“You’re joking, right?” he asked pointedly.

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Um, about what?”

“Cookie dough out of a plastic tube? Pre-made?”

I shrugged. “It’s easy and fast, and they taste fine.”

He shook his head again. “Show me to your baking supplies. I can’t stand by and watch this.”

I scowled at him. “You’re bossy for an out-of-work houseguest,” I told him.

“I have a job. Several actually. But yeah, I’m bossy. Now show me to your flour.”

I kept scowling, but I was walking from the kitchen and into the walk-in pantry while I did it. I waved a hand at the area that kind of held the baking supplies. The pantry was hardly well organized, so he would probably have to dig around to get everything he needed for cookies.

I left him to it, going back into the kitchen to pre-heat the oven and grease a cookie sheet. I put out a large mixing bowl, measuring cups, and any other incidentals I thought he might need for baking. It was the least I could do if he was actually going to do the baking.

I shrugged out of my sweatshirt, suddenly warm. It was a hundred and ten degrees outside, but you wouldn’t know it by the way I normally froze inside of the A/C’d to death house. It wasn’t normal for me to get so warm inside for no reason at all.

I was wearing a thin white tank and sitting on the counter when Tristan strolled back into the kitchen, his arms full of baking supplies.

He set them on the counter near the mixing bowl, lining them up neatly. His biceps bulged with the smallest movement. It was fascinating.

“Salt?” he asked me, his brow raised.

I blinked, trying to process what he’d said.

I pointed behind me after a few awkward moments.

He moved towards me without a word, and I saw my folly then. The cupboard I’d pointed to was directly behind me. I should have just grabbed it for him.

He didn’t seem to mind, moving uncomfortably close to me to reach behind me. His upper chest got so close to my face that I could smell him. He smelled divine, so divine that I closed my eyes for a second to take it in.

He had to reach up, so his hip grazed my inner thigh as he shamelessly moved between my legs to get closer.

I gasped.

“Sorry,” he said, backing up, the salt in his hand. I saw his eyes flick briefly down my body before he turned away, setting the salt beside the other ingredients.

“So you’re the nanny, huh? You are not what I pictured when Jerry said he had a live-in nanny.”

I glared at his back. “What did you picture?”

“I don’t really know. I didn’t have a clear picture in my head. I just wasn’t expecting someone like you.” He turned his head to flick me another unreadable glance.

I gave him a very unfriendly look, offended, and a little wounded. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing bad. Quit giving me evil eyes. Nannies just don’t usually look like you. You’re like what Hollywood would cast to be a nanny to add sex appeal to a movie. You’re sexy. Really sexy. Don’t play coy. You know you’re gorgeous.”

I stopped glaring, but I was wary of the compliments.

“Relax, okay?” he said, studying my face. “I’m not hitting on you, and I won’t. What are you, like eighteen? Way too young for me. I’m just stating facts. Normally women don’t appreciate other women as hot as you underfoot.”

I was glaring again. “I’m twenty-one, and Bev is my best friend. I’ve been working for them for two years.”

He threw up his hands, giving me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick. It just surprised me that you were the nanny Jerry was telling me about. He gave me no hints that you were, well, hot.”

“How old are you?” I asked him, still smarting from the too young comment.

“Twenty-six.”

“That’s not that old,” I told him.

“I know. Just too old to be dating eighteen-year olds, or even twenty-one year olds. Frankly, though, I’m bad with women my own age, too, when it comes to relationships, which is why I don’t do them.”

I couldn’t help it. I had to ask. “So what do you do?”

“Hookups. Brief, casual hookups. How about you?”

I shook my head, pursing my lips at him. I couldn’t quite believe that we had jumped to this already. He was a man to be careful of, to be sure. “I do relationships. No exceptions. Never had a casual hookup in my life.”

He sighed, measuring some flour into the mixing bowl. “Well, I guess that makes things less complicated. We’ll be friends, then.” He shot me a sidelong smile that was downright irresistible. I thought that this was one of the strangest conversations I’d ever had, being that we had just met. Only, it didn’t feel like we’d just met. He spoke to me like he’d known me forever, and it was hard to refuse anything he said in that low voice of his.

I nodded, giving him my own, rather begrudging smile. “Okay, friends, since we’ll be living under the same roof for the next week.”

“Okay, then. My first job as your friend will be to show you how to make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world.”

CHAPTER TWO

Tristan walked me through every step of the cookie making process, and I pretended to pay attention, but that attention kept wandering to his spectacular arms while he worked. I barely kept my composure when he used the mixer, and I watched his ripped arms vibrate with the movement of it.

“Did you catch that, Danika?” he asked me with a smile.

I shook myself out of it, looking at his face. “Huh?”

