by Layla Hagen
Small secret: dresses usually make me look as if I’ve put effort into my appearance when I actually haven’t. Low-maintenance is my middle name, so I own a stack of dresses. Before leaving my room, I put on earrings too. They’re brightly colored, shaped like tiny fruits. Colorful and oddly shaped earrings are my guilty pleasure, along with high-heeled shoes.
To be honest, my love for them started by accident. What I lack in height, I make up for in personality and high heels. I realized early on that if I wanted to be heard in a family of eleven, I had to be loud and clear. Honing the skill turned out to be invaluable, especially when I ventured out into the business world. But being loud isn’t always good, and everyone tends to overlook small people. Hence why high heels come in handy. Nude-colored pumps are a staple in my wardrobe. I can’t help a smile as I remember when I wore my very first pair: to prom in senior year, thirteen years ago.
It was one of the worst, but also one of the best nights. Midway through the event, I ran into my date making out with another girl. For an eighteen-year-old, that ranked up high next to natural catastrophes, possibly even the end of the world. Slapping the crap out of my cheating date didn’t help with the pain, even though it did calm me a bit. Then I realized I didn’t want to stay there for the rest of the event and headed home. But when I arrived, I didn’t want to go inside the house. I was torn between wanting to curl in my mother’s lap and sob, and hearing everyone’s pity. I ended up lying in a hammock outside which was hidden enough to not be viewed from the house.
“What are you doing here?”
Nate’s voice startled me, and I wiped away my tears as best as I could. I hadn’t known he was visiting.
“I live here,” I replied with sass, scrambling out of the hammock. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to see the baseball game with your dad. Aren’t you supposed to be at the prom?”
“Found my date kissing another girl in a dark hallway. Pretty sure his hand was under her skirt too.”
“Show me a picture and I’ll make sure he has a black eye tomorrow.”
I grinned. It was something my brothers would have said, but hearing it from him, it felt different.
“He already does. My knuckles will be bruised too.”
Nate eyed my tear-streaked cheeks. I was wearing waterproof mascara, so I hoped at least I didn’t look like a raccoon.
“When are you supposed to be home?”
“In three hours.”
He nodded in the direction of the gate. “Let’s go. My car’s outside.”
Excitement coursed through me. “Where are you taking me?”
“Out. You need good memories from tonight. We’re going to make some.”
That was the first time I swooned in his presence. My crush had already been going strong for a few years, but this was different. It felt grown-up, and I thought it was incredibly sweet of him.
He took me to a hip, vibrant restaurant, where they had good food and even better music. After we finished eating, he took my hand and pulled me on the dance floor, and those were the hottest minutes of my life up until then.
Nate wasn’t dancing like the guys at my school. There were no sloppy attempts to grab my ass or trying to grind against me. I realized it was because those guys were boys, but Nate was a man. I was eighteen, and he was twenty-three. He effortlessly led me across the dance floor, pulling me just close enough until our chests touched. His hands were on my hips when they needed to be, and only the firmness of his grip and the way his lips occasionally lingered on my cheek betrayed how much he’d love to touch me more.
That night was the first time I understood the meaning of a hot look. And I nearly melted at his feet. But he was a gentleman the entire evening. On the way out, we noticed the restaurant had a photo booth, which was cheesy, but I loved every minute we spent inside it. I’ve kept every single picture we took to this day.
When he brought me home, I was grinning ear to ear. He’d made me feel like I was on top of the world, and I adored him for it.
***
Half an hour later, I step inside Blue Moon and find Blake and Nate already seated at the small round table next to the bar. The bar area is the only complete part; the rest is still missing most of the furniture. But this place will be a knockout when it’s ready.
“Hello, boys.” I shrug out of my coat, leaving it on the back of the nearest chair, and then I stalk toward them with my chin held high, squaring my shoulders. They stop midsentence, rising to their feet.
“Alice, we were waiting for you before giving Nate the official tour. This is for you. Double espresso. When you texted to say you’d be late, I figured you wouldn’t have time for coffee.” He points to a Starbucks cup on the table. I hadn’t noticed it before.
“Ohhh, you just saved me, thank you.”
“Nah, I saved our asses.” Blake gestures between him and Nate. “You’re mean and cranky before you’ve had your two coffees in the morning.”
What can I say… my brother knows me well. Blake kisses my cheek, and then I turn to Nate, only to find his eyes raking over my body. When he unleashes the full power of his gaze on me, my skin simmers with awareness, blood rushing to my cheeks. Right, so apparently deciding I must forget about my crush hasn’t lessened my body’s reaction to his proximity. It was silly to assume it would all go away just by sheer force of will, but one can only hope.
When he leans down, brushing my cheek with his lips, I swear my skin catches fire. This close, I can smell the faint scent of soap on him, and nothing else. He’s not wearing cologne, but I swear his scent is pure sexiness. If someone could bottle it and sell it, they’d make a fortune.
I school my features when he pulls back, hoping I look like a professional business woman and not a girl with a crush. By the way one corner of his mouth lifts upward, my bet is I’m closer to the second option.
