Stirring Up Trouble

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Ironic, then, that he’d completely abandoned the notion of that slow discovery the minute she put her hands on him.

  Gavin shook his head and gripped the stainless steel whisk handle tighter, meting out a rhythmic tat-tat-tat-tat against the glass bowl. Yes, Sloane was a beautiful woman, and the chemistry between them was obvious. But ditching caution in all its forms wasn’t something he could do, no matter how much he liked her. He had more than just himself to think about now, and anyway, he’d gone the serious relationship route once before with disastrous results.

  Good thing the only thing serious about Sloane was that she was seriously sexy. Plus, it was plain that Bree felt comfortable with her, and having someone in his corner there would definitely help. While he wasn’t about to spill all his feelings à la Dr. Phil, having someone to talk to about the everyday stuff wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  And there was no way around the fact that she’d well and truly blown his mind in bed last night. Denying his attraction to her would be like trying to convince a magnet to stick to plastic. It was pointless, so he might as well enjoy what they had and see how things panned out.

  Maybe next time they’d pan out slower. Or twice.

  By the time Bree made her bleary way into the kitchen, Gavin’s goofy grin had returned in full force. For once, he didn’t care about wearing a little emotion on his sleeve. Or in this case, on his slightly stubbled face.

  “Breakfast?” he asked, transferring the egg mixture to the omelet pan with a flourish. “I don’t have to leave for the restaurant for another hour.”

  Bree eyed him with equal parts curiosity and disdain, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Why?”

  Nope. Not gonna let it bug me. He gave the handle a solid shimmy, swirling the egg mixture around the pan in an even layer. “Because I closed last night, so I get to go in a little later. I don’t have to be there until lunch shift starts at eleven.”

  “No, I meant breakfast. Are you cooking because Sloane stayed?”

  Gavin dropped the pan to the burner with an unceremonious clank. “What?”

  “I heard you guys talking a little in the hallway before I fell asleep. You told her you’d make breakfast, right?” Bree asked, her matter-of-fact expression the polar opposite of the panic brewing in Gavin’s chest.

  Well, shit.

  He’d been able to listen in on the tail end of Bree’s conversation with Sloane last night easily enough. How the hell had he not put two and two together to realize that thin walls worked both ways? The spare bedroom was at the end of the hall, with the bathroom between its walls and those of Bree’s room.

  What else had she heard?

  Gavin tested the waters with extreme care. “If I’d known you were awake last night, I’d have come in to say good night to you.”

  Bree let out a professional-grade sigh, but she backed it up with a look of slight chagrin. “Okay, I get it. I shouldn’t eavesdrop. But you guys were right outside my door. And anyway, I fell asleep like ten seconds later, so I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Sorry.”

  Gavin finally allowed himself to exhale. “It’s okay.” He paused before going for the redirect. “So you didn’t answer the question. You hungry?”

  She nodded, taking three plates from the cabinet over the sink and putting them on the counter next to the stove-top. “You didn’t answer the question, either. How come you’re making omelets?”

  “Oh.” So much for changing the subject. He pondered the question and grabbed a spatula to have at the ready. “Well, I did promise. Plus, I always make omelets.”

  In fact, he made them so often they’d been a staple item on the family menu before he left Philadelphia. He continued, his words coming out softer now. “You used to help me cook all the time, remember?”

  “I remember.” She crossed her arms over the front of her pajamas, not elaborating, but not turning away, either.

  “Do you want to help now?” he asked, holding out the spatula with more hope than he should.

  Bree’s eyes widened. “No.” A beat passed, then another before she said, “I’ll get the juice.”

  It wasn’t a moment of total defeat, so Gavin latched on to it. “If you’re not up for omelets, maybe next time we could change it up.” As much as it sent an ache through his chest to let go of something they’d always done together, clearly there was something about it that she wanted to avoid.

  She lifted her head, and her brows followed suit. “You mean make something different?”

