by Natalie Ann
“Hmm. That’s odd.”
“Why?”
“Just that she’s never taken an interest like that before. Not to the point of asking you to work with someone.”
“She isn’t asking me to. She just wanted me to see what they have to offer. I’m supposed to ask for someone named Alex. I’ll give them a call later.”
“Alex Marshall?” she asked.
“Yeah. I guess. Why?”
“No reason.”
It sure didn’t look it to him though when Ella stormed out of his office.
***
“Ella, darling,” her mother said. “You just caught me grabbing some lunch. Do you want to join me?”
She’d run downstairs fast to see if her mother was still in the building, ignoring the looks she got when her heels made a racket on the stairs. Her mother was in the bar talking with her new daughter-in-law, Aimee. Brody and Aimee had gotten married just a few weeks ago. She’d watched her mother crying at the wedding, going on and on about how her oldest was finally getting married.
Then she listened to her mother talk about Aiden’s engagement and his wedding to Nic four months from now in December. Not to mention Mason’s engagement to Jessica and going on and on about future grandchildren.
The three brothers were all engaged or married to employees that worked for them.
All women that her mother had a hand in finding for them when she never used to take an interest in the business after the daily operations were handed over to Ella and her brothers six years ago.
Brody and Aimee, she let that one go. Nic and Aiden made her suspicious. Mason and Jessica blew her radar up. Now she was positive Cade was the next on the agenda.
“Sure, Mom. I’m hungry. What are you in the mood for?”
“I think I’m going to have a cannoli for lunch. Do you want one?”
Ella fought from grinding her teeth. She had such a weakness for sweets and her mother knew it. “No, thank you. I’ll just have a grilled chicken salad, Aimee,” she said before Aimee went to hand her a menu.
“Raspberry vinaigrette, right?” Aimee asked.
“You know me well,” Ella said. She often ordered something down here or came and visited Aimee when she needed a break.
“I’ll take the fish tacos with fries,” Jolene said. “And can you tell them to give me a container of the cheese dipping sauce that goes with the pretzels? And don’t forget the cannoli. You really should have one, Ella. You could use a few pounds on you.”
“What no woman believes ever,” Ella said, frowning. She was thin, but not skinny. If she let herself go, she’d put weight on and not in muscle, but in boobs. It always went there first and she hated it.
Aimee laughed. “I know. You like to dip your fries, Jolene. They know in the kitchen too.”
“How’s work going, Ella?” her mom asked. “You look like there’s something on your mind. What is it?”
“Nothing,” Ella said. “Well, not really. I just heard you telling Cade about Marshall Printing.”
“Always were my smart girl,” her mother said. “You’re trying to adjust your budgets or whatnot, aren’t you?”
Ella snorted. Her mother acted like she didn’t know the first thing about the books, but she knew everything. “You know me. I want to stay ahead of the game.”
“All you kids have something special that makes you unique. Well, no one is as unique as Cade.” Her mother waved her hand. “Never mind. Anyway. Yes, Paula told me her daughter, Alex, took over the business. Guess she went to Duke like you and Cade. Imagine that. She majored in graphic design and has given the business new life. She said Alex would be annoyed if Paula reached out to us, but she’d told Alex to get over it, that she was reaching out to all her old clients.”
“Hmmm,” Ella said. “Have you met Alex before?”
“A long time ago. She’s about five years younger than you guys. I remember her being around when I’d pick things up for the pub. Cute kid, always keeping to herself or helping out, just like you kids did.”
“Didn’t I hear you say something about an Alex Marshall winning some teen beauty pageant years ago? Bragging on how you knew that little girl and how beautiful she was. Such a talented dancer and so sweet.”
“You don’t forget anything, do you, Ella?” her mother said proudly. “Yep, that’s Alex. I guess her grandmother coaxed her into those pageants so she could get scholarship money for school. The business was barely holding together for a long time.”
“I’m glad to hear they’re turning it around. Or that Alex is,” Ella said smiling.
She was on to her mother, but for now she’d keep it to herself. If there was one thing she learned from her mother, it was to be sneaky.
Maybe her other brothers would enjoy seeing Cade set up. That had merit for all the times Cade got on their nerves. The question was, how would they feel if they knew they’d been set up themselves, and could they keep it from Cade?
Pretend Indifference
Alex put the phone down and went to work. She knew her mother was going to be reaching out to old clients. She’d seen the list of businesses herself. She didn’t expect many to call her though.
She especially didn’t expect to hear from Fierce, the biggest name on the list. The one that could generate a massive amount of future business for her. The one she really wanted a chance at working with. Not that she’d admit that to her mom since she put up such a fit about her mother reaching out to begin with.
Unfortunately for her, she’d have to deal with Cade Fierce now.
Not that she’d ever met him in person. Or any of the Fierce siblings. She remembered their mother, Jolene, and their father, Gavin, from when they came to pick things up from her parents when she was a kid. But she’d never seen their kids.
