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was rehearsing my message!”

      “Okay, just pretend this is my voice mail.”

      “All right. Hello, Brand. Thank you for a pleasant evening and for buying me coffee. I wanted you to know Perks is going to try my cookies for a trial period.”

      “Excellent!”

      “Voice mail does not respond,” she reminded him primly.

      “Oh, yeah. Forgive me. Continue.”

      She took a deep breath. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to use your influence for me.”

      “Of course I didn’t have to. But what exactly would be the point of having influence if you didn’t use it to help others?”

      And then he was gone, no goodbye again. She contemplated the kind of man that would make a statement like that.

      This was what her father had always seen: the decency of Brand Wallace, a guy who could be trusted to do the right thing, even with a starry-eyed eighteen-year-old girl, desperate to be kissed.

      His innate decency made her feel shivery with longing. He appeared to be the polar opposite of Paul Weston, the college professor who had taken what was left of her heart after the death of her father and run it through the meat grinder.

      But it would be a form of pure craziness to think that a woman like her could ever have a man like Brand Wallace.

      On the other hand, who had ever looked at her hair before and seen sun-kissed sand?

      She went in the doors, and could hear the music blasting out of the auditorium. Chelsea, looking a little worse for wear, was behind a completely rummaged-over sample table, dancing enthusiastically by herself to the loud music spilling out into the foyer. She danced salsa competitively and managed to look ultrasexy even in the cookie apron and beret.

      She stopped when she saw Bree coming toward her. Sadly, it did not appear her sudden cessation of movement was because it had occurred to her it might be inappropriate that the table in front of her was badly in need of straightening.

      “Did you have wine?” Chelsea demanded.

      “No, I had a chai latte.” Bree decided, then and there, she probably would never have one again. Those smoky, spicy exotic flavors would remind her of a surprisingly pleasant evening—and forbidden longings—for as long as she lived.

      “Oh, you’re all glowy.”

      Bree was pretty sure glowy was not a word, not that she wanted to argue the point.

      “What has happened to the table?” Bree asked, not wanting to encourage an interrogation from Chelsea. “It’s a mess.”

      “Oh! About ten minutes before Crystal Silvers started to sing, the people just started to pour through the front door. They were on me like the barbarian hordes. Just grabbing things, ripping open boxes, uninvited. I have tidied, you know. There were wrappers all over the place. Anyway, somehow samples made it back to the lady herself. She sent out an assistant to tell me she loved our cookies, to expect a big order for her birthday blowout.”

      It was more than Bree had hoped for! So why did she feel curiously flat about it?

      If that came through, along with the extra business from Perks, there would be no time for thinking about happily-ever-after, or lack thereof, as the case might be.

      Thank goodness.

      “Oh, there goes the glowy look,” Chelsea said. “The frown line is back. Miss Worry rides again.”

      Bree deliberately relaxed her forehead. She hadn’t even realized until tonight she was endangering her chances of aging gracefully because of her perpetual frown. Despite the fact she knew better than to encourage Chelsea, she could not stop herself from asking.

      “What color would you say my hair was?”

      Chelsea regarded Bree’s hair, flummoxed, clearly thinking this was a trick question that she was not going to answer correctly.

      “Brown?” she finally ventured.

      Bree nodded sadly. “Just as I thought.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      YOU DIDN’T HAVE to use your influence for me.

      After Brand had disconnected the phone and put it back in his pocket, he made his way through the rain-glittered streets. He had decided to walk home. Going back to the gala after being with Bree Evans would have felt like getting dumped onto an eight-lane freeway after being on a quiet path through the country.

      Despite her new proficiency with high heels, and the way she filled out her trim white blouse, she was still sweet and smart. Definitely adorable. Totally earnest.

      And completely refreshing.

      Those words—you didn’t have to use your influence for me—just reinforced all those impressions of her.

      Everybody wanted him to use his influence for them. Even the manager at Perks had approached him, not the other way around. He’d recognized him from that blasted City article.

      Brand came to his house, and stood back for a second, gazing at it through the walkway opening in the neatly trimmed hedge. His architect had called it colonial, a saltbox, and, thankfully, it was less ostentatious than most of the mansions on his street.

      Inside, Beau, who seemed to be largely telepathic, had figured out he was home, and gave a deep woof of welcome.

      When people asked why he’d gone with a single-family house instead of a superglamorous condo, he said he’d purchased the Shaughnessy heritage home because it was close to his office tower in downtown Vancouver, his golf course and the VanDusen Botanical Garden.

      That seemed much easier than admitting he had purchased the house because he thought his dog would prefer having a tree-shaded backyard to a condo balcony.

      He opened the front door he never locked. Anyone with the nerve to try and get by his one-hundred-and-thirty-pound bullmastiff deserved a chance to grab what they could before dying.

      The dog nearly knocked him over with his enthusiastic greeting, and Brand went down on his knees and put his arms around him. They wrestled playfully for a few minutes, until Brand pushed away Beau, stood up and brushed off his clothes.

      “You stink.”

      The dog sighed with pleasure.

      “I met a woman tonight, Beau,” he told the dog. “More terrifying than you.”

      Beau cocked his head at him, interested.

      “And that was before she laughed.”

      Since the events of this evening were about the furthest thing from what he had expected when he’d headed out the door, it occurred to him that life was indeed full of little surprises. He had the renegade—and entirely uncomfortable—thought that maybe her cookies held predictions in them after all.

      And he had eaten that one.

      Happily-Ever-After.

      But one lesson he had carried from his hardscrabble childhood, left far behind, was an important one.

      Fairy tales belonged to other people. People like her.

      Except, from the stricken look on her face when he’d asked her about her happily-ever-after, somehow her great ending had evaded her. Or she thought it had. She was way too young to have given up on a dream.

      And it was none of his business why it had, or why she had given up hope on it, but he felt curiously invested—as if that night he had taken her to the prom, he had made a promise to her father, a man who had been so good to him, that he would look out for her.

      Brand also felt, irrationally

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