He shook his head at me, his smile widening. I found my eyes focusing on the shadow of a beard lining his jaw. I’d never found the unshaven look so attractive before.

“You’re a little troublemaker,” he told me matter-of-factly, going back to his cookie dough.

“Me?” I asked, and I wasn’t sad when he didn’t respond. We didn’t need to get into a conversation about Trouble.

He spooned little balls of his dough onto the cookie sheet very precisely. He slid the pan into the oven, setting the timer.

“Do you like to go out?” he asked me as he washed his hands.

I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off his hands. “Go out?”

He dried his hands and approached me, stopping just short of my legs. “Yeah. Go out. Like to bars and clubs and parties. What do you like to do for fun?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but my mind was pretty blank. Fun? What did I do for fun? I kept busy, that was for sure, but was any of it strictly for fun?

“I swim with the boys a lot. And I walk the dogs.”

He blinked at me, and I wanted to smack my own forehead. I sounded like a weirdo, even to myself. “You swim with the boys and walk the dogs? When was the last time you went out?”

I mulled that over, quickly coming to the conclusion that I would not admit how long it had been since I’d ‘gone out’.

I was saved from having to even attempt to answer by the swarm of dogs that invaded the kitchen. They had all followed Bev into her room, but had apparently finished saying their hellos.

Dot moved between Tristan and me, letting out a little warning growl, and taking his place to guard me.

Tristan studied the dogs, his hands moving to his hips as he took them in. “Are you going to introduce me?” he asked.

I couldn’t help it, my lip curled at him in a smirk. “You want me to introduce you to the dogs?”

He shrugged, that easy smile of his in place. “If you don’t mind.”

I pointed to Mango first. “That’s Mango. She’ll slobber on you, and get on top of you when you’re sleeping, but she’s the sweetest dog in the world.”

He nodded, moving to stroke his hands over the big dog. She was putty in his hands.

I pointed to the next dog, a little, black and white lhasa-apso. “That little one is Pupcake. She’s the easy-going one, and the boys’ favorite.” He had her rolling onto her back in seconds.

I pointed to the spotted brown coon hound. “That one is Coffeecup. He’s the youngest, and he and I are working through some issues.”

He laughed at the name, stroking the dog. Coffeecup licked his face, and he didn’t bat an eye. Son of a bitch. “Dare I ask about the issues, or is it a touchy subject?”

“It’s touchy,” I told him. The wild dog was driving me up the wall bonkers lately, and I didn’t want to explain all of the reasons why.

I pointed at Dot, who was nuzzling into my dangling leg. “This is Dot. He’s the guard dog of the bunch.”

Tristan nodded, bending down to pet the dog, his hand not an inch away from my leg. Shockingly, Dot let him, his tail wagging, no snarl in sight, close proximity to me and all. What the fuck?

“How did you do that? Dot never takes to strangers.”

He wiggled his fingers at me. “Haven’t I told you? I have magic hands.”

I rolled my eyes.

He straightened, pulling a pack of cards out of his pocket. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed them. I’d been enjoying how he fit into his jeans rather intently…

He shuffled the cards. I could tell by the way he handled them that he practiced a lot. His hands were big, which made the deft movements of his fingers more impressive, and more distracting.

He fanned the cards out, smiling at me. “Pick a card, any card.”

I arched a brow at him sardonically. “Are we really doing this? Card tricks?”

He nodded, his smile widening. “See, skeptics are my favorite. So much more room to blow your mind.”

I rolled my eyes, but I picked a card, extracting it carefully, keeping it turned away from him. I almost rolled my eyes again when I saw that it was the Queen of Hearts.

“I want a new card,” I told him.

He just laughed, shaking his head. “Just memorize it and put it back.”

I did, making sure he couldn’t see it.

He started shuffling the cards again, not even glancing down.

“I’ve seen this trick before,” I told him.

His brow furrowed, and cards started shooting from his hands, going everywhere. “Hm. You have?” he asked.

I nodded, uncertain if throwing the cards everywhere had been part of the trick.

He whistled loudly. “Mango, bring her the card.”

I glanced down at the dogs, totally lost. “What the…?”

Mango had a card in her mouth, and I bent down to her, holding a hand out.

“Don’t eat cards, silly. That’s even worse than a stick of butter…” I trailed off as I pulled the Queen of Hearts out of her mouth.

I straightened, thrown for a loop. I raised my wide eyes to Tristan’s smug ones. “How on earth did you do that?”

He wiggled his fingers at me again. His magic hands.

“Jazz hands are hardly an answer,” I told him.

That had him doubled over laughing, and me smiling, because I already loved the sound of his laugh.

“Seriously, how did you do that? How in the world did you have Mango in on the trick?”