The Last Single Garrett

His littlest niece nodded solemnly. “Make it c’ean.”

Tristyn saw a muscle in his jaw flex. “It didn’t need to go in the dishwasher to be cleaned,” he said through gritted teeth. “It was already clean.”

This time Hanna shook her head. “I dwop ice cweam on it.”

Josh blew out a frustrated breath and scrubbed his free hand over his face.

“You did say that you didn’t want to find sticky fingerprints on any of your things,” Charlotte pointed out in defense of her sibling.

“Meaning that I didn’t want any of you to touch any of my things,” he clarified.

His eldest niece shrugged. “Hanna tends to take things literally.”

“She killed my phone.”

The little girl looked up at him. “I so-wee, Unca Josh.” She reached up to take the phone, puckered her lips and kissed the screen before handing it back to him. “All better?”

He sighed again as he dropped the now useless device into the side pocket of his cargo shorts, but one side of his mouth curved in a half smile. “It’s not that easy, kiddo.” He tapped a finger to his cheek. “You have to give a kiss here to make it all better.”

She smiled and held her arms in the air. He slid one of his around her torso, and the natural ease with which he lifted the little girl onto his hip made something inside Tristyn’s chest flutter. She wasn’t usually the type to get quivery over a man, but apparently seeing this strong, sexy male cuddle with a sweet little girl was all it took for her to feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Hanna wrapped both her arms around his neck and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. Then she drew her head back, her nose wrinkling with obvious displeasure. “You’re scwatchy,” she told him.

“Yeah, I forgot to shave this morning,” he admitted, setting her on the bed again.

She immediately returned to the pile of pillows, then smiled at him again. “Movie?” she asked hopefully.

“After your movie is done and the kitchen is clean, we’re going to have to go out so that I can buy a new phone,” Josh told them, as he picked up the remote again.

Tristyn turned to follow him back down the hall. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Believed what?”

“That you’re a marshmallow.”

He stopped then and turned to face her, his brows drawing together over smoke-colored eyes. “I am not.”

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “You’re all soft and squishy—like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”

Those eyes narrowed dangerously, the only warning she had before he took two slow and deliberate steps forward. She automatically took two steps back. He laid his palms flat on the wall on either side of her, then leaned in, so that his body brushed against hers. His undeniably lean and very hard body.

“Do I feel soft and squishy to you?” he asked, his mouth close to her ear.

She lifted her palms to his chest, where his heart was beating in a rhythm much steadier than her own, to hold him at a distance. She had to moisten her suddenly dry lips with her tongue before she could reply, but she managed to keep her tone light and casual when she said, “In here.” And tapped her fingers against his rock hard chest. “Your heart is soft and squishy.”

“Because I didn’t yell at a three-year-old?” he challenged.

“You not only didn’t yell,” she pointed out. “You melted. That little girl looked at you with those big blue eyes and said, ‘I so-wee, Unca Josh,’ and it was as if you completely forgot she destroyed an eight hundred dollar phone.”

“It’s just a phone,” he said, conveniently ignoring the monetary value.

“Well, at least now I know why you didn’t answer any of my calls, text messages or emails today,” she noted.

He was still crowding her, standing so close that she could feel the heat emanating from his body. So close she had only to lean forward to touch her mouth to his strong square jaw. Her lips tingled with anticipation; her body whispered “yes, please.” She clamped her lips firmly together and pressed herself back against the wall.

“Were you worried about me, Tris?” he asked, the silky tone of his voice sliding over her like a caress.

“No,” she denied. Lied. “I was annoyed that I had to give Dave Barkov the tour of GSR.”

“I never doubted that you could handle it,” he told her.

“That’s not the point,” she said, ducking under his arm and walking away.

He, naturally, followed. “Do you want an apology? Okay—I’m sorry I was out of touch for a few hours.”

She shook her head as she returned to the kitchen to resume the task she’d abandoned earlier. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not just that you didn’t tell anyone you wouldn’t be at work today—you didn’t even tell your friends what was going on here.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. “Is that what we are, Tris...friends?” he asked, in that same silky voice that could make any woman go weak in the knees.

