Chapter 1 Rosie
The lights die when I’m piping the final row of buttercream roses.
One second the kitchen glows warm and gold, mixers humming, refrigerator motors thrumming, the little digital timer by the ovens blinking down the last six minutes on the test batch of vanilla sponge. The next, everything cuts to black so hard and fast it feels like the whole bakery gets punched in the throat.
Silence slams down.
Then comes the soft, terrible hiss of warm air leaving the refrigerators.
“No. No, no, no—”
My piping bag slips in my hand. A pale pink rose blooms crooked across the top tier of the wedding cake before the frosting bag flops uselessly against my wrist. I slap it onto the stainless counter and lunge for my phone where it’s charging by the register, already knowing from the dead outlet and the dead overheads and the dead quiet that this isn’t a tripped breaker inside my shop.
The screen lights my face blue. 4:12 a.m.
No service alert yet. Of course not. Because the universe likes drama.
Behind me, the emergency exit sign glows dim red, just enough to turn my kitchen into a horror-movie version of itself. Towering sheet cakes on cooling racks. Trays of piped flowers. Three tubs of mascarpone filling that took me all night to whip into silk. Eight dozen lemon curd tarts waiting for assembly. The Lancaster wedding order—my biggest order this quarter, maybe this year—sitting in the dark like a threat.
I move before panic can fully catch up.
“Okay, Rosie. Move.” My own voice sounds too loud, too bright, like I can cheerlead my way out of a catastrophe. Maybe I can. I’ve done it before.
I yank open the first refrigerator. Cold air spills over my bare legs, already weakening. I start hauling boxed pastries and buttercream tiers onto the prep table, sorting by what will die fastest. Cream first. Custard second. Finished cake tiers third. My brain clicks into triage so fast it almost feels calm.
Almost.
My bakery assistant, Liv, is supposed to come in at five-thirty. Mateo at six. I could call them, but for what? So we can all stand around together and watch dairy products go to war-crimes temperatures?
The thought is so grim it almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
I flip on my phone flashlight and crouch to check the under-counter freezer. Still cold. For now. I start stuffing in what I can—macaron shells, backup frosting, the emergency butter I hoard like a dragon guarding gold. My shoulders are already aching. My tank top sticks to my spine. There is powdered sugar on my left hip, a streak of raspberry filling on my wrist, and if this order dies, I am going to have to refund money I do not have while smiling like a professional.
My throat burns.
Not now.
I stand and force myself to breathe through my nose. In for four. Out for four. It’s a trick I learned two years ago after Carter left me with a gutted bank account, a pile of unpaid invoices, and enough humiliation to drown in. Panic is a luxury. Motion is survival.
I check the ovens. Dead. The mixers. Dead. The walk-in cooler in the back gives one pathetic little click when I try it, like it’s apologizing.
“Unbelievable.”
I grab my phone and call the utility company anyway. An automated voice chirps at me that there’s a service interruption affecting this area and they’re “working hard to restore power as quickly as possible.” No estimate. No human being. No mercy.
I hang up and stare at the wedding cake.
Four tiers. Hand-painted edible pearls. Cascading blush roses. Delivery at eleven.
If the buttercream softens too much, the whole design is shot. If the fillings warm, I can’t serve any of it. If I fail on a wedding this visible, people won’t just whisper. They’ll post. Tag. Review. Speculate. In this neighborhood, reputation is cash with better lipstick.
I press my palms to the counter until the steel bites cold into my skin.
Think.
Who has power? Who has industrial refrigeration? Who has enough freezer space at this hour to save a wedding order the size of a minor royal event?
The answer hits me so hard I actually say it out loud.
“No.”
Because of course he does.
Alexander Hunt. King of imported marble, private booths, and overpriced whiskey. Owner of the club downstairs and around the corner and somehow, by malignant real-estate magic, owner of half the block. If there is one building in this neighborhood with backup generators and enough commercial-grade cold storage to preserve my work, it’s his.
I would rather swallow glass.
But the image of the Lancaster bride crying in a silk robe while her mother eviscerates me on every wedding forum in the state pushes past my pride and grabs me by the throat.
