Opposites attract...and ignite!
When she’s dumped as the famous face of Espresso Cosmetics, Lola Gray does what any self-respecting diva would do: she throws a hissy fit and hits the road. Leaving Tennessee—and her family empire—in the dust, the cover model takes off for New York City. When a speeding ticket gets her in trouble in a small town in Ohio, the only bright spot is the hunky local police chief.
After the craziness of the big city, Dylan Cooper couldn’t wait to return to the peace and quiet of Cooper’s Place. Now the stunning tabloid beauty he is holding for questioning is charming his hometown, and seducing the former homicide cop. Dylan needs Lola gone before he gives in to temptation. But unexpectedly, Dylan’s discovering a woman of surprising talents, hidden depths...and intense passion. Is it possible their sizzling affair will become a lifetime of love?
Releasing his collar, Lola planted her palms on his chest and pushed, wrenching her mouth away from his. A foot of space now separated them, but their gazes remained locked.
Lola steeled herself against the obviously practiced look of surprise on his face. It didn’t matter how great of a kisser he was or that he had a body that would play a starring role in her fantasies for nights to come. She wasn’t about to give Celebrity Pranks the satisfaction or video footage of her looking like she was falling for a stripper.
Time to take back the control she’d momentarily lost along with her damned mind. Take this, Celebrity Pranks, she thought. She rounded the police chief and with her good hand, smacked him soundly on the butt.
“Now take off your clothes and dance!”
The sound of female laughter drew Lola’s attention to the doorway of the waiting room. The nurse she’d met earlier leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded over her chest. “Now that’s a sight I’d like to see myself.” Avis winked. “I see you’ve gotten acquainted with our chief of police.”
Lola’s jaw dropped.
“P-police chief?” she croaked, hoping she’d heard the woman wrong.
“Yes, police chief.” The deep baritone of the man she’d assumed was a stripper rumbled behind her, confirming the fact that she’d really screwed up this time.
Dear Reader,
We’ve all seen them. Wild, wonderful, spirited women who were tamed by the love of a good man. Some call it growing up. I call it a shame.
It got me to thinking what-if?
What if the youngest of the Espresso Empire siblings, Lola Gray, didn’t change? What if her impulsiveness and over-the-top ways, which usually land her in a hot mess, became an asset? What if she met a man wise enough to realize the things everyone around Lola considers faults are actually her greatest strengths?
Small-town police chief Dylan Cooper was the hunky answer to all my questions. And as he works to help get Lola out of a jam and out of town, he realizes she’s the spark both his life and the town lacked—and nobody wants her to change or leave.
I hope you enjoy Lola’s story, which concludes the Espresso Empire series.
All my best,
Phyllis
A former newspaper crime reporter, Phyllis Bourne writes romantic comedy to support her lipstick addiction. A two-time Romance Writer’s of America Golden Heart finalist, she has also been nominated for an RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Book Award and won the Georgia Romance Writer’s Maggie Award of Excellence. When she’s not at her computer, Phyllis can be found at a cosmetics counter spending the grocery money.
Books by Phyllis Bourne
Harlequin Kimani Romance
Taste for Temptation
Sweeter Temptation
Every Road to You
Falling into Forever
Moonlight Kisses
Heated Moments
Visit the Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles.
For Mom and Elizabeth, and authors Farrah Rochon, Michelle Monkou and Patricia Sargeant.
And as always, for Byron, you are my heart, and every day with you is a real-life romance novel.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“Son of a...!”
An uncharacteristic censuring glare from her father halted Lola Gray’s curse, but not her outrage. She glared at her family gathered in the boardroom of Espresso Cosmetics for their quarterly meeting.
“Calm down, baby girl,” her stepbrother and company CEO, Cole Sinclair, warned from the head of the conference room table. The endearment didn’t diminish the sting of his stern tone. Nor did it soften the blow of him using against her the voting rights she had entrusted him with.
“Calm down?” Lola asked, incredulous. Standing abruptly, she flung a head shot of the model they intended to replace her with across the boardroom table. “How would you feel if I gave your job to a drag queen?”
“That drag queen was nearly your new step-mother.” The gravelly voice of Espresso’s longtime secretary, Loretta Walker, chimed in.
A grunt sounded from Lola’s father’s direction. “Are you ever going to let that go?”
“Not as long as I’m still breathing,” Loretta retorted.
“It was an honest mistake,” Lola’s father grumbled. “The guy looked just like a woman, a really good-looking one.”
Lola’s shoulder-length hair swished against her shoulders as her head swiveled between them like a tennis ball in a championship match between Venus and Serena.
Unbelievable.
She’d walked through the doors of the Espresso building this morning expecting to hear an update on their family business, as well as more information about her upcoming photo shoot in China for the new red-lipstick collection. Instead, her family had broken the news she was out as the face of Espresso, as casually as they’d poured coffee from the carafe situated at the center of the long table.
