Should have, because it would feel good to swing the thing with authority and knowledge, surprising that smirk off his face.

He wriggled the sledgehammer enticingly.

Odd how a little part of her tingled to touch it, hoist it over her head and let loose. Barbaric, yes, and suddenly very appealing.

“You know you want to,” Mac said in a low, husky dare. “Touch it.”

She cocked a brow and looked at him from beneath lowered lashes. “So…are they all the same size?”

His eyes sparked, heated and flamed.

And one question was answered…she had most definitely not imagined that intense sexual speculation.

“I thought size didn’t matter to a woman.”

She lifted a shoulder. “That’s just the story some woman started in order to appease her poor husband who didn’t have…the right equipment.”

“Hmm.” He lifted the sledgehammer again, his eyes amused now. “The right equipment, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He looked at the sledgehammer with a new light, then back into her eyes. “Seeing as I have the right equipment, are you going to go for it?”

Oh yeah, she was. For the sledgehammer, anyway.

What could it hurt? She had aggression coming out her ears; for her grandfather, who was probably sitting on a cloud laughing down at her right this very minute, for her mother, who would rather do anything than be a mother, for her dwindling bank account, for the chandelier she’d lost out on…for being alone in all this.

For just about every damn thing in her entire life, she needed that sledgehammer.

Mac held it out.

Her fingers itched.

His eyes sizzled with the dare, and a potent, heady male heat.

“Fine.” She set her hat back on her head, snatched the tool from him, then swore in a very unladylike way as the thing jerked both her arms down with its weight, slamming the heavy sledgehammer to the floor.