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Oh, yes, he was very definitely hot.
And she’d already been burned.
* * *
Josh Slater stared at the disaster zone that used to be his kitchen and tried to decide if he should wade into the mess or call a hazmat team. In addition to the pile of dishes from breakfast and lunch, there was a long drip of dried pancake batter on the oven door, toast crumbs on the counter, Cheerios on the floor and a pot with the congealed remnants of mac and cheese stuck to the bottom. He waded into the mess and had just filled the sink with soapy water when a knock sounded at the door.
He wasn’t expecting any more visitors—he’d already had more than he’d anticipated this weekend and wasn’t eager to add to the number. He decided to ignore the summons and pretend he wasn’t home.
The knock sounded again, louder and more insistent this time. He frowned, thinking that if a knock could exhibit personality traits, this one was brisk and impatient, very much like...Tristyn Garrett.
Because she was on his mind, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear her voice come through the door. “If you’re in there, Josh, you better open this door before I call 911 and have the fire department break it down.”
Since she didn’t usually issue idle threats, he wiped his hands on a towel and opened the door. “What are you doing here, Tristyn?”
“Nice greeting.” Her deep green eyes narrowed as they skimmed over him, silently assessing. “You look like hell.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, felt the rasp of stubble on his jaw. Apparently he’d forgotten to shave this morning. But at least he’d showered. He was pretty sure he’d showered.
Tristyn, by contrast, looked stunning. With her slender build, deep green eyes and perfectly shaped mouth, she could easily have made a fortune in front of a camera. Of course, as a Garrett, she was already heir to a fortune. Still, she worked as hard as anyone else at GSR, often exceeding even his expectations—as she’d done again by showing up at his door.
“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” he finally responded to her comment.
He saw the cool derision in her eyes fade. “Are you sick?” She took a step forward and lifted her hand as if to check his temperature.
He stepped back, forcing her to drop her hand. Since she’d been enticed by her cousin Daniel to work for Garrett/Slater Racing two years earlier, he’d been forced to acknowledge that his best friend’s little cousin was all grown up. But she was still his best friend’s cousin, which meant that even if she looked like every man’s fantasy, she was off-limits to him.
That knowledge hadn’t stopped him from dreaming of her hands on him—frequent and explicit dreams. But he didn’t want her touching him because she felt sorry for him. It was much better if they both respected the walls she’d built between them.
“No, I’m not sick,” he told her. “I’m just exhausted from trying to keep up with three very demanding females.”
As he’d expected, the casual—and yes, deliberately provocative—words erased any hint of sympathy from her pretty green eyes. Now they glittered like emeralds—hard and sharp. “Seriously? You blew off a scheduled meeting with a sponsor because you’re recovering from a weekend orgy?”
Before he could respond, a tiny voice piped up to ask, “Whatsa orgy?”
Ah, hell.
Josh cringed at the sound of the adult word coming out of the little girl’s mouth as he turned to face his five-year-old niece. “I thought you were watching a movie in the bedroom,” he said.
Emily shook her head. “I don’t like the movie—it’s scary.”
“It’s a princess movie,” he pointed out. “How scary can it be?” Although he’d never seen it himself, he’d found it in one of the half dozen suitcases his sister had dumped in his foyer along with her three daughters, so he’d assumed it was suitable for the kids.
“It’s scary,” she insisted.
“This is my niece Emily,” Josh said. “Emily, this is Tristyn.”
“Hi,” the little girl said shyly.
Tristyn crouched down so that she was at eye level with the little girl—inadvertently providing him with a perfect view down the open vee of her blouse. And the view was perfect: sweetly rounded curves peeking over the edge of delicate white lace. He didn’t look away until the lower part of his anatomy began to stir with appreciation.
“What movie are you watching?” Tristyn asked.
“The Princess and the Frog.”
“Are you at the part where the prince goes to see the witch doctor?” she asked.
Emily nodded solemnly, her big blue eyes wide and worried.
