was rambling but her mind was on auto-pilot. Carter! Get a grip! His face was too shadowed for her to see the grin but she could hear it in his voice when he spoke.

'Yeah, I've been told that before.'

Sam pushed on the screen door, making him step back a pace and put out her right hand. 'Sorry. I'm not normally this … 'she couldn't come up with the words to adequately describe her current emotional state of play. Crash & Burn, Carter, Crash & Burn. '… well, whatever, Sam Carter, pleased to meet you.'

His own hand came up to meet hers, hard elegant fingers sliding along her palm before he took it in his firm grip. Wow! 'John Owen, pleased to meet you Mrs Carter.'

She could still hear the grin but it wasn't enough to stop her rising to the bait. 'It's Sam and it's not Mrs, it's Lieutenant Colonel Doctor.' His palm was dry and warm, even though she could see the sweat beading across his shoulders.

Releasing her hand he straightened and shot her a snappy salute. 'Yes Ma'am. Sorry, Ma'am. Won't happen again, Ma'am.'

'Very funny. If you've met Major Reynolds then I suspect you already knew that?'

'Might have.'

She let it drop. 'Anyway, it's Sam. When I'm not at work, it's just Sam. Let's go see what you've done out the front.'

……………………..

'Wow! This is amazing!' And she wasn't kidding; he'd done a really good job on the front of her lot. The grass was neat and he'd even trimmed the edges. The poor, strangled hydrangea bush had also been given some space and she noticed he'd removed a couple of dried out branches and some dead flowers from last year she hadn't quite got around to dealing with. 'Okay, I'm impressed. If you can do that in an hour, let's say I get you in for a couple of hours a week and you can do the back as well?'

'Well, I wasn't gonna say anything but now you mention it, your back-yard was kinda making the front look well kept.' She tried to fix him with a gimlet stare that would have had Siler sneaking for the door, but he wouldn't make eye contact with her. 'Sounds good to me. Does it matter which day I swing by?'

She gave up on the death glare. 'Not Really. You're lucky if you can catch me in most of the time. Saturdays are probably best and I'll just make arrangements with Mrs Reynolds to pay you if I know in advance I'm not going to be around.'

'Cool. See ya next Saturday then, Sam.' With a final grin and a vague wave he turned and headed back to his truck.

Don't watch his butt, Carter, take the moral high ground here.

With a resigned sigh, Sam's eyes were drawn to the play of muscles down his back and the little dimples just above the point where the low slung khaki's hung off his hips. Her mind drifted and she wondered idly if his tan went all the way down. It was only when he went to pull the door shut that she realised he must have been watching her in the rear view mirror on the open door. And he certainly wasn't doing the studied nonchalance thing any more. Smug bastard.

Sam ground her teeth, hoping the sun behind her would shield the stupid blush she just couldn't seem to control around the boy (That's good, Carter, live the denial. It's always worked before, right?) and swivelled on her bare feet to head back into the house.

The refrigerator was singing her song again.