“Let’s start with the tour,” Blake says. For the next fifteen minutes, we explain our vision to Nate, describe how the restaurant area will look, even show him the kitchen, which is ready.
Once or twice I catch him looking at me with what can only be described as hunger, but I do my best to ignore it. Come on, Alice. You just have to get through the day. Then you probably won’t have to see him again while he’s here, and then he’ll be gone anyway.
Once the tour is over, the three of us sit at the small round table next to the bar.
“What more do you need from us?” Blake asks.
“I have an entire report,” I explain. “With financial stuff and—”
“Nah, I just need some catchy stuff so they’ll pay attention. Hard facts too, like how many customers you have daily in your other restaurants, but essentially, I need a good story. What sells ideas is good storytelling. Not everything you tell me will make it on screen. In fact, most of it probably won’t. But first, I need to convince the network to pick this place and not another one.”
He’s not just book smart but also street smart. Sure, he can work his charm in every conversation, but I’m willing to bet anything he didn’t get to the top just relying on that. Since I met him, he never ventured into a conversation without having some strong arguments to dish out. I always admired his intelligence.
“What do you want to know?” I ask.
Nate takes out a notepad and a pen from the leather file in front of him—and glasses. I barely suppress a sigh when he slides them on square black frames around his green eyes. His sex appeal just shot through the roof. Normally I don’t find glasses attractive, but they work on him.
“First, how did the two of you end up opening a location together? The family aspect works in your favor—viewers would love it.”
As Blake and I rattle on, answering his questions, he jots down notes, and I can practically hear him spinning a story for the pitch in his mind.
“We should also include a funny story from your childhood. Those things work like a charm in pitches. How about the one where Blake tried to escape t
hrough the window and broke his leg?”
Nate is five years older than me, but he’s also a little younger than Sebastian. As such, he sometimes got involved in the younger group’s shenanigans.
“How about a story that actually makes me look good?” Blake deadpans. Ah, my brothers and their giant egos.
“Self-deprecation works great on camera,” Nate explains, and my brother merely grimaces.
“If I have to potentially make an ass of myself on national television, then by all means, tell the story where I ended up with my ass hanging out because my jeans got torn in the fence.”
I roar with laughter at the memory, and Nate chuckles.
“I still can’t believe you got caught.” There are two sets of twins in my family. Christopher and Max are younger than me but older than Blake and identical, and they used their likeness to pull pranks on us as often as they could. They also got away with it most of the time. Daniel and Blake are the younger set of twins, and while they look nothing alike, that didn’t keep them from competing with Max and Christopher for the title of the best pranking duo. They got caught most of the time.
We continue to answer Nate’s questions for about an hour when Blake’s phone chimes. Picking it up, he frowns at the screen.
“Damn! I have to leave. My bar manager is sick, and someone has to be there for deliveries.”
“I have a lot of info already,” Nate replies, surveying his notes. The glasses slip a fraction of an inch down his nose, and my fingers itch to push them back up. Yeah… I’m not looking for every opportunity to touch him or anything.
“I can tell you anything more you need to know,” I offer. To my dismay, I discover Blake is watching me with narrowed eyes. Uh-oh.
“Alice, can we quickly go over the to-dos for next week before I leave?” my brother asks. Clearly, this is an excuse, because we hammered those details yesterday before we went to Mom’s party.
Nate rises to his feet, his notes still in hand. “I’ll go outside for a few minutes, give you guys time to talk.”
Blake wastes no time. The second Nate’s out of my field of vision, he attacks.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he asks in a low voice. “The family friend you’ve been holding a torch for?”
I groan, propping my elbows on the table and my chin in my palm. Apparently, my little brother is not as oblivious as I thought. And apparently, the Bennett rumor mill is working better than ever. In a moment of weakness, I once confessed to Max that I’m holding a torch for a family friend, without naming Nate. Blake using the exact same words proves the guys in this family gossip as much as the girls.
My brother interprets my silence as a yes.
“Do I need to threaten him? Tell him not to mess around with you? Give him the brother speech?”
“Hold your horses right there. This is none of your business, Blake.”
“Barking up the wrong tree here.”
“No, you don’t need to flex your brotherly muscles. Nothing’s happening.”
Blake points his finger at me, but then his phone beeps again.
“Damn, this is my delivery guy. I have to go. If you change your mind about the brother speech, tell me.” With those parting words, he strolls out of the restaurant.
Nate stalks back inside seconds later. The moment he drops in his chair at the table, the air between us charges. It’s like the only thing that kept the usual sparks between us at bay was Blake’s presence.
“So, what else do you want to know?” I ask, drumming my fingers on the wooden surface, racking my brain for ways to dissolve the tension. It seems to have seeped into my body, making me jittery.
Nate leans slightly across the table. “Tell me more about that torch.”
It takes me a second to realize what he means, and then the round table suddenly feels far too small.
“How…?”
“I was barely out the door when Blake accosted you. So, you’ve had a crush on me for years, huh?”
