Chapter 3
~
Carissa
A full month into living in Dawson Barnett’s mansion, I’d settled into a comfortable routine.
Henry was a surprisingly easy kid to manage and always incredibly polite.
So much so that I wondered if he was putting on a show in the hopes of impressing Dawson.
He clearly held the hockey player in high regard if the starry-eyed way he watched him on TV was anything to go by.
The guys had been gone for most of the month, playing away games and only dropping by occasionally.
When they were home, it was business as usual.
Dawson kept up his stiff, polite performance around me, only softening when Henry was around, and Boone kept up his flirting despite his brother’s best efforts to keep him in line.
I had to admit I was flattered, and Boone was, admittedly, a hunk. A simple smile from the guy had me blushing, though I wasn’t sure what to do with his rapt attention.
Gage, in stark contrast to both brothers, continued to ignore me entirely. Whenever I walked into a room when another guy was around, Gage proceeded to walk out. He kept to himself and kept his headphones on tight, even avoiding Henry despite his promise to Dawson to help out with the kid.
I wasn’t too bothered by it; he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who could handle kids anyway, but I could tell his distance bothered Dawson. The team captain, I had learned quickly, was not as good at concealing his feelings as he seemed to think he was.
By the time Saturday morning rolled around, I was looking forward to some peace and quiet, and hopefully an opportunity to catch up on my studies.
Henry had a private tutor come in during the week, and I spent the rest of those days hurrying after him and helping with his homework, which meant weekends were sacred to the both of us.
I got a few uninterrupted hours to myself, and Henry got to play video games to his heart’s content.
Gage had initially been cagey about letting Henry anywhere near his precious PS5 setup, hovering like a disgruntled gargoyle every time the kid so much as looked at the console.
But somehow (most likely involving bribery of some kind), Dawson had managed to talk him down.
Not only that, he’d gone one step further and bought Henry his own controller so the kid wouldn’t have to get his sticky fingers all over Gage’s pride and joy.
Dawson hadn’t said much when he handed Henry the gift.
He rarely did. He’d simply rested a hand on Henry’s shoulder and told him to have fun in a soft voice I was starting to realize he reserved exclusively for the kid.
And so, with a fresh cup of coffee in mind and Henry no doubt glued to the television screen for the next six-plus hours, I made my way through the massive mansion with every intention of spending my day studying in some cozy corner.
That plan, however, died abruptly the moment I set foot in the kitchen.
The scene that greeted me was something out of a crime scene. Every drawer and cupboard was flung wide open, spilling its contents all over the floor and countertops. About a dozen cracked eggshells littered the stovetop, and every inch of the usually pristine place was covered in flour.
In the center of the mess stood Henry (equally coated in a thick layer of baking powder), and Boone, wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a stained ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron that had clearly been put through the wringer.
Both of them turned to grin at me when I walked in, and Boone lifted a batter-soaked spatula in greeting. “Carissa! Hey! We’re making pancakes.”
“...Pancakes?” I sniffed the air, wrinkling my nose at the scent of something singed. “You sure you’re not burning the house down?”
“Oh, shit!” Boone sped back to the stovetop to rescue the remains of what had once been a pancake and was now a sizzling black pile of goop. “I mean—” he glanced down at Henry, who was standing on his tiptoes, inspecting the disaster. “Shoot. Henry, don’t tell Dawson I swore in front of you.”
“You got it, boss.” Henry nodded solemnly before poking a finger at the sad excuse for a pancake. “Can I still eat it?”
“Sure,” was Boone’s nonchalant reply at exactly the same moment I bolted into action and strode into the fray.
“Absolutely not!” I pushed Boone aside with my hip, swiping the spatula from him before he could feed Henry the radioactive pancake from hell. “I’m not sure if you know this, Boone, but most people don’t eat their pancakes char-grilled.”
“Oh, please,” Boone chuckled, raising his palms skyward as he surrendered the frying pan to me. “So what if it’s a little crispy? I’ve eaten worse; have you tasted Dawson’s cooking?”
“It’s crunchy,” Henry, who had somehow swiped the charcoal pancake from under my nose, commented through a mouthful of crumbs. “Tastes like dirt.”
