A Lot Like Fate

Ruby’s Diner had the best scenery of any spot in the whole of Superstition Springs. That’s where Tristan Marchande could indulge in his favorite activity—appreciating women. Some guys fished or played golf. He could think of no finer use of an afternoon than looking at women, talking to them, and/or figuring out how to compliment them in order to bring out their best smiles.

His love of females approached art in its purest form.

Some people called it luck the way women thronged around him. Or worse, they slapped degrading labels on his passion. But he wasn’t playing anyone, nor was it a game. Treating women well was a talent and he’d been blessed with more than his share.

The real art lay in his unparalleled finesse at sending a woman off to her next adventure, confident, glowing and fortified with fond memories of her experience with Tristan. Women always moved on to someone better, a secret he’d learned at an early age. Since it was the height of arrogance to assume he should get to keep one, he always stuck to the tried and true: burn hot, burn fast, let her go. C’est la vie.

Ruby’s had the singular distinction of being where everyone in town hung out at least once a day, so Tristan tried to be there as often as possible. He liked the buzz of the crowd, plus Ruby kept the air conditioner somewhere in the realm of frigid, which made it a popular place during a Texas summer. Best of all worlds. He could look his fill, remind himself he wouldn’t be touching any of the women for any reason and carry on.

“Solo again today?” Ruby jutted a hip against the side of the corner booth where Tristan sat nursing a cup of coffee. She leaned into her conversation pose, which meant she’d cleared the kitchen of orders for the time being. “Do I need to check the vital signs of the girls in this town?”

Tristan grinned at the ageless owner of the diner and held up his mug for her to refill. In a couple of hours, she’d switch him to iced tea like clockwork, which was less a staple of small-town graciousness and more a testament to the fact that he’d put considerable effort into charming her. It never hurt to be the favorite of the lady with all the food.

“You’re the only girl I need, Ruby. When are you going to put me out of my misery and do me the honor of becoming Mrs. Marchande?”

Her laugh made him happy, which was one of the reasons he enjoyed talking to her for hours on end when time permitted. It wasn’t a chore. Ruby was an awesome lady with a great sense of humor, who had pretty auburn hair and a face with enough character that she could be fifty but still so youthful that it kept you guessing about her age.

“As soon as Darling circles the globe, I’m yours, sweetie,” she advised him with a wink, which he responded to with his typical heart-clutch as if she’d pained him enormously, but he couldn’t stop from laughing at her comment. Darling belonged to Farmer Moon and the pet pig was as much a resident of Superstition Springs as the people.

“You’re the only woman I know who can say ‘when pigs fly’ with such panache.” Which he also appreciated about her. “Come on. Who’re you holding out for?”

“Matthew McConaughey.” She stuck her tongue out. “And before you laugh, he was a regular customer at my restaurant in Austin.”

Tristan held up his hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t going to say a word. If I have to lose out to someone, might as well be a Hollywood pretty boy. He won’t treat you half as nice as I would though. Just sayin’.”

“Are you torturing Marchande again, Ruby?”

Ruby smirked at Isaiah West’s comment as Tristan’s former SEAL teammate joined the party in the corner booth. She bumped Isaiah with her elbow. “You know I live to crush his ego into little pieces.”

“And she does it so well,” Tristan agreed with a smile for Isaiah’s fiancée, Aria, who slid into the booth to sit next to him so West could take the seat on the end. “There’s my favorite redhead in the whole entire town.”

Aria laughed and pushed her long straight locks behind her shoulders with a pleased smile. “That’s because the other two don’t have my sparkling personality.”

The other two being her sisters, Havana and Ember, and yes, he would agree that of the three, Aria could light up a room the fastest with nothing more than a smile. Havana had her own great qualities, namely her taste in men since she was engaged to Caleb Hardy, the leader of the small band of SEALs Tristan had pledged allegiance to for more than a decade. Tristan respected Hardy more than any man alive, and a woman who likewise recognized his greatness got beaucoup points. Ember, on the other hand, had lush curves, a lush mouth and a vibe that said you better watch your soul around her, or you’d lose it in a heartbeat.

