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“Hmm.” She placed her hand on her chin and leaned a little closer to him to get a better look. Her arm brushed his. And there it was again. That little rush that was more than attraction and felt a lot like lust. “Their clientele seems similar to ours. Not a lot of construction workers. Business people mixed with hipsters. People who wouldn’t mind spending six bucks on a cup of coffee.”
“Very good, Amber. What else?”
She smiled at his praise before she looked back at the door. “Most of them are taking things to go. I see a lot of large boxes.”
“Excellent.” He touched her arm, which was a mistake because she had the smoothest skin and it made him want to run his hand up her arm and down her body just to see if the rest of it felt as good. “I counted fifty-nine people walking into Sweetness in the past hour. At Lillian’s we had thirty-five at the same hour yesterday. Our average customer is spending $5.19 when they visit. But just by watching them, I can see that a higher percentage of their customers are carrying out large cake and pie boxes. Their average customer is spending at least twice as much as ours. And while we have three times as many customers in the morning thanks to Mariah, their profits are still higher than ours.”
“Wow. My head is spinning. You really are into numbers.”
“It’s my job. I spent a lot of time doing growth projections at my last job.” He stood up and tossed money on the table to cover his bill. “Come on. I’ll walk with you back to work.”
They left the little restaurant and walked in the beautiful street toward the bakery. They couldn’t have found a better location than the Denny Triangle section of Seattle. It was a mix of beautiful old houses and up-and-coming businesses. There was a park nearby. The perfect location to enjoy a sweet treat from Lillian’s. Chase had been a little apprehensive when he was approached with the idea of running a bakery. But now his chest filled with pride when he walked up and saw the beautiful storefront in this busy section of town.
“We talked about what I do for fun, but we never talked about what you do to let off steam.”
“Oh, I BASE jump and skydive. There’s this thing called parkour, which is like a military-style urban obstacle course.”
“Really?”
“No.” She laughed. “If it involves my feet leaving the ground, it’s not happening. I love music festivals and traveling to beautiful historic places, but lately I’ve been focused on getting my degree and designing more jewelry. My dream—no, my goal is to get my jewelry into department stores one day. Everything I do is to get me one step closer to that goal. So it’s work and grad school, and in my free time I design. Designing doesn’t feel like work. It feels like...like...”
“Passion.” He could tell she had a lot of it. He could only imagine the type of passion she would bring to bed. He had to shake off those thoughts. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her that way. She was an employee after all.
“I do have passion for it. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather spend a lifetime doing.”
“It’s good to have passion,” he said as they walked up to the door. Chase always loved walking into the bakery and being greeted by the sugary smells and the feeling of hominess that enveloped him when he entered, but today he found himself not wanting to go inside.
It was a beautiful day in Seattle. The air was full of spring and for the first time he would rather blow off work and stay outside with this pretty girl than go to his office and bury his head in the books.
She was just so different from him. So much more interesting than the women he had dated recently. He barely knew her. He barely paid attention to the front-of-house employees, but he just wanted to talk to her some more. He wanted to know more about her.
“Are numbers your passion, Chase Drayson?”
“No,” he said honestly, looking into her big brown eyes. He liked numbers. He liked working and investing, but they weren’t his passion. He needed something he could be passionate about. “Maybe I’ll let you know what it is one day.”
He opened the door to let her in first. The bakery was busy. Not as busy at Sweetness had been, but they were doing pretty well so far and were on track to have a profitable first year, which was rare for new small businesses. Most of the time they only broke even if they made it to a year. He could see Mariah behind the counter, rearranging the stock. Jackson was there, too, chatting up some female customers, which was customary for him. But all of that kind of floated in the back of his mind because Amber was still in the front of it.
“One day? I’m not sure I can stand the suspense,” she said with a smile that made him feel like smiling, too.
“I’m sure you can.” He lifted her hand. She still wore the wire name bracelet, but she wore another one with it. It was also gold wire, but this one had three braided strands with white opals woven among them. “Did you make this, too?” He stroked his thumb over her pulse as he studied her creation. “It’s so well done.”