And now they’d segued to an entirely different topic.
“Gorgeous, isn’t he?” Lola’s older sister, Tia Gray-Wright picked up the discarded glossy photo. “This was the most challenging makeover I’ve ever done, but Freddy Finch is one stunning woman...uh, I mean man...um, I mean...”
Her husband and now Espresso’s attorney, Ethan Wright, patted his wife’s hand. “We know what you mean, sweetheart, and you did a spectacular job.” He turned to his father-in-law. “Always check the neck, man.”
Cole nodded in agreement. “And if you spot a giant Adam’s apple bobbing in the throat, then she is more than likely a he.”
Raucous laughter erupted around the table. Lola stared at them openmouthed. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she was in the middle of a comedy-club act instead of a business meeting.
How could they all sit around joking after the bomb they’d just dropped?
Fed up, Lola fisted her hands on hip bones sharpened by years of torturous exercise and a diet of tasteless protein shakes. “Shut up!” she yelled. “Every one of you. Just shut up!”
Silence fell upon the room, and the startled eyes of its occupants landed on her. Satisfied she finally had their attention, Lola wanted to make it crystal clear
she wasn’t going to stand by and let them take her job. Not without a fight.
“As a member of this family and a part owner of Espresso Cosmetics, I have a say in this matter,” she began.
“I hold your proxy,” Cole reminded her. Again, his chilly monotone had a firm edge, so different than the indulging one he’d always used with her. “So you’ve already had your say.”
“That was fine when I was out of the country for months at a time, but I’m back now. I’ll vote my own shares, thank you very much. We’ll just do a recount.”
Lola turned imploring eyes to Cole’s new wife, Sage, who had recently merged her own cosmetics company with Espresso. Her sister-in-law had a rebellious streak. If she got Sage on her side, Lola calculated quickly, and then sweet-talked her father into changing his mind, she’d have the voting power to overturn Cole’s decision to oust her as the face of Espresso Cosmetics.
Sage glanced at her husband, and Cole winked in response. Lola’s hopes plummeted as she watched her sister-in-law’s light brown face flush. She recognized a dick-whipped woman when she saw one, and Sage was clearly under his spell. Just as she expected, her sister-in-law shook her head slowly and mouthed the word no.
Cole cleared his throat. “Even if you did vote your shares, it’s not enough to overrule my decision,” he said. “Mr. Freddy Finch is the new face of Espresso Cosmetics. We’ll announce it to the public next month. He’ll also travel to Hong Kong to shoot the campaign for the special-edition red lipsticks.”
“So this was a done deal before I even walked into the building,” Lola whispered, more to herself than to them. “I never stood a chance.”
She glanced around the room at her father, siblings and their spouses. Her family. They were the very people who were supposed to have her back. Instead, she felt their disloyalty as keenly as if they’d took turns plunging a knife into her back.
“I have a contract. I’ll sue.” Lola knew she was grasping.
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Ethan said, sounding more like the lawyer he was than her brother-in-law.
Cole heaved a sigh from the head of the table. “Hopefully that’s settled.” He turned to his secretary. “What’s next on the agenda?”
“It is certainly not settled.” Lola struggled to keep her emotions in check. “This—this is...” she stammered, her brain scrambling for the right word. “This is bullshit!”
“Lola!” her father admonished from the other end of the conference table.
However, she had too much at stake to back down. “You raised me to call it as I see it, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” She addressed her father, and then scanned the room.
“I put my best face forward for years, while this company churned out one stale collection after another, earning the reputation as old-lady makeup,” Lola argued. She was the one the public associated with Espresso’s senior-citizen image. Not her in-laws, her father or her siblings. “Now that we’re finally making a comeback with fresh colors and exciting new products, you want to kick me to the curb, for a man in a wig.”
Zeroing in on her brother, Lola jabbed a gel-manicured fingertip in his direction. “If that’s not a load of crap, then you tell me what is!”
Cole raised a brow. “Since you never have a problem saying exactly what’s on your mind, I’ll return the favor.” His eyes narrowed as he leaned back in the black leather executive chair. “Let’s start with this sudden concern for your job. Where was it last year when Tia had to personally escort you to the airport so you could make a flight to a location shoot?”
He fired off another question before Lola could answer the first one. “Do you know how much it cost Espresso to appease that prima donna photographer you kept waiting?”
She knew before she opened her mouth to explain that he wouldn’t understand. Her sister certainly hadn’t. “My very best friend’s fiancé had just called off their engagement, a week before their wedding. Britt was hysterical. How could I walk away when she needed me most?”
“Easy,” Cole said. He appeared as unmoved as Tia had been at the time. “You hand her a box of tissues and head for the door.”