She didn’t scare the maestro des femmes. But Tristan did give her a wide berth, solely because of the seven-year-old son she had in tow. Tristan wasn’t father material on any day and there were rules about that kind of thing. Kids didn’t understand when adults they’d grown to care about vanished from their lives. Tristan had firsthand experience with that thanks to his mom’s disappearing act, and he’d set himself on fire before doing that to someone else.

“What’re you guys up to today?” Tristan asked the couple who shared a conspiratorial glint in their gazes.

Ruby shoved off to take care of other customers as Aria pulled out a manila folder full of papers and then set a laptop on top of it. “Party planning. It’s tomorrow night and Isaiah and I are way behind because we…um, played hooky yesterday.”

The sweet blush that stained her cheeks made Tristan grin. “Hooky” sounded a lot like code for a trip to the cold springs on the edge of town, a place couples frequented to spend time together away from prying eyes. “Since you’re not still playing hooky, I’m guessing Elmer here might need a few pointers on how to do it right.”

West shot him a flat-lipped look that probably had more to do with being called by his nickname than anything. “I play hooky just fine, thanks. Some of us know how to quit having fun when we have more important things to do, that’s all.”

Tristan waggled his brows and let it ride. West was the peacemaker of their group, the first in line to smooth the waters, but he’d undergone a bit of a renaissance, thanks to Aria. His comments fell more in the realm of smart aleck than anything lately, which Tristan heartily approved of. Aria was good for Isaiah, not that anyone had bothered to thank him for his role in ensuring the couple had ended up together.

The little crush she’d thought she had on Tristan had been easy enough to dispense with. And he’d taken the opportunity to guide her toward Isaiah, which was as it should be. They were perfect for each other, and Tristan’s self-imposed female hiatus remained intact with no one the wiser.

“Speaking of important things to do,” West said and cleared his throat, which meant he was about to segue into a subject that Tristan would prefer to skip. “Have you thought any more about taking Hardy’s job offer?”

Yep. That was the subject he’d least like to talk about. “Not really.”

A lie. He’d thought about it for two point two seconds. And the answer was no.

It was a dirty shame that as a SEAL, Tristan had developed an even greater talent with fire than his talent with the ladies. As the team demolition expert, he’d gotten a lot of chances to hone his abilities. Sometimes he wished he wasn’t so good at turning things to ash. But fire had a ruthless efficiency that guaranteed there’d be no second chances. Poetry in his book.

At least until his skill with destroying stuff had resulted in a long gash across the face of his teammate. Later, in that horrible German hospital, he’d learned that Rowe Hardy had also lost most of the hearing in his left ear thanks to Tristan. So after Syria and the worst professional mistake of his career, he’d taken a sabbatical from playing with fire. Of any sort, even the female variety. His interaction with the women of Superstition Springs could best be described as harmless. For now. Anything else was out.

“I need you to think about it,” West advised with raised eyebrows that emphasized his multi-colored eyes. He had one brown and one blue, an oddity that Tristan had long grown used to. “We agreed to help Hardy get this town in order. Aria and I can’t gear up the campaign to start attracting tourists until there’s a town to come to. Hardy needs infrastructure. Like a fire department.”

“Sure, I get it.” Tristan shrugged nonchalantly and smoothed a hand along his tightly bound topknot to search for strays, but the heat-resistant hair product Mavis J had ordered online for him was doing its job.

Unlike him.

This wasn’t the first time Caleb Hardy had sent West after Tristan with a hard sell. Just because Hardy had been elected mayor of this place didn’t mean he had the right to start pressuring people into ill-fitting positions he thought they should fill.

Taking on the role of fire chief meant Tristan would have to stop pretending fire didn’t exist. Stop ignoring the twitchy feeling he got sometimes because he couldn’t burn off tension the same way he’d always done in the past.

Sometimes had grown into most times if he wanted to be honest. He didn’t. Tristan was good at destroying things, not building something critical like a fire department from scratch. Hardy would have to find another go-to on that.

Eventually, Tristan would have to put his foot down and stop weaseling around about the job. It would be great if he could find something else to point to as his excuse for why he couldn’t be the fire chief. Anything else. Being idle wasn’t working for him now that he and West had finished renovating the old barn on Tallhorse’s property, turning it into a schoolhouse that would serve the new families the mayor hoped to attract. But what was he supposed to do instead?