She nodded. “It’s my birthstone.”
“Do you think you could make me one?”
“I know you have a keen fashion sense, but I didn’t think you wore beaded bracelets.”
“I would like to send one to Lillian. Can you do this with pearls?”
“I can.” She seemed surprised by his request. She shouldn’t be. Chase knew good quality when he saw it.
“And one for Mariah, too. Her birthday is in—”
“I know when your sister’s birthday is. I can make her one, too.”
“Is five hundred enough to cover both the bracelets?”
“Five hundred dollars! That’s way too much. I can’t take that kind of money from you.”
“Why not? That’s what I’m willing to pay. Your work is good, Amber, and your time is worth something. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Mariah is my friend and I work for your family. It just doesn’t feel right to take that kind of money from you. I can do it for the cost of the materials.”
“Plus a hundred dollars. Think of me as an early investor. Roll your profit back into your business.”
“Okay, Chase.” They looked at each other for a long moment. He realized he still held on to her hand, but for the life of him, he couldn’t force himself to let it go.
“I have to clock in.”
“You do.” He let her go. “Have a good shift.”
“Thank you. I will. I’ll see you later.” She walked away from him and he watched her go. Hips swaying all the way.
“Hey.” His baby sister came over to him with a curious expression on her face.
“Hey.”
“You walked in with Amber?”
“Yes, I met her on the street on my way back from an errand.”
“Oh? That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“Really? You were holding her wrist.”
Chase suppressed an eye roll. His sister had grown up into a beautiful, intelligent woman, but she was still his baby sister and sometimes she annoyed him the way she did when they were kids. “I was looking at her bracelet. I didn’t know she was a jewelry designer.”
“You were looking at her, too, Chase,” she said in a lowered voice. “You were looking at her the way a man looks at a woman he’s interested in, and you were touching her.”
“I ran into her on the street. I walked in with her. I looked at her bracelet. None of those things are a crime, and I’m pretty sure that none of them were your concern last time I checked.”
“What’s going on?” Jackson strolled over. “Why does Chase look annoyed?”
“He walked in with Amber. I just wondered how that came to be,” she said lightly.
“Amber, the cute little funky chick with the wild hair who makes coffee for us?”
“My friend Amber,” Mariah corrected. “The hardworking grad student and jewelry designer who works here and is doing her best to succeed.”
“Is there something you wanted to say to me, Mariah?” Chase felt more than annoyed at his sister at that moment. He was getting the strong feeling that she did not want him anywhere near her friend.
“No. It’s just that Amber is not your type.”
“And you have become an expert on what my type is?”
“Everyone knows your type, Chase,” Jackson said. “The type of women who speak three foreign languages and have hefty investment portfolios. Beautiful, dull, boring-as-hell women.”
“That is not true.”
Jackson yawned widely to make his point and Chase wanted to knock him on his ass then.
“She’s my friend, Chase. My first real friend since I moved back to Seattle, and I saw how you looked at her. I just wanted to know if there was something going on between you.”
“Because I walked in with her and looked at her bracelet? Well, you should congratulate me, because after one chance meeting on the street, we’ve decided to get married and move to Bora Bora. Amber tells me the snorkeling there is the best in the world. Neither one of us has ever tried it, but hey. You only live once.”
Mariah blinked at him. “Shut up, Chase.”
“Nothing is going on, Mariah.”
“I think you should go for it, Chase,” Jackson said. “She’s cute. She’s the opposite of you. You’ll have some fun with her. I’m in full support of you expanding your horizons and having a little fling.”
Mariah let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “Sometimes I wish I had sisters.”
“No, you don’t.” Jackson set a loud smacking kiss on Mariah’s cheek. “We’re more fun.”
“You’re as fun as a hive of angry bees.”
