by Jamie Pope
“The books?” He seemed genuinely curious. “What are you studying?”
“I’m in grad school. Going for my MBA. I’m an artist, or a jewelry designer, to be exact. I’m focusing on marketing and branding.” She lifted the intricately wire-wrapped pendant that was nestled between her breasts. “I specialize in wire work.”
He grabbed her wrist, lifting it closer to his face and she felt tingles rush up her arm and travel all over her body at his touch. It was unexpected and a little exciting. But it wasn’t the kind of excitement she needed in her life right now.
“You made these, too?” He studied the gold wire bracelets on her wrists. “This one says your name. I don’t think I’m likely to forget it anymore.” He ran his thumb over it. The sensation of his warm thumb combined with the smooth metal against her skin made her heart beat just a little faster. “Very impressive, Miss Amber. You’re the real deal, aren’t you? I don’t have a creative bone in my whole body.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound breathless. “There are tons of way to be creative.” She looked up into his eyes. “You just haven’t found yours yet.”
“I guess not.” He held her gaze, never looking away. Those eyes. The way he looked at her. It could make most women swoon. But technically he was her boss and she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, a lover or any unnecessary attachment.
She had started this little interlude with the intention of simply being friendly. But it was ending with her feeling more than just that.
“I should go now.”
“You should. It’s late.”
“You should go home, too, Drayson.”
“I will.” He shut his laptop and stood. “Let me walk you to your car. I don’t want you walking out there alone.”
“I do it all the time without you, Chase.”
“But now that I know your name, I wouldn’t feel right about letting that happen. Especially if I knew there was something I could do to change it.”
Whoa. This man. She might be headed for trouble.
Chapter 2
Chase sat outside on the patio of the little sushi place next to Sweetness Bakery. It was still a little too cool to sit outside and dine this early May day, but there he sat, sipping the warm tea the waiter had brought him and watching the foot traffic going in and out of Sweetness Bakery. He was running numbers in his head. For every three customers Lillian’s had, they had five. Two-thirds of those customers took their purchases to go. One-third of those customers came out with large bakery boxes. It was too late in the day for people to bring doughnuts to work. Sweetness was selling a higher percentage of cakes and pies than they were.
“Spying on the competition, are we?”
He recognized the voice. It surprised him that he recognized it because he’d only had one conversation with her, but he looked up to see that petite, pretty female with the delicious smile and expressive eyes standing a few feet away from him. “Amber,” he said, feeling the need to tease her. “Amber Bernard. You work in the bakery. As the barista. I remembered.”
She grinned at him. “At least now I know I’m not forgettable.”
No, she wasn’t. In fact he’d thought about her all night after he walked her to her car. He kept picturing her face. The way she ate that cookie. The way she licked her lips and moaned filled him with a pure surge of lust that took him completely off guard. But it wasn’t just that that kept him thinking about her. It was her smile. The way her face lit up when he told her about his last trip, the way she made him forget about work, when that was the only thing on his mind 99 percent of the time. “I’m not spying. Well, not really anyway. I’m just running numbers.”
“You’re running numbers while sitting outside and staring at our biggest competition? I’m just an artist so maybe I don’t know how these things work.”
“Come sit. I’ll explain.” She looked apprehensive for a moment.
“I don’t think I can. I’m heading to the bakery now. I don’t want to be late.”
“You can’t be late if you walk in with the boss. Sit down for a minute.”
She walked over and he couldn’t help but notice the way her hips swished in the long colorful skirt she was wearing. Her style would normally be a little too bohemian for his tastes, but on her it worked. On her, it was a combination of sexy and adorable that he had a hard time taking his eyes off of.
“Okay.” She gave him a mischievous smile as she took the chair next to him. “You going to let me in on your evil plan now?”
“No evil plan here.” He looked into her eyes as he said it. “Everything with me is always all good.”
“I bet you say that to all the women you encounter.”
“No. Only the special ones.” He was flirting with her. He didn’t mean to, but there was something about Amber that made him want to. Besides, she had started this. He was just minding his own business when she walked into his world.
He liked women, went on his fair share of dates. But all of the women he went out with were very much like him. Driven. They had practical careers with a tried-and-true path for growth. He figured he would marry a woman like that one day. Not a woman like Amber. Not that he was even interested in dating Amber, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to engage in a little conversation with a woman whose eyes sparkled when she got excited and whose smile made a man feel funny on the inside. “Look at the consumers who are walking out of Sweetness. What do you notice?”
“Hmm.” She placed her hand on her chin and leaned a little closer to him to get a better look. Her arm brushed his. And there it was again. That little rush that was more than attraction and felt a lot like lust. “Their clientele seems similar to ours. Not a lot of construction workers. Business people mixed with hipsters. People who wouldn’t mind spending six bucks on a cup of coffee.”