She knew of Cade though. Or better yet, his reputation at Duke.
Maybe it was all false? Or maybe not. She was painfully familiar with reputations and assumptions about herself and tried to keep that in perspective.
None of that mattered because he was going to be here in a few hours and wanted to see what she had to offer, so she’d be ready for him.
Only she wasn’t ready for him when he walked in the door all full of confidence with a swagger that would rival James Dean.
He had dark hair and darker eyes. Eyes that were smiling at her. No, smirking. Like he had something he wanted to say but was biting his tongue. She’d seen that look from men before and was going to pretend indifference, a look she’d mastered so long ago.
“Hi,” she said, walking forward with her hand out. “You must be Cade.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m looking for Alex Marshall. I’m supposed to be meeting him.”
She snorted. Should have figured he would have expected a man. Not only that...didn’t she just greet him like she knew she was his appointment? Guess he wasn’t as smart as she’d thought. “I’m Alex.”
He grinned at her. Didn’t apologize. Didn’t do much more than say, “Well, then I’m just on time when normally I’m late. Make sure you tell my mother that if you see her.”
She frowned, not understanding that comment at all. “Why would I tell your mother that? Or why would I see her?”
“I just figured you knew her since she asked me to give you a call and see if we could work something out on a business front. As for telling her I’m on time, I never am. Or so my siblings always tell me.”
He was sending her a smile that would melt even the strictest of nuns’ hearts. The one that stood over you with a scowl on her face and a ruler in her hand. Only that nun would look at Cade Fierce and politely hand over the ruler and apologize to him. That was dangerous.
She turned and glanced at the clock. “You’re two minutes early, actually.”
“I’m on time when it counts,” he said, winking at her. Smooth. Definitely smooth.
She wasn’t sure what to expect from him, but not someone this friendly. This nice. This charming. He wasn’t fli
rting when she kind of thought he might, was he? She couldn’t tell, which was odd for her. She wasn’t annoyed over that, not really. Guess all those rumors about him really weren’t true. Or he changed. Or she lost her edge, which was possible with her dry spell.
Nah, if what she’d heard was true, guys like that, they didn’t change. Like she said, he was smooth as silk.
Or like the soft buttery leather shoes she’d noticed he had on his feet with jeans that probably cost more than all the pants in her closet. At least his shirt wasn’t too flashy. A light pink button-down with the sleeves rolled up. It took one confident man to wear pink, even as pale as the one he had on.
“I’m a little short staffed right now, so if you don’t mind meeting here, that’d be great.”
“Where is everyone?” he asked, looking around at the front reception area they were standing in. It wasn’t anything modern or sparkly like she’d bet his office was, but it did the job.
“I’ve got two people in the office beyond that window, but one is out on maternity leave and another called in sick. I’m kind of manning the front and the back at the same time.”
“Are you the only one that does the work out back?” he asked, frowning.
“Hardly. I’m not sure what you’ve heard about our business, but it’s growing pretty fast. I’ve got about fifteen employees out back that rotate between all of the machines. Most of the work is set up once it’s designed, then it’s just making sure the machines do what they need to do, boxing up orders, shipping and such. With any luck, I’ll bring on more staff soon, but we’re pretty busy right now.”
It sounded good to her ears when she said it. He didn’t need to know that she just hired half that staff in the past six months when things started to jump. She was hoping it continued to flow and some of those part-timers could become full time. But for the moment she’d be happy to not lay anyone off.
“So show me what you’ve got,” he said.
She’d produced a bunch of sample items already with the Fierce logo on them that she had stored in a box to show him one by one. A slow tease of sorts. She was still thinking about the items, right? Yeah, she was. She shook her head.
“I still had access to the old Fierce logo from when my parents ran the business. I thought you might get a kick out of that.”
He did by the grin he was sporting. “That’s great. It actually gives me an idea for some throwback items. I’ll have to talk it over with my family. But you’ve nailed the red and that’s hard to do,” he said, holding a coffee cup in his hand. Not a small cheap one, but a nice big oversized one that required two hands. Like his two large hands wrapped around it.
Damn, she needed to stop being so distracted when she never was before.
“We can do just about anything when it comes to printing in terms of what we print on. I know that is not hard to find. Where I’ve grown the business from my parents’ days is with the range of designs and techniques.”
She pulled out a beer glass from a box and handed it over. “This is sweet.” He ran his long finger around the etching in the glass. “Can you get other glass styles? Who are your vendors for that?”
“I can give you all that information if we end up working together.”
He glanced up, his eyes staring at her while she held her breath to see if he’d call her out on that. He didn’t. “Sounds reasonable. What else do you have there?”
“My new baby is the embroidery equipment. Once I create the design and program it in, the machine does the rest. Personally, I like this better on clothing than the old school ink printing, but not everyone does.”
She handed over three red T-shirts with the Fierce logo on them. One for the brewery with a beer glass, one for the pub with a bar and stools, and one for the restaurant with a plate and silverware all embroidered under the name.