I look around my dark kitchen—my copper pans hanging over the island, the chalkboard menu in my own handwriting, the front case I bought secondhand and scrubbed until my knuckles bled. Everything I have built is standing in this room, balanced on a failing temperature line.
Pride doesn’t pay refunds.
“Fine,” I mutter, already moving. “I hate him. I can hate him in motion.”
I lunge for the stack of insulated delivery coolers in the storage nook and start loading them with whatever can still be saved.
The first cooler bangs against my shin on the way out the back door hard enough to make me hiss.
“Great,” I mutter, shifting the weight against my hip. “Perfect. Love this for me.”
The alley behind the bakery is damp from last night’s rain, the predawn air cool enough to raise goose bumps over my flour-streaked skin. The whole block looks wrong with the power out—too dark, too still, the usual warm hum of storefront signs and traffic lights replaced by a strange, waiting silence. Even the neon glow from the club district is gone except for one sharp line of gold farther down the street.
His building.
Of course it has power.
Of course Alexander Hunt’s palace of sin and arrogance is glowing like a smug lighthouse while the rest of us peasants rot in the dark.
I wrestle the cooler into the back of my delivery hatchback and sprint inside for the next one. Cake tiers first, I decide. Fillings second. Decorative elements last. My body runs on instinct now, every move clipped and desperate. Lift. Carry. Stack. Slam the hatch. Run back.
By the third trip, my lungs are burning.
By the fourth, my ponytail has half fallen out and a strand of hair is plastered to my lip gloss.
By the fifth, I am sweating through my tank top and talking to inanimate objects.
“You,” I tell a tray of lemon tarts, “are not dying on my watch.”
My phone buzzes against the metal prep table. For one stupid, hopeful second, I think maybe it’s the utility company with a miracle.
It’s Liv.
You here? Front’s dark.
I answer one-handed while shoving boxes of sugar flowers into an insulated tote.
Power outage. Don’t come in yet. I’m moving the Lancaster order.
Three dots appear instantly.
Where???
I stare at the message.
There is no way to type I’m hauling six thousand dollars’ worth of wedding desserts to the nightclub owned by Satan in a designer suit without sounding like I’ve had a full psychotic break before sunrise.
Somewhere with backup power, I send instead. Will explain later.
You want help?
No.
The answer is automatic, bone-deep. Not because I don’t need it. God, I need eight extra arms and the emotional stability of a Navy SEAL. But this order is my responsibility. My disaster. My humiliation. If I have to march into Alexander Hunt’s kingdom and ask for help, I am doing it alone.
I lock the bakery behind me and stand in the alley with the final cooler digging into both hands.
The club sits less than two blocks away, around the corner from the row of boutique storefronts his development project “revitalized,” which is rich-guy language for jacked the rent until three independent businesses folded and one bookstore turned into a luxury cigar lounge. He calls it urban renewal. I call it strangulation with good branding.
I start walking fast, then faster.
The cooler wheels catch in every crack of the sidewalk. The plastic handle bites into my palm. My sneakers slap wet concrete as the city yawns around me—delivery trucks idling at curbs, the distant wail of a siren somewhere south. The sky is still dark blue, but dawn is beginning to thin the edges of it.
I round the corner and there it is: Hunt.
Even from the street, the place looks expensive enough to have an attitude. Matte black awning. Brass-trimmed doors. Tall glass windows still glowing from inside thanks to the backup generators only men like Alexander think to install before disaster strikes. The gold script logo above the entrance shines like it knows I’m suffering.
I stop dead at the curb, breathing hard.
This is insane.
I am standing outside the club owned by the man I have hated for three years in leggings dusted with flour and sneakers sticky with raspberry filling, one cooler handle cutting off circulation in my right hand, preparing to beg for freezer space.
A laugh bubbles up in my throat, sharp and humorless.
Three years ago, I called him a predator in a designer suit at a neighborhood planning meeting so crowded someone recorded it. The clip went locally viral before lunch. Half the city cheered. The other half said I was hysterical, ungrateful, anti-growth, anti-business, anti-man with a jawline and real-estate lawyers. Alexander himself had just looked at me across the room with that terrifying, ice-cold calm of his and said, “If you’re finished performing, Ms. Woods, the adults can continue.”