“Do you get it?” West asked mildly in full Elmer mode. He’d earned that nickname because he excelled at gluing you back together when stress and other nasty stuff threatened to pull a guy apart. “Because it doesn’t seem like you do. We all have to pitch in. We’ve only got four more months to get this place operational before the developers pull the plug.”

The problem was he didn’t want to be put back together.

“Ben oui,” he shot back automatically. His speech always shifted to French when he got agitated. A gift from his father. “None of this is news to me.”

The twitchy feeling got worse the longer West and Aria sat there watching him carefully as if he might spontaneously combust right in front of them. And he was fini with this.

“When is the party?” he asked. “I’ll help with that.”

West gave him a look that said he knew exactly why Tristan had changed the subject and he was not amused. “The party is my job. You wouldn’t take that away from me after all I went through to get it, would you?”

“Seems like I recall you spent a lot of time shucking it off over some misguided idea that you weren’t going to be hanging around here much longer,” Tristan reminded him just as the bell over the door clanged to announce the entrance of someone new.

Cassidy Calloway.

She flowed into the room like a gorgeous river, prickling the back of his neck as her energy took up all the spaces inside him, squeezing everything until he was so uncomfortably full of her that he wanted to claw his skin off to ease the pain.

Tristan’s mood went sideways instantly. How she had the power to do that stuck in his craw. But there was no escaping the way she affected him. She walked into a room and bam—he went insane. Everything she did got him hot and bothered and not in a good way. Except sometimes it was very good, in the very best way.

There was nothing remarkable about her mouth, but he itched to rub a thumb across her bottom lip, just to see if he could caress a smile out of her. Nothing else he’d tried worked. That had to be why he dreamed about her in these half-lucid patchwork visions where he figured out exactly what made her tick and pushed every last button until she melted into his arms.

The odds of that happening in real life were zilch. She was the only woman he’d ever met who was wholly resistant to Tristan Marchande and it was messing with his head.

“I have to go,” he muttered and slid out of the booth as unobtrusively as possible.

Cassidy had obviously come here for a reason and if she spied Tristan sitting at the corner table, she’d flounce back out the door in a huff that would draw even more attention to the fact she hated his guts. Frankly, he’d gotten a little tired of the theatrics, so it seemed easier for him to duck out.

Plus, it kind of hurt. He’d spent his life honing his skills so that every woman he came in contact with loved him. How did he keep hitting a brick wall with this one?

Deep down inside, he knew. Syria had snuffed out the flame inside him.

“The thing where you two refuse to be in the same place at the same time is getting old,” Aria announced a lot more loudly than Tristan would have liked. “Grow up.”

“She started it,” he said which didn’t help his case, but he was fresh out of grown-up responses when the dynamic between him and Cassidy raked across so many raw places inside. “When I figure out how to finish it, I’ll let you know.”

He vacated through the kitchen, kissed Ruby on the cheek on the way out, and snagged the sandwich she nodded to on the sideboard because he might be an idiot about Cassidy but not when it came to eating. Ruby took care of him and he liked that.

As Tristan entered the lobby area of the mining-town era hotel where he’d taken a room—“lobby” being a pretty grand term for it—he spied Serenity sitting on the threadbare couch expectantly, as if she’d been waiting for someone. She had her long grey hair down around her shoulders today, a mess of contradictions because it made her look so young while framing her pretty, careworn face with hair that aged her.

“There you are,” she said with an indulgent smile, confirming that Tristan was the subject of her ambush.

“Good morning.” Pleasantries were a must when opening any conversation, no matter what. He crossed the small room in two strides and lifted Serenity’s lined hand to his lips for a brief kiss. Ladies loved that old-fashioned gesture and it served as his unique calling card, something they remembered about him long after he’d faded from their lives. “Is that a new dress? I love it. It suits you to the ground.”

Serenity’s smile widened as she fingered the swirling patchwork skirt covering her legs with a pleased titter. “How do you keep track of an old woman’s clothes so well? I finished sewing it last night.”

“When I see an old woman, I’ll let you know.” He winked and settled in next to her on the tiny couch, a trick and a half since his six-foot-four frame scarcely fit on regular sized furniture. “You should find something better to do with your time than sit around here waiting on me.”

“There’s nothing else I’d rather do than take care of my boys.” She patted him on the knee. “I sensed you needed reminding that someone cares about you.”