She left them then, leaving Chase with something to think about. Staying away from Amber might be a good idea. She did work for them and she was his sister’s friend. And she had the potential to be distracting. With this business just starting, he needed to focus on growing it.
Something made him look over to the coffee café where Amber was already hard at work. She looked up at him and smiled, and Chase knew then that ignoring her was going to be a losing battle.
It was a battle he would be okay with losing.
* * *
“I’m going to head out for the night,” Nita, another barista, said to Amber as she slung her bag over her shoulder. “Are you going to be okay with closing up alone?”
“Get home to that cute boyfriend of yours. I know he has been working nights lately.”
“Thanks.” Her eyes traveled over to the corner table in the café section. “Chase Drayson is here. If you hear something move, it’s him. I was here a couple of nights ago and nearly jumped out of my skin. I thought the world’s largest rat had broken in but thankfully it was just him.”
Amber laughed. “Thanks for the warning. I won’t make that mistake.”
“I’m surprised he took the leave of absence from his job to work here. Salary-wise, I’m sure he made in one day there what he makes in two weeks here.”
She hadn’t thought much about it, but all the Draysons had taken a risk to work here. Jackson was somewhat of an entrepreneur and was used to taking risks like these. Mariah worked here because she wanted to escape the difficult past she had with her former husband. But Chase... She wasn’t sure why he had taken this risk, yet she knew he loved his younger siblings. She could see it in the way they interacted. “Maybe blood is thicker than money, so to speak.”
“I’m sure he’s got enough of it to last him a lifetime already. A few years ago, a woman claimed she was pregnant with his baby in the hopes of cashing in. But that Mr. Drayson is one careful man. Of course the kid wasn’t his. I’m not sure he ever slept with her, but that’s the type of woman Chase attracts. Gold diggers. He’s a quiet man, but not a weak one and he certainly isn’t stupid. He knows what he’s working with and he chooses his partners carefully, but I don’t think he trusts easily. He goes for a very specific type of woman.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Chase only goes for elegant, Ivy League–educated women from well-off families to avoid opportunists. He might have a little fling here and there, but no one ever knows about it. He seems like the kind of guy who should be married with two kids already, but I don’t think he trusts anybody enough to let them get that close to him.”
Amber nodded. It made sense. It made sense that he went for women who were the opposite of her. She usually stayed away from men like him. “How do you know so much about Chase?”
“He and his family are big in the Seattle society circles and so is my cousin, Simone, who used to date him. She always says he was the one who got away.”
“Oh. Tell her I’m sorry for her loss.”
“You’re no sorrier than she is.” She laughed. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”
She watched Nita walk out before she turned her attention back to Chase.
He was caught up in work again. Eyes glued to the screen, fingers on the keyboard. Forehead scrunched in concentration. She used to think that he was cold. Aloof. Maybe a little bit snobbish. But after talking to him a few times, she realized that he was none of those things.
What he was was incredibly focused.
And fine.
Amber was an artist so she could see beauty where others sometimes missed it, but no one could deny how handsome he was. How symmetrical his features were. How rich and deep the color of his skin was. She thought of chocolate diamonds when she thought of him. She loved her intricate wire pieces, but if she was going to design a piece of jewelry to represent him she would use chocolate diamonds and white diamonds swirled together in a beautiful necklace to be worn close to the heart. Something classic and elegant with a little bit of a twist.
It was no wonder he was a target for shady females. He looked like a man with a lot to offer.
She was staring at him this time, she realized as she wiped the same section of the counter for the dozenth time. He hadn’t noticed she was there. Hadn’t felt her eyes on him yet. She had noticed him at the sushi place. She hadn’t meant to stop. Told herself to keep on walking by, but she couldn’t go by without speaking to him, without having those gorgeous dark eyes of his focus on her. He pulled her in with those eyes. With that deep, smooth voice. He made her want to stay and talk and know more about him when she should have gone on and ignored him and stayed away from him.