I had wanted to throw my coffee at him.
Some days I still do.
But none of that matters if this cake collapses.
I square my shoulders and drag the cooler across the street.
The side service entrance is propped open. Somewhere inside, metal clangs. A dishwasher hisses. Kitchen noise. Human noise. Salvation.
My pulse kicks hard.
I yank the cooler over the threshold and into a back corridor lined with polished concrete and framed black-and-white photos of old jazz singers looking judgmental. The air smells like citrus cleaner, yeast, coffee, and the ghost of last night’s expensive bourbon.
A prep cook in a white jacket glances up from a speed rack and blinks at me.
He takes in my messy hair, my flushed face, the coolers, the obvious desperation.
“Ma’am?”
“I need your freezer.”
He blinks again.
Not my best opening.
I swallow, try for human. “Emergency. Bakery next block over. Massive power outage. Wedding order. I need to speak to whoever’s in charge of the kitchen right now.”
The prep cook opens his mouth.
A deep male voice cuts in from somewhere beyond the swinging doors.
“She already knows who’s in charge.”
Every muscle in my body goes tight.
I know that voice.
Damn it.
He steps through the swinging doors like he owns gravity.
Which, honestly, feels on brand.
Alexander Hunt is in a charcoal dress shirt with the sleeves rolled once at the forearms and the top button open, like even at dawn he has somehow managed to look expensive and annoyed instead of human. He moves with that same infuriating control I remember from every public meeting, every headline, every time he has stood in a room and made it clear he expects the room to reorganize itself around him.
His gaze drops to the cooler at my feet, then drags slowly back up to my face.
There is a beat of silence.
“Ms. Woods,” he says.
My spine goes ramrod straight. “Don’t start.”
One dark brow lifts. “You entered my kitchen through a service corridor at five in the morning and opened with I need your freezer. I’d say you started.”
The prep cook abruptly finds something fascinating to do with a tray of croissants. Another staffer at the far prep station goes very still in the way people do when they sense incoming disaster and want front-row seats without legal involvement.
I hate that there is an audience for this. I hate more that I need something from him badly enough to feel it.
“Fine,” I snap. “My bakery lost power. I have a wedding order that will be ruined inside the hour if I can’t get it into industrial refrigeration. Your building clearly has backup generators because God forbid luxury nightlife experience even one inconvenience, so I am asking—temporarily—for freezer space.”
His expression does not change. That almost-calm of his is worse than if he yelled. “You’re asking.”
I bare my teeth. “Don’t make me say please in front of your employees. I have suffered enough.”
A flicker in his eyes. Not softness. Definitely not softness. But maybe amusement, which is almost more offensive.
“You’ve never had any issue making scenes in front of witnesses before,” he says.
There it is.
Heat floods my face, hot and immediate. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you still wounded over the predator comment?”
The room goes quieter.
One of the line cooks actually stops chopping.
Alexander takes two unhurried steps closer. “No,” he says, voice low and perfectly even. “I’m fascinated by the possibility that after spending three years telling anyone with a phone camera that I am personally responsible for the death of small business, you are now here to beg me for help.”
I grip the cooler handle so hard the plastic digs crescents into my palm. “I am not begging.”
He glances pointedly at the flour on my shirt, my messy hair, the cooler at my feet, my wild-eyed, sleep-deprived presence in his club before sunrise. “How would you prefer I classify this?”
“Civic cooperation.”
One of his staff makes a choking sound that might be a laugh. I shoot a glare toward the prep line without even looking for the culprit.
Alexander’s mouth almost moves. Not a smile. He probably isn’t anatomically capable. But something shifts at one corner like the concept offended him personally.
“Civic cooperation,” he repeats.
“Yes,” I say. “You have cold storage. I have six thousand dollars’ worth of wedding desserts currently inching toward bacterial tragedy. You let me use the freezer for a few hours, I save the order, and we both get to continue disliking each other by lunch.”
His eyes sharpen at the number. “Six thousand?”
“Try being impressed later.”
He folds his arms. The rolled sleeves pull tight over strong forearms, and because the universe enjoys humiliating me in layers, I notice. “And if I say no?”