That put nice little catch in the back of his throat. Because she wasn’t wrong. Serenity Force mothered him better than his biological one had. Of course, a turnip would be leaps and bounds ahead of the woman who had birthed him—whoever she was—simply by showing up.

“I did need that,” he told her gruffly and gathered her hand in his because it suited him to create a connection with her at that moment.

Serenity had been his pen pal while he’d been overseas. Actually, she’d written to each of the five members of Caleb Hardy’s team continually as they’d infiltrated the sewage-filled areas of Syria via multiple deployments. Her letters had been a bright spot as they’d drained the place of al-Qaeda militants.

And then when they’d been kicked out of the Navy—honorably discharged, like that made a difference—she’d taken them all in, given them a place to live, a town to refurbish and a new purpose in life. Tristan couldn’t possibly express his gratitude and Serenity was also the only person in a town-wide radius who loved him unconditionally, whether he had anything to do with fire again or not.

“You’re not blowing off my prediction, are you?” she asked him pointedly. “Because if you were doing it right, a woman your own age would be caring about you by now.”

“I’m not blowing it off…not exactly anyway,” he mumbled because he had totally written off the lines she’d penned him while he’d still been belly-down in the dirt of Syria. “I’m just—you know. Going through a dry spell.”

It did not escape him that the women he currently had success at charming were all twice his age. They were safe. Mother-figure types with no strings.

Serenity tsked and in that small sound managed to convey disapproval the way only moms could. “Because the prediction said you had to do the work, sweetie. You can’t expect the right woman to fall into your lap. What would that prove?”

That he still had the magic touch, of course. But he grinned to cover the ragged place inside that she’d rubbed raw without realizing it. “I like it when they fall into my lap.”

“I just bet you do.” Her arched eyebrows continued the verdict she hadn’t verbalized. From the reaches of her new dress, she pulled a pen and a pad of paper. “Write it down again. So you don’t forget this time.”

Dutifully, he took dictation as she spoke and read over the words when she’d finished.

You will experience a great shift in your love life if you are willing to put in the work. After much give and take over the last year, you must make emotional adjustments and surrender to the flow of life and death before you will find intimate love.

That didn’t sound as woo-woo as he’d recalled and not nearly as permanent. Clearly Serenity’s direct pipeline to the universe had his number. He was all about intimacy. Permanence? No. But this? Seemed like it was right up his alley. Maybe he could make a few small mental adjustments and ease away from this self-imposed woman-sabbatical that he’d forced himself into. If that was indeed the problem.

Had he screwed up by swearing off women? The lack of fire—both personally and professionally—was making him miserable. Why not try finding a new woman and see if it helped him get back the spark inside on at least one front?

The prediction even said he should surrender to the flow of life and death. That was a no-brainer. He started every relationship under the premise that it would eventually die. He was aces at helping it burn out as quickly as possible, too.

“Thanks, Serenity,” he said sincerely. “I’ll keep this on me at all times so I don’t forget.”

It didn’t mean he’d bought into the concept of a woman fixing his problems. More like distracting him from them, if he wanted to be honest, because no woman could ever make him want to take on a role in Superstition Springs that had anything to do with fire. His hands had caused enough destruction of people and property for a lifetime.

The plate Ruby plunked in front of Cassidy blurred. She should eat it, whatever it was. But her brain refused to cooperate enough to do two things at once and right now, every ounce of her energy went toward organizing the school she’d stepped up to start.

Lesson plan… I should finish—the white boards need to be rehung. Markers. Did I order—I ordered something maybe I got an email from that place or was it from the textbook—

“Cass.”

She blinked up at Ruby. “Sorry, I was in a daze.”

That was the standard excuse Cassidy used to explain away what happened when she lost focus. Ruby pretended along with her as she gestured toward Cassidy’s coffee cup. “Did you want a refill, honey?”

“Yes, please.”

She slid the cup toward Ruby’s carafe and bit back the age-old question—how many times did you ask? Usually if she waited, folks volunteered that information with what she was sure they thought was mostly kind admonishment.

Ruby never did though because she fell into the category of those who thought it was rude to poke into the reasons why Cassidy struggled with almost every aspect of daily life. There were plenty of those in the other camp though, who seemed to think it was perfectly fine to ask pointed questions like, what’s wrong with you? Are you paying attention to what I’m saying? Why can’t you focus for longer than two minutes?