“Very good, Amber. What else?”
She smiled at his praise before she looked back at the door. “Most of them are taking things to go. I see a lot of large boxes.”
“Excellent.” He touched her arm, which was a mistake because she had the smoothest skin and it made him want to run his hand up her arm and down her body just to see if the rest of it felt as good. “I counted fifty-nine people walking into Sweetness in the past hour. At Lillian’s we had thirty-five at the same hour yesterday. Our average customer is spending $5.19 when they visit. But just by watching them, I can see that a higher percentage of their customers are carrying out large cake and pie boxes. Their average customer is spending at least twice as much as ours. And while we have three times as many customers in the morning thanks to Mariah, their profits are still higher than ours.”
“Wow. My head is spinning. You really are into numbers.”
“It’s my job. I spent a lot of time doing growth projections at my last job.” He stood up and tossed money on the table to cover his bill. “Come on. I’ll walk with you back to work.”
They left the little restaurant and walked in the beautiful street toward the bakery. They couldn’t have found a better location than the Denny Triangle section of Seattle. It was a mix of beautiful old houses and up-and-coming businesses. There was a park nearby. The perfect location to enjoy a sweet treat from Lillian’s. Chase had been a little apprehensive when he was approached with the idea of running a bakery. But now his chest filled with pride when he walked up and saw the beautiful storefront in this busy section of town.
“We talked about what I do for fun, but we never talked about what you do to let off steam.”
“Oh, I BASE jump and skydive. There’s this thing called parkour, which is like a military-style urban obstacle course.”
“Really?”
“No.” She laughed. “If it involves my feet leaving the ground, it’s not happening. I love music festivals and traveling to beautiful h
istoric places, but lately I’ve been focused on getting my degree and designing more jewelry. My dream—no, my goal is to get my jewelry into department stores one day. Everything I do is to get me one step closer to that goal. So it’s work and grad school, and in my free time I design. Designing doesn’t feel like work. It feels like...like...”
“Passion.” He could tell she had a lot of it. He could only imagine the type of passion she would bring to bed. He had to shake off those thoughts. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her that way. She was an employee after all.
“I do have passion for it. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather spend a lifetime doing.”
“It’s good to have passion,” he said as they walked up to the door. Chase always loved walking into the bakery and being greeted by the sugary smells and the feeling of hominess that enveloped him when he entered, but today he found himself not wanting to go inside.
It was a beautiful day in Seattle. The air was full of spring and for the first time he would rather blow off work and stay outside with this pretty girl than go to his office and bury his head in the books.
She was just so different from him. So much more interesting than the women he had dated recently. He barely knew her. He barely paid attention to the front-of-house employees, but he just wanted to talk to her some more. He wanted to know more about her.
“Are numbers your passion, Chase Drayson?”
“No,” he said honestly, looking into her big brown eyes. He liked numbers. He liked working and investing, but they weren’t his passion. He needed something he could be passionate about. “Maybe I’ll let you know what it is one day.”
He opened the door to let her in first. The bakery was busy. Not as busy at Sweetness had been, but they were doing pretty well so far and were on track to have a profitable first year, which was rare for new small businesses. Most of the time they only broke even if they made it to a year. He could see Mariah behind the counter, rearranging the stock. Jackson was there, too, chatting up some female customers, which was customary for him. But all of that kind of floated in the back of his mind because Amber was still in the front of it.
“One day? I’m not sure I can stand the suspense,” she said with a smile that made him feel like smiling, too.
“I’m sure you can.” He lifted her hand. She still wore the wire name bracelet, but she wore another one with it. It was also gold wire, but this one had three braided strands with white opals woven among them. “Did you make this, too?” He stroked his thumb over her pulse as he studied her creation. “It’s so well done.”
She nodded. “It’s my birthstone.”
“Do you think you could make me one?”
“I know you have a keen fashion sense, but I didn’t think you wore beaded bracelets.”
“I would like to send one to Lillian. Can you do this with pearls?”
“I can.” She seemed surprised by his request. She shouldn’t be. Chase knew good quality when he saw it.
“And one for Mariah, too. Her birthday is in—”
“I know when your sister’s birthday is. I can make her one, too.”
“Is five hundred enough to cover both the bracelets?”
“Five hundred dollars! That’s way too much. I can’t take that kind of money from you.”
“Why not? That’s what I’m willing to pay. Your work is good, Amber, and your time is worth something. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Mariah is my friend and I work for your family. It just doesn’t feel right to take that kind of money from you. I can do it for the cost of the materials.”
“Plus a hundred dollars. Think of me as an early investor. Roll your profit back into your business.”
