Then there was the matter of Grace staying with her. It had simultaneously excited her and terrified her when the animated redhead had brought the idea up a few months before. So Sloane had agreed, though the prospect of exposing her closest friend to her inner sanctum was enough to work her into a clammy-handed cold sweat.
It was just Grace, Sloane had to keep reminding herself. And Grace knew pretty much everything.
The intercom buzzed as Sloane was maneuvering her last curl, eyes trained on the step-by-step YouTube video a beauty blogger acquaintance had posted. She switched off the curling iron and padded to the intercom.
“Let her up, please,” Grace said before the doorman could get a word out.
Sloane rushed around her apartment, straightening and shuffling and restacking in a frenzy. One last dollop of hand sanitizer, two shoes shoved onto her feet, three steps to the door.
And a knock.
She swung open the door and looked into the freckled face she’d seen so many times before—which was much higher than she’d imagined it would be.
“Hello, Meezy.” Grace shouldered past Sloane, rolling a huge vintage floral suitcase behind her. She slid an unapologetic, measuring glance up and down Sloane. “How’d you hide the fact that you were so short?”
“How’d you hide the fact that you’re part giant?”
The two women regarded each other for a tick before their uncertain tension dissolved into laughter. Grace crossed to her in one huge stride and scooped her into a hug so enthusiastic that Sloane’s feet left the floor. “I thought I’d never get to do this. You’re so brave.”
Sloane snorted. “Brave? I don’t know about all that. Let me get through tomorrow and then we’ll talk. You know how I am with crowds.”
“Don’t think of them as strangers.” Grace put an arm around her. “Think of them as friends. Readers. Coworkers. Your adoring fans.”
“Like that makes things any better.”
Grace’s big green eyes narrowed. “Levi’s going to be there.”
“What?”
“He decided to come after all. Drum up some new clientele.”
“Right. About that.” Sloane and Levi hadn’t spoken since he’d dished attitude about her telling Cooper everything.
Maybe he’d anticipated what would happen next. The way Cooper’s place in her life would bud into a warm, soft, colorful spring. If Levi caught a glimpse of what that kiss did to her, he’d be so self-satisfied. She’d never hear the end of it.
“Look, he’s promised to be on his best behavior.” Grace shifted on her feet. “Now, are you going to show me where to put my suitcase or what?”
* * *
AFTER GRACE GOT settled in Sloane’s seldom-used second bedroom, they were off to the convention center for registration, meetings and mixers.
Also known as that thing where people spout from every cranny of the room in endless droves. Hyped up on lots of caffeine.
The conversations went like this: “You’re Sloane from Mise en Place, aren’t you?”
Cue blank stare.
“We can’t believe you actually showed up this time.”
“You’re even shorter/prettier/blonder in person.”
Thank goodness for the conference’s huge name tags. Whoever had thought to put real names and blog titles on them was a genius. And thank goodness for hand sanitizer. Though there was no conclusive proof it could ward off everything from this rapidly moving crowd. At least the sanitizer’s pungent, clean smell reminded Sloane of home. And home helped her focus through the small talk.
Meanwhile, Grace zipped through the evening, stopping to talk to friends she found—or made—in her path. But to her credit, she kept an eye on Sloane, darting glances at her every once in a while to make sure she was okay.
Sloane had just excused herself from a conversation with some Paleo bloggers when she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to face a woman with striking blue eyes and a tight, dark brown French braid.
“You’re Sloane Bradley? Oh, good.”
Sloane stretched her sore facial muscles into a polite smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I was hoping I’d run into you.” She pressed a business card into Sloane’s hand. “My name is Karen Fox, and I’d love to talk to you about doing a cookbook with Johnson and Fox.”
The room swayed a little around Sloane. Johnson and Fox? They’d published some of the cookbooks that had a permanent residence on Sloane’s counter. Focus. “Yeah, sure. I’d love to talk about that.” Love was an understatement. She had an entire secret Pinterest folder of cookbook designs she loved and recipes she’d include.
“Get your proposal ready and send it to me.” Karen took the card and scrawled a phone number on the back. “This is my direct line if you need me to put you in touch with an agent.”
Agent? Direct line? Proposal? Sloane said goodbye to Karen then looked at the card. Did that really just happen?
“There you are.” The voice shot energy through Sloane’s spine. Levi. She’d been so overwhelmed by the new faces that she’d almost forgotten he’d be there.
She faced him slowly. “Hi.” Her vision of him swam before her. No matter how hard she tried, her eyes couldn’t focus.
“Whoa, Sloane.” Levi gripped her arm just below the shoulder. “You all right?”
“Just a little overstimulated, I think. It’s so good to see you.”
His image sharpened before her. Shaggy hair that couldn’t decide if it was the lightest shade of brown or the darkest shade of blond. Gray eyes fringed in thick lashes. A smattering of pale freckles she’d never noticed over their video chats.
“Why don’t I take you home, then? I told Grace—”
“No.” The edge in his voice was enough to sharpen her senses. “I’m fine, Levi. Promise.”
His face eased. “Why don’t you sit down for a bit then? We’ll get you something to drink. Juice?”