“That is a scary part,” Tristyn admitted. “But I watched the movie just a couple of weeks ago with my niece, so I can tell you that the scary part will be over soon, then there are some funny parts and the movie has a happy ending.”
Emily chewed on her lower lip. “For real?”
“For real,” Tristyn promised.
“You wanna watch the movie?” the little girl asked.
“I would love to watch the movie,” she said. “But I need to talk to your uncle for a little bit first, okay?”
“Okay,” Emily agreed, and reluctantly headed back to the bedroom where the “scary” movie was playing.
Tristyn stood up again, tugging down the hem of the short skirt that had ridden up her thighs. She had spectacular legs to go with her tempting feminine curves—an almost irresistible package.
“Is she one of the females who kept you up all night?” she asked him now.
“Yeah,” he admitted, with obvious reluctance. “Emily is my sister’s middle daughter. She has two sisters, Charlotte, who is a couple years older, and Hanna, who is younger.”
Tristyn curled her hand into a fist and punched him in the arm. She put some force behind the motion, but her effort glanced off his biceps.
He lifted a brow. “What was that for?”
“Because you’re an idiot.” She opened her hand, flexed her fingers. “Jeez—your arm is as hard as your head.”
“You’ve often accused me of being an idiot,” he pointed out, ignoring her latter comment. “But it’s never driven you to violence before.”
She just shook her head. “What is wrong with you that you would rather let me believe you spent the weekend participating in an orgy than admit you were taking care of your sister’s kids?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to disillusion you.”
“Into thinking that you had a heart in addition to your hormones?”
He shrugged. “We both know that our relationship is...safer—” he decided “—when you don’t have any illusions about me being a nice guy.”
“Don’t worry—discovering that you spent a weekend with your nieces isn’t going to change my opinion of you.”
“Good to know,” he said.
“Although I am curious about why they’re here—and where your sister is.”
“Long story.”
“And why haven’t you been answering your phone?” she asked.
“Because I can’t find it,” he admitted.
“You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “I remember answering a text message when I was scooping up ice cream for the girls last night, but I haven’t seen it since then.”
“I assume you’ve looked in the kitchen?”
He hesitated, just a fraction of a second. “Yeah.”
“That didn’t sound very convincing.”
“The kitchen is a bit of a mess right now,” he admitted. “But I’m hoping the phone will turn up as I clear things away.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” she offered, already moving toward the kitchen.
Josh followed, enjoying the sexy sway of her hips—and nearly ran right into the back of her when she halted abruptly in the doorway.
She slowly turned to face him. “This is a bit of a mess?”
“I didn’t have a chance to clear away breakfast dishes before it was time for lunch,” he admitted.
“But you have a dishwasher,” she pointed out.
“Still filled with clean dishes from yesterday.”
She shook her head despairingly. “I’ll put those away while you get the rest of this chaos organized.”
He should have refused her offer of help, but the truth was, he was grateful. He was also appreciative of the fact that every time she bent forward, he could see down her top. Because Tristyn Garrett might be a pain in his ass a lot of the time, but she had a body that seemed to have been designed to fuel male fantasies.
She removed the cutlery basket and set it on the counter, then paused. He gestured to the drawer on the other side of the dishwasher, assuming that she didn’t know where to put the clean forks and knives. But she made no move to open it.
“Um...Josh.”
He immediately shifted his gaze from the nicely rounded curve of her butt to her face, hoping like hell she hadn’t seen him looking where he had no business looking. “What?”
She lifted something out of the basket and held it up. “I found your phone.”
Chapter Two (#ub8c174aa-0563-5fca-a22d-6d945f1af627)
While his response was a harshly muttered four-letter expletive, Tristyn had to press her lips together so that she didn’t laugh. Because it wasn’t funny.
Well, it was kind of funny.
Because Josh’s phone was as essential to him as the air he breathed into his lungs and the blood that flowed through his veins. A fact that was evidenced by the apoplectic expression on his face.