My brain freezes for a brief second, embarrassment overwhelming me. Then, slowly, my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in. I’ve never been much of a coward, which only leaves fighting. I gather my wits around me, squaring my shoulders and looking him directly in the eyes.
“Answer something first. Have you been eye flirting with me for years or was it all in my head?” Yeah, I sound about a million times braver than I feel, but I don’t see another way out of this besides grabbing the bull by its horns.
“None of it was in your head.”
I swear my heart instantly doubles in size. For a split second, I understand the saying ‘to see the world through rose-colored glasses.’
“But I’m moving, and even if I weren’t, I’m not the man for you.”
Yeah, that rose? Just turned into shades of shitty brown.
“Way to twist the knife, buddy.” My voice is dry and flat, even though I was hoping I would sound humorous. I’ve always used humor as a shield. It’s usually quite effective.
“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.” Leaning across the table, he covers my hand with his. I think it was meant as a comforting gesture, but a bolt of heat singes me from the skin-on-skin contact. Judging by the sharp breath Nate exhales, he felt it too.
I pull my hand back quickly. “No touching.”
“Right.”
“Since we got that pesky detail out of the way, can we focus on your pitch?”
Nate flashes me a wicked grin, and I’m sure I’m in for some more teasing. He always did love to tease me. “Pesky details, huh?”
Luckily, I can hold my own, even though sitting across from his six feet of hotness and those bright green eyes doesn’t help one bit. Add a sharp brain to the mix and I’m a goner.
“Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” I say in an awful British accent. “You’ll be gone soon. Until then, just try not to knock my socks off by being smarter, hotter, or funnier than usual.”
Laughter bubbles out of him. “You’re the most unpredictable woman I know, and I love that about you.”
“See, you’re not helping by saying nice things to me. It would really help if you turned broody and mean.”
“Right. You don’t dig broody guys, do you?”
“You have a great memory.”
Nate was staying at our house during a Christmas vacation, and by then, I’d known him for enough years to be comfortable around him. We usually had a lot of fun together, typically at the expense of my younger siblings, but he spent that entire vacation frowning and being moody, and I wasn’t having any of it. I wanted my laughing partner back.
I was still a kid, too young to really like him, but even then, my instincts were to comfort him. Mom had told me he had a big fight with his mother before Christmas. In my book, that wasn’t a good enough reason to sulk all the time. I wanted to take all his sadness away but didn’t know how. So in my typical fashion, I started picking on him.
“You’ll get wrinkles from so much frowning,” I informed him.
“No, I won’t.” His voice had been flat, and he didn’t seem interested in carrying on a conversation. And it was exactly what bothered me. Nate would usually crack a joke, or at least toss a witty reply my way when I picked on him. I folded my arms against my chest and gave him a cold stare.
“For your information, broody guys are so passé. Girls don’t dig them anymore. If you need someone to take that stick out of your ass, you’ll find me outside.”
Nate had watched me incredulously for a split second before bursting out laughing. It was the first time he’d laughed so wholeheartedly during his entire stay. I wasn’t just proud, but also happy.
“You’re right, let’s focus on this.” Nate looks down, reading through his notes. “I meant to ask, why do you work only with small, local farmers? Why the farm-to-table concept?”
Ah, I could talk about this all day.
“Farmers work hard. Remember, my parents used to do that work too.”
A long time ago,
before Sebastian founded Bennett Enterprises, our family was poor. Then our luck changed. Bennett Enterprises grew to become a mammoth, and our brother took care of the entire family. But before that, my parents owned a ranch. Cattle was their main occupation, but they also had fruit and vegetables. Growing them required dedication and care. Selling them was another matter altogether.
“Farmers put in long hours, work themselves to the bone. But when it comes to selling their products, it’s hard for them to compete with the big guys. Supermarket chains often force them to sell far under the price to squeeze out a profit. Restaurants rarely choose to buy directly from small farmers because their prices aren’t competitive. But if you’re smart, you can make a profit without taking advantage of those hardworking people.”
Nate nods but doesn’t take notes.
“Why aren’t you writing this down?”
“I’ll remember it. I’ve never seen you talk so passionately about anything. You’re brilliant.”
“Why, thank you, mister. I suggest you lay off the compliments. Remember, you’re not allowed to knock my socks off.”
“Stop saying socks like that, Alice.” The way my name rolls off his tongue should be outlawed. There is so much sensuality in those two syllables, it’s giving me whiplash. The man isn’t even trying to seduce me. I wonder what he’d sound like if he tried. Damn. It’s this line of thinking that got me into trouble in the first place. I have to stop, or there is nothing good in store for me.
“How?”
“Like you mean panties instead.” His eyes snap fire, and the intensity in them travels straight through me. I involuntarily press my thighs together, hoping to assuage the ache between them.
“You sure like getting ahead of yourself.” I don’t know if humor will get me out of this situation or sink me more, but I’m not one to abandon a project midway. Still, sticking to the topic of the TV show is probably a safer bet. Pointing to his notebook, I ask, “Do you have everything you need?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Can we wrap this up, then?”