  “Sure.” The mixture in the pan bubbled merrily, and Gavin gave it a purposeful flip.

  Bree frowned, but it looked more like deep thought than a mark of irritation. “Like what?”

  “How about doughnuts? Double glazed.”

  Okay, so maybe he had Sloane on the brain a little more than he should. But then Bree’s eyes sparkled with interest, and he found himself not caring how they got that way.

  “Doughnuts might be okay.” She poured three glasses of orange juice with a shrug, but the spark in her eyes stuck around.

  Gavin put her omelet on a plate and passed it over, trying—and probably failing—to keep his idiot smile in check. “Okay. We could even shoot for Monday, since you have the semester break from school and I’m off work.”

  She took a sip of juice, but was just a beat too slow to hide her smile with the glass. “Sure.”

  “Great. I’ll grab the ingredients from Joe’s Grocery tomorrow, and we’ll be all set.”

  They ate their omelets in quick and relative silence, and even though part of him wanted nothing more than to wake Sloane just to catch her sleepy-eyed and thoroughly mussed, Gavin made the executive decision to let her sleep. After all, he had promised her some undisturbed slumber, and although he’d promised her breakfast too, he had the feeling she’d appreciate the sleep more.

  He covered her omelet in plastic wrap while Bree rinsed the dishes in the sink, and the harmony of the simple movements surrounded him with easy calm. His mood, which had been good to start with, skyrocketed into the realm of sheer excellence, and as he left for La Dolce Vita an hour later, Gavin felt a sense of relief that had been too long in coming.

  Finally. Finally, Mom, I’m starting to get it right.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sloane scanned the sixteen pages of hand-scribbled notes, spreading them out over the normally pristine kitchen table like a sunshine yellow quilt of words. She gathered all the Post-it notes she’d rapidly accumulated over the course of the evening and stuck them with meticulous care around the pages, rearranging them as if they were all pieces in an intricate puzzle.

  The refrigerator hummed its nighttime symphony as Sloane’s pencil flew over the unfurled pages, marking more notes in fluid shorthand and peppering in enough Post-its to ring the entire perimeter of the table. Finally, with one last brightly burning detail deposited from her brain to the page, she stepped back to take the whole thing in.

  Apparently, her muse had one hell of a soft spot for Gavin Carmichael’s brand of inspiration. Which would’ve been great on several levels, except the outline spread in front of her was the polar opposite of what Belinda had asked her to write.

  Sloane had discarded the ideas from the surprised handful of notes she’d written yesterday afternoon about as quickly as she’d churned them out. Yes, they’d been the only worthwhile pages she’d managed since Halloween, but still. Nothing she’d jotted down had anything to do with dashing, adventurous heroes or exotic, whirlwind escapades. She needed to gear up for the Greece book, and she couldn’t afford even a couple pages’ worth of distraction, even if they were good pages. So she’d done what any writer in her position would do. She shoved the notes in her bag and mentally filed them under maybe someday.

  But as soon as she’d woken up this morning, surrounded by the memory of what had happened just hours before, the ideas on those pages burst right back into her brain, mashing down last night’s desire to leave and rendering it useless. The thou
ghts on those pages called to her in barely audible whispers as she wandered down the hall to discover a surprisingly good-natured Bree sitting in the breakfast nook, reading the newspaper.

  Those loose threads she’d scratched out tiptoed through her brain, weaving themselves together while she ate the omelet Gavin had left for her in the fridge. By the time she and Bree field-tripped back to the bungalow so Sloane could shower and change, then took a quick trip to the drugstore to cap off their afternoon, those vague ideas had become loud snatches of insistent suggestion she could no longer ignore.

  What had started out as a glimmer became a thousand-watt light show in a matter of hours, and the six pages had nearly tripled before Sloane knew what hit her. The more she tried to purge the ideas for the sake of clearing cerebral real estate for her Greece book, the sharper and more wonderful the new outline became on the page.

