“Hello again.” The voice startled her, pulling from her daydream of hooking up with Archer Tate the film star, right back into his mother’s kitchen where he was standing beside her, a huge grin on his face.

In a millisecond, she took in the high cheekbones, chiselled jawline, cleft chin, full lips stretched tautly over perfectly straight teeth, and the strong dark brows and thick lashes that framed two of the most famous blue eyes on the planet.

“Hello,” she said, wishing she’d opted out of the orange and yellow floral rubber gloves.

“Chloe, right?”

“Yep.” Play it cool, as if you meet super-famous people every day. She had met famous people before. Well, people who were famous in Australia. Hardly the same thing. Although, she’d met Hugh Jackman once. He’d been just as lovely as everyone said he was.

“I’m Archer.”

She stopped herself from saying, “I know,” and instead replied with a casual, “Nice to meet you, Archer. I’d shake your hand but …” She held up her sheathed hands, then went back to the dishes. He picked up a tea towel and started drying. It was one of the sexiest things she’d ever seen.

“So, I’m a little fuzzy on why a gorgeous Australian woman is in my mum’s kitchen doing the washing up.” Gorgeous. He’d called her “gorgeous”. Point one for the “hooking up” daydream.

“Oh, it’s just this thing I like to do. Travel to a different country, go village to village, then door to door, and offer to wash people’s dishes. It’s becoming a bit of a craze, actually. You may have heard of it? Hashtag dirty-dish-tourism?” She handed him the next clean cup.

“Oh, right! Yes, I think I saw that trending on Instagram not so long ago. I wasn’t quite sure what it was all about, and here I am meeting one of you in the flesh.”

She giggled and looked up at him. God, he was tall. He must have been well over six-foot. She’d need to stand on a stool if she ever got the chance to kiss him. Please let me kiss him, she thought. He smelled good too. Spicy, like Christmas. When he smiled down at her, the surrealness of the moment was overwhelming. She looked back at the soapy sink.

“Really, though, I’ve been roped into helping out with the Christmas Fair. Someone named Deirdre stepped in a rabbit hole and turned her ankle, so now I’m in charge. Well, co-in charge, anyway—with your mum.”

“Lucky you.” He took the next cup and dried it with the tea towel. Yummy forearms, she thought. She was a sucker for those.

“Well, to be fair, no pun intended,” she said, “there’s not much to do until tomorrow. Everyone seems to have their bits in hand. Oh—”

“Bits in hand?” Yep. He’d heard it and his mind had gone exactly where hers had—a shared adolescent response to her gaff. Her hand flew to her mouth as a reflex just as she started to laugh, filling her mouth with soap bubbles, which she then tried to wipe out of her mouth with the same sudsy glove, making it all worse.