She didn’t know when she’d gone from seeing this man as nothing more than a control freak she should avoid to seeing him as a man who desperately needed someone to help him loosen up, but the move was a dangerous one. Thinking you could change a man is what got women into trouble.
As the interns walked away, Joy focused on them.
“They’re like the Stepford Wives,” she whispered.
Kaeden’s eyes went wide. “I’ve been calling them the Stepford Twins in my head. I keep thinking I’m gonna slip one day and call them that to their faces by mistake.”
Joy couldn’t help but laugh at that.
* * *
Kaeden let a slow grin cross his face and wondered what it was about this woman that tempted him to flirt. More than tempted.
Normally a vacation was the perfect time for a short-term hookup, but she wasn’t a distraction he needed on this trip. He needed to make sure nothing went wrong on this retreat.
But damn, he couldn’t help but watch in fascination as her face transformed when she laughed. She went from a woman who looked like she had too much to carry in the world to a woman who flat out stole his breath when she laughed. Her eyes lit up and her cheeks were tinged with a hint of pink. Her mouth, too. It was pretty fucking kissable, and he had to focus hard on keeping his eyes on hers so he didn’t stare at those lips and wonder what it would be like to taste them.
“Crepes.” She said the word like it hadn’t come out of nowhere.
He blinked. He had no clue what she was talking about. “Crepes? Is that your way of swearing or something?” He knew his boss’s sister-in-law didn’t like to swear and there were times when the things that came out of her mouth made no sense. She’d say things like “aw monkey toast” or “skidget.” Skidget wasn’t even a word but she didn’t care.
The look Joy was giving him said it had nothing to do with swearing.
“No. The food. Crepes. There’s a crepe place in town that’s amazing. Actually, they’re so good, they have two locations not even a block apart to handle the demand. It’s not something you should miss on the trip and you don’t have anything planned for tomorrow morning. Since you have the vans, you might want to see if a group wants to go into town for breakfast.”
“Isn’t breakfast served here?”
“It is.” She gave a small shrug of one delicate shoulder. “It’s just something you shouldn’t skip if you’re in Breckenridge. Carl told me I should make sure you hit all the local hot spots.”
He laughed. “Crepes are a hot spot?”
“In Breckenridge in the summer? Yeah. Crepes count.”
“Noted. I’ll see if anyone wants to make the trip into town tomorrow morning for the world’s most amazing crepes.”
“You jest, but I’m telling you, these things are magic.”
She looked a bit surprised when he pulled out his schedule and added ‘Magical Crepes’ to the following morning.
“You’ll be there to show us where to find the magical crepes and unicorns?”
“I never promised unicorns.”
“I assumed unicorns would be drawn to things like magical crepes. My bad.” Kaeden looked back at his notes for the week. “I’ll just put potential for unicorns.”
Chapter 5
Kaeden left his cabin to see Jax Cutter and Dave Alexander, two of the guys on his team, sitting on the small front porch of Jax’s cabin. From the looks of it, they’d be rock climbing that day.
Jax still wore his hair in the same cut he’d had in the military, short and tight. His bright blue eyes stood out against a tanned face and he grinned as he checked over a climbing harness.
Dave’s eyes and hair were dark brown, his skin a lighter shade of the same color. He wore his hair short as well and was busy packing ropes and gear into a bag at his feet.
Jax called out to him. “Skip the crepes and come climbing with us. We’re hitting Ten Mile Canyon.”
Kaeden walked over, stretching his arms over his head as he did. He should have gotten up and gone for a run before breakfast.
Tomorrow he would.