There can be more than comfort in food...

What could well-known and wealthy Graham Cooper Jr. have in common with a blogger like Sloane Bradley, a woman with secrets she’s kept firmly out of the public eye? That is, besides a love of food. Sloane still can’t believe Cooper’s the chef at the restaurant she’s been assigned to promote. But she’s boiling to prove to him that her “little blog” can put his place on the map. She can also fall head over heels for the guy, who has secrets of his own, it turns out...except for one thing. She can’t get past the post-traumatic stress disorder that keeps her walled up in her home studio.

“Does that taste like it came from my father’s other restaurants?”

“It’s fantastic,” she answered around another mouthful. “Where did the chef come from?”

He crossed his arms, his face expressionless. “I’m the chef.”

Sloane nearly choked. Graham Cooper Jr., a chef?

“I trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked in kitchens that made Gordon Ramsay’s seem like Girl Scout camp.”

Wow. His speech had the scratch of a broken record, as if he was used to giving it to naysayers. What did the heir to the Cooper dynasty have to prove anyway?

“It was all very good.” Sloane squeezed a dollop of hand sanitizer into her hands. “You’ve obviously done a lot of work with these flavor profiles.”

Cooper’s mouth curved into a crooked smile. “No offense, but what does a food blogger know about flavor profiles?”

Sloane’s pulse pounded in her ears as she stared at him.

His grin faded. “Wait. I’m sorry.” He leaned his head in his hands, realized he was still wearing his work goggles and set them on the table. “I think that came out the wrong way.”

“Whatever. It’s fine. Can we get back to work now? I’m sure you also have better things you could be doing.”

Two could play at this game.

Dear Reader,

I’m honored you’ve picked up this book! It was so fun bringing Cooper and Sloane to life and following their journey through food, healing and love. I hope their story reminds you that healing is always possible, even if you have to reclaim it one day at a time.

Warning: this book may cause hunger, so be sure to read with a warm chocolate chip cookie and a tall glass of milk.

PS: I love to hear from readers! You can find me at www.laurietomlinson.com, on Facebook at Author Laurie Tomlinson, or @LaurieTomlinson on Twitter and Instagram. Thanks again for reading!

With No Reservations

Laurie Tomlinson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LAURIE TOMLINSON is an award-winning contemporary romance author living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her stories are fueled by faith, steaming mugs of tea, and her belief that life should be celebrated with cupcakes and extra sprinkles. When she’s not writing, she enjoys baking with her two little sous chefs and testing new recipes on her husband—especially if she doesn’t have to do the dishes.

You can connect with Laurie on her website, Facebook page and Twitter.

To my husband, Jef, for being the ultimate hero inspiration with your strength, love and support. Thanks for being my Huckleberry!

Special thanks to:

My husband and two children for championing my dream and making space for me to write—and to the grandmas for all the babysitting!

Rachel Kent, my agent, for believing in my work; Dana Grimaldi, for discovering this story; my editor, Victoria Curran, for helping me strengthen it; and the rest of the team at Harlequin for their hard and superb work!

All the early readers who breathed life into this story in its early iterations. It wouldn’t be the same without your input.

My ACFW community, writing friends, Alley Cats and my sisters Anne Love, Halee Matthews, Jaime Wright, Kara Isaac and Sarah Varland—they know all they have done.

Kathleen Y’Barbo Turner, Kristin Billerbeck, Carla Laureano and Jessica Patch—I wish that all writers could have author-mentors like you in their lives. Thanks for giving me courage and for making me believe in what I already possessed.

And most importantly, thanks to my Lord and Savior for being the true source of hope, healing and life to the fullest.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

A STICK OF Irish butter, cubed into tiny uniform squares. Half-cup portions of white sugar, brown sugar, glittering in the light. And the star of the show, a mixture of chocolate chips and crumbled homemade toffee that was good enough to eat with a spoon. All showcased in sherbet-colored ceramic pinch pots and bowls from the flea market.

The mise en place, as the French said, was complete. Everything was in place.

Sloane Bradley found a calming satisfaction in the certainty that, when these proportions were mixed and baked, they’d turn out the most perfect toffee-chocolate chip cookies in existence. Gooey with just the right amount of crisp.

She was dialing up a crystal clear focus on the ingredients through her DSLR’s viewfinder when her cell phone buzzed against the kitchen table.

Dana—VisibilityNet.

Her account supervisor was early by a full six minutes, which couldn’t be a good thing. She was usually late.

“Dana. Hi.” Any enthusiasm Sloane tried to muster fell flat.

“Sorry, Sloane.” Dana didn’t miss a beat. “I know we’re ahead of schedule, but we had to move some things around today. Kathryn needs to start the meeting early.”

“Kathryn?”

Dana sighed. “Yes. She asked to be on the call.”

Okay, something was definitely up. Why else would the founder of VisibilityNet—the one who was usually just a signature on the checks—need to be in on this call? In the span of a breath, the parts of Sloane’s job she treasured most shuttered through her mind. The subconscious rhythm of arranging ingredients and capturing the finished masterpieces. Her ability to conduct business calls from the comfort of yoga pants. Even the multitiered, color-coded spreadsheets.

Maybe especially the multitiered, color-coded spreadsheets.

Sloane nodded even though her supervisor couldn’t see her and swallowed hard. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Questions zipped through her mind as she smoothed her tailored blazer over her shoulders and sank into the cream-colored, leather dining room chair opposite her laptop. Could her job be in jeopardy?

Certainly not. Sloane was one of the ad network’s most successful accounts. Her blog traffic was higher than ever. Brands paid a pretty penny to work with her. Clicks for third-party ads were on the rise. Email subscriptions were through the roof after her rustic herb pizza crust had gone viral on Pinterest earlier in the week. She liked it much better when VisibilityNet sent her kitchen gadgets to review and left her alone to do what she did best.

Blog.

But there was no time to figure things out now, no time to panic. Just the fizz in her midsection as her computer beeped to announce the incoming call. The video chat screen split in half as it connected. Two contrasting images swam into focus—barely postgrad Dana with her flawless milky skin, auburn topknot, and hipster glasses, and Kathryn with her signature silver-streaked black hair, pillowy lips, and catlike eyeliner tips.

“Good morning, Miss Bradley.” Kathryn’s puffy, plastic lips were slightly out of sync with the audio of her heavy New England accent. “Excuse me for skipping the formalities, but we really need to get to business quickly.”

Sloane nodded, willing her clenched throat to relax. “Good morning.”

“This is a very new deal, so please don’t make this public yet.” Kathryn filled her lungs for effect. “Is it correct that you volunteer for the City on a Hill Foundation?”

“I’ve been volunteering at their headquarters for a few years now.” Sloane was intimately familiar with the organization and did everything she could to promote their efforts to educate low-income families about smart, sustainable cooking and grocery shopping.

“Then you know it’s headed up by the Marian Cooper of J. Marian Restaurants. Well, it’s her ex-husband’s company now.”

J. Marian Restaurants? With the sleazeball CEO who paraded around Dallas like he owned the place? He’d made a fortune selling fast-casual restaurant templates. Make-and-take pizza parlors. Noodle buffets. Cupcake and doughnut boutiques. He could feed a third-world country for a year by selling one of his custom suits—or denying one of his wife du jour’s plastic surgery whims. Marian used to be married to that guy?

Relieved that this conference call was just a preemptive announcement, Sloane zoned out as Kathryn went on about “strategic partnerships” and “trend forecasts.” All Sloane could focus on was her overwhelming urge to reach through the computer screen and adjust Dana’s glasses, which were tilted a few degrees lower on her right eye.

When she heard the words national network spokesperson, however, Sloane’s attention snapped to the nasal, authoritative voice of the VisibilityNet founder.

“Wait. What?” She registered her own deer-in-the-headlights expression on the screen.

“That’s where you come in, naturally,” Kathryn said. “Marian convinced them to hire you specifically. And it’s perfect because you’re local.”

Panic gripped Sloane with razor-sharp claws as her fight-or-flight mechanism went from zero to sixty in a heartbeat. She nodded in the right places and scribbled notes on the pad of paper she’d placed on her makeshift desk for ceremony, never expecting to actually use it.

Son’s restaurant opening this winter.

Recipe development.

Reviews.

Basically, VisibilityNet expected Sloane to shake hands with a lot of highbrow people.

In person. Wearing real pants.

This could not be happening.

Shaky words formed on the tip of her tongue. “And if I choose not to agree to this partnership?” Too late to take them back.

Dana paled, her eyes widening in shock.

“There is no choice in the matter.” Kathryn let out a singsong little laugh.

Great. She thought the whole thing was a joke.

“Listen. We have a pretty good arrangement, Sloane. We increased your revenue percentage and gave you our top-tier accounts because people have been eating out of the palm of your hand with that whole organized food prep shtick.”

“But—”

“Because of us, you get to work with some of the highest-grossing companies in the food industry. And all you have to do is put on a pretty face and post pretty little pictures of your food.”

Sloane sighed. “I know, but I don’t think you understand.”

“I understand this.” A muscle twitched in Kathryn’s face. “You’re contractually bound to do this and breaking your contract would mean severing ties with VisibilityNet. If you don’t do this restaurant opening, then we don’t get J. Marian Restaurants. A partnership with them on a national level.”

“Just be the charming character who’s won over hundreds of thousands of page views this quarter.” Dana upped the pleasantries before Sloane could fight back. “It won’t be a problem for you.”

No problem? Right. They had no clue who they were sending to their front lines. No idea that, if her track record was any indication, their leader in ad revenue was about to be their undoing.

“Besides, the majority of your obligations surround the restaurant launch date. In a few months, it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

A few months. Sloane could handle a few months, especially if the alternative meant losing her primary source of income. The non-compete agreement she’d signed ensured she would never receive so much as a coupon from those companies if she ever left.

VisibilityNet had a list of bloggers who would jump out of a moving train for those accounts. But losing VisibilityNet would change everything for her.

Sloane made nice for the rest of the conversation and ended the call, gulping in a deep breath to try to get the elephant on her chest to budge. No such luck. Her cell phone lit up immediately, and she snatched it before it could buzz.

