Stirring Up Trouble Read online

  Where the hell was she?

  “Hello? Sloane?” There were only so many places to hide in the cottage, and unless she was sitting in the dark kitchen all by her lonesome, he’d exhausted the short list of choices. Gavin’s frustration quickly surrendered to cold, hard panic, however, as he finally rounded the empty couch.

  Sloane was lying on the floor in front of the coffee table, eyes closed and completely unmoving.

  “Sloane!” His heart slammed in an honest effort to shoot free of his rib cage, and he dropped to the hardwood with an unforgiving thunk. Dread clutched at him with clammy fingers, and he grabbed her shoulders in a rough hold, lowering his head to instinctively listen for a breath.

  Oh, fuck, please let her open her eyes, or take a breath, or something. Please let her ...

  A bolt of white-hot pain cracked from his nose all the way to the back of his skull.

  Somewhere in the distance, he heard a familiar, feminine voice gasping his name, but he was too fascinated by the pretty, winking lights in his vision to try to figure it out.

  Sparkly.

  “Gavin! Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. I’m so sorry.” A flurry of movement rushed past his ears, and somewhere amid the crushing pain reverberating between his temples, he felt himself being eased backward onto a soft surface and covered with a warm, wonderful blanket.

  Wait a second . . . the blanket had breasts. Nice ones.

  Make that really wonderful.

  “Gavin? Can you hear me?” The woman’s voice rose and fell over inflections he vaguely recognized, and understanding snapped back at him like a rubber band on raw skin.

  Clearly, Sloane was just fine, because she was practically straddling his chest.

  “Yeah, of course I can hear you. You’re right in my—ow!” Okay, so sitting up was a bad plan. He eased ungracefully back to the floor, highly aware of the heat of Sloane’s body notched against his.

  “Okay, shh. Just relax for a second.” Her fingers coursed gently over the back of his neck, and he caught a nose full of the spicy, seductive scent of her skin.

  Huh. Relaxing somehow got a little easier.

  “What were . . . what were you doing on the floor?” His fragmented thoughts began spooling back together, and finally, blessedly, the marching band in his cranium started to tone things down.

  Sloane’s body tensed, a slight shift in the body weight still perched over him the only sign of her hesitance. “Um, meditating.”

  He cracked one eye open to catch her gesturing to a bright yellow yoga mat beneath the tangle of their bodies. “Meditating?”

  “Yeah. I thought it might give me some good ideas for my book, mental clarity, all that rot. I had my earphones in and didn’t hear you come home. And then, well, you scared me half to death, and I guess I . . . I must’ve headbutted you.” She bit her lip in apology, but then her attention seemed to snag on an unspoken thought. “Wait, what’d you think I was doing?”

  Well, that explained the raging face pain. How had he not noticed the damned yoga mat? “I . . . well, never mind.”

  Of course, she didn’t relent. “Seriously, why else would I crash on your floor?”

  “Please,” he said, letting his exasperation lead the way. “You’re hardly predictable, Sloane.”

  She tensed, her muscles coiling tight against his body, and he instantly wished for the words back. Yes, he was irritated with her for scaring the shit out of him like that, but it was no excuse for taking a verbal jab at her.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just dangerous for you not to hear things like that. What if I’d been an intruder?” A bit of a lame recovery, but all told, not completely unfounded. What if something happened to her and Bree when they were alone at night?

  “Then I’d have cold-cocked you just the same, making the cops’ job easy?” Sloane released the words on a shrug, without the tiniest hint of remorse or worry that he could’ve been some thug with nasty intentions. Her face settled into a rare frown. “You don’t have to worry about a repeat performance, anyway. It’s not like it worked.”

  A pang shot through Gavin’s gut. Maybe he was being a little tough on her. After all, he had slipped into the house pretty quietly. “I really am sorry,” he mumbled, wincing at the residual twinge in his upper lip.

  “No, you’re right. I should be more careful. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  The streak of vulnerability on her face caught him so much by surprise that he spoke without thinking. “Sloane, you’re sitting in my lap. Honestly, I’ve forgotten about my face.”

