Page 10 of Too Delicious

“You have the entire world eating out of the palm of your hand. So maybe try to understand why I assumed the worst when I walked in and saw you in flagrante delicto with Cooper.”

She snorts. “Listen, I don’t know what ‘fragrance diablo’ is, but I’m pretty I sure didn’t do that!”

I blink at her and think back a few years. “It’s never your fault. Is it?”

“Oh, sis. No. Don’t go there.”

“I went there,” I say. “I can’t help it. My brain went there.”

“Harmony, I promise you. Cooper is not interested in me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Babe, I think I know when someone is interested.”

“That’s true.”

“More importantly, Carter and Cooper are committed to partnering with us,” she says.

“Really?”Even after that scene? I doubt it.

She nods. “There’s just one tiny detail we have to hammer out.”

Already, I don’t like the sound of that.

“What is it?”

“Let’s go find the guys and review the contract,” Summer tells me.

It turns out, Cooper and Carter have been looking for us. They stand in the doorway, and I wonder how much of our conversation they overheard. Little sneaks.

Oh god, I hope I don’t have chocolate in my teeth.

Cooper swiftly takes me by the arm and we exit without Carter and Summer. I don’t know why he’s suddenly being so physically forward with me, but he walks with such urgency that this must be about giving Carter and Summer a moment alone.

Cooper’s lips are moving; he’s saying something about showing me the contract in his office. But I can barely hear him over the crackle of electricity that rolls through me with his hand on my lower back, escorting me from the room.

chapter

five

Cooper

I don’t like how we left things.

I skim a rock across the lake, the circles illuminated in the misty, pre-dawn light.

The lake is where I do my best thinking.

We have a contract with Harmony and Summer. They will open a shop in Gold Hill, with our backing. We toasted with champagne. Everyone laughed about Summer mistaking me for Carter.

I made it abundantly clear to Harmony that we were friends and nothing more.

Everything should be fine.

And yet here I am, unable to sleep or concentrate on anything until I do some good thinking.

I don’t know Harmony well, but I’ve seen the hunger in her eyes.