Any woman but her, of course, because she was immune to the considerable charms of Josh Slater.

“Maybe not,” she finally said, determined not to give any hint of the feelings churning inside her. “A friend probably would have known you have three nieces.”

“It’s not something that often comes up in conversation,” he pointed out. “And since my sister moved to Seattle when Charlotte was a baby, I don’t get to see them very often.”

“That’s why you go to Washington every Christmas,” she realized.

“Not every Christmas.” He picked up the soapy cloth to wipe down the stovetop. “But I go when I can.”

She finished unloading the clean dishes and began to load the dirty ones. “So why are they here now?”

“Lucinda’s manager decided, at the last minute, to send her to Spain. The company she works for is setting up a new distribution center there and her pregnant boss, who was supposed to supervise the setup and train the staff, was recently put on bed rest by her doctor, so the company tapped Lucy to go.”

“Why did I always think your sister worked at Slater Industries?”

“My older sister, Miranda, does,” he told her. “She lives in London with her husband and their kids and manages the office there.”

Which meant that he probably didn’t get to see them very often, either, and perhaps explained why he was always hanging out at Garrett family events. Something to think about.

“How did you end up with so many dishes from two meals?” she asked, as she continued to fill the dishwasher.

“Each of the girls wanted something different for breakfast,” he admitted.

“And you indulged them,” she guessed.

“Well, Emily was up first and she asked for dippy eggs with toast sticks, so I figured I would make eggs for everyone. Then Charlotte woke up and informed me she doesn’t eat eggs—except if they’re in pancake batter. So while Emily was eating her eggs, I found a recipe for pancakes and started making those for Charlotte. By this time, Hanna was awake, too. But she just wanted cereal and seemed perfectly happy with the Cheerios I put on the table in front of her—until I made the mistake of pouring milk into the bowl.”

Tristyn’s lips curved as she pictured the scene he’d described. “Did she scream like a banshee?”

“I thought the neighbors would be knocking on my door—or Family Services,” he admitted.

“Kylie went through a dry cereal stage,” she told him. “Except for Rice Krispies, because they ‘talk’ when you put milk on them.”

“And this—” he said, scraping the remnants of a pot into the garbage can “—is what’s left of the mac and cheese they all had for lunch.”

“Well, that’s a score,” she noted. “Pleasing all three of them with the same food.”

“Except that Charlotte likes hers with ketchup mixed into it, Emily doesn’t like it with ketchup at all and Hanna’s ketchup has to be squirted on top of the pasta in the shape of a smiley face.”

Tristyn smiled at that image, too. “And how long are they staying?”

“Eight to ten weeks.”

Her brows winged up. “What are you going to do with them for two months?”

He wiped his hands on a towel, then folded it over the handle of the oven door. “I’m thinking I should talk to my grandparents, to see if they’re willing to take them for the summer.”

“Didn’t your grandmother just celebrate her eightieth birthday a few weeks back?”

He nodded.

“And your grandfather’s a couple of years older than she is,” Tristyn pointed out.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But they both play golf several times a week.”

“Which is impressive,” she acknowledged, “but still not as physically demanding as chasing after three kids. And considering that your sister entrusted you with the care of her children, I don’t think she’d be too happy to learn that you dumped them on someone else.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Hire a sitter to take care of them when I’m not here? Which is most of the time during race season,” he reminded her.

She shook her head. “That’s not an ideal situation, either.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Not off the top of my head,” she admitted, closing the dishwasher.

“Well, let me know if you think of something,” he said. “They’ve hardly been here twenty-four hours, and I’m desperate enough to consider almost anything.”

* * *

As Tristyn watched the last half hour of the movie with Josh’s nieces, she tried not to think about the fact that she was in Josh’s bed. On Josh’s bed, she hastily amended. As if that clarification made any difference.

