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If only
, Rachel thought as her mind flashed an image of a tall, serious-looking suit who also happened to be one giant pain every time she had seen him.

“No, I missed a stop, and the cab ride was longer than I expected. Did I miss much?”

“Nope. Pretty slow tonight.” Mason turned on his heel and moved back into his unorganized office.

Usually, she’d follow him in and see how his day had been. Tonight though, all Rachel could think about was the unsettling run-in she’d had earlier, and she didn’t want Mason and his all-knowing ways to figure it out. So, instead of chatting with her brother, she called out, “See ya,” and made her way down the back aisles to the humming kitchen.

It might not be a busy night at Exquisite, but that didn’t mean there was no activity. Quite the contrary, the kitchen was buzzing. The soft thump of music was playing, and she could see Wendy standing at the pass talking to Ryan, the new head chef Mason had brought in around two months ago.

They had decided to hire him when Mason had told her he wanted to be behind the scenes and only run the restaurant from now on. He no longer wanted to work in the kitchen or on the floor in any capacity.

That’s exactly what I need to do—hire someone for the flower shop
, Rachel decided as she headed to the small office she shared with Wendy. Dumping her things on her
very
organized desk, she wrote a note on her calendar as a reminder to place a want ad tomorrow.

She tied her hair back, pulled a black ball cap off the peg from the back of the door, and stuffed the low ponytail through the hole in the back of the cap. Removing her blue coat, she put on the bright purple chef’s jacket she’d talked Mason into getting her. After fastening the two rows of black buttons, she looked down at her outfit, and she had to grin.

She loved that Mason hadn’t been strict when it came to what she wore in the kitchen. She happened to think her black leather pants looked pretty kick-ass with the purple smock. Mason’s indulgence didn’t surprise her though. He was just like their father had been. They both had always encouraged her to be herself even when it wasn’t quite the norm.

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Mason pushed his hands into his khaki shorts as he walked into her bedroom and took a seat on the bed beside her.

“Come on, Rach. What did Lisa say to you?”

“Nothing.” Rachel pouted, crossing her arms under her newest annoyance, her breasts.

“She must have said something. You didn’t talk to her the whole way home, and I noticed you managed to throw her several death stares,” he pointed out, tugging on her bright pink braid.

Lisa Jennings, blonde-bimbo extraordinaire, was Josh’s latest girlfriend. She was the one girl who represented everything Rachel wanted to be. For a while, Rachel had done anything she could to emulate her idol. But that had all changed today when she’d walked into the girls’ restroom and heard Lisa laughing about Mason’s stupid pink-haired sister.

So, Rachel had moved Lisa from the really Cool Club to the She-Is-a-Total-Bitch Club. Currently, it only had one member, and Rachel wasn’t going to tell Mason it was Lisa. After all, his best friend was dating her.

Tugging her head away from him, Rachel looked up at her brother and wondered how he made everything seem so simple. He was never awkward, and no one considered him to be weird, but then again, he also didn’t have pink hair. At that thought, she giggled.

“There you are!” he declared, chuckling.

“Seriously, Mase, what does Josh even see in her?”

Stupid question
, Rachel thought with a sigh. She knew he saw tanned legs, blonde hair, and the captain of the cheerleading team.
Guys suck
, and that was Rachel’s official sixteen-year-old opinion.

Mason bumped shoulders with her and grinned. “Maybe she’s really good at Scrabble?”

Rachel busted out laughing as she tried to picture Lisa or Josh playing that game.

“You think she can even spell Scrabble?” she asked slyly, arching a brow at her brother.

“Dunno, but you know what she can’t do?”

Rachel shook her head as Mason wrapped an arm around her shoulders in a hug.

“She can’t pull off bright pink hair and make it look so cool that at least six other girls do it the next day.”

Rachel felt tears well in her eyes. That was Mason—always there with the perfect answer. He was about to say something else, but her bedroom door swung open, interrupting their
conversation.

Their father stuck his head in. “You two ready for dinner?”

Reaching up, she wiped a tear away.

Almost immediately, their father was through the door, glaring at Mason. “What did you do to her?” he asked as he moved to sit beside Rachel on the bed.

“Nothing,” Mason replied with a laugh, holding up his hands. He stood and walked toward the door. Just as he reached it, Mason turned back, looking at her and their father. “Someone said something about her hair.”

Rachel felt her dad pull away from her. He reached over to wipe away a tear from her face, but she turned away, so she could glower at her brother.

“And what could they possibly say about hair that looks so…” He paused as though he was trying to think of the right word. “Sweet?”

“Sweet?” Rachel squeaked.

Mason couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah.” Their father nodded. “Like…like cotton candy.”

“Oh, Dad.” Rachel finally laughed as she hugged him. “Thank you, but that doesn’t really help.”