  “Oh!” The start-and-wiggle combination caused by her realization that she was indeed suggestively pressed against him destroyed any remaining irritation that she’d scared him. In fact, watching her flail to her bottom on the floorboards would’ve probably been downright amusing if he wasn’t so busy mourning the loss of her body covering his.

  Gavin levered himself to a sitting position, face hot with guilt. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her, but surely he must have. He opened his mouth to say something reassuring, but she cut him off at the pass with a burst of throaty laughter.

  “Sorry! I’m sorry, it’s not funny.” Sloane giggled even harder. “I didn’t . . . mean to . . . you know, sit on you, but . . . God, I’m an idiot. I’ll just go. Really . . . I can . . .”

  The rest of her sentence was cut off by her unmitigated laughter, a sound so musical and full of unexpected happiness that Gavin had no choice but to start laughing with her.

  “You’re not an idiot. And for the record, I’m the one who acted like a jerk. Call it even?”

  She nodded, and their laughter twined together for a full minute before subsiding. “So you’re really okay?” she asked again. She reached up to brush her fingers over his cheekbone in a gentle sweep, and even though the touch was benign, he felt it in the darkest places of his body.

  God, he wanted to kiss her again; only, this time, he wouldn’t be an idiot and stop. She tilted her face toward his in the smallest gesture, her teeth pressing against her bottom lip to interrupt the lush shape of her mouth. The soft pads of her fingers coasted to a stop over his temple, lingering as her eyes met his.

  Gavin shifted his weight with the intention of touching her back, of pulling her in and not letting go. But just as he moved, Sloane dropped both her hand and her chin, slipping away from him as if she’d realized the mistake of her proximity and meant to make good on her promise to leave. Already in motion, he had no choice but to do something, so he skimmed a clumsy palm over his own face in the wake of her now-absent hand.

  “Yeah. You’ve got a pretty hard head, though.” Everything seemed to be back in working order, except for maybe the rational section of his brain, and he nodded slowly as he let go of the desire brewing in his gut.

  Sloane snorted, but the gesture sounded way more endearing than rude. “Gee, I’ve never heard that before.” She popped to her feet in a shockingly fluid move, offering him a hand. Getting vertical was decidedly less graceful on his part, but he managed well enough.

  “Thanks.” Gavin watched her roll up the yoga mat, and the silence between them stretched out like a napping cat. “So how did things go today? Okay?” he asked, in a lame attempt to fill it.

  “If by ‘okay’ you mean, ‘Bree ignored me while I came up with a bunch of epic-fail ideas for a book’, then yes. We were very okay, all day long.” Sloane’s easygoing tone erased any heat that her words might’ve carried, as if it were simply her way of saying sure, we had a great day.

  Gavin nodded. He hadn’t figured Bree would be an open book with her, but at least the weekend hadn’t been a disaster. And the tutoring part had gone better than he’d expected, which was an added bonus. At least her grades were safe, for now. Maybe he was getting the hang of taking care of Bree, bit by bit.

  “I really appreciate your help, especially with the tutoring,” he said. “But I’m sorry about the book ideas thing.”

  Sloane bent to gather the scattered lumps of paper by t
he arm of the couch. “No problem. Like I said, Bree did most of it herself. I just refereed, really.”

  “Well, I’m glad she didn’t give you any trouble. She can be, ah, difficult sometimes.”

  “She was okay. Actually, she spent most of today in her room, watching movies as far as I could tell. Oh, that and she tried on a bunch of red lipstick and black eyeliner.” A sly half grin crossed Sloane’s lips, as if wearing a ton of makeup was perfectly normal behavior for a middle schooler.

  Panic uncurled in Gavin’s chest. “Are you serious?”

  Weren’t girls supposed to be older than Bree before they wore makeup? Like, thirty, maybe? Why would Sloane let her do something like that? Christ, he was ill-prepared for this.

  Sloane’s grin faltered before fading completely. “Sorry. I didn’t know you’d feel that strongly about it. We stayed here all day, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. And honestly, the only reason I even saw it was because she came out to grab some water with it on.”