Short answer: she was defective.

But she refused to let that stop her from opening a school where every kid had an opportunity to learn at their pace, just like Tallhorse had done for her when she’d been growing up. The stoic Native American teacher had never openly discussed Cassidy’s learning disability, at least not with her, but he’d quietly helped her pass the standardized tests she needed to move from one grade to the next.

Probably there were diagnostic routines somewhere in the world that might have explained in clinical terms why Cassidy couldn’t absorb information the same way other kids did, why in her twenties, her mind still scattered in a thousand different directions. Why she felt such a fierce need to hide her disability from everyone, even as an adult. But in a tiny place like Superstition Springs, those resources didn’t exist. And besides, who wanted to take a bunch of tests that would only confirm what she already knew?

She wasn’t like other people and the less other people knew about it, the less they could give her grief. Or worse, ply her with sympathetic looks and treat her like a baby as they showed her how to do something a seven-year-old could do without help, like add two plus two.

Eggs. And toast. That’s what was on her plate. Cassidy picked up her fork and shoveled the frothy mass of yellow clouds into her mouth. The toast had a pointy side that made it look like a house in an upside-down world where the sky could be all around in a bubble of golden egg…

Cassidy had rearranged her plate to create the picture in her head before she’d fully registered that she’d stuck her fingers in her food, a social convention that was not done, according to her mother. She’d had that drilled into her from an early age. Ugh. Who made art out of scrambled eggs? Why couldn’t she just be normal for five minutes?

That pretty much killed her appetite. Wiping her fingers on her napkin, she stood and waved to Ruby, then took off for the sanctuary of her newly renovated barn where she could be alone with her deadlines, and no one was there to notice that she’d challenged herself with the impossible.

Soon, it would be a schoolhouse full of kids who needed a safe place to learn. She’d figure out how to compensate for her lack of education and lack of skills because that’s what she did. Overcome. Always. There was no other choice.

Digging into the stack of paperwork she’d put off yesterday, she snapped a rubber band on her wrist as she read, which sometimes worked to keep her focused if she wasn’t too tired or distracted. She’d set up the desk in her small administrator’s office exactly the way she wanted it, facing north because that had the best energy, and the orange chair she’d ordered made her smile. This was her space in the environment she’d helped create from nothing.

It wasn’t done yet, but she’d get there. Tallhorse would help as a teacher but told her in no uncertain terms that the administration end wasn’t his deal. She had to handle it all. It was scary, thrilling, amazing, sweat-inducing work. So far, no one had figured out that she had zero clue how to build a successful school, private or otherwise.

And no one ever would.

“Anyone home?”

The smooth male voice that had called out from the main area of the building flowed across her skin like a thousand warm tendrils of honey. Tristan Marchande. Even his name sounded like something gooey and delicious and very, very bad for you.

He was a wolf dressed unashamedly in wolf’s clothing with a spare wolf skin thrown around his shoulders for good measure. He didn’t even try to pretend he was anything other than a womanizer, a consummate flirt and a whole heap of trouble all rolled up into one.

Her gaze narrowed as she scrubbed at the raised hair on her arms, willing it to lay down because it was Tristan. Who should not affect her in any way but did. Oh, boy did he. Tristan with his perfect sleek blond hair and the way he wore a white button-down shirt as if stains didn’t exist in his world and oh, yeah, they didn’t because he was perfect in every way, including the fact that his shoulders were to die for not to mention his perfect body, plus his perfect face could rival both Gabriel and Michael in the angelic department…and that was enough to snap her back from the abyss.

Tristan Marchande did not have one single cell in his body that could be compared to an angel. He was Team Lucifer all the way, kicked out of heaven for being so very good at being bad.

What was he doing in her schoolhouse?

“What do you want?” she called out crossly. She’d just gotten into a groove with her paperwork. How dare he interrupt her? It was going to be murder to get her concentration back.

The man filled her office instantly as he materialized in the doorway, arms crossed. He smelled divine, like the best combination of woodsy, earthy, piney something that she could roll around in for an eternity and his scent invaded her, like poof, there it was inside as if she’d inhaled it and yeah, okay, she had automatically sucked in a huge influx of breath through her nose but who could blame her—

“There you are,” he said just as crossly as if she’d been hiding from him while he counted to one hundred, only for her to stymie his search once he’d shouted ready or not, here I come.