He wasn’t her type of guy. He had money. He practically smelled of money. That may be a positive with most women, but it wasn’t for her. People with a lot of it didn’t often realize how hard it was to get. He didn’t bat a lash when he tossed a fifty-dollar bill on the table to cover a tab that couldn’t have been more than ten. It nearly took her breath away, though. She had to work hours to make that much money.
And then when he asked her to make the bracelets, he offered her more than she could have imagined. And he did it all while telling her to value herself more.
No man had ever told her that. No one had ever told her that.
He was all wrong for her. Too rich. Too organized. Too buttoned-up. But she still couldn’t force herself to stay away.
She turned back to her espresso machine and a few minutes later she once again slid a steaming drink in front of him along with a plate of shortbread cookies.
“You must have read my mind.” He looked up at her as he lifted the cup.
“You needed a caffeine fix?”
“No. I was thinking I needed a beautiful woman to bring me my caffeine fix.”
She tried to stay cool, but the line made her blush. “Oh. You’re smooth, sir. I thought you could use a break.”
“Please. Sit down.” He smiled over his mug just before he took a long sip. She watched him drink the special coffee she had made just for him and watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She wondered what it would be like to pop a button on his shirt and place her lips on his throat. She wondered how his skin would feel beneath her mouth. She wondered how he would smell. A clean scent. Or something a little darker, a little spicier. Either way she was sure it was intoxicating.
She mentally shook herself. Where did that thought come from?
She would stay far away from that neck. She didn’t like to mix business with pleasure. She made it a rule. She needed this job. It was helping her pay her way through school. She couldn’t afford a fling with her boss.
“Myers’ coffee is always good, but you did something special to this,” he said to her.
“Mexican coffee. My own special recipe with just a hint of vanilla, cinnamon and chocolate. When I serve it at parties, I go all out and make it with tequila, Kahlúa and melted vanilla ice cream. But I toned it down for you tonight. This bakery doesn’t have a liquor license.”
“Do you throw a lot of parties?”
“Between working here, getting my master’s and designing jewelry, I don’t have time to throw any parties. The last one I threw was for my ex’s thirty-fifth. I went through a lot for trouble for it, only to break up with him a month later. I’m kind of wishing I had broken it off before I bought him the most expensive thing I’ve ever purchased in my life.”
“Don’t tell me you bought him a car?”
“Do I look like the kind of woman that would go around buying men cars?”
“I don’t know. Women do all sorts of things for the men they love.”
He was right. She had been so much of her life leading with her heart. She had been prepared to give up a lot of things to please Steven, but in the end giving up herself seemed too big of a price to pay.
“What did you get him?”
“An original James Van Der Zee photograph. Do you know who he was?”
“A photographer. Famous for capturing the Harlem Renaissance through his lens.”
“Exactly.” She smiled at him, impressed that he knew who she was referring to. “I found a small photograph of his in a shop and thought my ex would love it. He didn’t. He was hoping for a new camera, which would have cost even more than the photograph.”
“Some men don’t know how good they have it. You must have really loved him if you gave him such a gift.”
“I thought he was the love of my life at one point. But I think I loved the potential of him.” She’d bet her ex wouldn’t say the same thing about her. He loved what she could do for him. He felt like he was a serious photo journalist, while she was just playing at her jewelry design. Jewelry making he called it. He referred to it as her hobby instead of her dream, treated it as it something that she merely liked instead of had a passion or talent for. She put up with a few years of slights and digs, with him diminishing what she did while lifting up his own work.
The truth was, they had been in the same places in their careers. He’d had one piece picked up by a national magazine the year before they met, but nothing big after. The only jobs he could get were for small local newspapers and unpaid gigs for bloggers. Amber’s business had been growing at the time; she had designed some pieces for the wealthier set and gotten her work carried in a few small boutiques. And she had supported him, too. Picking up the slack by taking on extra shifts when his jobs had all but dried up at one point, but she stuck by him, a lot longer than she should have, because she had been in love then. She’d thought with her heart instead of her head. But that was all done now.