Panic flickers low in my stomach, mean and fast. I crush it before it reaches my face.
“Then I’ll remember this the next time you stand in front of a camera and talk about community investment.”
The kitchen goes still enough that I can hear the distant clink of ice from the front bar.
His gaze pins me in place.
It would be easier if he looked smug. Easier if he looked cruel. But what he looks, for one weird, disorienting second, is tired. Tired and sharp and entirely too aware.
“Interesting,” he says quietly. “You assume I need your approval more than you need my refrigeration.”
“I assume men like you always think everything is leverage.”
That lands. I can tell because the air between us changes—draws taut, thinner, dangerous.
He takes another step closer until there is maybe a foot between us, maybe less. I catch the scent of coffee and clean soap and something dark underneath, expensive and masculine and deeply unhelpful.
“And women like you,” he says, “tend to mistake contempt for principle.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
This close, I can see the faint shadow of exhaustion beneath his eyes, the hard line of his jaw, the irritating perfection of a man who probably has meetings called things like acquisitions strategy while I spend my mornings elbow-deep in buttercream. He looks as composed as ever, but there is something banked under it. Heat. Temper. Recognition. I hate that I feel a matching spark low in my own bloodstream.
I lift my chin. “Are you going to help me, or do you want to keep auditioning for the role of nightmare landlord?”
A tiny pause.
Then he looks past me to the cooler, the service corridor beyond, no doubt calculating how much product I’ve brought and how much is still sitting vulnerable in my bakery.
When his attention returns to me, his face is unreadable again.
“Bring the rest in,” he says to one of the kitchen staff.
Relief hits so hard my knees almost unlock.
But before I can speak, before I can even decide whether thank you would kill me on impact, Alexander leans down just enough that his next words are for me alone.
“You can use my freezer,” he says.
His voice is velvet over steel.
“...if you work for me this weekend.”
For a second, I honestly think I misheard him.
Not because Alexander Hunt is being subtle. Men like him are never subtle. They just say outrageous things in calm voices and expect the rest of us to adjust.
I blink at him. “I’m sorry?”
Behind him, one of the kitchen staff suddenly remembers a very urgent reason to wheel a speed rack in the opposite direction. Smart man.
Alexander straightens to his full height, every inch of him composed, and jerks his chin toward the cooler. “Your product can be stored here. In exchange, you cater an investor weekend event for me.”
I laugh.
It comes out sharp, disbelieving, and just a little feral.
“Absolutely not.”
He does not react. “You haven’t heard the details.”
“I don’t need the details.” I plant both hands on the cooler handle like I can anchor myself with it. “The answer is no. I came here for temporary freezer space, not to be extorted into servitude by the neighborhood’s favorite billionaire tyrant.”
A line cook at the far station abruptly coughs into his elbow. Someone else mutters something that sounds suspiciously like holy hell.
Alexander’s gaze flicks past me toward his staff, and the entire room resumes moving with the mechanical speed of people pretending they are not listening while absolutely listening.
Then he looks back at me.
“Careful, Rosie.”
The use of my first name should not do anything to me.
It does something.
Annoying, electric, immediate.
I narrow my eyes. “Don’t careful Rosie me. You do not get to turn a disaster into a business opportunity.”
“Everything is a business opportunity.”
“Thank you,” I say sweetly. “That is the most Alexander Hunt sentence anyone has ever spoken.”
For the first time, his mouth actually twitches.
It is not a smile. It is the possibility of one, seen from a great distance through expensive fog.
I hate that I notice.
He folds his arms again. “My pastry vendor backed out on a private investor weekend two hours ago.”
I stare at him.
He continues, maddeningly steady. “Breakfast service tomorrow. Dessert course tomorrow night. Brunch the following morning. I need someone capable, discreet, and available immediately.”
“Then hire someone else.”
“I would have,” he says, “if someone else could produce under pressure with no lead time and still deliver quality worth serving to people who invest eight figures before lunch.”
The compliment lands before I can duck it.
I hate that too.
“So this is what?” I snap. “You strong-arm me into saving your event because you know I can’t afford to lose this wedding order?”
“No,” he says. “I’m solving two problems at once.”