“Dana, we’re in trouble.”

“What? Who’s in trouble?” It wasn’t Dana’s chirpy voice on the other end.

It was her mother’s.

“Hi, Mom.” She forced a smile in an effort to hide the panic in her voice. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Who’s in trouble?”

Sloane let out a breath slowly. “It’s nothing. Just a new contract they gave me today. Work stuff. It’ll be fine.” She winced at the last word. Fine. Everything was always fine. Only, it wasn’t.

“Does that mean you can’t come home for Thanksgiving? Or Christmas?”

Home. The little town in Indiana hadn’t resembled home to her in ages.

She padded into her bedroom and folded the ironing board with a loud screech. “Yeah, no, Mom. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it this year. Maybe in the spring.”

“That’s what you said last year.”

A stake of guilt punched through Sloane’s heart as she paced to the kitchen. That’s what she’d said for so many years.

“Would it be better if we came to you?”

“Well, with this new contract, life’s going to be pretty busy.” Sloane pulled a dustrag from a drawer and began scrubbing the dishes and props on the rolling wire pantry in her kitchen.

“As long as you’re taking care of yourself, Sloanie. Spending time with your friends. Going to church. You’ve made friends, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Probably not in the sense her mother meant, but she had friends.

By the time she hung up with her mother, two rows of pots and dishes gleamed, and every limb in her body was itching to medicate with a few miles of downtown Dallas pavement. To help her process this new work arrangement as something that was manageable—and now to take the edge off of the reminder of why her mother had called.

It was his birthday.

She bit her lip against the pressure of tears building between her temples and crouched to the immaculate tile floor. Bracing herself, yet again, for the crush of painful memories.

But in a way, Sloane saw a silver lining in the conversation. Another one of her mother’s semiregular attempts to reach out was over.

There was now one less time she had to remind her parents that the daughter they knew was gone. Things would never be the way they used to be.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS RAINING so hard that Sloane only caught glimpses of the buildings outside the car in between broad swipes of the windshield wipers. But according to her phone’s GPS, the brick storefront barely visible from the rear window was the right location for J. Marian Restaurants’ latest franchise venture, Simone.

She grabbed her compact umbrella. “Thanks,” she told the driver, opened the door—and immediately stepped into a gargantuan puddle that soaked her black pants to midshin.

If this was seventy-five and sunny like the local news had forecasted, then Sloane was the queen of England.

Rainwater sloshed in her black flats as she scurried under the awning and through the heavy wooden door.

This couldn’t be right. The inside of this café was nothing like J. Marian Restaurants’ other prototypes—usually sunny and cheerful with modern decor, bright flowers and lots of clean lines. The best way to describe this place was a cozy, inviting cavern with a modern industrial edge to it. The walls were painted a dark gray framed by exposed galvanized piping. Reclaimed wooden tables were paired with mismatched chairs. A fireplace with crumbling brick occupied one of the corners, surrounded by squashy leather couches. Definitely European. And emptier than a ghost town, except for a contractor hammering at the leg of an overturned table in the back.

Sloane cleared her throat when the hammering paused and stretched to her tiptoes, watching for signs of life in the window of the door behind the counter. There was an impressive stainless steel espresso machine, a few large glass display cases and huge chalkboard panels spread across the serving counters waiting to be written on then hung behind the cash register.

So the restaurant mogul was up on the current trends. Good. It would make her job easier.

“Sloane Bradley?” The contractor walked in her direction, pulling off work gloves to reveal tan, muscled forearms.

“Yes, I’m here to meet with someone from J. Marian Restaurants.”

They were supposed to be talking strategy about the restaurant’s soft opening scheduled for Saturday. But at this rate, it would never be ready by then with only one worker on the job.

Though he certainly looked capable enough.

“You’re from VisibilityNet, right?”

She commanded control of her wayward focus and nodded. This wasn’t how the next few months were going to go. On the clock, Sloane.

“Is anybody back there?” She pointed to the door behind the counter then clamped her hands around the strap of her bag to make their shaking less obvious.

The man paused for a beat and pushed his protective glasses up to reveal appraising, gold-flecked brown eyes.

Sloane took a step back as her brain clicked into cognition.

No. It couldn’t be.

“You’re early.”

It was. Dana had told her the Cooper family would send one of their PR suits, not their spoiled frat boy of a son. It was the face she’d seen on the magazines in the grocery checkout a few years ago, curled into a perpetual smirk. Accessorized by handcuffs, models and half-empty bottles. Only now, his pale, lanky angles had softened into serious lines.

Professional. Right. She must remain professional.

“I’m right on time, Mr. Cooper.” Sloane zeroed in on the layer of dirt that speckled his hands. “May I call you Graham?”

Don’t shake my hand. Please, don’t shake my hand.

“I go by Cooper, actually. My father is Graham.” He moved behind the counter to scrub his hands in the porcelain sink then disappeared through the door into what she assumed was the kitchen.

Sloane spun around—surely this was some kind of joke—and dropped into a chair at the table closest to the door. Better to make a quick getaway if she needed to.

Cooper reappeared right as she uncapped her trusty bottle of hand sanitizer and squeezed the gel into her palm. In his hands was a tray filled with stoneware dishes and a pair of mismatched mugs. Her stomach rumbled its appreciation for the smells coming from the tray.

Acting of its own accord, Sloane’s gaze flickered over him with the new knowledge of who he was, just long enough to absorb the muscles filling his stained white T-shirt, the two or three days’ worth of stubble lining his jaw and his brown hair mussed by the clear work glasses perched on the top of his head. Just long enough to register that he was even better looking in person as he wiped sauce from one of the plates with the edge of a cloth napkin.

But it was long enough for him to notice.

Heat spread across Sloane’s cheeks as her stomach dipped in response to him. What? Did she think this was some kind of reality show or something? And why was her body choosing now of all times to behave this way? It had to be some kind of fight-or-flight misfire.

Cooper set the tray of food in front of her. “I thought I’d give you a preview of what we’re going to serve at the soft opening in case you want to write about it in your little blog.”

Sloane raised an eyebrow. Little blog? Apparently his good looks weren’t all the gossip headlines were right about. But maybe his arrogance would serve her well. Anger and annoyance always had a way of making her less of an awkward disaster. They helped her maintain control.

She ignored his comment and reached for the crock of soup, focusing on the smell of hearty broth and some kind of caramelized white cheese.

Cooper gripped her forearm. “Careful. I just pulled that out of the oven.”

She snatched her hand back as sparks of electricity scattered up her arm. Forget the hot ramekin. His touch might as well have been the lit end of a July Fourth sparkler.

Cooper unrolled a cloth napkin and placed a fork and a spoon on a saucer, reaching across the table to hand it to her. The silverware clattered against the porcelain in her shaky grip when she took it, as if the restaurant were positioned along an unsteady fault line.

He glanced from Sloane’s hands to her eyes, a line creasing in his forehead as she reached into her bag and scrubbed the cutlery with a wipe before dipping her spoon in the soup.

“So, tell me a little about J. Marian Restaurants’ vision for this place.” She blew on the spoonful of broth, crouton and cheese, willing the soup to keep from dribbling back into the bowl since her hand still wasn’t cooperating. “It’s not like the corporation’s other restaurants, is it?”

One bite of the soup threw Sloane back with an explosive blast of flavor.

Cooper smirked at her reaction. “Does that taste like it came from my father’s other restaurants?”

“It’s fantastic,” she answered around another mouthful, already assembling her third bite. “Where did the chef come from?”

He sat up straighter in his seat and crossed his arms, his expressionless face the final brick in the wall he’d put up between them. “I’m the chef.”

Sloane nearly choked on her soup. Certainly, her ears had failed her. Graham Cooper Jr., a chef?

“I trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked in kitchens that made Gordon Ramsay’s seem like Girl Scout camp.”

Wow. His speech had the scratch of a broken record, as if he was used to giving it to naysayers. What did the heir to the Cooper dynasty have to prove anyway?

Sloane cleared her throat and pulled a pad of paper from her bag so she didn’t have to respond, making notes as she sampled the rest of the food in silence. There was an apple and brie panini, a chocolate croissant, a hybrid between a French dip and a croque monsieur, a salted brown butter and berry tart. The food was divine—all of it. She had to stop herself from clearing the entire tray. If she was in business mode, this food was putting up an involuntary out-of-office reply for her. The only thing that kept her in check was the mental tally of calories she’d have to plug into the app on her phone later.

“It was all very good.” Sloane squeezed another dollop of hand sanitizer into her hands as her own white flag of surrender to the food. “You’ve obviously done a lot of work with these flavor profiles.”

The corner of Cooper’s mouth curved into a crooked smile. “No offense, but what does a blogger know about flavor profiles?”

Sloane’s pulse pounded in her ears as she stared at the amused individual across from her in shock.

His grin faded to wide-eyed panic. “Wait. I’m sorry.” He leaned his head on his hands, realized he was still wearing his work goggles and set them on the table. “I think that came out the wrong way.”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” Sloane stared at the goggles. What else could he have meant? He was surely trying to placate her because he didn’t want to be inconvenienced by hurt feelings. She pulled her shoulder blades together. “Can we get back to work now? I’m sure you also have better things you could be doing right now.”

Two could play at that game.

“Go ahead.”

“So, Mr. Cooper. I asked you about the vision for this place. I take it you spearheaded the development yourself?”

Cooper laced his fingers behind his head, studying Sloane through heavy-lidded eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I wanted an answer to my father’s way of doing things, which works for him, I guess, but in a different way.”

Sloane scribbled the keywords that would help her remember their conversation later. “So you basically set out to create a restaurant that will cause a stir with how your father usually does things.”

Cooper frowned and shifted in his seat, scanning her pad of paper. “I wanted to create an atmosphere that said Stay awhile and a cost-effective, sustainable menu that said Savor. You can read into that whatever you want.”

“That’s very European. And the name? Where does Simone come from?” Some bimbo he’d met while enjoying the Parisian nightlife?