Sloane nodded and allowed him to lead her to a tall pub table and chair she practically had to hoist herself into. She watched Levi head to the bar for her drink.
This was just like Levi, making sure she was okay. It was in his nature as the bloggers’ resident techie geek to serve, even at the conference.
Maybe she’d been too hard on him about Cooper. “Can we call a truce and get back to being friends yet?” she said when he returned.
Levi slapped down a napkin and set a short, squared tumbler filled with pink fizzy liquid and a lime wedge on top of it, settling his wiry frame into the chair across from her. “Is that a nice way of asking if I’ll shut up about Cooper?”
“Yep. Pretty much.”
“I don’t like you working with him, Sloane. This whole thing seems like you’re playing with fire.”
She sighed.
“But you’re here—actually at this conference—and if he was the one who finally got you out of that apartment, then I guess I can’t argue.”
Sloane would have made some joke about taking a picture or recording those words to memorialize the single time in his life Levi couldn’t argue, but his eyes narrowed as if the admission had taken a few years from his life. “Thank you,” she said instead, “for trusting me.”
“Whatever.” Levi scrubbed a hand over his face and stood. “Hey, I have a meeting I need to get to.” His tone softened. “Catch up with you later?”
She nodded. They were okay, thank goodness. “Later.”
As she watched Levi walk away, the volume of the room pressed in on her. It was as if the hotel existed at a high altitude that messed with her equilibrium. Her consciousness shifted with the realization that she’d been staring at a chair across the bar for longer than was socially acceptable. Her conversation with Levi had short-circuited something in her wiring, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away
from it.
Her phone buzzed in the little emerald-green clutch she carried.
Why was Cooper’s name blinking on her screen?
She accepted the call with a swipe of her thumb and ducked through the lobby, half jogging on her high-heeled boots until she was outside.
“Hello?”
“Oh good, you answered. I know you’re at your conference, but do you have a minute?”
She nodded even though he couldn’t see her. “Sure. What’s going on?”
Play it cool, Sloane.
“I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, and I can’t find the flash drive with those photos you took. You know, of the food.”
“Oh! The flash drive.” Sloane could pinpoint the exact little compartment of her workbag that contained the flash drive. “Yeah, it’s at my apartment. Do you need me to go get it? Or I can bring it to you.”
Great. Now she sounded overeager.
His chuckle sounded breathy with the line’s static. “I don’t want you to miss your conference. I can figure out another way to get them. Email, maybe—”
“No, really. It’s not a problem.”
Please say okay. Please say okay.
“Okay.”
Yes!
“I’m driving that way in a few minutes so I can pick you up and swing by your apartment if that’s all right.”
“Yeah, whatever. It’s cool.” When had a frat boy overtaken the speech center of her brain?
They hung up, and Sloane immediately fired off a text to Grace explaining that she was going home then another to the car company, asking them to be on call until Grace was ready to leave. She stepped inside the frosted glass doors and watched for Cooper.
The sight of him in the driver’s seat brought her senses from dulled to sharp with laser precision.
“Are you doing all right?” he asked as she climbed in. Even toned, stoic. Broad shoulders pinned to the back of his seat.
Sloane angled her head toward him. Despite the robotic delivery of his question, a patch of streetlight illuminated concern in his eyes. That slackened the tension in her chest, flinging her iron-forged trust fortress wide-open. She nodded without hesitation, with a peace that it was safe to be honest with him after all of the information he was already protecting. “It was a bit much in there for me, so I was ready to leave. But I’m okay.”
“Good.” Cooper checked his mirrors and turned in his seat to look for a break in traffic. “I’m really proud that you went, Sloane. You know it?”
Warmth suffused her face. That was the difference between him and Levi. Both knew what the accident had done to her, but instead of treating her like a fragile flower, Cooper made her believe she could stand strong and healthy like an oak again someday.
That’s why, if Levi had given her any kind of our-friendship-or-him ultimatum, her answer would have been easy.
“So, New York.” She broke the quiet that had stretched for a few streets. “What are you doing on your trip?” The man beside her made her feel wonderful. And she wasn’t letting anything ruin that.
Cooper pulled into a spot across the street from her building. “Oh, you know.” They stepped out of the car. “Checking in on a higher-profile franchise opening, meeting with some vendors, a little PR. Trying to avoid World War III with my father. That sort of thing.”
She winced as they crossed the street. Better him than me. She slowed her pace just long enough to indulge a full look at him. She took in his black, zip pullover, the distressed leather bag slung over his shoulders, the way his muscular legs filled his jeans. A warm, dizzying wave rushed over her.
“Is this a really big deal, then, since your father’s coming along?”
“Oh, no. He just doesn’t trust that I know how to do my own job right now.”
Sloane eased past him as he opened the lobby door. “Well, I’ll pray for your survival.” She glanced up with a sympathetic smile, but froze under the intensity in his eyes. The way he studied her.
“I’d appreciate that.” The tenderness in his voice melted the knots of anxiety.
So this was what happened when she let her walls down. Sloane could feel every reservation slipping through her fingers like dough that had too much liquid and couldn’t be kneaded into submission.
