Chapter 1
Emma
My carry-on bag feels like it weighs about a hundred pounds.
I hoist it into the overhead compartment, my arms shaking like crazy, and tell myself it's just the adrenaline. The good kind. The kind that comes with doing something exciting.
I'm going to Italy. To Florence, to be exact. To learn everything I can about creating fragrances from a master perfumer who's agreed to let me shadow her for a week.
This is the beginning ofeverything.
I slide into the window seat—24A, coach of course, because who the hell can afford to fly first class?—and pull out my notebook. The pages are crammed with formulas and margin notes in three different colors of ink. My business plan for Essence is also in here, every detail I've agonized over for the past year. Clean fragrances. No synthetics, nothing toxic. Just pure, beautiful scents.
The plane is filling up around me, a river of bodies and rolling luggage and that particular brand of travel chaos that makes my stomach churn. I press myself against the window and flip to my notes on sandalwood sourcing, trying to focus. I have exactly seven days to absorb a lifetime of knowledge. Seven daysto prove to myself that I can build something real, something that's entirely mine.
Something my father can't control.
I'm so deep in my notes—rereading about ethical harvesting practices—that I don't immediately notice someone has stopped beside my row. Don't notice the shift in the air and the faint scent of expensive cologne cutting through the cabin's nasty recycled air smell.
"Emma?"
My heart skips a beat.
I know that voice. Deep, smooth, with the kind of automatic authority that comes from years of people listening when you speak. I've been hearing that voice my entire life—at Christmas dinners, summer barbecues, my college graduation.
I look up slowly, my heart doing a somersault in my chest.
Grant Cross is standing in the aisle, looking at me with those gorgeous blue eyes.
"I—" My voice comes out strangled. I clear my throat, trying again. "Grant. Hi."
He's holding a laptop bag, dressed in dark jeans and a black quarter-zip sweater. His salt-and-pepper hair is slightly mussed, like he's been running his hands through it, and there are the faintest lines around his eyes that I don't remember being there the last time I saw him. When was that? More than a year ago? My father's birthday dinner, where I'd ducked out early, unable to stomach another evening of watching my dad hold court while my mother smiled her careful, perfect smile.
"What are you doing here?" Grant asks, and there's genuine surprise in his voice.
"I'm—" I gesture vaguely at my notebook, at the plane, at the rest of the passengers. "Going to Florence. You?"
"Same." He glances at his boarding pass, then at the seat numbers above my head. His brow furrows. Then his mouth—and God, I should not be noticing his mouth—curves into something rueful. "You're kidding me."
My stomach drops. "What?"
He holds up his boarding pass. "24B."
The middle seat. Right next to me.
Of course. Of course the universe would do this to me. I would take my carefully planned trip, my solo journey of independence and self-discovery, and drop my father's billionaire best friend—the man I've had an embarrassing, ridiculous crush on since I was fourteen years old—directly into the seat beside me for a nine-hour flight across the Atlantic.
"What a coincidence," I manage weakly.
Grant's still looking at me with that slightly stunned expression, like he's trying to reconcile the Emma he knows—or thinks he knows—with the woman sitting in 24A.
His gaze flicks over me, quick but thorough, and I'm suddenly overly aware of what I'm wearing. Black leggings, a cream-colored sweater, my hair loose and wavy around my shoulders instead of pulled back in my usual ponytail. I'd dressed for comfort, for the long flight, but the way he's looking at me makes me feel like I'm wearing nothing at all.
"David didn't mention you were traveling abroad," he says, stowing his bag under the seat in front of him and settling into the seat beside me. He's too big for the space, his shoulder nearly brushing mine, his presence overwhelming in the tight quarters of economy class. And what the hell is he doing in the economy anyway?
"Dad doesn't know."
Grant's head turns sharply. "He doesn't know you're flying to Italy alone?"
