Page 30 of Stirring Up Love
Are you really thinking of backing out?he’d asked, but the depths of his eyes cried out,Don’t walk away. Choose to stay.
Choose me.
For a fraction of a second, suspended in time, she’d almost put her arms around him and held on. A perilous impulse, deadly even. Death to her career, death to her freedom and autonomy. Death to the self she’d been fashioning ever since she left home.
The avatar she’d designed to conquer the game of life wouldn’t stop to hug her nemesis. Badass Simone would pulverize the competition.Find his biggest weakness and exploit it in a tactical strike. Vengeance was the feeling she needed to hold on to, not the knee-shaking, pulse-racing vulnerability that sneaked up on her whenever they were alone together.
Honey and Hickory could be the heart of the community in more ways than one—she wanted to bring in goods from local farmers and artisans, sell products made by women entrepreneurs, like Chantal’s jewelry designs.
With the opening of the dinosaur museum, tourists would be ... if not flooding, then trickling into a town where for so long the only newcomers were of the four-legged variety. The first chance for progress in decades, and she wanted to seize on it. But a franchise deal would pull her focus away from Hawksburg.
And if she accepted the merger, would Honey and Hickory become nothing more than a shell for Finn to market his sauce and grow his side of the business? Their family’s legacy, sold out to the tune of $200,000.
Her phone rang, and she collapsed backward on the bed and threw her arm over her eyes.Argh.She couldn’t be social today.
But when the ringer cut off and started again, she grabbed her purse. What if it was one of the bachelorette party venues calling? Just because her world was crumbling didn’t mean she could slack off in her maid of honor duties. Her sister deserved the best send-off, and she intended to give her one with a day of pampering and a night of partying in Chicago.
Holding her phone overhead, she discovered it wasn’t a party-planning emergency, after all. She accepted the video chat, her face lifting in a real smile for the first time since last night. “Chantal!”
“Sim!” The voice squealed across the airwaves, and Simone’s smile grew. “Can we talk about how you made history last night?”
Just as quickly, her heart fell. For a second, Simone had forgotten her best friend was the die-hard fan who got her hooked onThe Executives, back when their undergrad study sessions were bookendedby copious amounts of reality TV. No doubt Chantal had been watching the spectacle unfold from her couch with a frozen daiquiri in a bag and a heaping bowl of homemade Chex mix.
“I gotta say I’m a little hurt you didn’t clue me in on the twist. Hurt, but also that was epic to watch in real time.” Yep, Chantal had definitely been drinking last night if she thought that dumpster fire was epic. “Kind of glad you didn’t spoil it by telling me.”
Simone let her free arm flop over her forehead. Apparently this was a conversation she was going to be having a lot in the near future. “I didn’t know. They blindsided me.”
“Hello, Sim. It’s me.” Chantal sounded exasperated. “Did you sign a nondisclosure or something?”
Well, yeah, she had. Several of them. But not about Finn, because the conniving producers had wanted her shock to be authentic. “I wish I could say it was an act, but nope. I went in there thinking it was going to be a typical show. Just me, the investors, and the audience.” She stood up and went over to the window, where she had a first-rate view of the parking garage. Fitting.
“And instead, you got to flirt your way to two hundred thousand dollars.”
Put that way, the offer stung even more. “I didn’t get an offer because of my flirting ability.” Had she, though? Was she doomed to have all her achievements undercut by her proximity to a man?
“I didn’t mean it that way.” She turned away from the dismal view to find Chantal frowning at her on-screen. “I meant you got to have a little fun and still come out with a deal.”
Fun?More like an unmitigated disaster. “Half of a deal, and a crappy one at that.”
“A partnership with Constance Rivera and the funds to start a franchise is crappy?”
A fellow small-town girl chasing big-city dreams, Chantal couldn’t seem to wrap her head around Simone’s love of Hawksburg. To mostpeople, the broader scope of the deal would’ve been the biggest selling point. No denying multiple locations would put a sheen on her résumé, add to the illustriousness of Pops’s legacy.
But she didn’t want her legacy to be a bunch of corporate barbecue clones spread across the country. She wanted Honey and Hickory to be community focused, to spark change and growth in her own hometown. And the scope of the deal wasn’t her sole objection. “Constance is amazing, don’t get me wrong. But add Finn to the mix—”
“Oh yes, please.” Chantal disappeared in gloom as the camera compensated for her leaving the city sidewalk and entering her building foyer. “Let’s talk about that snack of a man, and why you never mentioned he was scorchingly sexy when you complained about him all summer.”
Simone’s mind flashed to Finn’s eyes on hers, dark and intense as his lips closed around her finger, his tongue sliding along her skin. The current of need pulsing between them before he pulled away and snapped it. Shattered her dreams without so much as a flicker of remorse.
“Can we not?”
“Are you kidding? If you’re considering turning down two hundred thousand dollars and slighting my girl Constance, you’d best believe we’re going to talk it out.”
“It’s simple. I’m not interested in a deal with a built-in liability,” Simone said.
“By ‘liability,’ you’re referring to the fast-talking guy you let have carnal knowledge of you on TV?”
Yeah, he’d screwed her all right, but unfortunately, not in the literal sense. “I did no such thing. It was only my finger.” Whoops. Walked right into that one.
