“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.