“Well, you’re laughing,” he pointed out before looking back and forth between the both of them. “Never let someone make you feel like you are not the best version of yourself. You hear me?”

“Yes, Dad,” Rachel mumbled.

“And you,” he said as he stood and moved over to Mason, “always look after your little sister. Come on now, let’s have dinner.”

Thinking of that night with her father, Rachel shook her head with a small smile. He had been running through her mind a lot lately, and she couldn’t seem to pinpoint why.

Well, I’ll have time to think about that later
, she thought as she made her way to the walk-in fridge to pull out the pears that had been chilling all day. Tonight’s dessert special was cider-poached pears in a puff pastry shell with a warm caramel sauce.

Sarah, Exquisite’s other pastry chef, had spent the morning coring the pears and making the puff pastry in preparation for this evening. Rachel returned from the fridge with two large containers of pears and placed them down on the stainless steel prep table.

Smiling at Sarah, Rachel wiped her hands on her apron. “So, did you manage to get the pumpkin spice? I can’t believe I forgot to order that the other day. It really does make the difference.”

Sarah moved to the other side of the table. “Yeah, it came in this morning, so I made a small sample of the sauce, just to make sure you really want to add it.”

Sarah had started working with Rachel around six months ago when Mason had decided someone needed to come in during the morning hours to help her prepare for the evening. This worked out perfectly since she was down at Precious Petals during the day; before they had hired Sarah, Rachel had come in at four in the morning to do all the prep work herself. Now, when Rachel arrived for the evening, Sarah would go home. It turned out to be a match made in heaven.

“Give me one second. Keep in mind that it’s not finished yet,” Sarah told her as she stirred the warm dark concoction of cider, brown sugar, pumpkin spice, and Calvados brandy.

Rachel couldn’t help but joke with her coworker as she nodded toward the mixture. “Oh good, I was starting to think you forgot to add the butter and vanilla.”

Sarah looked over at her from under her blunt brown bangs and sighed dramatically. “You don’t really mean that. I know this because you told me you trusted me.” With a saucy wink, she held up a spoon toward Rachel. “This is just the base. Would you like a taste?”

Rachel held back a groan.
Why is everyone asking me that today?

“No, I trust you.” For the second time tonight, she denied herself a taste of something she really wanted.

Although Cole had been running substantially late, he’d actually arrived at the meeting before the other parties. Now, three and a half hours later, he stepped into the elevator that would take him up to his condo.

God, that was one mind-numbing meeting
, he thought as he unbuttoned his coat.

Pressing the number twenty-six, he moved to the back of the elevator and leaned up against the wood-paneled wall, crossing his legs at the ankle and stuffing his hands into his pockets. When his fingers brushed over the square of wax paper, he reflected on the unexpected run-in from earlier.

He was in one hell of a predicament. He couldn’t get that woman off his mind. She had denied him at every opportunity
. Well, isn’t that the most intriguing part of all?
Instead of accepting her decision, he found the challenge of changing her mind a total fucking turn-on.

Rachel Langley
. She was Josh Daniel’s friend and his good friend’s little sister. It wasn’t the smartest idea he’d had, that was for sure, but it was the most intriguing one he’d had in a long time.

Rachel Langley
. Yes, he even liked the sound of her name as it rolled through his mind, and there was no way he was changing course now. He wanted her, and he was going to have her.

Ever since that first moment in the club, he had become intensely fascinated by her. Add tequila in with that exchange, and he had been hooked. He had even gone back several nights after that, always looking for her but never finding her. Imagine his delight when Josh had invited him to Mason’s Halloween party, and he’d walked in to see her dressed like some kind of ninja. And again, she had run from him.

Well, not anymore.
The time for running was over—unless, of course, she was running straight to his bed. The only way he thought he could remove this fixation with her was to satiate his curiosity.

As the elevator came to a stop on his floor, it made the usual loud ding. He made his way out and turned left, passing by the closed doors of his unknown neighbors and several mass-produced floral prints on the walls of the cream-colored hallway. When he reached his corner condo, Cole pulled out his keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open.

Stepping into the small foyer, he dumped the keys on the wooden table at the entryway. He shrugged out of his coat and black suit jacket and then hung them both on the six-foot cherry wood coatrack situated in the opposite corner.

Rolling his shoulders, he stretched his neck from side to side, trying to ease some of the tension knotted up between his shoulder blades and the top of his spine. Making his way across dark hardwood floors into his kitchen, he opened a cabinet and grabbed one of his crystal tumblers. He reached up to loosen his tie as he walked over to where he kept his liquor. At the opposite end of the kitchen, he’d had a wine fridge installed on the bottom half of a separate cabinet, and above it was where he kept his old friend, a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan.