Page 25 of The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

He frowned. ‘Only because you tricked her into it.’

‘I’m pretty sure half of dealing with kids is just tricking them into doing stuff.’

He couldn’t help his gruff laugh. Maybe he should be more concerned about his nanny talking about tricking his kid, but at this point he was just so grateful that he and Olive had had a positive interaction that he wasn’t going to question Iris’s techniques.

‘I think she’s a little afraid of you,’ she said.

‘Afraid of me? Why would she be afraid of me?’ Was that true? He’d tried so hard to be gentle around Olive, soft. He’d offered to color with her for Christ's sake. What else did he have to do, sing nursery rhymes?

It was Iris’s turn to sigh in frustration. ‘Because Olive spent her whole life with her mom and now you’re like this big, intimidating man in her life.’

‘I’m not intimidating.’

Iris rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘I didn’t … I mean, I’m trying … I don’t yell at her or anything.’

‘You don’t have to yell, it’s your whole vibe.’

‘My vibe?’

She sighed again. ‘Yes, your very intense vibe. Like the way you’re staring at me right now it’s as if you can see through to my bones or something. It’s unnerving.’

He blinked and looked away. He hadn’t realized he was staring at her.

‘I have a hard time believing you didn’t know any of this. You spend your day bossing around people in your kitchen, right? I mean, aren’t you intimidating on purpose?’

‘Not here. Not at home. I just…’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know how to do this.’

‘I’m sure you’ll figure it out.’

‘Like the pancakes?’

She gave him a soft smile that permeated through all the shit he was feeling at the moment, leaving him warm. ‘Like the pancakes.’

He looked away again, busying himself with adding the wet ingredients to the dry. ‘Do you want to be my taste tester?’ he asked when the batter was done, and Iris was still sitting at the island watching him.

‘Do I want to eat pancakes in the middle of the night? Uh, yes please.’

He couldn’t help his smile. There was something contagious about Iris’s easy comfort. He shouldn’t have encouraged her being here with him in the middle of the night. He should have sent her back to bed, drawn a line, set a boundary between them. They weren’t lovers or even friends. She worked for him. He shouldn’t be pouring out his problems to her and he certainly shouldn’t be letting her comfort him.

But as disciplined as Archer was in the kitchen, he’d always been reckless with women. He could never seem to help himself. He liked women. He liked their softness. Too many times he’d fallen into bed with the wrong woman just because he’d needed a soft place to land.

Archer made bad choices with women. And so, he melted butter in the pan and poured in enough batter for one big pancake.

‘Will you do the fancy-flip thing?’

‘Fancy-flip thing?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow, trying and failing to not be thrilled that Iris wanted to watch him cook. For the first time in two weeks, he felt like he knew what he was doing, that he was in control. Like his real self was clicking back into place.

‘The thing where you flick the pan and flip the pancake without using a spatula.’

Archer flashed her a cocky smirk and flipped the pancake with just a flick of his wrist. Iris clapped and he felt like he could do anything.

He slid the pancake onto a plate on the counter between them and handed Iris a fork. Her gaze drifted to his before taking a bite. Archer might be failing at a lot of things at the moment, but he still knew when a woman was into him and the heat in Iris’s eyes was irrefutable.

She chewed slowly, a little sigh of happiness leaving her lips. Archer watched intently, waiting for the verdict.

‘It’s delicious,’ she said, taking another piece. ‘But it’s not the same.’