I throw up my hands. “That is just a cleaner, more arrogant way of saying yes.”
His gaze drops briefly to my hands, still tense, dusted with powdered sugar and raspberry streaks. Something unreadable moves across his face. “You need cold storage now. I need a pastry chef now. This is efficient.”
“Efficient,” I repeat. “You know, most people say thank you when a woman insults them to their face before sunrise. You somehow make it sound like an acquisition.”
A real laugh escapes one of the prep cooks this time before he chokes it off.
Alexander doesn’t even glance away from me. “You already think the worst of me. I’m not motivated to correct your branding this early in the morning.”
I should say no again. I should grab my coolers, drag my dignity back out the service door, and figure out some other way to save my order.
Except there is no other way.
I know it. He knows it. The knowledge sits between us like another witness.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out and see three missed calls in a row from the Lancaster bride’s mother.
Oh, good. Excellent. The vulture has awakened.
A text follows before I can even unlock the screen.
Just confirming delivery still on schedule? We’re so excited!!!
Three exclamation points. The punctuation of women who ruin lives in Facebook groups.
I close my eyes for one beat too long.
When I open them, Alexander is watching me with that same unnerving stillness, like he can hear the exact math happening in my head.
He speaks before I can.
“You deliver the wedding order. My staff helps you unload and stabilize what you’ve brought. After that, you stay and discuss the weekend menu with my executive chef.”
I let out a short laugh. “You are alarmingly comfortable telling me what I’m going to do.”
“And you are alarmingly comfortable pretending you have better options.”
That one hits so close to the bone it steals my next comeback.
I hate that most of all.
He steps closer again, not enough to touch, just enough that I have to tilt my chin to keep glaring at him properly.
“Take the deal, Rosie.” His voice is low now, meant only for me. “Save your order. Keep your clients happy. Then decide whether hating me is still more important than surviving me.”
Surviving me.
God, he is insufferable.
Also, devastatingly certain.
I swallow, furious at the sudden awareness of him—the heat of his body, the coffee on his breath, the maddening calm that makes me want to slap him and shake him and maybe, under entirely different circumstances, do something much more reckless.
Not happening.
Absolutely not happening.
I square my shoulders and force my voice steady. “This does not mean I like you.”
His eyes flick to my mouth, then back up. Fast. Barely there. Still enough to make my pulse trip.
“I would be concerned if it did.”
One of the kitchen porters appears beside us, clearly sent by some survival instinct stronger than curiosity. “Mr. Hunt?” he asks carefully. “You want us to start clearing freezer four?”
Alexander never breaks eye contact with me.
“Yes.”
The porter hurries off.
I stand there for one more second, trapped in the terrible reality of my own need.
Then I exhale through my nose.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll hear the details.”
Alexander’s expression doesn’t change, but victory settles around him anyway. Controlled. Quiet. Total.
It makes me want to bite something.
He steps aside and gestures deeper into the kitchen.
“Good,” he says. “Try not to embarrass me this weekend.”
I grab the cooler handle and drag it forward, brushing past him hard enough that my shoulder clips his chest.
“Try not to make that your whole personality,” I mutter.
Behind me, I hear it—soft, brief, unmistakable.
Alexander Hunt laughs.
The executive chef is named Marcel, and he looks at me like I’m a health-code violation with opinions.
He is tall, silver at the temples, French enough to weaponize silence, and clearly offended that his morning has been interrupted by a flour-covered woman dragging half a wedding across his polished kingdom. Still, once Alexander gives the order, the entire kitchen shifts around me with brutal efficiency.
Freezer four gets cleared. My coolers get opened. Sheet trays slide in. Cake tiers are transferred with the kind of care usually reserved for unstable explosives and crowned heads of state.
I hover over every single movement.
“Careful with that box,” I snap as one of the porters reaches for the sugar flowers. “Those are handmade gumpaste peonies and if one petal snaps, I swear to God I will haunt this building after I die.”
The porter freezes. “Yes, ma’am.”
Marcel’s mouth goes thin. “If you are going to insult my kitchen and dictate to my staff, at least use proper pastry terms.”
