He leaned into my ear and whispered, “It’s okay to let your guard down for a second, Sophie, and it’s okay to lose once in a while. Don’t forget, I’ve seen you naked. Vulnerable. Screaming for more. You’re the sexiest woman in the world when you let go of that control.”
When he leaned back, I sneered, “Don’t you dare bring up”—I glanced to my right and left, making sure there wasn’t anyone within listening range—“Lush.” The anger was beating in my chest. “Plus, you have no right to speak to me that way. Not here, not anywhere. What happened that night stays there.”
He smiled. “That’s right … seven orgasms were insignificant to you.”
My eyes went wide.
“Except I think you were full of shit when you said that. I think you were trying to convince yourself that they had meant nothing since the enemy was the one who had given them to you.” He continued to stare at me. “Yes, I’m right … I can see the way I affect you.”
“You infuriate me.”
He laughed and took a step back. “I love to hate you too, Sophie.” He turned around and walked to the exit.
FIVE
COLSON
Once I got into the back seat of the SUV, Paul pulled out of my driveway to head to the office, and I stared at the screen of my phone. The notifications were heavier this morning, and most were from my family. It was obvious that none of us had slept last night after Walker and Alivia’s grand opening. Dozens of texts had gone back and forth between all of us.
The only sibling who had reached out beyond text was Walker. There were four missed calls from him, starting at five this morning, the latest round only a few minutes ago, when I’d been busy giving Ellie breakfast.
I pressed his number and held the phone to my ear. “Walker …”
“Jesus Christ, Colson. Why haven’t you been answering my calls? I know you get up at the ass crack of dawn—that’s why I’ve been reaching out to you nonstop.”
Thanks to my daughter, sleep wasn’t something I got a lot of anymore. Not when she came into my room in the middle ofthe night with her arms full of stuffed animals and slept horizontally so her feet kicked my face a few times an hour. It didn’t matter how many times I repositioned her; she always ended up in the same spot.
“My phone was on silent,” I admitted. “I just needed a fucking minute.”
“We don’t have a goddamn minute.”
I glanced out the window. The winding roads of the Hollywood Hills didn’t offer much of a view from the street, just mostly tree coverage and massive mansions. “I know.”
“I’ve been thinking …” He paused. “The recipes we use at Horned and the ones that have carried over to Charred, they’re solid. Sure, I could alter a few ingredients to make them different, but I don’t think that would satisfy the Gordons. Those motherfuckers want total change, they don’t want tweaking.” His exhale almost sounded like a growl. “You know, I didn’t want to buy Horned in the first place. I thought we had too much on our plates. Hart and Beck, they were all about it, and now this happens and …”
My eyes closed, and I remembered the moment Hart and Beck had pitched us the idea. “We can’t fix the past, Walker. It is what it is at this point.”
“No, but we can sell Horned.”
My eyelids flicked open. “Is that what you want? We already have contracts signed on two more buildings. That would be quite a loss, although the sale would make up the difference.”
“I know I don’t want to redo a whole menu, and I don’t want to spend twenty million for the one we have now after we already spent seven figures on purchasing Horned.”
I banged the back of my head against the cushion behind me. “Troy and Jenner said they can get that number down.”
“To what? Eighteen? Come on. I don’t want to give them afucking dollar. Eighteen million isn’t going to sting less than twenty.”
My brain was spiraling, reaching for anything to grasp, the same way it had been doing all night and morning. “If we sell, the Gordons are still going to want to be compensated for the period in which we used their partial recipes. There’s no escaping this. We’re going to have to give them something—it just depends on what that something is.”
“I wish there were a way out of this.”
I laughed. “Do you want to hear a funny coincidence?”
“I’m not in the mood to laugh.”
I wasn’t sure my brother was ever in the mood to laugh, but I still said, “You’re going to have to hear it anyway. Do you remember a few months back, when I told you I had one hell of a fucking story for you and I wanted you to call me?”
“Are you forgetting that at the grand opening last night, you gave me shit for not calling you regarding that situation? So, yeah, of course I remember.”
