Page 4 of Too Delicious

“Yeah. Where can I buy your ice cream? Kroger? Where?”

She bristles. “It’s not ice cream, it’s?—”

Shit, I’m fucking this all up. “Frozen yogurt. Got it. Where do I buy it?”

“We don’t have a distributor. We’re opening our own shop.”

I try not to wince visibly. Their own brick-and-mortar store?

Think of the rent, I want to say. The upkeep! The overhead! This is a terrible idea.

I’m not the numbers guy, but I am a marketing guy, and I know for a fact that places like this are lucky if they don’t close within a year. The health inspections for a single small business are a bigger hassle when dealing with a public store front. But if they contract with a factory with processes in place…so much simpler. The electricity bills alone…

All these thoughts scramble into meaninglessness when I look in her eyes and see her. Really see her.

Harmony’s my girl. It’s a foregone conclusion. I mean, she hasn’t come to that conclusion yet…obviously.

I may not be her dream guy, but Harmony has a dream. I can see her vision of it in the intensity of her gaze.

So now, I have a job to do. She will have a brick-and-mortar shop if it bankrupts all four of us.

chapter

two

Harmony

Why is the twin of my stalker carrying my sister?

Summer was supposed to be networking with the team representing the Bryant estate. Word on the street is the sole heiress to that famous railroad fortune has started a grant program for small businesses in rural communities. We need a piece of that.

And not just because I would kill to see the inside of Bryant Castle. My sister and I once explored the grounds and gardens, and I swore I spotted that Bryant heiress from one of the upstairs windows. Summer said I was delusional from my lifelong obsession with the heiress.

What can I say? Some people follow the British royal family. I have Google alerts set for Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, the Gettys, and our local recluse, Esme Bryant. I’ve read every biography of the era. I’ve toured the inside of almost every major Gilded Age historic site except for Bryant Castle, which, other than the gardens, is closed to visitors.

So where do I find my sister, who assured me that accompanying her to this godforsaken event would guarantee making contact with a Bryant?

In the arms of one of the MacKenzie finance bros.

I wind through the crowd, ignoring the people smirking at me and my outfit, and come upon the scene.

“What’s going on? Why is he carrying you?” I ask.

The other one—Carter, I think—explains that he’s not letting my sister put weight on her ankle. So he’s a firefighter?

“This is a little over the top,” I say.

Everyone ignores me as Summer launches into the hard pitch for the frozen yogurt shop. Well, everyone but Cooper ignores me. He’s still staring like a serial killer. Okay, not literally. But it’s unsettling. If he wasn’t so nice to look at, and wasn’t so clumsily helpful and genuinely sweet, I might be attracted.

Take a breath, girl. Remember that’s how your ex got his hooks in you. The boy-next-door, “nice guy” act. He was nice…until he wasn’t.

I pull myself together mentally and finally realize what’s going on.

We haven’t even vetted these guys. Why aren’t we hobnobbing with the Bryant people, who are a known entity?

Not only that, Summer was just going to give these guys our five-minute elevator pitch without me? The pitch that I wrote?

Sure, Cooper already gave me a verbal commitment—and we don’t even know if they have real money—but this stings a little.

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