He snatched the device out of her hand and marched purposefully down the hallway. Curious to see how he would handle this incident, Tristyn followed, her steps faltering when she realized she was in the doorway of the master bedroom.
Josh’s bedroom.
Part of her wanted to turn away, to let his private sanctuary remain private. Another part urged her to take a peek. That part won.
Her gaze moved around the space, noting the enormous king-size platform bed centered on the far wall and flanked by a set of night tables that matched the wardrobe, long dresser and entertainment stand. She glanced up at the ceiling—nope, no mirrors. So maybe he wasn’t quite the degenerate she’d always believed him to be.
And while there was no denying this room was a man’s domain, the decor was simple but inviting. Walls painted in a pale neutral tone that reminded her of the sand on a pristine Caribbean beach; pale floors that she guessed were bamboo and that contrasted nicely with the dark walnut finish of the classic mission-style furniture she recognized from the Garrett catalog.
Usually a man’s domain, she clarified, as her attention shifted to the three girls snuggled together on the bed, propped up on a mountain of pillows against the headboard. Emily—the one who hadn’t wanted to watch the scary movie—was on the side closest to the door. In the middle was Hanna—a preschooler, Tristyn guessed, with big blue eyes focused on the screen and uneven blond pigtails sprouting out of the sides of her head. On the far side was Charlotte—obviously the oldest sibling, also blond and blue-eyed, wearing ripped jeans and a black T-shirt with some kind of picture on the front that Tristyn couldn’t see because the girl’s arms were folded across her chest in a posture that she recognized as pure unhappy female attitude.
None of them paid any attention to their uncle. It was as if they weren’t even aware that he was facing them from the foot of the bed. But that might be because they were all mesmerized by the animated feature playing on a television screen that was probably ten inches bigger than the one Tristyn had in her living room.
Josh scooped up the remote and thumbed a button to pause the movie, which finally succeeded in drawing the girls’ eyes to him.
Charlotte opened her mouth as if to say something, then saw the phone in Josh’s hand, slid a quick glance toward the sister snuggled up beside her and closed it again without saying a word.
“Anyone?” Josh prompted.
“I talk,” Hanna offered, crawling to the end of the mattress and reaching her hand up for the phone.
“That would be great, wouldn’t it?” he said, his gaze moving over each of them in turn. “But someone put it in the dishwasher.”
His littlest niece nodded solemnly. “Make it c’ean.”
Tristyn saw a muscle in his jaw flex. “It didn’t need to go in the dishwasher to be cleaned,” he said through gritted teeth. “It was already clean.”
This time Hanna shook her head. “I dwop ice cweam on it.”
Josh blew out a frustrated breath and scrubbed his free hand over his face.
“You did say that you didn’t want to find sticky fingerprints on any of your things,” Charlotte pointed out in defense of her sibling.
“Meaning that I didn’t want any of you to touch any of my things,” he clarified.
His eldest niece shrugged. “Hanna tends to take things literally.”
“She killed my phone.”
The little girl looked up at him. “I so-wee, Unca Josh.” She reached up to take the phone, puckered her lips and kissed the screen before handing it back to him. “All better?”
He sighed again as he dropped the now useless device into the side pocket of his cargo shorts, but one side of his mouth curved in a half smile. “It’s not that easy, kiddo.” He tapped a finger to his cheek. “You have to give a kiss here to make it all better.”
She smiled and held her arms in the air. He slid one of his around her torso, and the natural ease with which he lifted the little girl onto his hip made something inside Tristyn’s chest flutter. She wasn’t usually the type to get quivery over a man, but apparently seeing this strong, sexy male cuddle with a sweet little girl was all it took for her to feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Hanna wrapped both her arms around his neck and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. Then she drew her head back, her nose wrinkling with obvious displeasure. “You’re scwatchy,” she told him.
“Yeah, I forgot to shave this morning,” he admitted, setting her on the bed again.