Was it okay not to fight it this time?
“I’ll, uh, go get the flash drive if you want to wait down here.” Yes. Definitely safer down here.
Cooper nodded and sat on an antique upholstered love seat.
Breathe in. Two...three...four... Sloane willed her heartbeat to slow as she rode the elevator to her apartment and finagled her key into the lock. She pressed her back to the door behind her.
Out...two...three...four...
The thumping drum behind her ears slowed. The pressure of the blood pumping in her veins dulled. She found the flash drive exactly where she’d left it.
When the elevator doors opened downstairs, Cooper was sitting in the same place, back to her, computer opened in his lap. She paused to take in the sight of him. Maybe she wouldn’t be such an awkward mess this way.
She saw familiar images flashing across his screen as he scrolled through them.
Were those her images? The ones he’d come all this way for?
At the ding of the elevator closing, Cooper minimized his laptop screen as if he were defusing a ticking bomb and set it on the table in front of him. He turned, a trace of urgency lingering on his face.
Sloane moved forward as if she’d just arrived and hadn’t been standing there for a few moments.
Did this mean what she thought it meant?
A grin spread across his face as he stood. “Did you find it?”
Had the images been on his computer the whole time?
“I...um,” Sloane stammered, her ability to form a coherent thought disarmed by his closeness—near enough to touch—and by the delicious conclusion her mind was processing. “Here it is.”
She held out the flash drive, and he covered it with his palm, wrapping his fingers around her hand. Lingering, lips parted as though to speak words that made her fingertips tingle with anticipation. If she could reach out and grab those words—
“Sloane, you’re here.”
She took a giant step back from Cooper. “Hi, Grace. Did you have fun?”
Grace’s attention zeroed in on the six-foot distraction to Sloane’s left. Her gaze zipped between the two of them then landed on Sloane with an expectation. Well?
“Oh, sorry. Grace, this is Cooper. Cooper, this is my best friend, Grace. She’s staying with me this weekend.”
“Well, this is our first time actually meeting,” Grace said. “But we’ve been friends through our blogs for a few years.”
Cooper blinked as the pieces visibly clicked together in his mind. “Oh, right. Right. Grace. You’re here for the conference.” He nodded. “Nice.”
Sloane flashed a look at Grace in the awkward pause that followed. We’re so leaving. Now.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Cooper.” Grace’s voice boomed across the marble lobby as she shook his hand. “We’d better get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow and everything.”
Cooper’s head swiveled to Sloane, eyebrows pulled together.
“You can just keep the flash drive, Coop,” she said before her insides could do that droopy puddle thing again.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I have everything I need.” She took a step toward the elevator. “Good luck in New York.”
“See you when I get back?”
Most definitely. Sloane nodded.
“Nice to meet you,” Grace called again. The lilt in her voice hinted that she was dying for him to leave so she could pounce on Sloane.
“Man alive. He’s even dreamier
in person.” Grace fanned herself with a conference brochure when they were inside the elevator. “Why are his biceps so big? Bee sting? Does he need some Benadryl?”
“Stop!” But Grace was kind of right.
“So that’s why you left. No wonder.” Grace huffed an indignant breath, finger-combing her red curls. “I thought you said you guys were just friends.”
Heat bloomed across Sloane’s cheeks. “We are.” At least, in all scenarios that weren’t her imagination, they were.
“Right. Uh-huh.”
The disbelief in Grace’s tone made Sloane smile in a slow, satisfied way. Maybe Cooper had been fudging the truth when he asked for the flash drive. Or maybe he’d found the images that moment in the lobby.
But, no shadow of a doubt, he would have found a reason to come see her before he left on his trip. She just knew it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THEY DIDN’T TALK for four days.
Four whole days of meetings and promotional appearances, Cooper had told her. Interviews with big-name magazines and TV spots with Food Network celebrity chefs. Certainly not thinking about her back in Dallas. Certainly not allowing an innocent kiss on the cheek to drive him crazy like Sloane was doing.
Sloane and Cooper hadn’t gone on a date. There was no logical reason she should be checking her phone this much. He was minding his own business. Promoting his restaurant. Rubbing elbows with the bigwigs.
After Grace left, Sloane recategorized her cookbook and magazine collection, arranged it on her floor-to-ceiling bookcase accordingly and catalogued it in an Excel spreadsheet. All of the pieces she was responsible for on the J. Marian account were ahead of schedule or awaiting little things like restaurant openings before she could finish them. Thanks to the cookbook organization project, the content calendar for her website was full of enough recipe ideas to last until the end of the year. Two full weeks of posts were photographed, edited and scheduled for publication. And she was starting to conceptualize the cookbook proposal that had come from nowhere.
“These are divine, Meezy,” Grace said around a mouthful of roasted grape and almond crumble bars Sloane had packed for her to take. Crumbs spilled onto the only empty space of countertop that was visible on the webcam. The rest was cluttered by stacked pans, cutting boards, scraps of what looked like some sort of crust and various cooking utensils. “You should send some of these to Levi.”
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