Chapter 2

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.