She definitely wasn’t ready. “Imagine that. I’m in my office. Where I work. Where would his highness have preferred for me to be?”

“If you must know, I prefer Roi Marchande,” he informed her loftily and leaned on the doorsill casually as if he had all the time in the world to upset her routine and gah, why did his immaculately ironed shirt have to stretch across his broad shoulders like that? It was nearly enough of a panoramic view to charge admission.

She looked away. “Some of us don’t speak French.”

Nor did she want to hear it because for whatever reason, the way his accent rolled through her made her shiver and there was very little on this earth that she hated more than having involuntary reactions to stimuli. That happened enough without Tristan’s disturbing presence.

“Some of us should learn.”

Oh, sure. That was happening. Learning was totally her strong suit. The reminder that he was good enough at it to absorb not one, but two languages put her back up even though she’d sworn she wouldn’t let him rile her. “How about speak English. That’s the national language of America.”

“I’m as American as apple pie, chérie.”

“Which is it? Apples or cherries?”

That made him laugh, and the deep richness of it was as disturbing as his French, even laced with a sarcastic edge. “Door number three. Bananas. As in you drive me. Can we have a civil conversation or is that beyond you?”

“How is the fact that you’re a smug, arrogant loser my fault?” she practically screeched before checking her temper. She was never this catty and mean with other people, but he brought it out in her for some unknown reason. “I’m working here and you’re the one who barged in without even knocking. One would hope you’d have brought your manners when intruding on someone’s solitude, but then again, it’s you we’re talking about so—”

“Okay.” He held up his hands, spreading his long, lean fingers out in what might pass as conciliation from someone else, but only managed to mold his shirt sleeves to his drool-worthy biceps. Not that she’d spent a lot of time contemplating just how they might feel under a woman’s fingers or anything. “Truce.”

Warily, she eyed him. “Do you even know how to spell that word?”

“Bien sûr. Do you?” He waited with a cocked eyebrow that crawled across her last nerve.

Deep breath. The longer she argued with him, the more of her precious concentration he’d take up, and he already took up a lot of her energy in the wee hours of the morning when she should be sleeping but was really thinking about why Tristan Marchande kept her awake when he was nothing more than a player who plowed through women like a combine on frenzy mode.

The real mystery was why she kept letting him bait her when she knew he wasn’t picking at her insecurities on purpose. He was just generally a jerk. But only to her for some reason. Other women got compliments and sonnets to their beauty, while she got kicked in the teeth solely because she didn’t lay down at his feet, prostrate with vapors over his manly manliness.

Instead, she spent every second in his presence making sure he didn’t get close enough to figure out her defects. He wasn’t the kind of man who would have a lot of patience for a woman with a disability, not when he had so many others to choose from, and she had to protect herself.

“Why don’t we skip the spelling lessons and you tell me why on earth you came looking for me,” she suggested and forcibly relaxed her clenched jaw.

“I don’t know. Bored.” He made a great show of glancing around her office. “We did all this work on renovating the barn into a schoolhouse and I didn’t even get a tour when you and Tallhorse finished the interior work.”

“You never asked.” And the fact that he was here sniffing around her domain after the fact sat funny on her nerves. He’d worked right outside the barn doors for weeks and had never once ventured inside. Because she was on this side of the door most likely. “You still haven’t asked.”

“Cassidy, will you show me the schoolhouse s'il te plaît et merci,” he intoned and dang it, even in a robot voice his accent bordered on sinful. That should be illegal. And it definitely shouldn’t make her ache to hear more in much closer circumstances.

It was enough to get her riled all over again. “You can drop the French. It doesn’t impress me.”

“What would?” he asked out of the blue with enough sincerity that she did a double take.

“What, like you care all of a sudden?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged nonchalantly, pulling his pristine white shirt across his built shoulders. “Maybe I’m curious how a conversation between us might go. Give it a whirl.”

Sure. That was what he wanted all right. How about instead, he had some other angle she wasn’t getting. And besides, friction between them worked for her on a whole lot of levels. Removing that would introduce a multitude of issues, many of which she could scarcely imagine dealing with. Like, how much less experienced she was than his normal type. How much more backwoods she was than the chic women he surely attracted in droves. How he’d laugh if he knew the last time she’d been tested at age fifteen, she’d read at a sixth-grade level. Better to keep them at odds so she never had to find out how incompatible they were.

