LITMIR.BIZ

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recognized the voice. It surprised him that he recognized it because he’d only had one conversation with her, but he looked up to see that petite, pretty female with the delicious smile and expressive eyes standing a few feet away from him. “Amber,” he said, feeling the need to tease her. “Amber Bernard. You work in the bakery. As the barista. I remembered.”

      She grinned at him. “At least now I know I’m not forgettable.”

      No, she wasn’t. In fact he’d thought about her all night after he walked her to her car. He kept picturing her face. The way she ate that cookie. The way she licked her lips and moaned filled him with a pure surge of lust that took him completely off guard. But it wasn’t just that that kept him thinking about her. It was her smile. The way her face lit up when he told her about his last trip, the way she made him forget about work, when that was the only thing on his mind 99 percent of the time. “I’m not spying. Well, not really anyway. I’m just running numbers.”

      “You’re running numbers while sitting outside and staring at our biggest competition? I’m just an artist so maybe I don’t know how these things work.”

      “Come sit. I’ll explain.” She looked apprehensive for a moment.

      “I don’t think I can. I’m heading to the bakery now. I don’t want to be late.”

      “You can’t be late if you walk in with the boss. Sit down for a minute.”

      She walked over and he couldn’t help but notice the way her hips swished in the long colorful skirt she was wearing. Her style would normally be a little too bohemian for his tastes, but on her it worked. On her, it was a combination of sexy and adorable that he had a hard time taking his eyes off of.

      “Okay.” She gave him a mischievous smile as she took the chair next to him. “You going to let me in on your evil plan now?”

      “No evil plan here.” He looked into her eyes as he said it. “Everything with me is always all good.”

      “I bet you say that to all the women you encounter.”

      “No. Only the special ones.” He was flirting with her. He didn’t mean to, but there was something about Amber that made him want to. Besides, she had started this. He was just minding his own business when she walked into his world.

      He liked women, went on his fair share of dates. But all of the women he went out with were very much like him. Driven. They had practical careers with a tried-and-true path for growth. He figured he would marry a woman like that one day. Not a woman like Amber. Not that he was even interested in dating Amber, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to engage in a little conversation with a woman whose eyes sparkled when she got excited and whose smile made a man feel funny on the inside. “Look at the consumers who are walking out of Sweetness. What do you notice?”

      “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

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