After my fourth failed attempt at cutting butter into proper flour nuggets, Valen cages me in with his strong arms. His chest presses into my back, his breath warm at my ear as he murmurs instructions.
I feel him hesitate—feel the moment he realizes how close we are, how easy it would be to turn this into something else if not for the Harrington Mayhem Brigade.
His hands flex on mine, and for one breathless second, I think he’s going to pull away. Instead, he leans closer.
“Like this, Honeybee.”
My mouth is so dry I can’t swallow.
Valen’s body flexes behind me—just for a second—before his breathing turns shallow.
“I…” His voice is distant, strange. “I’ve done this before. I was helping you with something. Dough? No…clay. We were making something out of clay, and you couldn’t quite…your arms wouldn’t reach high enough, and I…”
When I glance up at him, he’s blinking hard.
I want him to finish. To remember the rest of that moment, but his eyes glaze over, and I know the memory is lost.
I catch Sterling’s eye, and I can almost feel the disappointment in his expression too.
Valen presses his arms into my sides, and when he speaks again, his voice is rough. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
“It’s okay.” I want to bawl like a baby though—I’d forgotten that not all memories of my childhood were bad, but every single good one included Valen. “Um, like this?” I squish the dough between my fingers, giving us both something else to focus on because my brain cells have evacuated in favor of screamingabort, abort, proximity alert.
I’ve spent too much time with bodyguards lately. Not even the characters in my novels are ever this cheesy.
“You’re supposed to keep it cold,” Grant says, eyeing our butter situation. “Cold hands, cold butter, hot oven. That’s the secret.”
“Her hands are freezing,” Valen says, covering mine with his. “Feel.”
Grant touches my fingers and frowns before Valen swats his hand away.
“Never mind,” he snaps. “Don’t touch her.”
Grant shakes his head but continues to stare at me. “Clover, are you okay? You’re ice-cold.”
“I’m fine,” I squeak. How the hell did I end up with four insanely hot men in my kitchen baking freaking biscuits?
Chase chuckles from across the room. “She looks good to me.”
Valen throws flour at him. I think it was an involuntary reaction to the innuendo in Chase’s tone, but it causes ten full seconds of stillness.
Then a war breaks out when Chase retaliates by throwing a chunk of butter that hits Valen’s chest with a splat.
Sterling lifts a cup of flour, and my eyes go wide. I’m shaking my head, already knowing where this is going. Sterling winks, then dumps the flour over Grant’s head before running to the other side of the room.
“Stop,” Grant yells.
Nobody does.
Chase makes a grab for the entire bag of flour, but Grant beats him to it.
They grapple with the paper bag, and then whoosh—a cloud of flour hits the air.
Flour is a weapon I didn’t know existed, but after two minutes, the dust cloud hanging in the room has everyone choking for fresh air.
Sterling opens the back door, swinging it wildly to bring clean air into the room, but it just stirs up the fine powder even more. Chase cackles as he clears the flour from his eyes.
“W-what just happened here?” I ask, while Grant carries on as though he’s not leaving a trail of flour behind him and slips two baking sheets into my oven.