Cooper’s expression clouded. “Someone who was very special to me in France.”

For how long? A week?

“She taught me how to appreciate food and enjoy cooking it. More important than anything I learned at Le Cordon Bleu.” His words became more flavored with French as he spoke, as if saturated by the remnant of this woman in his mind.

“And, let me guess, she was a little reluctant to leave the motherland?”

Cooper looked up, his forehead creased. “No. She died right before I moved back.”

Died. The word snapped against Sloane like a whip. “Oh. Wow. Well, she must have been...something...to, you know, name your restaurant after her and everything.”

She focused so her breath didn’t release in shredded gasps as Cooper launched into a story about Simone. Something about standing next to her over her stove top.

But Sloane’s mind could only focus on one thing.

Aaron.

She’d unintentionally wandered into an area of Cooper’s life she didn’t have security clearance for. And the intrusion only served to land her square in the middle of the place she kept under lock and key in her own life. Every instinct told her to take cover from the impending explosion.

“Can I use your restroom?” She stood so abruptly that her chair clattered to the floor.

“The water’s not connected—”

“That’s okay. Just tell me where it is.”

Cooper furrowed his eyebrows and pointed to a hallway on the far side of the kitchen.

The door to the restroom closed with a thunderous crash when Sloane heaved her hip against it. She pulled the jade-green sleeves of her cardigan over her hands and clutched the pedestal sink, leaning into it. Deep breaths.

She willed her racing heart to slow, trying to abate the pressure of backed-up tears.

Refold short stack of hand towels.

Angle off-center soap dispenser.

Normally she could handle talk of death just fine. It happened every day. But sometimes the jolting blow of emptiness sneaked up on her when she least expected it, even more than a decade after her best friend’s death. The days and weeks surrounding his birthday were always terrible—agonizing at best and unmanageable at worst. Well, she’d have to learn how to manage it better if she wanted to keep her job. Even if it was clear Cooper wasn’t a fan of the arrangement either.

With a few more deep breaths, the pressure softened a little, leaving a dull ache in its place.

Sloane straightened and watched in the mirror as the peach undertones returned to her pale skin. Her fingers worked with practiced precision to tame the stray strands in her blond braid. And then she was ready to face the world again. Ready to give Graham Cooper some lame excuse and retreat to the safest place she knew.

But she wasn’t ready for the look on his face. For the way he stood and stepped in her direction when he saw her walking down the hall. For the trace of remorse in his confident facade that made her knees shake when he asked if she was okay.

“I’m fine,” Sloane said. “But I need to be somewhere right now. Unless you have anything else to tell me, I think I’ve completed everything on the agenda for today.” And, unfortunately, a bit more than she’d bargained for.

“No, of course. I think we’re good.” Cooper started gathering dishes as Sloane packed her bag. He disappeared into the kitchen then returned to walk her out.

Sloane paused in the doorway, a sputtering explanation forming in her mind. Maybe she could tell him she had a situation with her contact lenses. Or something to dispel the truth he’d certainly picked up on that she was a total wreck. But she fled with a flick of her hand the instant his eyes met hers. Before the tightness in her chest could escalate. Before the moisture in her eyes turned from annoying drip to full-fledged leak.

Once she’d made it to the end of the street and turned the corner, out of Graham Cooper Jr.’s sight, she leaned against a building and wafted air into her lungs with flailing hands. She called her car service and practiced her breathing exercises while she waited.

Inhale, two, three, four.

Exhale, two, three, four.

She’d try anything to keep her mind off Aaron.

Nine stoplights, sixty-seven trees and fifty-nine footsteps later, Sloane was in her apartment, hands scrubbed clean. Curled up in her bed where she finally emptied her lungs.

I can’t take this forever.

CHAPTER THREE

GETTING THE RESTAURANT ready had spoiled Cooper, and now that he’d gotten used to the loose cotton of his work clothes, his go-to suits felt like wool straitjackets. But today he was leading a training seminar at the J. Marian corporate offices, so he had to be on his game and look the part for the group of franchise owners who’d flown in from across the country.

To mentally prepare, he’d taken his black Lab Maddie to their favorite park. The mechanics of throwing the ball and watching her bound after it had reset his focus from repairs and recipe testing. A long shower had washed the smells of the kitchen from his skin and gave him the chance to rehearse talking points for the training he’d led countless times.

But in the clean confines of the old Land Rover Defender he’d rebuilt, Cooper’s mind veered from the gray Dallas streets to his sawdust-covered restaurant, alternating between his massive to-do list and scenes from the mind-boggling encounter he’d had with his new PR person.

He’d been too busy to do his research before the meeting. Totally unprepared for how stunning she’d be in her own unassuming way. She reminded him of those cartoons he used to watch with his sister, a fairy-tale princess who’d been forced to get a real job—milky skin, a healthy rose to her cheeks, immaculate braid in a warm, golden blond. Natural, he could tell, not bottled. But she’d traded in her ball gown for business garb. And judging by the revolving door of faces he’d seen on the woman, she’d traded in her happily-ever-after, too.

As he parked in his spot in the garage next to his brother’s limited edition Audi R8, he shuffled the few facts he’d collected about Sloane Bradley. She was hesitant yet professional. Bold, yet there was something fragile about her that had nothing to do with the fact that she couldn’t be much taller than five feet.

He moved on autopilot through the dim parking garage, remembering how Sloane had practically bolted when he told her about Simone. Cooper recognized the pain in her eyes like he was looking into a mirror. Yes, he was very familiar with the kind of grief that sneaks up on you. With the dark, smothering bag it throws over your head and the way it pushes you into the back of a moving van.

As he opened the sleek glass doors, he catalogued all thoughts of Sloane with the mental list of things left to do at the restaurant and stepped into the massive lobby—clean and white and futuristic with purple LED uplighting. The smell of new construction was acrid, more glue and fused metal than the round scent of aged wood he’d become accustomed to.

“Sandra said to tell you he’s in a mood.” The receptionist covered the mouthpiece on her headset and motioned Cooper to the elevator bank with a curt wave before continuing her phone conversation in a polite, robotic tone.

Perfect. He rode an empty elevator to the fifth floor, and when the doors opened, his father’s assistant’s desk was empty.

Graham Cooper Jr. His name in red marker on the top of a cream folder caught his eye.

Why was his file on Sandra’s desk?

He reached for it, double-checked that he was alone and flipped it open.

“Are you looking for these?”

Cooper whirled around at the sound of his father’s voice and pressed his back against the desk, closing his file with a nudge behind him.

His father brandished a trifold flier with the Simone logo and glossy images of Cooper’s food that had been redone four times before he finally approved them. He didn’t consider himself picky on principle, but this was his restaurant and it had to be just right. Only, the images still weren’t quite there.

“Yeah, thanks.” Cooper took the stack of proofs from his father and turned toward his office. “I’ll send off these final revisions when they’re—”

“I still don’t know why you insisted on hiring some computer girl when you have a full staff of top MBAs at your disposal,” his father muttered.

Cooper clenched his teeth around his knee-jerk instinct to mirror the acrid tone. Fighting back would accomplish absolutely nothing, he’d learned. “It’s the twenty-first century, Dad. The internet is where the numbers are.”

His father smoothed the lapels of a suit that probably cost more than the average Dallas corporate drone’s monthly salary. “We lost Baker and Mayfield.”

Cooper’s mouth turned cottony. He’d thought the two oil millionaires were in the bag. The paperwork to open their first two restaurants, though coming along slowly, was mostly complete. He’d even broken a personal rule and played golf with them the other month, for Pete’s sake.

“They’re investing in real estate instead, and they won’t be persuaded to change their minds. I tried.”

He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Yeah, well, they decide everything together.” This was bad—worse because they weren’t the only ones Cooper had lost since he’d gotten the restaurant off the ground.

“You’re off your game.”

The muscles in Cooper’s neck tightened. “Dad—”

“You’re late to work all the time.” His father ticked off the items on his meaty fingers, pacing the plush carpeting. “You’re never home, always flying from here to that restaurant.” His voice rose. “It’s not healthy—for you or the company!”

Cooper sighed, his shoulders almost shaking against the strong urge to slump.

“I mean, do you even sleep?”

He scoffed at his father as heat edged his face. “Of course I sleep.” When he wasn’t bolting out of bed to do just one more thing.

“I need to know that you’re all in, Coop.” The senior Cooper tented his hands.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Good.” He clapped Cooper on the back, walking toward his office. “Then deal with that massive pile on your desk before anything else falls through. And take care of that training today.”

Cooper watched his father leave, swallowing around the familiar itch in his throat that craved to be satisfied with a few cold Jack and Cokes. He cleared his thoughts and forced himself to relax, turning toward his own office.

It was a mess in there, half of his desk littered with coffee-ringed napkins and the other covered in tall stacks of file folders, at the top of which were the Baker and Mayfield accounts. Next on his list. Could they have been salvaged if he’d spent more time at his desk over the past few weeks? He snatched them up and let them fall in the metal wastebasket.

There. Two down, at least two days of follow-up calls to make and—he moved to check his watch, but it was sitting on his desk at the restaurant where he’d painted the interior walls early that morning. A glance at his laptop told Cooper he needed to be at the training auditorium in fifteen minutes, and he was meeting his restaurant manager after that.

He gathered a sizable pile of folders and locked his office. Even if it would be too late to call once his night at the restaurant was finished, at least he could take care of the clients who preferred to work by email. The company depended on him to recruit franchisees who would open their restaurants across the country—and to keep their business. It was a huge percentage of their annual revenue. So he’d work all night if he had to and possibly move some things around at the restaurant tomorrow.

Cooking had made him healthy again, a huge, necessary part of what had kept him away from the bottle for two years. But he owed it to his family not to let things go up in smoke. At least not again.

His father’s words circled in his mind as if they’d forgotten something. If Cooper was going to get it together at the office, ready the restaurant and actually have customers when they opened the doors, he was going to need all the help from this “computer girl” that he could get.

