Killian Read online

  Luke holds open the door for me. "Has anyone ever told you that you need a lesson in accepting help?"

  I bristle at his words. "I don't need help, Luke Saint." I follow him into the kitchen. Olivia walks with me, babbling happily: "Saint, Saint."

  "Hah, she's like a little parrot." Luke sets a bag on the kitchen counter and starts removing food items one by one.

  "Which is why you should watch your mouth," I warn him.

  "Me?" He turns around and takes the bag out of my hands. "I think you're just as foulmouthed as I am, and that kid of yours is going to wind up talking filthier than a sailor because of it."

  "I am not!"

  He raises his eyebrows. "If you say so, Red. You've got a naughty side."

  "Wait, is that what all of this is?" I ask, gesturing at the bags on the counter. "This ‘accepting help’ nonsense? Is this your attempt to flirt with me?"

  The corner of his mouth pulls up, and he looks at me with a crooked smile that somehow makes him look more arrogant than before. When he leans in close to me, he speaks low and graveled, and his voice sends a shiver of arousal ricocheting through my body. "Trust me, Red," he says. "When I try to flirt with you, you'll know it."

  I swear that everything that comes out of this man's mouth sounds like it's dripping with sex. I remind myself that this kind of guy is exactly the opposite of what I should be looking for in a man. I should be looking for stable, not oozing-sex-from-every-pore-of-his-body.

  Clearing my throat, I pause before I speak, trying to shake off the lust that I fear will cloud my voice. "Good," I say. "Because if you were flirting, I'd remind you that I'm practically old enough to be your mother."

  Luke chortles, and when Olivia hears him laugh, she claps loudly. "Saint! Saint!" she yells before darting across the tile floor to the other side of the kitchen where she parks herself at the refrigerator, rearranging letter-shaped magnets.

  "See? She thinks that's just as ridiculous as I do," he says. "My mother. You're not that much older than me."

  "Well, I'm too old to have some jock barging into my kitchen and telling me I don't know how to cook or run my orchard."

  Luke looks down at me, his blue eyes flashing. "You're damn uppity for someone who needs something from me."

  Someone who needs something from me. My mind goes immediately to sex and I hate myself for it. "Uppity? I didn't ask you to come in here and cook. Or poke around my orchard."

  He leans in close to me. Too close. I can smell him, soap and aftershave, clean and masculine. "I wasn't poking around," he murmurs, his voice low. "And if I did, you wouldn't be complaining."

  Warmth rushes through me at the thought of Luke poking around anywhere, and I force the thought out of my head. "I don't need you, for the record."

  The way he looks at me makes me blush even harder. "We both know that's not true, Red."

  "I don't," I insist, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. "And this charming little flirting act of yours might work on girls your own age, but it doesn’t work on me."

  Luke grins. "So you admit it's charming, then?"

  "I said it was an act."

  "You said charming." He pulls coffee from his bag. "Now, can you make coffee, or is your coffee just as crap as your food?"

  I take the bag of coffee from his hand, groaning in frustration. "You don't have many friends, do you?"

  "I could ask the same thing of you, sweetheart. So why don't you just make the coffee and get out of my kitchen?"

  "It's my kitchen," I insist as I fill the pot with water at the kitchen sink. I glance over my shoulder at Olivia, who's happily pulled off all the magnets from the refrigerator and surrounded herself with them on the floor. "And you're working for me. Apparently. Which we haven't even discussed. Aren't you concerned it's slightly inappropriate, cooking your employer breakfast?"

  Luke walks up behind me, his hand on the side of the sink. His breath is warm on the back of my neck, and I swear that as soon as it hits my skin, I stop breathing. My heart thumps loudly in my chest, and the water overflows from the coffee pot, running down the sides and over my hands, but I don't move. It's like I'm completely paralyzed.

  Luke reaches around me with his other hand, shutting off the water. His arm grazes my shoulder and sends a jolt of electricity runs through my body. "This is nowhere near inappropriate, Red," he whispers, his voice quiet, his words barely even audible with his lips pressed against my ear. "Inappropriate would be if I cooked you breakfast in the morning, after you came on my tongue the night before."

  I swallow hard, my heart beating so fast I swear it's going to beat right out of my chest. Then he walks back to the counter nonchalantly, like he didn't just talk about me coming on his tongue, and busies himself with preparing breakfast. I stand at the sink for a moment, my hand gripping the edge tightly, and when I glance over at him, he looks at me and winks.

  Damn it, I think. Hiring him is a very bad idea.

  7

  Luke

  "Good morning, Autumn!" Greta calls. The front door slams and Olivia squeals, tottering headlong down the hallway. "Hey Liv-Livs!"

  "In here," Autumn calls.

  The girl arrives in the kitchen with Olivia perched on her hip and stops short when she looks at me, not even bothering to hide her raised eyebrows. "Oh," she says, smiling. "I didn't know you had company."

  "He's not company," Autumn says, shaking her head. Autumn's face flushes nearly as red as her hair, and she looks guilty as sin, like we were caught with our pants down around our ankles or something.

  Not that I haven't been thinking about what that would be like with this woman.

  There's just something about that uptight, haughty attitude that makes me want to get her to let loose. She's not even my type – too straight-laced for my taste – yet all I could think about after I left her place last night was running my hands down her sweet curves and covering my mouth with hers.

  "Greta Hayward, meet Luke Saint," Autumn is saying, her voice interrupting my thoughts. "He's the new foreman," Autumn explains. "I think. He helped with the fire."

  "I'm a smoke jumper."

  Autumn turns toward me. "You are?"

  Greta clears her throat. "It looks like you have some business to take care of." Before she walks out of the room with Olivia, she gives Autumn a wide-eyed look that I definitely don't mistake. She's giving us space because she thinks there's something going on between us.

  Autumn apparently doesn't notice that look. "You're a smoke jumper?"

  "Yup."

  "So, you already have a job," she says. "You don't need this one."

  I shrug. "I do and I don't."

  "What's that supposed to mean? God, you're infuriating."

  "I'm infuriating because I have a job?"

  "No, you're infuriating because you don't give a straight answer to any question."

  "Maybe you should stop being nosy and I'll stop being evasive."

  Autumn exhales heavily and gives me a look out of the corner of her eye – pure irritation –that just makes me laugh. "You're already the worst employee ever."

  "I can be a better one," I assure her softly, not bothering to disguise the innuendo evident in my tone.

  What the hell is wrong with me? She's older, has a kid, and is completely not the kind of woman I need to be fucking around with.

  Autumn's eyes widen, and when she stands up, I do something stupid. Reckless. I reach out and take hold of her wrist to stop her.

  "What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me. I'd think she’s pissed, except the way she looks at me with those big eyes and the sharp inhale of breath makes me absolutely sure she's not angry at all.

  I turn her hand over, slowly tracing the inside of her wrist with my finger and running it across her palm. By the time I reach the middle of her hand, her eyes close softly for a second like she's blinking, except it's just a moment too long to be just a blink. She's enjoying my touch. Savoring it.

  Her lips part