Page 4 of Catching Mr. Right

Chapter Two

CASPER

“For fuck’s sake.” I storm out of the kitchen and into the yard behind the ranch, thick dirty smoke billowing out the door behind me. It was only a matter of time before that stupid girl set fire to my kitchen.

The guy I’m filling in for left the day I arrived so I had to find my own way around the quirks and foibles of his setup. Which was fine. I wanted the time to get into a routine and train up my help before busloads of kids showed up and things got busy. Only I hadn’t expected Razer to saddle me with such an incompetent female when I asked for an assistant. It’s only been a few days and she’s already doing my head in.

Fuck. If she hadn’t been in my kitchen then I wouldn’t have been distracted by her Pepto pink lips, or her long, golden legs. At least the fire was easy enough to put out. I smack the heel of my palm against my forehead, grind it into my brow where a headache’s beginning to pound, and growl out my frustration.

A second later she knocks through the kitchen door on wobbly legs, comes to a halt in the middle of the path, and bows over in a coughing fit. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how that happened.” Her apology is punctuated by the sharp hacking caused by her inhalation of smoke.

“You’re a menace,” I bark as I turn and stalk toward her. “I knew it from the second I saw you.”

Actually, what I knew from the second I saw Mandy Pearce was she’s trouble. The kind of trouble most men wouldn’t mind finding themselves in.

Wide, expressive, green eyes hold mine without flinching as I stare her down. They water a little, probably stinging from the smoke, but she doesn’t give an inch. Fuck, she really is pretty, isn’t she? The kind of girl you want to see in a pin up calendar wearing sexy lingerie and nothing else. The kind of girl who has an immediate effect on my cock. The only girl in a long time that has made me want to trap her against the kitchen counter while I rip away her panties and pound into her.

Trouble. Mega fucking trouble is what she is. I can almost see the pink of her bra through her collared shirt, or maybe I’m imagining it.

Either way she’s too pretty. And young. And stupid.

“Stay the fuck out of my kitchen and away from me,” I order, punctuating my words by stabbing my finger at that pink strap I’m now certain I can see under her shirt.

“It was an accident,” she repeats. “I didn’t do anything that should have caused the fire.”

I don’t know if she’s trying to placate me or keep her job but either way I’m not interested in having her underfoot, causing havoc, and increasing blood flow to my dick. The fucker will fall off before it gets the better of me again.

“I mean it.” I glare at her before storming past her and back to the mess I now have to deal with. “You’re nothing but a disaster waiting to happen. Stay the hell out of my way.”

***

It takes me a couple of hours to scrub the entire kitchen from ceiling to floor and get rid of the acrid scent of burned to ash meat. And now I have my head inside the oven.

Yeah, I might be contemplating death by baking. It has to be less painful than the alternative. I undo the screw and pull the element free. The thing is toast. The wires inside the coil are burned through, which means the oven was probably faulty when it was installed and it was only a matter of time before the damn thing caught alight anyway.

I suck in a breath through my mouth and blow it out through my nose. It wasn’t her fucking fault. Getting up, I gingerly pick up the broken element and place it on kitchen paper on the counter. Then I Google the nearest repair shop. No, it wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t because I was preoccupied either. Though I still shouldn’t have let her distract me at all. But she’s not accountable for that either. That’s all on me. It’s not like she’s coming on to me, not like she’s dressing to seduce me. But she’s making it hard, me hard. How long can a man ignore his dick before it takes over his brain anyway?

Fuck me, I’m going to have to apologize.

It takes me half an hour to locate her. She’s in the same place where her and her friend watched me work Soldier a few days ago. Of course I was aware of her then. I have a pulse after all.

This time she’s sitting with her legs over the top railing, her hands gripping the rough wood on either side of her. She pretends not to hear me as I approach, but her spine straightens and her shoulders pull back. She doesn’t look at me though, just stares out over the dusty yard.

What is it Juliette used to tell me after we fought? A heaviness settles over my chest the same way it always does when I think about the past. Her smile fills my mind like an open curtain letting in sunlight, but it also floods me with pain. Until acid burns my throat and I’m dizzy with the dark aching that spreads through my soul. I bite down on my back teeth until my jaw creaks. But I don’t wish things were different anymore. There’s no point. Nothing can fix what I’ve done.

I shove my feelings down, deep, as far as they will go, but I surrender to her voice. She would have told me that a woman can give the cold shoulder for a lot longer than it takes to use the word asshole. As in I’m being one, and I need to admit it.

I shove my fisted hands deep in my pockets and blow a breath out through my mouth. “Look, I shouldn’t have blamed you for the kitchen. It was a faulty element.”

Without acknowledging my apology, she says, “What is it specifically that you don’t like? Is it people? Or me?” When her gaze captures mine, I can’t look away. There’s an unguarded, beautiful honesty in the way she looks at me, and my callous words hurt her, but she’s not afraid of me. “Not that it matters. You’re obnoxious, and you’re mean, and—”

“An arrogant son of a bitch?” I hitch my boot on the bottom railing and lean on the fence beside her. I can’t drag my focus from her parted lips, and the pale green irises in her eyes, with their flecks of gray and charcoal. “A jerk? An asshole?”

“Yes,” she exclaims. “Exactly. You’re totally ruining my fantasies.”

“What?” There is no way I heard her right. This girl can’t be sitting here having thoughts about me, nice ones or naughty ones. Not after the way I lost my temper.

“My fantasies. You know, a girl has to look after her own needs by keeping her spank bank full of steamy sexual fantasies.” Her eyes widen and she sucks in a breath before clamping down on her lip gently with her teeth. “I don’t have one of you, of course. I’m not imagining you and me doing anything naked.” She starts tugging at the bottom of her silvery braid. “I was thinking about someone else, here, right now, on the fence, and then you came—”

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