Page 2 of The Au Pair Affair

Was he checking to see if she’d called?

Probably. She was now sixty-seven minutes late.

With an inward wince, Tallulah tapped call and held the phone to her ear. When the device started to buzz in Burgess’s hand, a ripple went through his back. He dropped the phone to his side and looked straight ahead for a moment, then back at the phone, coughing. Rolling a shoulder. She could only see his profile, but his lips moved slightly like he was practicing his greeting—andthat’s when Tallulah rememberedwhyshe’d agreed to take the live-in au pair job with someone she barely knew.

Time had obviously blurred the memory of Burgess.

There was something about his energy that read... safe.

Very safe.

Protective.

Along with her friends’ faith in Burgess, she’d trusted her gut.

It was going to be a shame to break the agreement. It was for the best, though. There was no guarantee he’d be civil off the ice one hundred percent of the time. Wells and Josephine might wholeheartedly believe in Burgess’s good character, but Tallulah had done the same with people throughout her life and gotten burned when their true selves were revealed.

You just never knew.

Tallulah watched as Burgess tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear, plugging the opposite one with his finger to drown out the screaming blender.

“Hello,” he said, staring intently at the floor. “Tallulah.”

Best to ignore that hot shiver that trekked up her inner thighs at the basement baritone version of her name. Blame it on her recent lack of anything resembling a sex life.

Watching penguins mate didn’t count.

“Hi, Burgess,” she responded, waiting for him to register the blender sounds in the background of her call, too. When he did, his gaze zipped to where Tallulah sat, a grunt brushing up against her eardrum.

They both ended the call, looking at each other across the smoothie shop.

It was very hard to tell what Burgess was thinking. But hewasthinking. A lot. Intuitive blue eyes traveled between her and the suitcase, a slight wrinkle taking up residence between his brows, though the rest of his expression remained carved in stone.

Without taking his attention off Tallulah, Burgess reached outand accepted his smoothie over the counter, and that casual competence was... dangerously attractive. It was all coming back to her now. The hot spark of attraction she’d felt for this man all those months ago. She’d flown into California as a surprise for her best friend Josephine’s birthday. Burgess had been in attendance as a spectator at the same golf tournament where his friend, Wells Whitaker, had been competing with Josephine as his caddie. Brought his daughter, Lissa, along, too.

The five of them had unexpectedly had lunch—and when Burgess sat down beside her at the table, she’d been caught off guard by the ribbons of electricity that had only fluttered with more persistence every time his voice did that deep, boomy thing. There’d been no reason to question his outward calm while at lunch with other people, but she couldn’t discount her current apprehension at the prospect of being alone with him. In an apartment. Day in and day out. Knowing he was capable of breaking someone’s nose with all the fanfare of a sneeze.

As Burgess approached the table, the sound of his bootsteps was muffled, her palms growing soggy, but she also couldn’t help but notice the way his God of Thunder thighs were almost too robust for his jeans. He wore a loose navy sweater, like a man in the middle of a relaxing Sunday, and she wondered if he’d stretched out the neckline to show off the sharp cuts of his throat and collarbone.

Instinct told her no. That he’d just thrown it on.

But instincts weren’t always enough when it came to men, right?

When Burgess was five yards from the table, Tallulah shot to her feet with the brightest smile she could muster and held out her hand for a shake. “Burgess. It’s so nice to see you again.” She pressed her toes into the soles of her ankle boots when their hands connected, coarse into smooth, twisting the ball of her foot intothe soft leather, because the clash of awareness and misgivings was so peculiar. And noisy. She could hear herselfswallow.

Dang, he was tall. Mean appearance, collected demeanor. So confusing.

“I’m so sorry, but unfortunately I won’t be able to take the au pair position, after all.”

Chapter Two

“I’m so sorry, but unfortunately I won’t be able to take the au pair position, after all.”

Burgess was so busy trying to put a lid on his physical reaction to this woman those words almost didn’t reach his brain. That sentence had a lot of hurdles over which to leap, starting with the way her scent smacked him in the senses like a puck to the chin. A few years back, he’d been forced to attend the wedding of one of his teammates and they’d had a signature cocktail. He’d felt like an ogre holding the ridiculous crystal glass between his thumb and index finger for the toast, sort of how he’d used to feel having tea parties with Lissa, but the taste of the drink had been unusual enough to stick with him.

Blood orange and basil.

That’s what Tallulah smelled like. Fresh and sensual.

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