“Yes. If I can get her a good proposal, she’ll give me a stake in the shop, plus invest in Inferno.”
Millie’s mouth dropped open. “That would be amazing!” she said. “You’ve been wanting to get her investment forever and this is the perfect opportunity to impress her.” She paused, confused. “Where’s the drama in that? You can definitely do it.”
“Um... well...” She trailed off, wondering how her sister would take the next bit of news. “Anh made the same offer to someone else, as well, and she’s only going to pick one of us.”
“Ooh, a competition. Slightly more saucy.” Millie finished off her cardamom bun, thinking. “But not really, since there’s no one you can’t beat.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Emmeline said. “My rival—it’s Luke Hayward.”
“Oooooh.” Millie drew the word out for a good thirty seconds, eyes growing wider and wider, her mouth open. “Nowthatis dramatic.”
Emmeline looked at her sister closely, but Millie’s expression was unreadable. Luke was, after all, the guy who had broken Millie’s heart.
In university, Emmeline and Millie were a year apart, and when Emmeline was a senior, she had to spend an entire semester hearing Millie crush on Luke Hayward, notorious man-whore.
“It’s a bad idea, Mills,” Emmeline warned, over and over, but Millie was undeterred. She was a girl with a crush. Eventually, Millie succeeded in going out with Luke and, one date later, she claimed she was in love.
Until two dates later, after they had slept together, Luke callously broke Millie’s heart.
“I’m not interested, and I never will be,” he had said, blunt and unfeeling.
Emmeline could not leave such behavior unpunished. He needed a taste of his own medicine, so Emmeline did what he had done to Millie: she’d made him interested in her, slept with him, and then been cruel. She had told him exactly what he had told Millie when he had broken it off with her, and it was then that he finally realized the ruse.
She would never forget how he’d blinked, jaw slack with shock. “This was all for revenge,” he said, dumbfounded.
Guilt had prickled through her, but she had finished what she’d started. Emmeline barked out a laugh. “Did you really think I don’t already own a copy ofLetters to Milena?”
His face flashed with pain, but it was so quick she must have been imagining it because, not even a second later, he’d laughed out loud. His teeth shone as he’d flashed her a wolfish grin.
“I am just gutted,” he had replied with mock disappointment, holding a hand over his heart. “Here I was thinking it wasfate.”
Sarcasm had dripped off his words, and for some reason, his tone had made her bristle. Her cheeks felt hot. He was letting her know it didn’t mean anything to him—and why had she been surprised? Nothing ever did, as his reputation would confirm.
She couldn’t really hurt him.
Then, he’d looked at her carefully, something turning in his mind.
“I must say, I’m impressed,” he said, stepping closer. “You really are like me.”
Her heart sank at that. She wasn’t like him—shecouldn’tbe. She’d left him without another word, avoiding him entirely until they graduated that spring. Later that year, she opened Tempest, and two years after, he opened Inferno, making them business rivals.
Emmeline might have gotten her revenge, but she had never forgiven Luke for breaking Millie’s heart. Millie had cried for a week! It had been horrible to witness her little sister so sad because of a stupid boy. Just the thought of it now made Emmeline upset.
“Em,” Millie said, voice confident. “You’ll win the investment. I know you will.”
Luke was her match, which would make beating him difficult, but Millie was right.
There was no one Emmeline couldn’t beat, and that included Luke Hayward.
Chapter 8
Seeing Emmeline again so frequently was not good for Luke. At all.
It was opening up the floodgates of his memories: the ones he had kept safely locked away all these years, for the sake of his own sanity. As he sat in his office at Tempest, he took a sip of black coffee, trying to focus on the financial spreadsheet on the computer in front of him.
His thoughts strayed for the hundredth time that day, and he released a sigh, leaning back in his desk chair. Perhaps if he allowed himself to indulge, it would finally help him focus again.
Luke closed his eyes, going back to that time. Twenty-two years old, which had felt so grown-up when he was there but, looking back now, he had still been so young. The night he met Emmeline at the bookshop, he had imagined it was a chance encounter, a stroke of fate.