She wondered how many women had passed through that same doorway, laid on this same bed. Then pushed the question aside, deciding she didn’t want to know. Still, she felt as if she shouldn’t be here. She knew now why he hadn’t shown up at work today, and why he would be juggling his schedule for the rest of the week—and possibly the rest of the summer. And now that her questions were answered, there was no reason for her to stay.

No reason except that she’d made an impulsive promise to a little girl. A little girl who was even now pressed against her side, her face turned away from the screen as the Shadow Man’s spirit was taken away by the demons. But truthfully, her promise to Emily was only part of it. She was also intrigued by the opportunity to glimpse a corner of Josh’s personal life and curious to see him interact with the little girls.

She vaguely remembered Lucy Slater from Hillfield Academy. Josh’s younger sister had been two years behind Tristyn—a popular girl who liked to party more than study. She got kicked out midway through her sophomore year and wound up pregnant a couple years after that. By that time, Tristyn was mostly keeping her distance from Josh, so any information she had was secondhand from her cousin Daniel. There had apparently been a hasty wedding, and an even hastier divorce.

Obviously Lucy had gone on to have two more children and was now the mother of three beautiful girls. Three beautiful girls who were in Josh’s care for the summer. Tristyn smiled a little at the thought of how the responsibilities would put a crimp in his usually active social life. Maybe she could offer to help with the girls, because it might be fun to have a front-row seat to the fireworks while he figured out how to mesh his life with the needs and demands of his three nieces.

Except that spending too much time in close proximity to Josh was a risk. Sure, they were friends—or at least friendly—most of the time, but there was also that uncomfortable friction that occasionally reared up between them—seemingly more frequently in recent years.

As Daniel’s best friend and business partner, Josh was almost an honorary Garrett. Because his parents traveled a lot to oversee the various offices and interests of Slater Industries—a multinational investment company—he was often on his own for national holidays, and Daniel’s mom, Jane, always included him in whatever plans the Garretts made. As a result, Tristyn had spent a lot more time with him over the past two decades than she’d sometimes wanted to.

In many ways, Josh had been like another cousin, and almost as bossy and annoying as most of her cousins were—at least from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl who hated to be excluded from their activities because of her age and her gender. She didn’t look at him any differently than she looked at Daniel or Justin or Nathan or Ryan. Not until the summer after she’d turned thirteen, when suddenly being around him made her heart beat just a little bit faster. And she would blush and stutter in response whenever he spoke to her.

Her sisters teased her about her crush on Daniel’s best friend, which she vehemently denied. He was just an idiot boy like the rest of their idiot cousins and all the other idiot boys she knew. Of course, Lauryn and Jordyn didn’t believe her denials. And when Tristyn saw Josh making out with Missy Harlowe (aka Missy Harlot) beneath the bleachers of the football field, she felt as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. This unexpectedly fierce reaction forced her to acknowledge the truth of her feelings, if only to herself. She was in love with Josh Slater.

Later, she’d realized that what she’d thought was love was only an infatuation. Regardless of what she called it, there was no denying that he’d been her first real crush. And seeing him with other girls—and there were a lot of other girls—had broken her heart each and every time. She cried when he graduated from Hillfield Academy, because she would no longer see him at school every day. And she cried again when he went away to college, certain that her broken heart would never heal.

By the time Josh came home with Daniel for Thanksgiving, she had a boyfriend. Mitch Harlowe—Missy’s younger brother—was a varsity athlete and an honor roll student with curly brown hair and eyes the color of melted chocolate. And he looked at her in a way that Josh never had—as if she was the most beautiful girl in the world and he was the luckiest boy in the world just to be with her.

She dated Mitch for more than a year and a half, but they never went “all the way.” She was tempted, but she didn’t want to be one of “those girls.” They did a lot of other things, and Mitch was mostly patient with her—and undeniably relieved when she suggested that, maybe, after prom, they could finally “do it.” He was first in line the day prom tickets went on sale.

She smiled a little at the memory, but her smile faded when her thoughts skipped ahead to that night—and an ending that neither of them had planned.