“Okay, Chase.” They looked at each other for a long moment. He realized he still held on to her hand, but for the life of him, he couldn’t force himself to let it go.
“I have to clock in.”
“You do.” He let her go. “Have a good shift.”
“Thank you. I will. I’ll see you later.” She walked away from him and he watched her go. Hips swaying all the way.
“Hey.” His baby sister came over to him with a curious expression on her face.
“Hey.”
“You walked in with Amber?”
“Yes, I met her on the street on my way back from an errand.”
“Oh? That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Really? You were holding her wrist.”
Chase suppressed an eye roll. His sister had grown up into a beautiful, intelligent woman, but she was still his baby sister and sometimes she annoyed him the way she did when they were kids. “I was looking at her bracelet. I didn’t know she was a jewelry designer.”
“You were looking at her, too, Chase,” she said in a lowered voice. “You were looking at her the way a man looks at a woman he’s interested in, and you were touching her.”
“I ran into her on the street. I walked in with her. I looked at her bracelet. None of those things are a crime, and I’m pretty sure that none of them were your concern last time I checked.”
“What’s going on?” Jackson strolled over. “Why does Chase look annoyed?”
“He walked in with Amber. I just wondered how that came to be,” she said lightly.
“Amber, the cute little funky chick with the wild hair who makes coffee for us?”
“My friend Amber,” Mariah corrected. “The hardworking grad student and jewelry designer who works here and is doing her best to succeed.”
“Is there something you wanted to say to me, Mariah?” Chase felt more than annoyed at his sister at that moment. He was getting the strong feeling that she did not want him anywhere near her friend.
“No. It’s just that Amber is not your type.”
“And you have become an expert on what my type is?”
“Everyone knows your type, Chase,” Jackson said. “The type of women who speak three foreign languages and have hefty investment portfolios. Beautiful, dull, boring-as-hell women.”
“That is not true.”
Jackson yawned widely to make his point and Chase wanted to knock him on his ass then.
“She’s my friend, Chase. My first real friend since I moved back to Seattle, and I saw how you looked at her. I just wanted to know if there was something going on between you.”
“Because I walked in with her and looked at her bracelet? Well, you should congratulate me, because after one chance meeting on the street, we’ve decided to get married and move to Bora Bora. Amber tells me the snorkeling there is the best in the world. Neither one of us has ever tried it, but hey. You only live once.”
Mariah blinked at him. “Shut up, Chase.”
“Nothing is going on, Mariah.”
“I think you should go for it, Chase,” Jackson said. “She’s cute. She’s the opposite of you. You’ll have some fun with her. I’m in full support of you expanding your horizons and having a little fling.”
Mariah let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “Sometimes I wish I had sisters.”
“No, you don’t.” Jackson set a loud smacking kiss on Mariah’s cheek. “We’re more fun.”
“You’re as fun as a hive of angry bees.”
She left them then, leaving Chase with something to think about. Staying away from Amber might be a good idea. She did work for them and she was his sister’s friend. And she had the potential to be distracting. With this business just starting, he needed to focus on growing it.
Something made him look over to the coffee café where Amber was already hard at work. She looked up at him and smiled, and Chase knew then that ignoring her was going to be a losing battle.
It was a battle he would be okay with losing.
* * *
“Get home to that cute boyfriend of yours. I know he has been working nights lately.”
“Thanks.” Her eyes traveled over to the corner table in the café section. “Chase Drayson is here. If you hear something move, it’s him. I was here a couple of nights ago and nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought the world’s largest rat had broken in but thankfully it was just him.”
Amber laughed. “Thanks for the warning. I won’t make that mistake.”
“I’m surprised he took the leave of absence from his job to work here. Salary-wise, I’m sure he made in one day there what he makes in two weeks here.”
She hadn’t thought much about it, but all the Draysons had taken a risk to work here. Jackson was somewhat of an entrepreneur and was used to taking risks like these. Mariah worked here because she wanted to escape the difficult past she had with her former husband. But Chase... She wasn’t sure why he had taken this risk, yet she knew he loved his younger siblings. She could see it in the way they interacted. “Maybe blood is thicker than money, so to speak.”
“I’m sure he’s got enough of it to last him a lifetime already. A few years ago, a woman claimed she was pregnant with his baby in the hopes of cashing in. But that Mr. Drayson is one careful man. Of course the kid wasn’t his. I’m not sure he ever slept with her, but that’s the type of woman Chase attracts. Gold diggers. He’s a quiet man, but not a weak one and he certainly isn’t stupid. He knows what he’s working with and he chooses his partners carefully, but I don’t think he trusts easily. He goes for a very specific type of woman.”