* * *

THE PERFECT LIGHT spilled through the kitchen window of Sloane’s condo, illuminating the crisp white plate, slate charger and teardrop vase she’d paired with a couple red-orange tulips. It shone like a spotlight on the star of the show, a juicy roasted lemon-rosemary chicken with the perfect golden-brown crust.

Not thrown together by the seat of her pants with the items in her pantry, as Cooper probably assumed. She’d scheduled the meal in her content calendar weeks ago, orchestrated so each ingredient was fresh from local farms when she cooked and photographed almost a month before each recipe’s scheduled posting date.

Sloane wasn’t even capable of operating on a whim. At least not anymore.

A tiny speck on the smooth white plate—invisible to most—caught her trained eye. She rubbed it gently with a napkin and climbed onto a chair for a look through her camera’s viewfinder.

She adjusted the ISO speed.

Who does Graham Cooper Jr. think he is?

She dialed the aperture down a few notches. Who was she kidding? She’d almost lost it in front of him.

With one tiny movement of the shading screen a camera equipment company had sent her to review, she flicked all thoughts of Graham Cooper out of her mind and returned to her position on the chair, one foot in a clean sock perched on the table for optimum angling.

Her computer interrupted the moment of perfection, beckoning her to the kitchen counter with the rhythmic ring of an incoming video chat.

Sloane scowled as she hurried to the kitchen. There was only one person who could be calling right now. “This better be important, Grace.” Sloane stuck her tongue out at her best friend to show she was joking when her freckled face appeared. Mostly joking. “I’m losing light.”

“Good morning to you, too, Meezy!” Grace lived in San Diego, two hours behind Sloane. She was still in her pajamas even though it was past nine there. She’d nicknamed Sloane Meezy based on the name of her blog, Mise en Place.

“I wanted to make sure you got my gift.” Her friend yawned, raking a hand through her fluffy red hair. “That’s a pretty valuable piece to be floating around in the possession of the postal service.”

The biggest kitchen catalog on the web, Good Cooks, had sent Grace a high-end enamel Dutch oven she already owned. So she’d taken pity on Sloane who had dropped her own brand-new one and shattered it during an unfortunate compound butter incident.

She shuddered at the memory of the slick beef short rib concoction that had covered every square foot of her kitchen. “I was going to text you after I finished my post for today. It’s gorgeous. I think the purple looks better in my kitchen anyway.”

“Good, good. Well let’s get right down to it.”

“What?”

“You and I both know I didn’t call to chat about cookware.”

Sloane sighed. Right. That. She should have known. “There’s nothing to tell, Grace. I’m working with their son to open his new restaurant. End of story.”

“Sloane, Sloane, Sloane. There’s always more to the story. How did he act? Was he decent to you? Did he have an entourage?”

“Okay, Hoda.” Sloane carried her laptop to the table and sank into the chair. She wanted to take a nap. “No, he didn’t have an entourage. He was alone. Doing his own repairs, for goodness’ sake.”

“Did he say why he’s been off the radar for so long?”

“He was in Paris. Going to culinary school.”

“From America’s party boy to chef who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Interesting.” Grace typed something into her computer. “He doesn’t sound like the monster Levi was thinking he’d be.”

The web coding and design genius they’d befriended hadn’t held back when voicing his opinions about Cooper’s character, much less his stance on whether Sloane was fit enough to work with him in the first place.

“Well, we know Levi can be a little trigger-happy with his Google searching.” Sloane laughed.

“Yes, my friend. You’re absolutely right. So, was he as good-looking in person?”

Cooper’s warm, caramel-colored eyes and his strong profile that could have been chiseled from granite appeared in hi-def in Sloane’s mind.

Quick. Play dumb. “Who, Levi?”

Grace raised her eyebrows.

“I, uh—”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Triumph played in Grace’s eyes. Sloane was toast and she knew it. “Maybe I’ll get to find out for myself in a few weeks.”

Sloane sighed. “The conference.”

“You have no excuse this year. It’s practically in your backyard.”

“I know, but—”

“But don’t worry. I won’t let them devour you.”

This was why they got along so well. And why Sloane had finally agreed to attend their annual food blogging conference. It was true; she’d run out of excuses since the conference was in Dallas this year. But she couldn’t deny it would be good to finally meet Grace in person, even if her throat closed up a little when she imagined being in a room with thousands of bloggers and readers that were much less intimidating from their 2-D cyber distance.

“Well, I won’t keep you from your good light. Are we watching MasterChef tonight or what?” Grace was now typing furiously. Their conversation wasn’t long for this world.

“Sure. Eight my time?”

“Yep. I’ll tell Levi about it right now. And I’ll tell him to back off. I think one grand inquisition about the Coopers is enough.”

“Ha. Fat chance of that. Talk to you later.”

Grace closed the screen, foregoing a goodbye now that she’d moved on to the next thing.

After Sloane picked a new pair of socks, she returned to the chicken, rearranged everything according to the slight difference in lighting and snapped several shots from a bird’s-eye view.

Her meal might not be molecular gastronomy or whatever they taught at a fancy French culinary school. But she was going to teach some home cooks how to roast a chicken so bone-licking scrumptious that they’d never be satisfied with rotisserie from the deli ever again.

And she was going to buck up and prove she had a lot to bring to Graham Cooper’s table—rattled first impressions or not.

* * *

COOPER SAT AT his desk in his favorite corner of his home—besides the kitchen—head in one hand, the proofs for Simone’s promotional materials spread in front of him. They were clean, bright, cheerful—all the trappings of the J. Marian corporate signature. But all wrong for Simone.

He’d been staring at them for what felt like hours, absently rubbing circles into Maddie’s fur with his foot. He couldn’t put his finger on it or name exactly what changes he needed to make. Design had never been his forte. Not like sales and customer service were. But he knew the tone didn’t work at all. It fit what he was going for about as well as Maddie crammed into the nook under his desk, knobby legs sticking out in every direction. He sipped cold coffee, its acrid taste a far cry from what he would have been drinking a few years ago. It sure would make these proofs easier to swallow.

He sighed. Something had to give or history would repeat itself. He’d lose everything he owned if it meant he could stand the person he saw in the mirror each morning.

Cooper swallowed hard. Even the restaurant.

No. He sat up and turned the proofs over so all that was visible was the back of the page, frustration gnawing at his foundation like a termite. He’d been through too much to let his restaurant slip through his fingers.

And then he saw it. The scrap of J. Marian letterhead had slipped through a pile of papers. Sloane Bradley, it read in his father’s assistant’s slanted script. No email address or phone number. Not even the address for her website. Simply a name that opened the starting gate for a fresh round of loping thoughts.

He swiped a finger across the trackpad of his laptop and opened the browser. Sloane Bradley food blog, he typed into the search engine. The first result had a thumbnail of Sloane along with a short introduction to her website. Cooper cracked a half smile when he saw the title was French. Mise en Place.

“Dude, maybe you should get some glasses.”

Cooper shot up, and Maddie scrambled from beneath the desk, scattering a stack of papers with her tail in her excitement. “How about you warn a guy before you creep up on him like that?” He grinned to show he was joking. And to downplay the fact that his face had been inches from Sloane’s picture on his computer screen. “How long have you been here, man?”

“Just got home a few hours ago.” Jake Neighbors traveled all across America, helping surgeons install pacemakers and defibrillators all hours of the night in hospitals that didn’t have the technology. Cooper saw his roommate one or two nights a week—if he was lucky. Most of the time, Jake was catching up on sleep.

Judging by the rumpled T-shirt and sweatpants, that’s exactly what he’d been doing. “Well, don’t let me intrude on your beauty sleep, Neighbors. Because you need a lot of it.”

Maddie snatched her ball and pushed it against Jake’s leg. She’d given up on Cooper ages ago.

“Who’s the girl?” Jake bent and scratched Maddie’s ears.

Cooper shrugged. “Someone my mom recommended to help promote the restaurant.”

“Yeah?” Jake leaned forward on the desk for a closer look. “How’s that been going?”

Cooper sighed and picked up one of the proofs, extending it toward his roommate. “It’s going, I guess.”

His roommate’s face was unreadable as he scanned the brochure. But Cooper was pretty sure he saw him wince. “Why don’t you see if this woman...” He waved a finger at the computer screen.

“Sloane.”

“Sloane. Why don’t you see if she can help? I mean, these are good and everything, but her style seems more up your alley, you know?”

Cooper nodded, trying to reconcile the hot mess of a girl he’d met at the restaurant—she’d wiped her silverware, for crying out loud!—with the spirited image she conveyed on her website.

Once Jake had left to run some errands, Cooper opened his browser and dug deeper.

So, her thing was mise en place. The recipe prep. Neat piles of ingredients staged so they were appealing to the eye. He got that about Sloane, in the way she’d rearranged things and seemed to have a particular order as she sampled his food at the restaurant.

She was an interesting girl—feisty, even. And she certainly wasn’t lacking in the looks department. The head shot on the website header affirmed that. Her shiny blond hair was pulled to one side, full lips parted like she was about to say something to the person taking the picture. The light pink of her sweater highlighted something younger, an almost playful vibe. Totally different than the guarded professional he’d met. A black apron with her Mise en Place logo accentuated her figure, petite and curvy. Trim, but healthy enough to show she wasn’t the kind of woman who only ate birdseed and water. He could appreciate a woman who didn’t refuse a fluffy, buttery roll or two when the bread basket was passed around. Life was too short for that.

Cooper rested his chin in his hand and scrolled to her most recent post, a recipe for pumpkin spice cake doughnuts prepared two ways. Some were sprinkled with a spiced sugar concoction and the others were drizzled with a multilayered vanilla bean glaze.

He did a double take and leaned close to the computer to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks when he saw that her post had over two hundred comments. And he could see why.

Sloane’s images were gorgeous. From the assembled ingredients to the close-up of the baked, spongy center. And the final product arranged in a doughnut pyramid, shot on a vintage sherbet-colored cake stand against a wood pallet backdrop.

Jake was right. This was what he wanted for Simone. Charming, rustic, cozy, mouth-watering. Just like he promised the real Simone it would be.

Maybe his mother’s instincts were spot-on and Sloane could do his restaurant promo justice.