Chase seemed similar to her ex. Serious about his work. Focused. Driven. He was being nice to her now, ordering bracelets for the women in his family, but he probably thought her jewelry design was just a hobby, too. And one man in her life like that had been too many. She never wanted to experience that again. That’s why finishing her degree and learning the business end was so important. She was ready to show the world and anyone who doubted her that she was a serious artist and that she had a lot to offer.
That’s why she was adopting a no-men policy. Chase was incredibly good-looking, heart-poundingly so, but she was going to keep her distance. Some conversation. A shared plate of sweets was just enough.
Amber couldn’t afford any entanglements in her life right now.
“What do you mean by that?” His eyes swept across her face, studying him. “Potential?”
“Everybody has potential,” she said, remembering that she had said that about her ex. “Don’t you think about a woman’s potential before you decide whether you are going to date her or not? Her potential to be a good partner. Her potential to be a wife. Her potential to be a mother. Her potential to further her career. I’d bet you’re the type of guy who has a spreadsheet with fifty-six characteristics a woman must have in order to date you. And each woman you meet is put into a column. Fling, casual partner or lifelong mate.” She thought about what Nita just told her. Amber knew she was the exact opposite of the women Chase normally dated, but that was okay. She wasn’t looking to be his potential partner and she didn’t want him to think she wanted anything else from him either.
“You think you know me so well? First you think I’m boring and now you magically know what I want in a woman.” He raised a brow at her and smiled. She found it incredibly sexy. There was a little dimple on his cheek. The urge to kiss it came over her. She wondered what he would do if she leaned over and kissed his face. How he would react? What would be his next step?
She shook her head, trying to shake off the feeling of wanting to kiss him for the second time that night.
“I just know you’re organized. I saw the business plan you constructed for this place. I’m learning how to write them for school, but yours was incredible. Beautiful, really. I’ve never seen so many colorful charts in one place. And you say you’re not artistic.”
He took a long sip of his coffee as he looked at her. She felt like blushing with the way his eyes kept passing over her face. It was silly. She was an adult, but the way he looked at her made her feel like a girl again. “How did you see our business plan?”
“Your sister showed me. I was having trouble with an assignment and I asked for her help. She showed me your work. I was incredibly impressed, but I guess I shouldn’t be. You went to one of the best business schools in the country. You’re a pro at it.”
He nodded. “I spent many years in the corporate world. If you ever need help with an assignment, you can come to me. I won’t even charge you for my time.”
“How sweet,” she said, wanting to take him up on his offer but knowing it probably wasn’t a smart idea. She was pushing the limits of her willpower by being here with him tonight. “I might take you up on that.”
He nodded and reached for a cookie. “I still want to hear about this guy with potential that you bought the Van Der Zee for.”
“He was a photographer. I met him while I was taking an art class at the local university. He was one of those people with big visions. He did what he called artistic photo journalism. Wanted to change the world with his work.”
“That sounds admirable.”
“It was, but the relationship was a little one-sided. And being with somebody who just takes can be draining. I felt like I was sacrificing what I wanted, so he could live out his dreams. I couldn’t do that. I watched my mother do that. Give up her dreams to be a wife. To raise a family. I know she loved us. And not once did she treat us like we were a burden, but I knew she wished she could have lived out her dreams. She was an illustrator. A great one. Some of her work made it into magazines, but I think her dream was to do children’s books.”
“She gave it up completely? Was your father not encouraging?”
“He didn’t discourage her, but there were four kids and my brother was always sick when he was younger. Life got in the way. Money needed to come in. My mother had no choice but to be practical. She sacrificed her dreams for us.”
“And you don’t want to be like her?”
She shook her head. “I want to have a career for her. I feel that there’s always a little sadness in her. A little regret that she was never able to share her work with the world.”
“You should encourage her to try again. Even if it doesn’t get her anywhere, you should encourage her to draw again. Maybe take a class or two. I know a woman who gives scholarships to African American women over forty for school. I can recommend her for one.”