  “Bree knows I’d never let her do that,” he muttered. Why did she have to be so defiant all the time? It was like she was trying to make him angry on purpose. Only that was ridiculous.

  “Well, that explains her motivation. She had to know I’d tell you,” Sloane said with a nonchalant shrug, as if the explanation made all the sense in the world.

  Would he ever understand anyone with an XX chromosome?

  “Why on earth would she do something she knows I’ll get angry over, and then go out of her way to get caught?” The logic made no sense at all. How come Sloane seemed to understand it so perfectly?

  “She’s just pushing your buttons to see how far she can go.”

  Gavin had a bad feeling he was gaping, but that didn’t stop him from asking, “Did she tell you that?”

  Sloane’s good-natured belly laugh plucked its way through him with enticing warmth. “Of course not. But I was a teenage girl once, too, you know. When I was fourteen, my mother flat-out insisted I wear these annoying pants underneath the skirt of my school uniform.”

  Great. He was never going to get rid of the image of her in those damned kneesocks. Gavin cleared his throat. “That seems a little extreme for a fourteen-year-old.”

  She popped a shadowy brow, sliding a hand over one denim-encased hip. “Not once she heard from Joey Romano’s mother that the boys had taken to going under the bleachers to look up the girls’ skirts.”

  The image in his head caught fire and exploded. “You wanted the boys to look up your skirt?”

  Sloane meted out an insouciant smile. “Please. I kept my legs crossed like everyone else once we figured it out. And anyway, you’re missing the point. It was totally embarrassing to wear pants under my skirt like a little kid, and I wanted my mother to know I could take care of myself.”

  “You were fourteen.” He looked at her dubiously.

  She pointed to herself with both index fingers, grinning. “Hello, figured it out, remember?”

  Gavin’s curiosity got the best of him and he gave in. “Okay, so how’d your mother find out you didn’t listen to her if all this went down at school?”

  “Because rather than leaving home with the pants on and just taking them off once I got there, I left them folded up, right on top of my bed every morning. It was standard teenage boundary testing, and I bet it’s exactly what Bree’s doing. She just wants to prove she’s growing up.”

  His gut gave a hard yank at the thought. She didn’t have to grow up that fast. “Well, it wasn’t a good idea to let her put on all that makeup. You should’ve said something to her.”

  Sloane’s laid-back expression shorted out like a faulty fuse, and she set her jaw in a firm line. “We stayed here all day, so nobody saw her except me. It just didn’t seem like such a big deal.”

  “Well . . .” Okay, so she had a point. Still, the idea of makeup on his little sister’s face, especially red lipstick with all its grown-up connotations, made him more than vaguely nauseous. He couldn’t let it happen again.

  “We’ll just have to agree to disagree, I guess. But thanks for letting me know.”

  Sloane’s smile returned, albeit at half the wattage of before. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. After the novelty wore off, she muttered something about looking like a clown and then she wiped it off.”

  “Oh. Good, then.” His words were like overstarched shirts, stiff to the point of breaking.

  God, when had he gotten so old?

  The urge to talk about it, to air his frustrations with someone who might get it—hell, someone who’d just listen—pushed its way to the surface.

  “Sloane?”

  She froze, one arm encased in the red wool of her pea coat, the other one halfway in the sleeve. “Yes?”

  For a split second, he wanted her to stay. She seemed to have some insight on Bree, and the simple snippets of conversation they’d shared both yesterday morning and again tonight had strummed up a long-forgotten feeling of ease in his chest. Gavin opened his mouth to ask her if she wanted to stay, maybe have a glass of wine, when his conversation with Adrian punched through his memory with startling clarity.

  That woman is going places even in her sleep.

  Who was he kidding? She wasn’t going to stick around, and after Mrs. Teasdale returned, he wasn’t going to see Sloane again. There wouldn’t be any more conversations, and anyway, airing out his personal life would only stir up trouble. He’d have to figure this out on his own.