There it was. A glimmer of hope where he’d had nothing a minute before. He had to talk to her. He scrolled through his inbox, scanning the names for one that might have her contact information. “There you are.” Finally. He tapped the numbers into his phone.

It wasn’t until it rang that something twinged in the pit of his stomach. The warning sign that perhaps he should have thought this through a little better.

She answered as he was clearing his throat.

“Sloane, it’s Cooper.” Silence. “From Simone?” It felt good to say that out loud.

“Right, right.” Her tone remained flat, all business. “What can I do for you?”

He cleared his throat again, replaying their last meeting. Did he do something to offend her? He couldn’t remember. But that didn’t matter. Even if she never wanted to work with him again, it was time to lay it all on the line.

“I need you.”

* * *

“THANK YOU SO much for coming on such short notice.” It was the third time Cooper had said it, but he didn’t care.

He picked up the last box from the trunk of the black Lincoln Town Car that had brought Sloane to the restaurant.

“Careful with that one,” she warned him, looping one forearm through the handle of a reusable bag and bunching the brown cotton of her skirt in the other to protect it from the wild winds. “Thanks, Henry,” she called to the uniformed driver.

What was up with the car service? Maybe hers was in the shop or something. But that wasn’t important right now. The fact that she was there to save his bacon was all that mattered.

Cooper set the last box on the stainless steel prep area of the kitchen with the rest of Sloane’s impressive assortment as she began opening containers and lifting a menagerie of items from them—plates, stands, serving dishes, ceramic spoons of inviting colors and textures.

“Where do you find all of this stuff?”

At first, Sloane ignored him, her eyes sweeping back and forth between the props. She shook her head, and the focus returned to her eyes. “eBay, mostly. Online shops. May I see the food you prepared for this shoot?” Quick. Impersonal. Proper.

“Um, yeah.” He ran a hand through his short curls. “It’s right over here.”

Cooper watched as Sloane inspected the dishes he’d made for her to photograph. Her expression didn’t look promising—somewhere between fierce concentration and measured grimace.

“Okay. I can work with this,” she finally pronounced. Without a word of explanation, she picked up three of the plates and whisked them from the kitchen to the café.

Cooper followed suit with the rest of the plates but stopped when he saw Sloane moving from table to table, inspecting each surface. What was she looking for? Crumbs or something?

“The lighting is best right here.” Sloane framed a patch of light on one of the front tables with cupped hands. “But we don’t have much time.”

“Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Sloane looked up at him. For a moment, he saw a flicker of warmth in her blue-gray eyes that jolted him enough to raise the hair on his arms. And then it was gone.

He stood at a distance, nibbling the thumbnail of one hand. Watching as Sloane moved in silence, transferring food to her dishes, expertly molding and reshaping with silverware, dabbing crumbs and smudges from immaculate surfaces. Adjusting her camera and snapping photographs from every angle imaginable.

Food styling had never been Cooper’s thing in culinary school. But this took it to a whole new level. Precise. Methodical. What Sloane was doing was an exact science she could write the book on.

She didn’t acknowledge him again until the very last shot when she looked up and, after a fleeting blink of confusion, seemed to remember that he was there.

“You don’t happen to have milk here, do you? Or cream? And a tall glass?”

Cooper saw where she was going with this and jogged to the kitchen. The milk may have been a day or two expired, but its only purpose in life was to look good next to a molten chocolate cake.

That, it could do.

Right as Sloane had the shot lined up, something occurred to Cooper. “Wait. Just a minute.”

He hurried into the kitchen, opening drawers and slamming them, upending packing materials and dishes until he found a plastic bag and tore it apart with his teeth on his way back into the dining room. He placed the teal-striped straw he’d gotten from a vendor in the glass of milk and stood behind Sloane to survey it from her vantage point.

She whipped around, a glimmer of life in the wide blue-gray eyes he now noticed were rimmed with brown. “You’re a genius!”

“I’m glad my sole contribution pleases you.”

After snapping the last photo of the molten chocolate cake, Sloane heaved a sigh and plopped into the chair. “You don’t mind if I eat this, do you?”

Cooper shook his head, mind blown. “Go ahead.” He laughed. “But the milk is at your own risk.”

She rubbed on hand sanitizer and polished her spoon with a wipe before digging into the cake. “Mmm. This is so good.” The cake’s liquid chocolate center pooled at the corners of her mouth, and Cooper tore his eyes away. “They’re going to be lining up for this cake alone—mark my words.”

“We’ll see about that. It’s about the only thing I like to bake. I’ll take a knife and a skillet any day.”

Sloane’s head snapped up from the cake. “What’s so bad about baking? It’s pretty much the best thing ever.”

“There’s no...improvisation in it.” Cooper pulled out a chair from Sloane’s table and sat on it backward. “It was my least favorite thing about culinary school. Everything has to be so measured and set in stone or else it turns out awful.”

She took another bite and chewed it delicately, staring at the rich, gooey cake in front of her. “Set in stone isn’t always awful. Here.” She handed him the camera, her white-collared shirt draping open at her smooth, pale neck. Her thumb rotated the dial, demonstrating how to scroll through the pictures.

They were exactly how he wanted to represent the bistro. The lighting, the angles, the food...it was all amazing. She’d really done it.

“Not bad for a measly blogger, is it?” Sloane narrowed her eyes, a half-smile curving her lips.

“These are perfect, Sloane. Seriously.”

She scraped her spoon against the bottom of the ramekin, avoiding his eyes. “You didn’t seem to think I had much to offer when we met the other day.”

“Sloane, that didn’t come out the right way at all.” Cooper dropped his head in surrender. “I’m sorry I said it like that. Clearly, I need you to make this happen.”

“I know.” Sloane’s voice was even. Not arrogant, just stating the obvious. “That’s why I’m here. It really was a logical move to put your focus on online marketing for this project. You’re attracting a different crowd, Cooper. J. Marian has the soccer mom and older crowd down, but this—” she indicated the room “—your people are different. They’re waiting to find you online.”

She was right. And the confidence in her voice told him she knew how to make that happen.

Memory card clutched tightly in his palm, Cooper walked around the back of the Town Car to thank Sloane after the last of her serving props had been loaded in the trunk.

To his disappointment, the distant, professional version of her had returned the minute their conversation reached a lull. Maybe feeding her chocolate cake was the magical key to unlock her. To give her permission to relax a little.

Before he could reach her window, she was gone with a swift wave and a tight smile, leaving a deluge of questions in her elusive wake.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRAFFIC WAS SO backed up with cars arriving for the soft opening that Sloane’s driver could go no farther. She had to walk two blocks to Simone, camera bag bouncing against her hip. This was one of the reasons she never wore heels, even for nice occasions. No amount of beauty was worth the blisters.

But fortunately, there were no torrential downpours or hurricane-grade winds. The sky was clear, a pleasant breeze wafting through her filmy aubergine dress. Just cool enough that she knew the warm flavors and comforting atmosphere would be spot-on.

Now she knew exactly how to begin her article.

With one gloved hand on the polished copper door handle, she paused to take a deep breath and tried to drown out the sounds of the crowd inside.

One. Two. Th—

The door flung open, careening her into the restaurant. Her camera bag slid down her arm, and she was mere inches away from eating some serious floor when two solid arms caught her around the waist and shoulders and lowered her to the floor at a much safer velocity.

“I’m really sorry about that,” a booming voice said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

Sloane looked up to see perfect white teeth surrounded by a charming smile. And a face that looked oddly like Cooper’s.

“Hello.” He drew out the last syllable suggestively as his gaze moved from her face to her peep-toe flats and back. Holding on to her hand just a little too long. “Have I met you before?”

Sloane felt a gentle tug on her elbow. The real Cooper appeared at her other side, syrupy eyes filled with irritation for the man he’d just pulled her away from.

His look turned to concern as he faced her. “Are you all right?”

“I—” She darted her gaze between him and the person who’d spared her from certain humiliation. Same height, same muscular build, same chiseled facial structure and cleft chin. The other man had reddish-brown hair to Cooper’s mocha color and eyes so dark they were almost black in place of Cooper’s honey-flecked ones. “You’re...?”

“Brothers.” Cooper sighed. “Sloane Bradley, meet Owen Cooper. Director of marketing at J. Marian Restaurants.”

“Twin brothers.” Owen’s million-dollar grin was a stark contrast to Cooper’s flat reluctance. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Cooper rolled his eyes. “Sloane is the food writer helping with the launch.”

“Nice to meet you, as well.” Sloane’s voice came out shaky, no doubt compounded by her heartbeat’s seismic proportions. Was it her almost-fall and rescue that was whipping her into a tachycardia? The two very good-looking men on either side of her? The warmth of Cooper’s hand still holding her elbow?

And, goodness, did he clean up nicely. Cooper’s eyes practically glowed in the low lighting. His now stubble-free jawline could cut glass.

Sloane’s stomach dipped as she recognized the Cooper patriarch approaching, motioning his sons to him with a commanding expression. Cooper gave her an apologetic look before following his brother.

With their backs turned, she took the opportunity to smooth the hem of her dress and rearrange her Spanx in one stealthy movement.

She took in the room. So. Many. People. Just breathe. She only had to do this for a few months. Then things would return to normal.

When Sloane turned, Mr. Cooper was still speaking to his sons in a hushed tone. He was dressed in a dark, textured dinner jacket that looked fresh from the tailor. The woman at his side—gorgeous, with a sparkling planet on her ring finger, long white teeth that seemed to go on for miles and half his age—said nothing.

Unsure where to go or what to do, Sloane scoped out the restaurant decor. Cooper had pulled everything together in time. And he’d added a touch of elegance with low lighting and rustic burnished candlesticks on every table.

But the best part? Massive canvases of the photos she’d taken had been hung on each wall, flanking a huge black-and-white portrait of an older woman—probably seventy or so. The contrast and lighting of the photo highlighted her lined face, wide cheekbones, and deep set of her eyes in a way that showcased her strength and dignity. Though her mouth was set in a firm, thin line, there was a sparkle in her clear eyes that spoke volumes about her and also made her very French. Made Sloane want to know her.