  It was the most finely crafted outline she’d ever come up with, bar none.

  Sloane snapped a bunch of close-ups of her handiwork with her iPhone, then flipped her laptop open over the counter in the breakfast nook. Images vaulted from brain to fingers to screen, all without so much as a mental tug to move them along, and despite her misgivings on the subject matter, she didn’t fight them. After months of having to drag the words out of her brain kicking and screaming, watching them spill over the page without effort was a huge relief. Even if the whole shebang was set in none other than a cozy mountain resort town, with not an ancient ruin or breathtaking exotic view in sight.

  She’d just have to deal with the fact that they were the wrong words later.

  “Wow. It looks like you got over that writer’s block pretty fast.”

  The sound of Gavin’s voice filtering in from the entryway to the kitchen yanked Sloane on a one-way trip back to reality, and she pulled the canvas hat from her head with a series of blinks.

  “Oh, sorry! I didn’t hear you come in.” Whoa, when had nine-thirty turned into midnight? And when had she passed the heading for Chapter Two?

  And more importantly, how did Gavin manage to look so freaking sexy, all buttoned up in that serious navy blue suit? He gave a mischievous smile that ratcheted his sexy factor even higher, and Sloane’s muse giggled like a schoolgirl.

  The rest of her tightened with awkward indecision, and she dropped her eyes to the floorboards, gripping her hat with a little too much enthusiasm. She’d always been terrible at the whole morning-after thing, to the point that she avoided it whenever she could. But steering around this was impossible, and the heat in her veins suggested that part of her didn’t even want to avoid it.

  Of course, that was the part that got her into this in the first place.

  Gavin’s easy smile stayed constant, though, and it chipped away at her unease. “At least you didn’t head-butt me this time,” he said. “Looks like we’re both making progress.”

  Progress. Right. She closed her laptop with a snap and a soft laugh. “More like running in circles, I’m afraid. At least as far as this is concerned.”

  He gestured to the literary cyclone covering the kitchen table with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t look like running in circles to me. But between the paper and the Post-its, you might want to buy stock in 3M.”

  Sloane unwound herself from her cross-legged position at the breakfast bar, eager to head off the invasion of awkward that was sure to drop back in any second now. Though she had zero regrets about spending the night being righteously inspired by Gavin, things would probably just be easiest if they skipped a repeat performance.

  Probably.

  She started talking, the words tumbling out just a touch too fast. “Yeah, sorry about the mess. I just need to number these pages really quick and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “You don’t have to rush.” Gavin’s eyes locked on hers. “You could take your time. Or stick around for a while, if you want.”

  Ohhhhhh, Lordy, did she ever want. “Oh. Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you up or anything.” Her cheeks flamed at the insinuation, while her inner voice went right into liar, liar, pants on fire mode. “I mean, you know. If you’re tired. From work.”

  Dammit, she knew all that awkward was going to sneak up and bite her. Sloane clamped down on her lust-addled tongue and leaned over the table to mark each page in sequence for quick removal.

  “I’m not.” Gavin paused, clearly catching the look of disbelief that had emerged on her face without her consent. “Well, I am, but . . .” He turned his attention toward the splayed-out sheets, clearing his throat and changing the subject without fanfare. “So, this is how you write a book, huh?”

  She took the change of topic and ran like a third grader at recess. “It’s kind of sloppy in the beginning, but yeah. More or less.”

  “It looks like a hell of a process.” His eyes lit with interest, and he edged closer to the table. “How does it work?”

  Sloane’s heartbeat stuttered. “What?”

  “Sorry, is that taboo or something? To ask a writer about a book she hasn’t written yet?” He averted his eyes, as if the toes of his loafers had suddenly become fascinating.

  An unexpected laugh welled up at his genuine concern. “They’re not top secret FBI documents or anything. You don’t have to worry.” She paused, trying to dislodge the curve ball from her chest. Aside from a smattering of writers in her online courses, nobody had ever expressed that much interest in the particulars of what she did. And why would they? Half the people in her family were expecting her to change careers any minute now, and the other half were just hoping.

