Laurie Tomlinson - With No Reservations

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.