She tore her gaze from the portrait and turned to the Coopers. Owen was deep in conversation with a woman she recognized as a network news anchor while Mr. Cooper and his wife moved on to more schmoozeworthy pastures.

“Come with me.” Cooper’s low whisper startled Sloane and sent shivers down her spine. “I know just the spot for you.”

He led her to a table with a small chalkboard sign marked Reserved. Seated there were a blonde who looked fresh from the beach and a woman with the regal elegance of a politician’s wife—Marian Cooper.

Sloane sucked in a trembling breath. If she could have any superpower right now, it would definitely be invisibility. Cooper destroyed any possibility of that when he interrupted their conversation. “Ladies, excuse me.”

They turned toward him, mirroring his charming smile. Sloane flinched as his fingers brushed her bra strap and came to a rest on her lower back.

“I’d like you to meet Sloane Bradley, freelance writer and ambassador for VisibilityNet. She’ll be working to expand our presence on the web.”

Sloane listened closely for a dismissive air in his tone, still a little stung by his words a few days before. But if he still thought her job was ridiculous despite all of the help she’d given him, he hid it really well.

“Oh.” The blonde straightened to her full, runway model posture. “You’re a blogger, right? I think I’ve seen some of your recipes on Pinterest.”

Sloane swallowed a lump in her throat, wishing more than anything that Grace or one of her faithful blog commenters was here to do the talking.

“Yes, her recipes have built quite the following,” Cooper answered for her. “This is Trina Taylor, local reporter for the Dallas Morning News.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of you, too,” Sloane said. “You have quite the reputation around here.”

“Persistent?” Trina raised a shaped eyebrow.

Sloane nodded. “Yeah, something like that.” Though she’d never met the reporter in person, ruthless was the word people most often used to describe Trina. It was an excellent quality for a young journalist, but Sloane preferred to stay away from them in general. Maybe it was all the questions.

Cooper moved behind his mother’s chair. “And this stunning creature, as you know, is my mother, Marian Cooper.”

“Hello again.” A nervous laugh escaped Sloane, followed by an even more awkward wave, if such a thing was possible.

The older woman smiled, her familiar golden-brown eyes glowing. “Hi, Sloane. You’re welcome to sit at our table.”

Calmed by Marian’s drawl, Sloane pulled out the chair next to her. “That’s very kind of you.”

Cooper stepped aside as a server arrived with a tray of appetizers. His head swiveled toward the door, where people dressed in expensive suits and glittering jewels filed inside. “I need to say hello to a few other guests,” he said over his shoulder. “So I’ll leave you ladies to enjoy the evening. Let me know if you need anything.”

Trina dove right in when he was out of earshot. “So, Ms. Cooper, what is your role at the company these days? Are you here on official business?” She tore a leaf from the roasted artichoke and sucked it delicately. “Mmm. This is delicious.”

Part of Sloane was glad Trina wasn’t the type to pull her punches. Maybe Sloane would get some answers about this family that she didn’t have the clearance to ask.

“You want to know how they handle the jilted matriarch at these kinds of things?” Marian’s expression didn’t waver.

“That’s not what I was asking, but if you’re answering...”

Please be careful what you say! One wrong step and Marian could find herself snapped up in a proverbial bear trap, if the amusement twinkling in Trina’s eyes was any indication.

“Though I elected to focus on the City on a Hill Foundation, I’m still very interested in the company that has my name on it, even if I’m not involved with the day-to-day operations.”

“Of course.” Trina gave a little nod.

“But beyond keeping an eye on my investments, this is one of the biggest nights in my son’s life. Anything else is a nonissue.”

Good for her. Kind, but still firm. Jilted or not, the woman could hold her own.

Sloane glanced at Trina, measuring whether the reporter was daring enough to dig deeper. Not now, her firmly pressed lips told Sloane. But her calculating eyes said there would definitely be a later.

A silence settled over the table as they sampled the French onion soup. Sloane focused on picking out each ingredient in the broth as the hum of chatter in the room and the soft, dulcet French music whitewashed her senses into a warm calm.

Once she was thoroughly relaxed, she excused herself and pulled out her camera to take some action shots for her recap article. The hoity-toities were too focused on their food to notice her, which was exactly how she liked to keep it. She even captured one of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s district attorneys midbite, staring at his croque monsieur as if it had been laced with some kind of love potion.

Trina’s chair was empty when Sloane returned, traded for a spot next to Cooper and Owen. Judging by the look in Trina’s eyes and the way she was half hanging on Owen, it seemed she was about to lap the Cooper brothers up with a spoon.

Nope. That was none of Sloane’s concern.

“Your son is an excellent chef, Marian.” She put her fork down after finishing her chocolate lava cake and leaned back in her chair. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to cut my Spanx off when I get home.”

Marian chuckled. “Yes, Graham’s always had a special talent when it comes to cooking. He and his sister were making us dinner when he was practically still in diapers.”

Sloane smiled at the image of a toddler standing on a chair and stirring something over a stove.

“We put him to work in our first restaurant when he was fourteen.” The smile vanished from Marian’s eyes. “There was a time when I didn’t think he’d ever cook again.” She blinked several times, and the twinkle was back. “He’s come a long way here.”

Sloane nodded dumbly as Marian’s words echoed against the corners of her mind. She’d practically lived under a rock for the past several years and even she knew enough of the story to see he wasn’t the same person. Though Sloane was beginning to get the feeling all she saw was the tip of a very jagged iceberg.

She scanned the room for Cooper and started when she found him looking directly at her.

Whoa. She felt like a dunk-tank seat had plunged her into water.

He smiled and gave her a little nod before returning his attention to the white-haired lady making animated gestures in front of him.

Distraction. Sloane needed a distraction from Cooper and locked her gaze on the black-and-white portrait of the older woman. If that was a stock photo, it was spot-on for the restaurant. “Do—do you know who that is in the picture?”

Marian turned in her chair for a look. “Did Graham not tell you?”

Sloane shook her head.

“That’s Simone. The woman this restaurant was named for.”

“Simone?” That couldn’t be her. The moisture evaporated in Sloane’s mouth and throat.

“My son rented her upstairs apartment when he moved to Paris, and she really got through to him when he needed it the most. If it weren’t for Simone...” Marian swallowed hard. “Well, I don’t know that I’d have two sons right now.”

Sloane nodded, transfixed on the photo as Marian’s words sunk in. With the record straight about her horribly false assumption of Simone, it was clear every interaction she’d had with Cooper needed a fresh interpretation.

“So, are you from this area?” Marian leaned her elbows on the table, the gold in her bracelet catching the candlelight. “What’s your story?”

I moved here because I couldn’t handle my hometown—and my hometown couldn’t handle me.

“No. When I graduated from college I basically took out a map, closed my eyes and pointed to a random spot.” Sloane sipped her water. “There are lots of good things happening in Dallas.”

Marian pressed her lips together. “Do you get to see your family often?”

What? Was this woman in league with her mother?

“We, uh, keep in touch.” Sloane crossed her legs and smoothed her dress.

Marian nodded, her eyes narrowed with understanding. She knew there was more to it, but unlike Trina, she was polite enough not to pry.

Sloane had been back to the place she grew up, that one-stoplight Indiana town, once since her high-school graduation. And that was only to pack a few things and ship them here.

“Well, you’ve done quite well for yourself with your website,” Marian said. “I appreciate everything you do for the foundation, and when I found out your line of work, I had to check out VisibilityNet. I’m looking forward to seeing where this partnership goes. Depending how this launch fares, I think it could lead to a bigger deal with this company.”

“Wow,” Sloane injected enthusiasm into her tone. “I think my bosses would give me their jobs if that happened. They would love the opportunity for a contract with J. Marian Restaurants.”

She, on the other hand, would love to go back in time and tell Blissfully Ignorant Sloane to never take her comfy job for granted. She looked up as a figure stopped next to their table, and Cooper Sr. aimed a searing glare at her before moving on.

Yes, if she could do it over again, she’d definitely reread her contract and negotiate the whole human interaction thing before she signed on the dotted line. She glanced at Marian to see if her ex-husband looked at all total strangers like that. But the woman was distracted, stifling laughter into her napkin. The source of her amusement? Cooper angling farther and farther away from Trina’s less-than-subtle advances.

“He’s a totally different person,” Marian said, sipping her water. “Owen, on the other hand—”

An earsplitting whistle commanded the silence of the entire room.

Cooper had moved to the front of the restaurant and was seated on the counter. “Thanks for breaking bread at Simone tonight,” he said, earning the applause of his patrons. “It means the world that you’re willing to share this moment with me.”

His cell phone buzzed loudly against the counter’s surface, but he didn’t flinch.

“I want to thank my dad for supporting my vision even when we didn’t see eye to eye.”

The older Graham Cooper uncrossed his arms, the smug line of his mouth curving into a beaming grin before snuffing out.

“And my mom, Marian, for being brave enough to put all her eggs in one basket and taking a chance on that first restaurant years ago.” Cooper slid off the counter and crossed to their table. “Our family’s been through a lot, and I can’t imagine that J. Marian Restaurants would have survived without a person like you at the helm.”

While Cooper’s father was the great and powerful Oz of J. Marian Restaurants, Marian had been the mastermind calling the shots behind the curtain. And that made sense, given that it was her money that had funded the company in the first place.

Cooper bent to kiss his mother on the cheek.

“Jordan would have been so proud of you,” Marian whispered, squeezing both of her son’s hands before he returned to the center of the floor.

Jordan? Who was Jordan? Judging by the sheen in Cooper’s eyes and the way he kept glancing at his mother while he thanked his staff and did the obligatory name-dropping, he was someone special.

“Thank you for sitting with me and keeping me entertained this evening.” Marian stood as Sloane gathered her things to leave after Cooper closed out the evening. “I look forward to getting to know you better.”

“You, too, Marian.” Sloane put her hand in Marian’s outstretched one and returned her gentle, maternal squeeze.