  “Oh. So how come you use five different colors of Post-it notes?” Gavin loosened his tie and moved to stand next to her, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to tell him about her job.

  As if her answer truly mattered.

  “Well, obviously I have a heroine and a hero.” Sloane lifted the pink and blue squares of paper accordingly, moving a few of them from the outer rim of the table to the pages of legal paper as she continued. “And then there are internal conflicts, which are the issues they each bring to the story.” She motioned to the scattering of green notes in front of them.

  “You mean like emotional baggage?” He leaned in closer, so their shoulders touched.

  She smiled at both the contact and the question. “Exactly. But if you’ve got internal conflict then that also means . . .”

  “External conflicts,” he finished, and Sloane gave the pages of legal paper beneath her hands an affirming tap.

  “External conflicts. Otherwise known as all the things that happen to keep the hero and heroine apart.” She tossed the remainder of a half-used stack of yellow Post-it notes to Gavin, which he caught with a confused frown.

  “But it’s a love story, right? Why are the guy and the girl apart?”

  A fair question, to be sure. “Because people who fall in love too easily make for really boring romance novels.”

  “So much for happily ever after,” Gavin said, arching a caramel-colored brow.

  “Funny you should mention that.” Sloane ran her thumb over the edge of purple Post-its, fanning herself in an exaggerated sweep. “Purple is for the steps they take to get to the resolution. See?” She pointed to the last four sheets of legal paper, all flanked by notes on purple squares. “Happily ever after.”

  “I had no idea it was so involved.” He skated a glance over the whole thing again. “So how does it get from this to an actual book?”

  “I start out with the handwritten pages, just to gather my thoughts in one place, but then as the idea grows, I add finer details with the Post-it notes. That way I can shuffle them around if I want, or remove them easily if I decide they won’t work. Then, once it all starts to gel, I have to get on the laptop in order to keep up with myself. But it’s nice to have the written notes to go back and cross-reference as I draft.”

  His soft whistle emphasized his surprise. “It sounds pretty fast-paced.”

  “Sometimes. This is n
othing compared to being on deadline, though.” Sloane winced at the realization that she might have seen the last of her deadline days, but she shoved the awful sensation aside. Five weeks from now, she’d be the living embodiment of getting things done, and the book in front of her would be long gone from her system.

  Losing her job because her creativity went off on a lust-induced tangent just wasn’t an option. No matter how strong the outline was.

  Or how delicious the lust.

  “Whoa. From the look on your face, I’d guess meeting deadlines isn’t the most fun part of your job,” Gavin said, and Sloane pasted a smile onto her face.

  “Actually, it is.” She hauled in a breath, forcing herself to relax. “But you’re right. Sometimes it’s just kind of fast-paced.”

  “You really love it, don’t you?”

  The question startled her right down to her socks, but she answered it without hesitation. “Yeah. It just . . . fits me.”

  He lifted a hand, barely skimming it over her cheekbone. “It’s written all over your face.”

  “That is a terrible metaphor,” she said with a soft laugh. But she curved into his palm anyway. Oh, God, she felt exquisite with his hands on her, even in the most benign of touches.

  “Sorry.” His look said he wasn’t, but who was she to argue? “It’s true, though.”

  Sloane stared at him through the late-night quiet of the kitchen and said the only thing she could think of.

  “Thank you.”

  Gavin kissed her with none of last night’s urgency, but every ounce of the intensity. He brushed her lips with light touches, exploring her with patience that sent a hot tug right between her hips.

  “You’re welcome.” He kissed her again, and the tingle of want became a strenuous demand. She wrapped her hand around his loosened tie to pull him closer, opening herself up to the sheer goodness of his mouth, so hot on her own.

  “Do you always go so fast?” His murmur fell into the stretch of skin behind her ear, and she arched up to greet it.