Lola closed her eyes briefly and wondered how she could be from the same family as her coldhearted older siblings. Then she remembered, when it came to Espresso, their late mother and company founder, Selina Sinclair Gray, could be downright brutal.
Cole wasn’t finished. “Then, following that hotel incident where you were kicked out after throwing a wild party and trashing their suite, I specifically cautioned you to stay out of trouble, but instead of heeding my warning you made news again. What was it this time?” He turned to his secretary, who was all too eager to supply him with an answer. “That’s right, last week an airplane en route to Nashville from Los Angeles had to make a pit stop in Denver, so you could be hauled off it for allegedly assaulting a fellow passenger.”
“B-but—” Lola began.
Again, her brother barely let her utter a word in her own defense. “Do you know how embarrassing it was for Espresso to have its top representative escorted off an airplane by security? Cell-phone videos of it went viral. You’re still all over the internet, dragging our company down with you.”
His secretary held up her tablet computer. “Lola’s airline fiasco is currently trending higher on social media than those reality-show sisters with the big behinds,” she said.
Lola rolled her eyes. So much for hoping the hubbub would die down. The wisecracks about her on celebrity gossip websites and YouTube snippets replayed in her head. Even worse, tabloid television shows had run different cell-phone videos of the same incident every night since it happened, adding horrid titles such as Espresso Diva’s Mile High Tantrum and Pretty Ugly: Lola Attacks Man over Smelly Feet.
Of course, there had been no video footage of the uncouth passenger in the row behind her resting his bare feet atop the seat—and the head—of the elderly gentleman sitting beside her.
Lola exhaled. Contrary to what Cole believed, she had taken his warning seriously, and she had really, really tried not to intervene, knowing the last thing she needed was more trouble.
She’d white-knuckled the armrests as the jerk behind them blatantly disregarded the flight attendant’s repeated requests to put his feet on the floor where they belonged. “It’s none of your business.” Lola remembered muttering the words under her breath almost like a mantra.
However, when her senior-citizen seatmate’s polite pleas were met with the oaf behind them laughing and wiggling his toes, impulse took over. She’d jumped from her seat and shoved the offending feet off the elderly man’s chair, earning the grandfather’s heartfelt gratitude and the applause of everyone in the first-class cabin.
Unfortunately, the moment the lout had caught sight of her famous face he’d immediately yelped in pain and crumpled into the fetal position.
The upshot: they were both escorted off the plane. Lola was flanked by security, while the rude passenger, who claimed she’d beaten him senseless, was hauled away in a wheelchair, his contrived moans and groans echoing in the air.
“Your behavior was unacceptable,” Cole said.
“But they got the story all wrong,” Lola said. By the time airport security got to the truth and released her with an apology, the strangers taking videos on their cell phones were long gone. “I was simply helping a fellow passenger.”
Tia shook her head. Lola saw her father stifle a yawn with his fist, and her brother-in-law took a surreptitious glance at his watch.
“You also helped yourself right out of representing Espresso,” Cole said.
“Under the circumstances, any of you would have reacted the exact same way,” Lola countered. “Only no one else would be painted as a volatile diva or have to stand here pleading for their job.” Nor would they have to dodge tabloid television reporters trying
to goad them into saying or doing something stupid.
Cole rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. He met her gaze, and for a moment, Lola thought she’d actually gotten through to him.
“My decision stands,” he said finally.
“B-but—”
“The subject is closed.”
“So where does this leave me?” Years of practice kept her posture ramrod straight, but Lola couldn’t control the telltale quiver in her voice as she looked around the table. “Or did you all go behind my back and vote me out of this family, too?”
“Of course not, baby girl.” Her father’s face, which like Cole’s had been uncharacteristically hard, softened with his tone.
“You know better,” Tia said.
Lola raised a brow. “Do I?”
Cole cleared his throat, loudly. “We discussed this earlier,” he said, his words aimed at Tia and their father. “Lola’s not a child anymore. She’s a twenty-five-year-old woman.” He continued as if she wasn’t standing right in front of them. “And these situations, incidents, or whatever you want to call the messes her impulsiveness constantly gets her into, are bad for business.”
Realization dawned as Lola studied her siblings, who had both married over the past year and a half, and their spouses.
“Oh, now I see where this is going.” Maybe she hadn’t been booted from the family yet, Lola thought, but they were definitely ganging up on her. She pointed at her sister and brother-in-law. “First, there’s you two, who are so in sync you finish each other’s sentences.” Then she turned to her brother and Sage. “Next we have the two of you, who are so much alike, it’s downright scary.”
Cole huffed out an impatient sigh. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It appears I’m the odd man out, in this family as well as this company.”
Her brother frowned. “Look, we have a lot of Espresso business to cover, including our plans for the building, dealing with competition from Force Cosmetics and future ad campaigns for Freddy,” he said. “So either have a seat and put that marketing degree you earned online to work, or stop holding us up with this ridiculousness.”
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