  Gavin served up a cool, professional smile, one that he knew from experience didn’t reach his eyes. Walking her to the door, he said, “See you on Tuesday. Have a good night.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gavin spared a glance at the clock, as if the numbers would change simply because he’d willed them backward.

  Nope. Six A.M. pretty much sucked no matter how you sliced it. And when it followed a restless night’s sleep spent trying to get rid of a gut full of unease, getting out of bed on his day off was just that much tougher.

  He padded across the cold floorboards to place a hand on Bree’s door, only to find it open and her room vacant. A faint glow edged out from the bathroom doorframe, and the steady hum of running water confirmed the fact that Bree was already up and getting ready on her own. Damn, he simultaneously loved and felt sick at how well she could take care of herself, like it had snuck up on him and transformed her from a kid in a car seat to a capable preteen overnight.

  Then again, considering some of the choices she’d made in Philadelphia, plus failing English here in Pine Mountain, capable was a bit relative. The whole makeup escapade with Sloane yesterday was really just the cream in the cannoli, hammering home the fact that he couldn’t leave her alone. No matter how much she hated him for it.

  Gavin swept a hand over his sleep-mussed hair and headed for the kitchen, putting just enough water on to boil before beelining for the bag of coffee beans behind the sleek, white cabinet doors. The stainless steel coffee grinder released a chorus of soft clicks as he poured the beans into its belly, and the familiar, calming sound polished the rough edges off his nerves.

  The rhythm of being in the kitchen, of filling the French press with precise tablespoons of fresh grounds, the earthy, complex aroma of the hot water meeting the coarse coffee grounds as he poured it into the pot—all of it unfolded over fresh calm. By the time Bree trundled into the kitchen wearing a pair of faded jeans and a scowl that looked more sleepy than surly, Gavin had assembled half a dozen ingredients on the rolling butcher block island. The comfort of feeling the food beneath his hands fled at the sight of Bree’s frown.

  “You don’t have to get up early just to make sure I get on the bus, you know.” The intensity of her expression slipped a notch as her eyes rested on the carton of eggs lying open on the smooth wooden square of the butcher block, but she didn’t move from the doorframe.

  Ah, right. Their favorite morning argument. Only today, something told him not to bite. “I’m making omelets. You want
one?”

  “No.” The word crossed Bree’s lips at the same moment her stomach growled, and she surrendered a heavy sigh. “Okay, maybe.”

  Gavin bit back his urge to smile in case she caught it and decided to flee after all. “French okay with you?” He slipped a knife, thin and gleaming, from a slot in the side of the island, and the smell of fresh-chopped parsley met him like an old friend at the door.

  “Whatev—I guess.” Bree corrected herself with a shrug, and although the noticeable hitch made his curiosity uncoil, Gavin didn’t pursue it.

  “Anyway, I don’t get up early just to make sure you get on the bus.” He meant the words as a peace offering, but her disdainful eye roll negated his good intentions.

  “I’m not going to do anything stupid with you right down the hall. Plus, you’d wake up if I did.” Bree kept her focus firmly on the butcher block, her frown locked into place.

  Gavin’s irritation spurted. “I said that’s not why I get up early.” He looked down, only to see that his hands had stopped moving and his knuckles were as blanched as raw almonds. Shit. This was so not the early morning chat he’d envisioned. Time for a redirect.

  “Anyway. How was your weekend with Sloane?” he asked, pulling the thin leaves from a sprig of tarragon a lot more smoothly than he’d changed the subject.

  “Fine, I guess. She’s kind of weird.”

  The sound of Sloane’s quirky, full-bodied laugh ribboned through his memory, and the potshot it took at his gut made him glad he’d put the knife down. Talk about ruining a guy’s concentration.

  “Weird how?” Gavin knocked two eggs together in his palm, splitting them into a shallow dish one right after the other before repeating the process with the four remaining eggs.

  Bree lifted one shoulder in a birdlike flutter. “She likes Shakespeare.”

  “She’s a writer, Bree. All in all, that’s not too shocking.”