“You were right,” Emily said, drawing Tristyn’s attention back to the screen where the human-again couple were sealing their wedding vows with a kiss. “It does have a happy ending.”

“It’s not over yet,” Charlotte told her sister. “It’s not over until they show all the names of the people in the movie.”

But a few minutes later, it was over.

“Okay, girls,” Josh said from the doorway. “Time to get your shoes on.”

“That’s my cue to head out,” Tristyn said to them.

Josh looked slightly panicked as she made her way toward the door. “Do you have to go?”

“You’re leaving, too,” she pointed out.

“But I was thinking—hoping,” he admitted, “that you might come with us.”

She didn’t delude herself into thinking that he wanted her company. The simple and obvious truth was that he had no clue what to do with the three little girls left in his care and he was desperate for help with them. And yet she couldn’t resist turning his own words around on him.

“Why is that?” she asked, blatantly fluttering her eyelashes. “Does keeping up with three females require more stamina than you possess?”

Chapter Three

Josh slid an arm around her back and drew her closer. So close that her breasts rubbed against his chest. Even through the layers of clothing that separated them, she felt her nipples tighten and strain against the lace of her bra. She lifted her eyes to his, and the intensity in his gray gaze nearly made her shiver.

“Do you want a demonstration of my stamina?” he asked.

She wanted to push him away, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that his touch affected her. Instead, she rolled her eyes. “Not even in your dreams.”

His lips curved into a slow, dangerous smile. “You have no control over my dreams.”

“Then definitely not in any version of reality,” she amended.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked, finally releasing her.

“Positive,” she said, taking just a half step back so that she could breathe without his proximity short-circuiting her brain.

And clearly her brain had short-circuited or she wouldn’t have baited him in such a way. Because even if she was no longer a teenager experiencing her first infatuation, compared to Josh Slater she was still a novice when it came to the games that men and women played.

“In that case, there’s no reason you would object to accompanying me and the girls,” he suggested.

He was right. For the past dozen years, most of their public interactions had been civil—if occasionally adversarial. It was only when they were alone together—which she tried to avoid, if at all possible—that they tiptoed around one another. But if she went along, they would have the barrier of three little girls to prevent them from rubbing one another the wrong way and creating a familiar and dangerously tempting friction.

“Let’s go get you a phone,” she agreed.

* * *

As soon as they stepped through the doors of the electronics store, Charlotte and Emily made a beeline toward the video games on display. Josh opened his mouth to call them back just as a young salesman stepped up and Hanna announced, “I has to go potty.”

With an apologetic glance toward the store employee, he shifted his attention to his youngest niece. “Why didn’t you go before we left home?”

“I didn’t has to go before,” she said with unerring logic. “I has to go now.”

He looked at the salesman, who shook his head. “Sorry, we don’t have any public restrooms here.”

“There’s a coffee shop next door,” Tristyn pointed out. “I’ll take her there.”

“Thank you,” Josh said.

As they turned around and went back out the door, he caught up with Charlotte and Emily. “You can stay here to look at the games or whatever,” he told them. “But stay together.”

“Okay,” they agreed, each already with a controller in hand and attention fixed on the demo game system.

The hopeful employee was still hovering beside him—no doubt working on commission. “Can I help you find something, sir?”

“I need a new phone,” he admitted, and handed over his dead—albeit squeaky clean—iPhone 7.

Tristyn returned with Hanna just as the tech guy—who had been attempting to work magic on Josh’s SIM card—gave him the bad news: none of the information could be salvaged. Which wasn’t really a surprise but a disappointment nonetheless.

“All of those names and numbers...gone?” Tristyn asked, feigning horror. “The cute little messages with kissy-face emojis from all of your girlfriends...gone? Your electronic little black book...gone?”

He slid her a look. “No worries—I have a real little black book for all of the important names and numbers.”

“I have no doubt,” she said.

Josh passed his credit card to the salesman. A few minutes later, he walked out of the store with his new phone, which indicated the time to be 5:26 p.m.

“I’m hungry, Uncle Josh,” Emily said.

