"I was planning on having coffee," I say.
Luke snorts. "That ain't breakfast," he says. "What's wrong with you? Doesn't your kid eat breakfast?"
A surge of irritation rushes through me, and I take Olivia's hand in my empty one. "Yes, she eats breakfast," I say. "She just had oatmeal. Wait, are you just letting yourself inside my house again?"
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 say, following him into the kitchen. Olivia walks with me, babbling happily: "Saint, Saint."
"Hah, she's like a little parrot," Luke says, setting a bag on the kitchen counter and removing food items one by one.
"Which is why you should watch your mouth."
"Me?" he asks, turning around. He takes the bag out of my hands. "I think you're just as foul-mouthed 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," he says, grinning. "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 ten years 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 says, 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," he says.
"I don't," I say, 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 says, pulling 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," he says. "So why don't you just make the coffee and get out of my kitchen?"
"It's my kitchen," I say 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.