“I’m impressed by quiet, bookish men who wear horn-rimmed glasses and are the type to never forget his mother’s birthday.”

Tristan’s expression went blank, giving her the distinct impression she’d said something she should apologize for, but then he nodded once. “Noted. About that tour…”

Obviously, he wasn’t going anywhere until he got whatever he’d come for. If she indulged him in the tour, maybe she could get his disturbing presence out of here faster. “Sure.”

She levered out from behind the desk, but when she rounded it, he didn’t back out of the doorway like she’d expected him to and suddenly, they were almost touching and the frissons of electricity arcing between them nearly stole her breath because he was right there, so close that she could almost feel the rise and fall of his chest echoing in her own breastbone—

“Cassidy,” he murmured and oh, goodness, the thick elixir of his voice did something to her skin.

“Um…what?” Why did her voice sound so breathy? It was just…his eyes were this amazing blue color that she’d never seen from this angle, full of something both sincere and intense that she couldn’t look away from. He was so tall. And so gah, like this combination of beautiful, ethereal and yet, so real…

“I was hoping we could do the truce thing. For real,” he said. “We seem to be upsetting our friends the longer we drag out this animosity between us.”

That was what he wanted? She blinked. “Maybe you should stop antagonizing me.”

“Same goes.”

He didn’t do her the courtesy of blinking in kind, his laser vision boring through her. Reminding her that she wasn’t perfect like he was, and she’d do better to be dreaming of elves who came out of the woodwork to help with her paperwork than of what it might be like to be kissed by a man with the level of skill he must have because she could feel his expertise in the marrow of her bones—

“Then step back,” she muttered fiercely. Before I lose my mind. “I can’t show you the schoolhouse when you’re in my way.”

He didn’t, not right away, likely to prove he didn’t dance to her tune but then he waltzed backward into the hall with so much grace she nearly wept. Or maybe the sudden aching sense of loss explained the need to grieve as he tore his heavy masculine presence from her office.

Wow, was she in a fanciful mood today. Snapping her brows down, she shouldered past him into the main area of the building. “This is where we’ll have joint sessions in the morning.”

“Joint?”

He’d followed her, dragging his woodsy scent with him, or possibly it still lingered in the air from when he’d flowed through this part of the barn earlier in search of her. Maybe it was just a permanent part of her now—what did she know?

“Yeah, we won’t have enough students to split into classes for the whole day, not at first. It’s good for the kids to be around others, especially older children. It becomes a community of learning at all levels, a draw for the folks we hope to attract to Superstition Springs.” As she warmed to the subject, ideas both old and new pinged at her faster and she scrambled to articulate the vision she could easily see in her head. “We’ll do individualized instruction in the afternoon with each kid while the other students do independent study. That’s what will make our school special. Students will never feel adrift or as if they’re just a face in the crowd. We have to craft each lesson with differently abled learners in mind, different age levels… What?”

Tristan was watching her so intently that she’d lost her train of thought.

“It sounds like a lot of work.”

She made a face at him. “Yeah, your allergy to hard work is well noted.”

Instead of sniping back at her as she’d expected, he pursed his lush lips and contemplated her. “I’m not opposed to work, if it has value, and I like what you’re talking about doing here. You’ve sold me. When can I start?”

“Start what?”

He spread his hands to encompass the great room. “Working with you. After that great speech, I want to be a teacher. Sounds like you could use one.”

She choked as she tried to swallow and say no at the same time, which had the unfortunate effect of prompting Tristan’s concern. He buzzed closer and patted her on the back a couple of times, which did not help her regain an iota of equilibrium.

“You’re kidding, right?” she wheezed and tried to give herself some precious space wherever he wasn’t, but he seemed to be everywhere at once, his warm palm on her back rubbing in little circles, his scent, his gorgeous voice crawling through her blood—

“Not in the slightest. Hardy and Havana have made umpteen speeches on how everyone has to pitch in. We need the school established as fast as possible, like you said. Why wouldn’t I want to be a part of that?”

