“Because Ican.” Her mood shifted in an instant, some unexplained turmoil brewing behind that beautiful face, and he couldn’t pull his eyes away from her savage gaze. She was burning, and the longer she stared at him, that fire threatened to consume him too, trapping the breath in his lungs and making sweat gather at his hairline.
“Ican,” she repeated, breaking the spell. Then she planted her feet on the bottom rungs of her stool and leaned forward to rummage behind the bar until she found a stack of napkins, leaving him to glare around the room at anyone who might be tempted to perv on her denim-covered ass while it hovered in the air. Once she was safely seated again, she fished a pen out of her purse and popped the tip of her tongue between her lips. She sketched a flurry of sharp strokes across one of the squares and slapped it in front of him on the scarred wood. He looked down to see the wordsBlondie Bakesemblazoned on the thin material in bold block letters, accompanied by a rough but recognizable sketch of his profile, his jaw a squared-off block and his hair pulled to the back of his head in a bun. He immediately smacked his hand over the caricature.
“No.” As well executed as it was, over his dead body would his face appear in a logo. He hastily shoved the napkin into his pocket and out of sight.
She ignored his definitive tone and hit him with a challenging gaze. “What’s stopping you?”
What was stopping him? More like whatwasn’tstopping him. He ticked off the obstacles on his fingers. “Let’s see… location. Equipment. Staff. Marketing. A customer base.” Each word weighed him down, dragging him farther away from the glimmering dream she was spinning. But she just waved a breezy hand to dismiss his concerns.
“So start small. Put up a website, work out of your kitchen, and build up a clientele. Or let me help you look for a location.”
“What is it that you do again?”
A laugh burst out of her. “Meddle mostly.” She sipped from her glass. “I work for Dynamic Marketing. We’re not massive, so I do a mix of PR, event planning, and advertising.” Her voice turned coaxing. “I do this for a living, and I suddenly have some extra time on my hands. I could make you huge!”
Her hopeful face glowed up at him, and it was impossible not to bask in the warmth of it. Still, his voice was gruff even to his own ears when he asked, “Who said I wanted your help?”
Her smile dimmed, and he immediately wished he could call the words back. But she was making him wish for things he couldn’t have. Business things. Redhead things.
“I got carried away again, didn’t I?” She jammed her straw into her drink. “Sorry. It’s a bad habit.” Two seconds later, she was smiling again, although a little less broadly this time. He hadn’t known mercurial before he’d met this woman.
“I just figured we could, you know, suffer together, with the job hunt and the wedding planning. But if you don’t want to, it’s fine.” She dragged a finger through the moisture rings on the wooden surface in front of her. “So does Chicago’s hottest baker really have no leads on any employment options?”
Unease marched down his spine, pushing away the absurd pleasure he felt at being labeled the hottest anything. She took in his silence and tilted her head in sympathy. “Oof, really? It’s been, what, close to two weeks? I figured somebody’d be dying to get you in their kitchen.”
“Not so much,” he mumbled.
“For real?” The outrage in her voice should’ve encouraged him.
He scrubbed a hand through the whiskers covering his jaw. “Nobody’s looking for anything more than a glorified kitchen runner.” For all her flaws—her many, many flaws—Dora had given him a chance to graduate from kitchen grunt work, and the thought of going back to an underling role after having the run of the ovens was too depressing to contemplate. But he was out of other options, which meant he’d either have to swallow his pride or move back to the farm with nothing to his name but a few months of mild success. And he wouldn’t do that.Couldn’tdo that. Besides, Gina was getting ready to move here. The timing was awful all the way around.
“Hmm.” Josie clicked her tongue in thought. “Have you tried at Lutz? Sweet Mandy B’s? Bang Bang?”
“Yes. All of them.”
She blew out a breath. “Well, that sucks. I guess we’ll just have to build you a website then.”
“Oh, it’s that simple?” His sarcasm hid the interest sparking to life in his belly.
She flicked a hand through the air. “Sure. I do it all the time. Plus you’ll need a social media campaign. You should be on Facebook, of course, but you’d kill on Insta.”
Her eyes traveled down his body again, and he could’ve sworn a soft purr rattled in her throat for a moment. He shifted on the stool, the weight of her eyes like a physical caress across his skin. Then she tucked a red curl behind her ear and continued in an all-business tone.
“We could maybe book you a segment on one of the local news shows if I pulled a few strings. It’ll be great exposure for your up-and-coming business. And I’ll keep my ears open for any events that need dessert catering.Payinggigs.”
She tossed back the dregs of her drink and slammed her empty glass triumphantly onto the bar.
“What just happened?” he asked, bewildered.
“You, my friend, just became my next project.”
Eight
“What are you working on?”
The question pulled Josie out of her Monday-afternoon work trance, but she was too slow to minimize the screen, which allowed her worst coworker to get an eyeful.
“Oh, you’re trying to design a logo! That’s adorable.” Valerie Jones sniffed and leaned closer to the screen as Josie twitched in annoyance.