“It’s not even five thirty,” he noted. “What time do you guys usually eat?”

“Five thirty,” Charlotte told him.

“I guess that means it’s dinnertime,” he acknowledged, mentally inventorying the contents of his refrigerator to determine if he had anything left to feed them. “What do you like to eat?”

“Pizza,” Emily announced.

“Chicken fingers,” Charlotte countered.

“S’ghetti,” Hanna chimed in.

“Well, at least we have a consensus,” he said drily.

“What’s a sen-sus?” Emily asked.

“It means agreement,” he told her.

Her little brow furrowed.

“He was being sarcastic,” her older sister explained.

“Oh,” Emily said. Then, “What’s scar-tas-tic?”

“Sarcastic.” Tristyn enunciated the word for her. “And it’s your uncle Josh’s way of trying to be funny, but he’s not.”

“S’ghetti,” Hanna said again.

“You had pasta for lunch,” Josh reminded her.

“Not s’ghetti,” she argued.

“What’s your vote, Tristyn?”

A peek at her watch made her grimace. “Actually, I—” she glanced at the girls’ hopeful expressions “—I think going out to eat would allow everyone to choose what they wanted.”

“And it would give my kitchen a reprieve,” he agreed.

“I just need to make a quick call first,” Tristyn said.

He offered his new phone.

“I’ve got my own,” she reminded him, tapping the screen as she stepped away.

“Can we go eat now?” Emily implored. “I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” Charlotte said.

“As soon as Tristyn’s finished with her phone call, we’ll go.” He didn’t pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping on her call, and though he heard only bits and pieces of one side of the conversation, it was enough pieces to put together and figure out she was canceling plans for dinner with someone else.

“You had a date,” he said, when she’d disconnected the call.

She nodded.

“You didn’t have to cancel,” he told her, though he was secretly pleased that she’d done so. And grateful that she would be sticking around to help him out with the girls for a little while longer.

“Well, my car’s still at your place, and by the time we drove back there and then I drove home to change, I would have been late, anyway.”

“I’m sure your date wouldn’t mind waiting...especially if you promised to make it up to him later.”

“So what’s the plan for dinner?” she asked, deliberately ignoring his comment.

The question was answered with renewed calls for “pizza,” “chicken fingers” and “s’ghetti.”

“All of those are on the menu at Valentino’s,” Tristyn pointed out.

“But what do you want to eat?” he asked her, as he led the girls back to his truck.

“Are you buying?”

“It seems the least I can do to thank you for your help today,” he told her.

“Then I want steak,” she decided. “A nice thick juicy steak.”

He buckled Hanna into her booster seat, then stepped back so that Emily could climb into hers while Tristyn opened the door on the other side for Charlotte. “From Valentino’s?”

“No, from The Grille. So I’ll have the seven-layer lasagna tonight and take an IOU for the steak.”

He lifted a brow. “You’re trying to wrangle a date, aren’t you?”

“Ha!”

“Is that where you were supposed to go for dinner tonight?” he asked, settling behind the wheel and securing his own seat belt.

“I’m not discussing my plans with you,” she told him.

“Who was your date with?”

“Refer to previous answer.”

He should let it go. It really was none of his business, but he was curious. “Was it a first date?”

“Refer to previous answer,” she said again.

“Because I haven’t heard you mention that you were dating anyone.”

“Should I add my social engagements to the itinerary of GSR’s monthly meetings?”

“That would be helpful,” he agreed.

“Well, it’s not happening,” she told him.

Her response didn’t surprise him. What surprised him was how much he sincerely wanted answers to his questions. But for now, he decided to be satisfied with the knowledge that she’d canceled her date to have dinner with him.

* * *

The waitress introduced herself as Sydney, recited the daily specials as she handed out menus and filled their water glasses, then left them alone to peruse the offerings.

Valentino’s didn’t specifically have a children’s menu, but they did offer child-sized portions of any of their entrées.

Charlotte frowned as she scanned the options. “There’s no chicken fingers on the menu.”