“Because you—” Aren’t educated. She bit it back because neither was she, and green leprechauns would ice skate on the springs in August before she’d admit something like that to him. Neither could she argue about his lack of experience since she had none in her pro column either. “You’re you. We don’t even like each other. And you want to sign up to spend eight, nine hours a day together? No thanks.”

“We’re doing okay right now,” he countered quietly in what amounted to a fair point that she refused to award him. “I’m trying. You try too and we’ll be fine.”

Maybe she didn’t want to try. Having Mr. Perfect around on a continual basis? Sure. That sounded like fun with all the reminders of how everything came easy to him—even ironed shirts in June of all things—and how she struggled to remember where she put her list of things to do, let alone do the things.

No. No. No. He could not be a teacher. Tallhorse knew about her disability, would help her without judgment. Would cheer her on as she figured out ways to compensate. Tristan would do none of that and would mostly likely dive right back into antagonizing her. She would never get close to functional with him around to remind her she wasn’t getting it right on the first go-round.

“I’ve only got a few students right now. A couple of Moon boys. Judd Nixon. Ember’s son,” she explained somewhat desperately. “Maybe in the fall when we open, we’ll have more and then we can circle back to this somewhat bizarre conversation.”

“Is it bizarre that I’d want to make a contribution?”

Her brain scrambled to find the punchline and came up way short. “Well, yeah. You dropped into town from nowhere and now you’re here to stay? It’s a little…suspect.”

“No ulterior motive.” He held up his palms again, long fingers spread, a gesture he’d repeated several times, often enough she wondered if he’d been trained early on to do sleight of hand tricks. Nothing up my sleeve. Presto-chango, anyone with lady parts is instantly under my spell.

That was something she could never, ever let happen to her.

“Why do you do that?” she demanded crossly. “You always do this abracadabra thing with your hands. Were you a magician in another life?”

The flicker of…something in his gaze mesmerized her as a kind of internal battle played out in his depths before her eyes. It should be frightening how quickly he sucked her in, how he closed in all around her, but she couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to stop it and then out of nowhere, he blinked first. Looked away. Scrubbed at his face, revealing a boatload of vulnerability that she had no idea what to do with, especially since she didn’t think he’d done it on purpose or even intended for her to register it.

All at once, she wanted to hug him. Or something.

But then he dropped his hand from his jaw, his expression blanking out again. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Did you make things disappear?” she asked in hopes that she could encourage him to make himself vanish if so. Her brain could not keep up with this tempo, veering from extreme to extreme and she did not have the skill set to deal with Tristan on any level, let alone the one where he exuded all this genuineness.

She much preferred it when they clashed. That she understood.

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured and leaned in a little closer, gesturing her forward but he was already near enough that she could feel his heat. Her breath rattled in her throat as he lifted his brows suggestively. “I’m the master of making things disappear. Women’s clothes in particular. Would you like a demonstration?”

All of her confusion melted away. What had she been thinking? Sincerity was not his thing. Tristan Marchande was a master of something all right—illusion. She’d fallen for another one of his tricks, that’s all.

“I can think of nothing I’d like less,” she informed him primly.

“Make no mistake,” he cut in smoothly. “You’d like that and everything else that came along with it. I do not leave a woman unsatisfied.”

Yeah, that wasn’t in question. She had absolutely no doubt that he could reduce her to a quivering mass of sensation who could do nothing more coherent than mewl out his name. But she’d spent a lot of time pushing him away for a very specific reason—Serenity Force’s prediction.

The thing had been emblazoned across her soul.

You want to feel the security of a strong committed relationship. You will have a high impact on the new man you meet and create an intense bond with him. Pregnancy is in your immediate future.

And she refused to pass on her disability to an unsuspecting child, no matter how deep the idea of a baby had settled into her heart. Of course, she didn’t know for sure that she would…but it was not worth the risk. A man like Tristan could not be allowed anywhere near her. Security of a strong committed relationship? These were not concepts that screamed Tristan Marchande’s name. For goodness sake, he was so wicked, he might actually get her pregnant just by breathing on her.

That’s why she’d instigated a campaign to ensure he hated her. It had worked out well enough that he’d jumped on the bandwagon to keep them at odds. At least until today. Whatever he was talking about with a truce? Not happening.

It was far, far better to cross swords with him at every opportunity and ignore the smoking hot, sizzling vibe that sprang up between them when they locked eyes.