“My brothers are going to wet themselves over these.”
She laughed over his statement, amused all his smoothness flew out the window in his excitement. She’d take that as a compliment.
He grimaced. “Sorry. Completely unprofessional and it slipped. Words tend to fly out of my mouth when I’m excited about something.”
“Good to know.” She had this!
“So you said you design and program everything in?” he asked.
“Yes. I can do just about everything in terms of graphic design, but I like some stuff better than others.”
“Do you do web design?” he asked, his eyes looking hopeful.
“I can, but it’s not my specialty. For cost purposes, I’ve created and continued to update our webpage, but I’m sourcing out for the meat behind the basic pages.”
She’d have liked to save the cost of that, but there were only so many hours in a day and she was lucky to get five hours of sleep on a good day.
“Can you order from your website?” he asked.
“That’s why I source out. I upload pictures and descriptions for the items, but someone else makes it all work properly for ordering and processing.”
“That’s good to know. I’d love nothing more than to offer more items soon on our website too.”
“Great, but if you don’t mind me saying, you looked like you might have been interested if I did that also. Are you dissatisfied with who you have now?”
“Not at all. I was just hoping it would be a negotiating tool to put everything in one spot.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said.
“Not disappointed at all. What else do you have in that magic box right there?”
Back to his smoothness again, throwing out accolades. “I’m not sure it’s magic, but if it gets me a job, then you can call it anything you want.”
She put the box on the counter for him to dig into himself. He was pretty much ignoring her at this point while he looked over everything she’d printed on, from pens, to shot glasses, to Christmas ornaments.
“Are you self-taught?” he asked, not even looking at her but still digging through the box.
“No. I went to Duke and majored in graphic design.”
His head snapped up fast, he hesitated, and then grinned. “So did Ella and I.”
“I know.”
Fast on His Feet
Cade had been searching through everything in the box in hopes of not staring at the woman in front of him.
Not that he didn’t appreciate everything she was showing him that she’d produced, because he did. He was truthful when he said his brothers were going to wet themselves; he just shouldn’t have been so uncouth about it.
This stuff was rad. Things he had been trying to get his brothers to agree to for years. Now that he had the samples, he might be able to push them more.
But he really wished his mother had mentioned that Alex was a woman and not a man.
A woman that was stunning. One that looked like a model disguised in jeans, an old T-shirt, and sneakers, with her hair pulled back in a messy bun on her head. A natural beauty that he didn’t see often.
One that didn’t use what she had to get his attention or that of any man to get her way, if he was guessing by her business demeanor.
One that stood out by doing nothing more than being her confident self.
It was obvious she worked with her hands. They weren’t dirty by any means, but there was no polish on her nails, no rings on her fingers, nothing at all that most women wore on a daily basis when they left the house.
Or most women that he came in contact with.
She was rather plain...or trying to pull it off. She was failing miserably though.
He saw right through her act to her porcelain skin, her clear green eyes with the strawberry blonde hair, and the chest she was trying to disguise in her shirt that was two sizes too big.
If she put even an ounce of effort into her appearance, she’d stop traffic in New York City with nothing more than a toss of her hair. He figured she probably knew that too.
Instead, she was standing in front of him trying to hid
e what was so natural.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to make a comment on her beauty. To say she looked nice. To compliment her in some way, but he’d held back and was glad he did. If he’d been warned ahead of time by his mother, he would have known what to expect and could have prepared.
Good thing he was fast on his feet.
He was here for work and he was trying to keep it professional. Hell, his brothers were all falling for their employees, but he didn’t have anyone other than his married assistant, so that wasn’t going to happen. Why did that thought pop into his head?
Not that he had any intention of falling in love anyway.
Out for a good time. Keeping it fun. Nothing serious to even think about, let alone worry.
Those had been his mottoes over the years, among several others.
Just because he might be slightly jealous that his brothers were settling down didn’t mean he had any intention of giving up the fun life. The life that most dreamed of having, even if it wasn’t as exciting as most thought he’d led.
Besides, if he’d learned one thing, he’d learned that no matter how hard you try to change your ways, they always come back to haunt you. Stupid shit from his past was going to outlive him, he knew.
The women he’d spent the last ten-plus years dating were out for the same things he’d always said he was. Too bad it’d never really been what he was after. To change that now would be difficult when no one seemed to take him seriously anyway.
The biggest problem of all with Alex though...she went to Duke.
The college he had such a blast at but where he’d earned a less than desirable reputation. Then his senior year when three girls decided to set him up because he’d spent three years earning the title “the man most likely to date for a week.” He had no idea that having fun and being friendly would have turned into what it had. Looking back, he should have realized it.
Those three girls, though, that was the turning point for him to take things more seriously. Or at least try to. It was when he started to settle into school and was determined to prove to everyone he had what it took to be a lawyer and the one his family could depend on.