I turn to him, already bristling. “If your staff breathes wrong on those flowers, proper pastry terms won’t save them.”
For one awful second, I think I’ve just picked a second fight in ten minutes.
Then Marcel gives one curt nod toward the tray. “Non. She is right. Hands off the flowers.”
The porter visibly relaxes.
I do not. I’m too busy tracking the movement of my cake boxes into the freezer, my pulse still beating against the inside of my throat. Every tray that makes it into the cold feels like a tiny resurrection.
Alexander stands a few feet away talking quietly to someone in a dark suit who appeared from nowhere with a tablet and an earpiece. Of course he has people who materialize from walls before dawn. Of course his disasters come with tech support.
He glances over mid-conversation, eyes landing on me just as I exhale for what feels like the first time in an hour.
Something in his face shifts—not softer, exactly, but more focused. More intent. Like my relief is data he’s filing away.
I hate that he sees it.
I hate more that part of me is relieved he does.
The last tier goes into the freezer. The porter closes the heavy door with a solid seal-thunk that sounds, to my frayed nerves, like divine mercy.
I press my hand to the stainless steel and let my forehead dip for one humiliating second.
Saved.
Not fixed. Not forgiven. Not safe.
But saved.
My phone starts ringing again.
Lancaster Mother.
I stare at the screen like maybe I can will it into another dimension.
Alexander is suddenly beside me. Not touching. Just there. “Answer it.”
I shoot him a look. “You know, giving orders is only attractive in movies.”
One dark brow lifts. “You’re welcome to let her assume her daughter’s cake is melting in the dark.”
I grit my teeth and answer. “Good morning, Vanessa.”
Her voice hits my ear at full volume and full panic-disguised-as-cheer. “Rosie! Hi! Tiny question. Our florist said half the block lost power? That doesn’t affect you, does it?”
Tiny question, she says, like she isn’t holding a blowtorch to my bloodstream.
I turn slightly away from the kitchen, lowering my voice. “There was a brief outage, but I’ve already secured alternate cold storage and your order is on schedule.”
That part, at least, is true.
“Oh, wonderful,” she breathes. “I told Amanda there was no need to panic. You’re such a professional.”
Amanda is the bride. Vanessa is the war department.
“Thank you,” I say, because customer service is just emotional hostage negotiation with prettier language.
She launches into a fresh concern about delivery timing, table placement, floral spacing, and whether the blush piping will photograph too peach in daylight. I answer automatically, my body finally starting to feel the crash after adrenaline. My knees ache. My hands are trembling. My stomach has gone hollow and sour from too much coffee and not enough food.
When the call ends, I look up and find half the kitchen pretending not to have listened.
Marcel has returned to his station. The porter is gone. The man with the tablet has vanished. Alexander, naturally, remains.
“Professional,” he says.
I slide my phone into my pocket. “Were you hoping for hysterics? Sorry to disappoint.”
“No.” His gaze flicks over my face, my shoulders, the white-knuckle set of my hands. “You disappoint in much louder ways.”
I laugh once, incredulous. “You are unbelievable.”
“And yet here you are.”
There is no answer to that which doesn’t make me sound as desperate as I am.
I glance toward the freezer, then back at him. “Fine. The order is stable. Your kitchen survives another day under my terrifying influence. Tell me about your precious investor weekend.”
He gestures toward a stainless prep table at the far end of the kitchen where a folder now sits beside two coffees I did not see arrive.
Naturally.
Of course the devil has briefing materials.
I walk toward the table because at this point dignity is a decorative garnish and I have bigger problems. He follows at an unhurried pace that somehow makes me more aware of him than if he were crowding me.
Up close, one coffee is black. One is light enough to be mine.
I look at it, then at him.
“You don’t know how I take my coffee.”
His expression doesn’t shift. “You order a large drip with too much cream from the café kiosk in the lobby every Wednesday when your supply rep parks in the loading zone.”
I blink.
“That is,” I say slowly, “either deeply observant or medically concerning.”
“Take the coffee, Rosie.”
I do, because I’m tired and because my traitorous body wants warmth more than it wants to argue. The first sip is exactly right.
Which is infuriating.
He opens the folder and slides a page toward me. Event schedules. Guest counts. