“In a nice way.”
“In a nice way.” Now his lips twitched.
She blinked, then swooped in to take his plate and deposit it in the dishwasher. “If that’s all, si—Joaquin, I’ll say good night…unless there’s something else I can get you?”
The butler was leaving him? But it was full dark, and she’d likely had a long day that included meeting the man of the house and didn’t include a middle-of-the-day snooze. He cast a look at the television. He’d need something to do for the next several hours before he’d be ready for more sleep. “The remote.”
“Right over here.” She bustled around the island, leaving the tiniest drift of floral perfume in her wake.
Joaquin followed it and those tempting apples of her ass toward the huge matching couches in the living area where she pulled the device from a drawer in the coffee table.
As she handed it over, their fingertips brushed.
Sparks burst.
“I shocked you.” Her gaze jumped to his face. “So sorry.”
But it wasn’t a static shock. It was a burst of awareness, the sexual kind that caused sparklers of heat to rocket up his arm and then roll down the rest of him.
It had affected her too, he could tell, because her nipples had budded beneath her bra.
Was he supposed to ignore that the butler had breasts?
Fuck. He closed his eyes and thought of the long night ahead. Would a shower even do the trick? “Naps are a lousy idea,” he muttered. “I’ll never get to sleep.”
Her response was prompt. “I can do something about that if you’d like.”
Joaquin’s eyes flew open. Had she just offered…? He cleared his throat, knowing he must be wrong, but finding himself saying it anyway. “Your, uh, duties are all-inclusive then?”
He saw the dawning knowledge of what she’d said and how he’d chosen to construe it come over her face. Her eyes widened, and a blush crawled up her neck and cheeks. Her rosy, kissable mouth opened, closed, opened.
“Bloody hell.” She threw a hand over her lips. “Pardon me.” The words came out muffled, followed by a stifled laugh.
“Too late,” Joaquin announced, charmed. Too late, because he’d seen Sara Smythe drop her prim and proper guise.
Her hand fell, and then she bowed her head so she had to peek at him through the tangle of her long lashes.
“Bad Sara,” she scolded herself, then addressed him again. “That came out completely wrong, didn’t it?”
“Maybe just a little,” Joaquin conceded, though he was the bad one, because his baser self couldn’t help wanting the butler to consider the idea of helping overcome his sleeplessness as completely right.
But then her chin tilted up and her gaze met his full-on. The unspoiled blue of it forced him to step back and curse his wayward desires. Bloody hell is right. He was here for solitude, damn it, not sex. To smooth himself out, not to become entangled with the bright-eyed butler.
This wasn’t the time, and she definitely wasn’t the type for the only kind of short-term fling—physical and fiery—in which he ever indulged.
The next morning, Sara deadheaded spent blooms on the full growth of roses alongside the deck overlooking the ocean. When she’d arrived at the estate, the bushes had looked unhealthy, and after consultation with the landscaper, she’d cut them back almost immediately. Then she’d applied a preventative fungicide spray and fed them an organic fertilizer. For good measure, she’d added a little alfalfa meal for the soil itself.
The care had paid off nicely. Pleased, she smiled to herself, then paused as Joaquin’s presence made itself known. Even in the salt- and flower-scented air she could smell his masculine, spicy soap mingling with the aroma of fresh coffee.
Glancing over, she saw him with mug in hand, gazing out at the ocean. “Good morning,” she called.
“Is it really?”
Her gaze shifted to the empty beach, the tumbling waves, and then to the blue sky above them. “Well—”
“Don’t mind me,” he said, grimacing. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
She frowned, turning to face him. “Was the mattress uncomfortable? The pillows too soft—”
“They’re fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“But I’m employed to address issues such as that,” she insisted, then hesitated a moment before plunging on. “Which brings me to a discussion I believe we should have right away—about how you’d like your home to be run now that you’re living in it.”
That was what she’d landed on the night before when she couldn’t sleep. Over and over she’d replayed in her head the moment when she’d unintentionally blurted what sounded like