Read Online Stirring Up Trouble by Kimberly Kincaid - Free Book Online Page B

knowing she’d have to cross the you-need-to-settle-down bridge again soon enough. Dwelling on the inevitability would only make it worse.
    At any rate, Sloane thought as she rinsed her toothbrush, Carly was right. The money was good, and she needed it desperately. She’d tried like hell last night to get a workable idea on paper, or at least do a little legwork so she could dive right in once she got to Greece, but her muse had remained solidly unimpressed. So much for the possibility of tutoring being the light for her creative fire. Right about now, Sloane had all the spark of wet logs in the wilderness.
    Dry humping in the living room notwithstanding.
    “Oh, forget the kiss, girl! And anyway, a deal’s a deal.” Adding a temporary nanny gig to her résumé might not have done much for her creativity, but at least the job got her one step closer to packing her bags. Still, the rest of the cash wasn’t going to simply appear via Fairy Godmother, and she was going to have to come up with one hell of a fallback plan in order to get herself to book-writing Nirvana.
    Sloane made her way back to the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee with one hand while dialing her cell phone with the other. Just because she’d dismissed her misgivings about playing Mary Poppins for a couple of weeks didn’t mean she couldn’t dish out a little well-placed attitude. After all, Carly had all but offered her up on a platter.
    “If you’re calling to give me a hard time, save your breath. You need the money, and I can’t run a restaurant without a general manager.” Her best friend’s sleepy voice murmured over the line without the benefit of a hello, and Sloane bit back a laugh in response.
    “Your preemptive strike will get you nowhere. I can’t believe you threw me to the wolves.”
    “It was only one wolf, and besides, it’s a perfectly workable solution.” Leave it to Carly to be so matter-of-fact.
    The dark, piercing gaze Gavin had sent right into her bones just before he’d kissed her last night shock waved through Sloane’s memory, sending an electric hum through her blood like she’d been slapped upside the head with a tuning fork. “There is nothing workable about me and your GM. He’s wound tighter than a Salvation Army drum, I swear to God.”
    She tucked the phone to her ear and flattened her palms over both forearms to give the goose bumps that had sprouted there a vigorous rub. After all, the kiss he’d planted on her had no sooner moved from oh-yes to oh- hell -yes when Gavin not only snapped out of it, but fell all over himself to make a formal apology. The whole thing had left Sloane in a moment of rare embarrassment, wondering if she’d conjured the sizzling passion out of thin air. Hell, she had been grasping for romantic ideas all night. She’d probably just been projecting on the nearest available male body.
    Never mind that it had been the first male body to ever stir a potential orgasm between her thighs, and that she’d wanted him so badly, she’d climbed him like a tree.
    At least her fight or flight instincts hadn’t dallied in getting her out the door. Thank God some things still worked flawlessly.
    Carly chuckled, yanking Sloane’s sizzling thoughts back down to planet Earth. “Just because he takes his job seriously doesn’t mean Gavin’s a bad guy. Look at it this way, babysitting his sister is less painful than selling your eggs to a fertility clinic, right?”
    “Marginally.” Sloane headed down the hall to her bedroom with her cup in hand and the phone still tucked to her ear, shaking off the last of the weird ripple coursing through her. Arriving at her dresser, she set her hands to work in a flurry of motion, tugging a few things mercilessly from the drawers. “You know kids and I don’t mix.”
    “It’s only for two weeks. And besides, if anyone’s tough enough to handle a thirteen-year-old, it’s you.”
    Sloane made a disdainful noise and paused to slurp her coffee.