“Don’t eat that,” I groaned, exasperated, as Boone leaned over Henry’s shoulder to try a bite of the burned mush too.
“Oh, God, you’re right.” He made a face like he’d just licked a lemon and picked at a crumb in his teeth. “Tastes like dirt.” Despite that statement, he took another bite anyway.
It occurred to me then that I would have to step in and save these two terrible chefs from themselves before they both ended up with a stomach ache. So with a sigh and a silent vow to ban Boone from the kitchen moving forward, I rolled my sleeves up and lowered the heat on the stove.
“Hand me that mixing bowl.” I snapped my fingers in front of Boone’s nose and pointed at the bowl of poorly stirred pancake batter. “And Henry, grab that spoon. You need to mix it properly before you dump it in the pan.”
“Our hero,” Boone crooned as he passed the bowl over. A strand of blond hair escaped his haphazard bun, and he blew it from his eyes with a smirk. “What would we do without you?”
“Burn this place to the ground, most likely,” I muttered before crouching to show Henry how to fold the lumpy bits of flour into the dough. “Keep stirring it like that, and if your arm gets tired, you can make Boone do it for you.”
Henry complied with a giggle, stirring the batter while Boone leaned an elbow on the countertop beside me, getting entirely too close to the scorching hot stove.
“You’re quite bossy, Carissa,” he noted with a sly, teasing smile. When I ignored him, too focused on salvaging another sizzling blob in the frying pan, he reached a hand out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “I like it.”
“I’m saving you from a stomach ache and a lecture from your brother,” I muttered in response, but I had to admit it was helpful to have my hair out of my eyes.
Not that I was going to entertain his obvious flirting.
“Also, you’ve been trying to fry things without oil.
That’s why everything is sticking to the pan. ”
“Huh, who would have thought?” Boone looked genuinely enlightened, and I had to wonder how he had made it this far when he clearly did not know the first thing about cooking literally anything.
Henry wedged between us then to offer up a well-mixed bowl of batter, and I got to work frying a new batch of pancakes while the two of them watched with overly keen interest. Eventually, the smell of burning batter was replaced with the wonderful aroma of freshly made pancakes, and Boone even made himself useful by brewing a pot of coffee too.
It seemed like he’d given up on his efforts to flirt with me until I started plating the pancakes, and he sidled up behind me to whisper in my ear. “Thank you, really, for saving us from disaster.”
His breath on my neck sent shivers skittering down my spine, and I felt my cheeks flush red as he leaned over my shoulder. I cleared my throat and slipped sideways, putting a safe inch of space between us as I reached for another plate.
“No problem.” I kept my eyes fixed on anything but him as heat bloomed up my neck. “Though I think Henry would have been perfectly happy eating burned charcoal bits. He just likes hanging out with you guys.”
Boone glanced over at Henry, who sat with his legs swinging on the edge of the countertop, licking pancake batter from a spoon. “He’s a good kid. I wanted to do something nice for him.” He looked back at me with a sheepish smile. “Probably should have picked something a little less messy.”
It was that open, honest look in his eyes that hit me harder than any of the charming grins he’d thrown my way.
When Boone wasn’t posturing or performing, he was…
handsome. Sure, he wasn’t the brightest, led by his libido most of the time, and was definitely impulsive to a detrimental degree.
But he was kind, genuinely so. He braved his own bad cooking skills to make a young kid smile.
“Yeah,” I smiled back at him, “pancakes might have been a little too ambitious.”
Standing across from him in the aftermath of his valiant attempt at baking, something fluttered in my stomach, a feeling entirely unexpected. Maybe I liked Boone, just a little. It was hard not to. But butterflies were unprofessional, and I was there on a job.
I squished that feeling down as quickly as it arrived and shook the thought from my head. “So… when did you guys get back, anyway? I thought you were in Denver until Monday.”
“Early this morning,” Boone spun around to inspect the contents of the fridge and stretched tanned, muscled arms over his head. “Dawson said we had to head back for more training, but I think our team captain was homesick.”
“Well, it’s nice to have you back,” I said absently, a little too absorbed in his flexing biceps and the broad, winged muscles of his back.
“So you admit you missed me—?” Boone, unfortunately, picked that moment to glance over his shoulder and caught me staring. His smile turned devious as I hurriedly looked away.