She waved to Cooper as she joined the herd leaving the restaurant and mouthed “Thanks.” He started toward her before he appeared to remember he was in the middle of a conversation with an older gentleman. Cooper smiled apologetically and returned his attention to his guest.

As she stepped into the street where her car was waiting, for some reason Sloane dabbed at tears in her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Cooper’s mom had squeezed her hand. A weird mixture of sadness and relief pulled in her chest as she replayed the events of the evening in the back of the car, then later as she showered and dressed for bed. As she brushed her teeth, words ran through her mind like a scrolling marquee, the restaurant review she knew she had to write now or else she’d never sleep.

Once it was finished, when she was finally snuggled into her covers in the dark familiarity of her apartment, she allowed her muscles to relax and closed her eyes—only to snap them wide-open. How could she have forgotten to schedule her social media posts for tomorrow? It was something she did every night without fail.

Maybe I can skip it. Just this once.

But visions of the chaos it would spin into her morning schedule unsettled Sloane enough that she shoved her feet into her slippers and wrapped a cozy throw around her shoulders.

After the posts were lined up, she crawled into bed with the quiet reassurance that everything was in order. Everything except for the niggling confirmation that the suspicions she’d had from the beginning of this assignment were one-hundred-percent founded.

The Cooper family was about to unravel her, bit by precise bit.

* * *

IT WAS MIDNIGHT, and Cooper sat on the leather couch in the corner of his restaurant, bathed in the flickering light from the fireplace. Still in disbelief that it was his restaurant.

His guests were long gone. The overhead lights were turned off. He’d switched the French jazz to a playlist that always helped him wind down. He’d just said goodbye to his manager, Janet—the early-fifties woman who reminded him of Simone. She was brusque and hardworking but the pinnacle of kindness when the people around her needed it the most.

The staff had swept the place clean, chairs overturned on the tables, stacks of clean dishes piled here and there. He was left with a to-do list that could probably reach Austin, including adjusting some of the ingredients on his house salad that didn’t quite suit the less adventurous palates in attendance.

But all of that could wait. For now, he would sit. He would relish the fact that he wasn’t the one bored at one of his parents’ events anymore. This was his restaurant. His pièce de résistance. Those people had all been here for him, perhaps like rubberneckers driving past the scene of a three-car pileup to witness Graham Cooper Jr.’s potential crash and burn. But they had been his to take care of nonetheless.

And, with the exception of a few people who couldn’t appreciate a good Blue Stilton in all of its pure and pungent glory, he’d had them right where he wanted them.

Cooper unpeeled the wrapper from a straw and chewed on the tip of it. He closed his eyes and blew the air from his lungs slowly, drawing up an image of the people who’d filled these seats, familiar faces he’d seen dozens of times in the news, at important events, in meetings with his father. But he’d never seen those faces flushed with satisfaction, lined with laughter, relaxed and rumpled. Lingering over his empty plates. His vision for Simone was circling the corner, close enough to reach if he leaned a little.

But he’d had to avoid his father, who’d worn a scowl most of the night and had actually pulled him and Owen aside to ask about a work issue.

“This doesn’t concern me,” he could picture Simone saying in her tiny kitchen as she cut a pat of butter into a frying pan. “The only thing that matters is what you decide to do.”

His phone buzzed on the couch next to him. A text from Owen.

Might not make it tomorrow. It’s going to be a late night :)

Cooper rolled his eyes. Different night but same song and dance from his brother.

Owen had left without a word, laughing and flirting shamelessly with a giggling trio of girls. Daughters of politicians or lawyers, probably. Of course Owen was going to flake on their standing basketball game.

At least Owen hadn’t gone near Sloane for the rest of the night. Cooper had made it clear to his brother that Sloane was different. Off-limits. Not another one of Owen’s conquests to wring dry and leave hanging on the laundry line next to the others. Not that Sloane would let that happen anyway.

When he dismissed Owen’s text, the red bubble of his unopened emails seemed to magnify on his screen. Forty-six issues that needed his attention. Forty-six fires he needed to douse. Forty-six people he was potentially failing in the pursuit of this restaurant.

As Cooper watched the fire cast swaying swaths of light across the dark café, he felt a dry pull in the back of his throat. The tip of panic crept into his consciousness before he shoved it away and allowed his focus to float free. He could almost taste the smooth, rich Jack Daniels and feel its tang burning across his tongue, through the back of his mouth.

He swiveled on the couch, the necks of the oil and vinegar bottles on the expo counter glinting in the light of the flames, taunting him.

For over two years, he’d been sober. Surely he had it under control enough to manage one sip. He’d intentionally avoided stocking alcohol in the restaurant for this very reason despite the revenue it would bring. But there was a liquor store half a block away, a gas station on the corner.

One drink wouldn’t hurt anything, right? Only one glass of the easy stuff.

Cooper growled and snatched up his things. Yes, in his experience, one drink could ruin everything. Because it never ended up being just one. When he was drinking, he was a human tornado that destroyed everything in its path. There was too much at stake, too much life in this restaurant to risk it.

He put out the fire and locked the restaurant behind him, leaning against the door and allowing the cool autumn air to calm him. Willing himself to fight the craving that was so strong he could taste it.

Jake. If he texted his roommate, maybe he wouldn’t do something stupid. As he pulled his phone from his pocket, an alert lit the screen. New email from Sloane.

Mr. Cooper,

I just scheduled the article to post in the morning. Here is a copy in case you’re awake and want to preview it before it goes out. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Cordially,

Sloane Bradley

He chuckled and clicked the link to the document, leaning against the heavy wooden door as he waited for the text to load. Something flickered in his chest. Was he nervous about what Sloane had to say? Or had he simply stolen too many bites from the pastry tray?

The article popped up on the screen, and he read it in Sloane’s distinct silky voice.

Influenced by head chef and developer Graham Cooper Jr.’s time in Paris, Simone is a groundbreaking addition to the J. Marian Restaurants family. The cozy atmosphere offers patrons a respite from the bustle of downtown Dallas, and the commitment to quality in its diverse menu proves that a fast, casual concept doesn’t have to be synonymous with hurried and uninventive.

He scrolled through Sloane’s reviews of the dishes she had photographed—crisp, inviting images of hearty breads and fresh vegetables and bubbling cheeses with vivid descriptions of each taste and smell.

And to think he’d ever questioned what use she would be for him. For his restaurant. He’d never second-guess one of his mother’s recommendations again.

With the last sentence of the article, his fate was sealed. The emotions of the night all whisked together from the corners of his brain to form a lump in his throat.

Simone represents a thoughtfulness, precision and execution poised to revolutionize the fast-casual restaurant experience—a can’t-miss if you’re in the Dallas area.

Cooper stared at the screen, sinking down the outside wall of his restaurant to a crouch. For the first time since he said goodbye to Simone, he had an ally. Someone who believed in him and not just because they shared his blood. Who cared that Sloane was paid to write these things? Whoever she was, guarded and talented and fiercely protective of her camera, with her words, Sloane Bradley made him feel like he could do anything.

“À la bonne heure.” Cooper could almost hear the words Simone often told him as she poured tea into his mug. “In good time.”

Had his time finally arrived?

CHAPTER FIVE

“JUAN DAVID, MAYBE you should wash your hands before you eat that.”

It was Thursday, the highlight of Sloane’s week. She got to spend a few hours in the kitchen with the kids in the City on a Hill after-school program.

It had started out as a guilt thing. Voice mails from one of the administrators, which she’d ignored twice. A sloppy demo of grilled chicken salad that the kids ate only because they were trying to be nice. But they’d warmed up to her, just as she was. No questions asked. No pretenses. Her heart had opened quickly to them in ways she didn’t think she was capable of after the accident. Now on Thursday afternoons, those kids were her safe place—a reminder of who the old Sloane was. A glimmer of hope for who she someday could be.

Juan David wiped his nose again with the back of his wrist and looked at Sloane, his grin as cheesy as the pot his right hand hovered inches above. “Yes, Miss Sloane.” He stepped off the stool and jogged in the direction of the hand-washing station. His place on the stool was stolen by his little sister Samira, who wasted no time dipping her spatula into the roux for a stir. This beautiful six-year-old with uneven dark bangs and a gap-toothed smile had great instincts in the kitchen.

A group of three older kids returned, balancing a cutting board of turkey kielbasa sausage and scallions they’d chopped under the careful supervision of their teacher, Miss Jaime.

“Look at those perfect knife cuts!” Sloane took the board and carefully set it on an empty stretch of counter. “Are you sure you guys even need me here?”

Three pairs of eyes rolled in response to her hyperbolic enthusiasm.

“Duh, Miss Sloane,” said Chloe, the only girl of the trio, a spitfire who was eight-going-on-eighteen. “What do you think?”

Sloane knew she wasn’t supposed to have favorites and really did love all of the kids. But those three—Miles, Chloe and Davon—were the ones she’d been with the longest and the ones she most looked forward to seeing every week.

Especially Davon. He had a soft spot in her heart because he reminded her of an eight-year-old Aaron, only with a much louder personality.

“I think you guys had better start helping Emma grate some cheese because this sauce is almost ready.” Sloane nudged the side of Davon’s grainy oversize polo shirt with her elbow. No response. Something was bothering him.

“Miss Sloane, I—” As if in slow motion, Samira’s little cobalt-colored eyes screwed up and she turned and sneezed before Sloane could react, covering her arm and the hip of her jeans in germ-infested bodily fluids. Immediately, she could almost feel a crawling sensation. Keep it together, Sloane. It’s not that bad.

“It’s okay, Samira.” Sloane gingerly placed a clean, gloved hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Bonus points for not sneezing in the food. I guess you and Juan David caught the same cold, huh?” She motioned to Jaime to take over the roux and then guided Samira to the hand-washing station. Armed with a hefty stack of paper towels and Sloane’s hand sanitizer, they cleaned themselves off as best as they could.

But as Sloane supervised the methodical Chloe stirring in three different cheeses, she checked the clock on the wall every few minutes, trying not to let any part of her skin come in contact with her jeans. Only a few minutes stood between her, a hot shower and a fresh change of clothes.

