Page 33 of Wicked Heat

“Too bad for me.” He taps the steering wheel and looks straight ahead when he adds, “Then again, absent cookies, I’ll have to think of another way to get paid. Cash is so last year.”

I fight a laugh. “Would it be terrible of me to admit that I’m now tempted to withhold cookies, just to see what kind of pervy imagination you have?”

His brows rise. “Pervy?”

I shrug, enjoying the game despite myself. “I won’t know until I know.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” He turns just long enough to meet my eyes, and when he does, it’s genuine heat I see in his.

My stomach does a little flip, and I manage a weak smile as I force myself not to beg him to let me out so I can call another Uber. What was I thinking? Flirting with Ashton Stone? I am not a woman who lives dangerously, and he’s about as dangerous as it gets.

I slouch lower in the seat, then shift so that I’m peering out the window, trying to look like someone enraptured by the cute-but-too-close-together houses that line this part of PCH and the peeks of ocean we get whenever there’s a decent-sized gap between them.

“What if I’m just wishing for snickerdoodles?”

I frown as I turn to face him, totally confused. “Snickerdoodles?”

“For payment,” he says. “I’m a very big fan of snickerdoodles.”

“Oh.” I wince a little. “I’m a chocolate chip girl. I haven’t looked, but I’d lay money that Kari loaded me up with chocolate chip.”

“I’m easy,” he says.

I raise a brow. “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”

He laughs, then puts one hand over his heart. “Ouch.”

“Hey, you reap what you sow.”

“You do,” he says, his voice more serious than I’d expected. “You really do.”

I clear my throat. “So, cookies?”

“I think the going rate for delivering a beautiful woman to the airport is three chocolate chip cookies.”

“Then you get five,” I say. “I’m a big believer in tipping well. Even drivers who try to up their tips by tossing out blatantly false flattery.”

“Don’t even.”

“What?”

“Don’t even pretend that you don’t know how gorgeous you are.”

“Ash.” I’ve already slipped out of my sandals, and now I pull my feet up onto the seat and hug my knees.

“I’m just saying….”

“You’re just flirting. And I’m not your target audience.”

He keeps his eyes on the road, but he tilts his head in the slightest of nods. “Fair enough,” he says, and I bite back a sigh of relief. “But if you can’t flirt with your friends, who can you flirt with?”

Eleven

Four Months Ago—Ash (the airport)

She was, Ash decided, the most frustrating woman he’d ever been attracted to. So frustrating, in fact, that he ought to suck it up, rein in his ego and libido, and settle for being nothing more than her friend. At least that was true. Wasn’t it?

He frowned, thinking back. The first time he’d met her at his father’s house, they’d tiptoed around each other. Primarily because he’d been an ass then. But as he settled into a relationship with the father he’d come to know, the stepmother he admired, and those siblings he adored—well, he’d also settled into a casual friendship with Bree. She was the kids’ nanny, after all. Or, she had been. Now she was both a tenant and the part-time nanny.