Cara Colter - Swept Into The Tycoon's World

He was as fit and muscular, as outdoorsy-looking, as he had been when he’d worked as a summer student for her dad’s landscaping company.

Brand made the extremely famous actor, who was standing a short distance away from him, look small and very, very ordinary.

“I’m sure I know who he is,” Chelsea said, her tone mulling. “I’ve seen him in something. Warriors of the New Age? No, I know all of them. Maybe that new series. You know the one? Where the lady time-travels and the gorgeous guy—”

“He’s not an actor,” Bree said. “Chelsea, please put the cookies out. We only have twenty minutes until the official start time and I—”

She had to what? Leave, obviously. Before he saw her.

“But I know who he is,” Chelsea said. “I’m sure of it.” She unwillingly turned back to emptying the cookie-filled boxes, her body angled sideways so she could keep casting glances his way.

“You probably saw him on the cover of City magazine,” Bree said. “That’s why you feel as if you know who he is. Could you put a row of Devilishly Decadent at the end of the display?”

“Brand Wallace,” Chelsea announced, way too loudly. “The billionaire! You’re right! City had him on the cover. I couldn’t turn around without seeing that glorious face on every newsstand! I don’t usually buy it, but I did. He founded an internet start-up company that went insane with success—”

Bree shot a look to the doorway. Apparently he had heard Chelsea yelling his name like a teenager who had spotted her rock-star idol. He was casting a curious look in their direction.

Bree did not want him to see her. She particularly did not want him to see her in her Kookies outfit. She and Chelsea were both wearing the uniforms she had designed, and Chelsea had sewn. Until precisely three minutes ago, she had been proud of how she had branded her company.

Kookies sold deliciously old-fashioned cookies with a twist: unexpected flavors inside them, and each different type claimed to hold its own spells.

And so the outfits she and Chelsea wore were part sexy witch, part trustworthy grandmother. They both had on granny glasses, berets shaped like giant cookies, and their aprons—over short black skirts and plain white blouses—had photos of her cookies printed on them, quilted to make them look three-dimensional. It was all so darn cute .

Somehow she did not want the man her father had convinced to escort her to her senior prom to see her as cute. Or kooky. She certainly did not want him to see her with a giant cookie on her head!

In fact, she did not want Brand Wallace to see her at all. He belonged to another time and another place. A time when she had still believed in magic. A place that had felt as if her world would always be safe.

She shot another glance at the doorway. He was still looking in their direction—she could see he was trying to extricate himself from the conversation with Shelley.

“He’s coming this way,” Chelsea sighed. “How’s my hair?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bree saw Chelsea flicking her hair. She also saw there was an emergency exit just a little behind and to the left of their table. For some reason, it felt imperative to get out of there. And out of the apron. And the beret. Especially the beret.

It was trying to remove both at once that proved dangerous. She was twisting the apron over her head and taking off the beret with it, when, too late, she saw the corner of a box of Little Surprise cookies that was jutting out from under her display table. At the last second she tried to get her foot over it and failed.

The toe of her shoe caught on the box, and it caught the leg of the table, which folded. Apron and beret twisted around her neck, she had to make a split-second decision whether to save the cookies or herself. The cookies, which represented so much hard work, and her future—being invited to participate in this event was a huge coup for her company—won.

She dove under a cascade of Spells Gone Wrong boxes, which fell on her, one by one, until she was very nearly buried in them.

Really, it was a slow-motion and silent disaster, except for the fact she had managed to break the fall of the delicate cookies.

The incident probably would have gone completely unnoticed if Chelsea had not started shrieking dramatically.

And then he was there, moving the avalanche of boxes gently out of the way to reveal Bree underneath them. He held out a hand to her.

“Miss, are you—”

He stopped. He stared at her.

She blinked where she was lying on the floor, covered in boxes, and remembered. She remembered his eyes, the glorious deep brown of them, warm as dark-roasted coffee. She remembered that very same tilt of his mouth, something faintly sardonic and unconsciously sexy in it.

She remembered the feeling of his gaze on her, and a forbidden warmth unfolded in her that made her feel boneless.

“Bree?” he said, astounded.

She heard Chelsea’s cluck of astonishment.

“Breanna Evans,” he said slowly, softly, his voice a growl of pure sensuality that scraped the nape of her neck. And then his hand, strong and heated, closed around hers and he pulled her to her feet, the cookie boxes, which she had sacrificed her escape to save, scattering. His grasp was unintentionally powerful, and it carried her right into the hard length of him. She had been right. The shirt was silk. For a stunned moment she rested there, feeling his heat and the pure heady male energy of him heating the silk to a warm, liquid glow. Feeling what she had felt all those years ago.

As if the world was full of magical possibilities.

She put both hands on the broadness of his chest, and shoved away from him before he could feel her heart, beating against him, too quickly, like a fallen sparrow held in a hand.

“Brand,” she said, she hoped pleasantly. “How are you?”

He studied her without answering.

She straightened the twisted apron. Where was the beret? It was kind of stuck in the neckline of the apron and she yanked it out, and then shoved it in the oversize front pocket, where it created an unattractive bulge.

“You’re all grown up,” he said, in a way that made her blush crimson.

“Yes,” she said, stiffly, “People do tend to do that. Grow up.”

She ordered herself not to look at his lips. She looked. They were a line of pure sexy. The night of her prom she had hoped for a good-night kiss.

But he hadn’t thought she was grown up then.

Did it mean anything that he saw her as grown up now?

Of course it did not! Chances of her tasting those lips were just as remote now as they had been then. He was a billionaire, looking supersuave and sophisticated, and she was a cookie vendor in a bulging apron. She nearly snorted at the absurdity of it.

And the absurdity that she would still even think of what those lips would taste like.

But she excused her momentary lapse in discipline. There wasn’t a woman in the entire room who wasn’t thinking of that! Chelsea’s interest, from the first moment she had laid eyes on him, had made it clear Brand Wallace’s sex appeal was as potent as ever.

“You know each other?” Chelsea asked, her voice a miffed squeak, as if Bree had kept state secrets from her.

“I was Bree’s first date,” he said softly.

Oh! He could have said anything. He could have said he was a summer student who had worked for her father. But oh, no, he had to bring that up.

“I don’t recall you being my first date,” she said. “I’d had others before you.” Freddy Michelson had bought her a box lunch at a fifth-grade auction. That counted. Why did he think he’d been her first date?