The timer on the stove went off.

“The pasta is ready!” a chorus of voices proclaimed.

“Okay, everyone,” Sloane said in her most obnoxious, booming voice, “stand back.” She slipped a pair of oven mitts over her fresh plastic food service gloves. “Davon, colander?”

He shook his head and took a step back, an uncharacteristic darkness etched into his long-lashed green eyes.

“Okay. Miles, colander?”

“Ready, Miss Sloane.” Miles steadied it in the sink and backed away quickly.

“Hot water coming through!” Sloane sang in a high-pitched voice that made the kids erupt into laughter. She emptied the pot into the sink and turned her face so the steam didn’t burn. “Shoom! Shoom! Shoom!” She threw her hands up and down, mimicking the billowing steam to the kids’ laughter. Shaking the remaining water from the colander, she whisked it to the stove again and poured it in the pot with the finished roux. “Miles, Chloe, Davon. Do you have the rest of the cheese?”

“It’s ready,” Chloe said.

“Yes, Miss Sloane.”

Silence from Davon.

Miles sprinkled it into the pot—with clean hands, Sloane checked—as Chloe stirred. Davon stood back, watching with his arms crossed.

Sloane’s chest hitched as he swiped at a tear in the corner of his eye. Her little friend was usually so enthusiastic. And ornery. The others had to fight to share the energy and attention of the room with him.

“And the grand finale. Drumroll, please.” As the kids rapped their hands against the counter, their stomachs, thighs—whatever they could find—Sloane scraped in the turkey kielbasa and scallions and evenly distributed them in the cheesy mixture. “All done. Look what you guys made!”

Six small heads crowded around for a glimpse of the pot’s contents, and Sloane had to admit it looked amazing.

“Wow,” Samira said. “And we can make this at home?”

Sloane nodded and banged the spatula against the pot to free a clump of excess cheese. “It’s a lot better for you than the stuff in the box, too.”

“I bet it doesn’t taste as good.” Miles jutted his round chin.

“Okay, then.” Sloane raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have to try it. More for everyone else.”

Even though he was grinning and clearly knew she was joking, the fleeting look of panic in Miles’s blue eyes made her laugh.

“Oh, I’m going to try it.” He grinned.

Sloane sent everyone to wash their hands and scooped portions of healthier macaroni and cheese into disposable bowls.

Juan David was the first kid to return. Sounds of contentment escaped around his first mouthful of pasta.

“I agree.” It may not have been quite as cost-effective as boxed mac and cheese, but it was close. And it was tastier, judging by the satisfied looks on everyone’s faces as they devoured the meal. The flavors stood on their own—the whole wheat penne, chunks of hearty turkey kielbasa and crunchy little flecks of green onion.

When the last bowl had been scraped clean, Sloane said goodbye to the kids, making sure they all had their recipe cards and grocery lists in tow. And then as she was elbow-deep in suds and dirty pots and pans she felt a pair of thin arms wrap around her aproned waist.

“How you doing, Davon? Everything okay?” Sloane dreaded asking that question with these kids. Their lives were so unstable that she never knew what answer she was going to get.

Her suspicions were confirmed when he shook his head. “My mom’s been really busy with school and work. And my Big Brother Carl’s moving away, so he won’t get to pick me up from school anymore.”

Davon had a brother? What bad timing for a move with their mom in the thick of third-year law school. “But you’ll still get to see Carl at holidays and stuff, right?”

“Naw, Carl’s not my real brother. He’s just a guy from an agency. He has a kid my age and everything. But he was real cool.”

“It’ll be okay, Davon.” Sloane stifled a wince. “Your mom’s almost finished with school, and I know you’re going to get a new Big Brother soon.” She hated how lame those words sounded, too aware of the emptiness behind the platitude.

For a moment, Sloane could picture the faces of the people she’d known her whole life looking at her like she was a stranger after the accident, some with pity, but most fidgety and uncomfortable. Everything’s going to be okay, they’d placated her, probably to make sure she stayed quiet. We’re here for you. And then they’d avoided her.

His eyes widened as his aunt appeared in the doorway. “Don’t tell anyone I said anything, okay?”

“Okay.” Sloane waved at Davon’s aunt, who picked him up most days while his mom was in class.

“See you next time, Miss Sloane. And, uh, thanks.”

Her heart broke for Davon as she watched his aunt hurry him along. He was such a good kid. His mom had done a great job with him as she worked hard to build a better life for them after her husband’s death.

As Sloane’s hands worked to finish the dishes, she made a mental note to ask around about Davon getting a new City on a Hill Big Brother. Because if things weren’t okay in her little friend’s world, things weren’t okay in hers.

* * *

“WHAT KIND OF salad could possibly be so good that you’ve disturbed my reading?” Sloane’s neighbor stomped across the hall to her apartment that evening.

“Trust me, Mrs. Melone.” Sloane let the older woman in. “It’s life changing.”

This was their thing. Mrs. Melone pretended to be a crotchety old woman. Sloane played the sort of neighbor with lots of excuses that required the older woman’s presence. But in reality, they were doing each other a favor.

They both needed someone, anyone, to check in every once in a while.

Mrs. Melone was the wife of some sort of Old Hollywood producer who was always in LA. She was way too stylish to be crotchety. And if she were half as grumpy as she made herself out to be, she never would have agreed to try the salad that spun Sloane into a dancing fit that could rival the cheesiest of touchdown celebrations.

Never mind that it took Sloane three tries and ten minutes of coercing to get Mrs. Melone here. When she finally said the word bacon, Mrs. Melone was sold and grabbed her purse faster than Sloane had ever seen the woman move. Way faster than a woman working on her second hip replacement should ever move.

Sloane took her laptop from its usual spot on the dining room table and guided Mrs. Melone to the chair where the salad was still perfectly posed from its earlier photo shoot, complete with a bud vase of gerbera daisies that made the fresh greens pop.

The older woman made a big ceremony of shaking her head, dangle earrings clinking as she assembled a bite with the best proportion of romaine lettuce, bacon, bleu cheese, lemon-herb chicken and the creamy date and Dijon vinaigrette, then stuffed it in her mouth. Her eyes lit up.

Case. In. Point.

“Good, isn’t it?”

“This is...so flavorful.” Mrs. Melone shoveled in another bite.

Sloane grinned and leaned her elbows on the table beside her neighbor. “See, aren’t you glad I made you come over to try it?”

Mrs. Melone’s stylish silver bob snapped in Sloane’s direction, the scowl on her lined face churning as she chewed her salad. Then her lips curved in the slightest hint of a smile and she took another bite.

Victory!

“Did you get this recipe from the Cooper boy?”

The triumphant sound track came to a screeching halt. “What?” How did she know?

“Graham Cooper. The restaurant you’re working with.” Mrs. Melone made a clicking sound. “Oh, don’t act surprised. You’ve advertised it to the world on your website.”

“I didn’t know you read my website.” Sloane crossed her arms, pulling the ends of her cardigan tighter around her waist. As if that was going to help her feel any less exposed.

“Yes. Ever since Mitzi Mason from the country club told us about a feature they did on you in the Sunday paper. So about—” Mrs. Melone’s eyes shifted in thought “—two years or more.”

“And you’re just now saying something to me?”

“It never came up!” Her expression went from stubborn to sly. “Are all the stories about him true?”

“No.” This had to stop right there. “And to be honest, I don’t want to hear the stories about him.” Grace and Levi had told her enough. At every opportunity.

Mrs. Melone nodded and took another bite as if it was no big thing. “This is divine. You’ll have to make this for my Bunco club. You’re all they talk about, you know.”

Mise en Place had page views from countries all over the world. But somehow knowing her neighbor’s inner circle of socialites were among those readers pried open the tight disparity Sloane had created between her real life and her website.

“Do you want to take a picture of me for your website?” Mrs. Melone had already put down her fork and was applying a raspberry lipstick that only she could have pulled off. “You know, so your mother won’t worry?”

“I...” She stood and busied herself with packing up the salad leftovers to mask her shock. What, was the woman combing through her website comments or something? “What do you mean?”

“I may not have children, but I had a mother once. It’s weird what they turn into with a daughter living in a strange city by herself.”

“You’ve got me on that one,” was Sloane’s weak offering as her mind pictured a younger Mrs. Melone with curls tied in a handkerchief and hat boxes stacked in the back of a classic convertible moving to Hollywood by herself. “But I’m afraid the lighting’s all wrong for a photo now.”

Mrs. Melone’s nose turned up. “Well, I wouldn’t want my internet debut to take place in bad lighting. I’d never hear the end of it from the girls.”

Without ceremony, the older woman stood and took the container of salad leftovers, quicker and more agile than Sloane had ever seen her. Maybe it wasn’t just the bacon putting a fresh spring in her step as she walked down the hallway. “I think even my husband will enjoy this when he gets in tonight. And he doesn’t do salads, no matter how I spin ’em.”

“You’ll have to let me know.” Sloane watched her neighbor walk toward her apartment. Mrs. Melone usually moved at a much more snaillike pace, leaning against her signature silver-adorned cane. Now she didn’t even have a limp. “Hey, Mrs. Melone.”

Mrs. Melone turned around, fists framing her waist.

“I noticed you’re not using your cane anymore.”

She cracked a genuine smile. “Yeah, I’ve been doing yoga for the past few months, and I’m a new woman.” She whirled around in a little circle. “I’ve been sleeping through the night for the first time in years. I guess I must have done something right when I was younger to deserve this.”

Sloane’s laugh sounded counterfeit. “You don’t really think it was something you did right that took the pain away, do you? Besides the yoga, I mean.”

Mrs. Melone shrugged, one cheek dimpling. “All that matters is that I’m pain-free.”

“I’m glad.” Sloane stifled her unspoken questions with a smile. She wasn’t going to even begin to go there with Mrs. Melone.

Sloane’s mind had been swirling with theories on healing for over twelve years. The silent bleed in Aaron’s brain that killed him. Her own guilt and broken thought processes and everything else that had all but imprisoned her. If some quota of right was what it took, Sloane would be a prisoner forever.

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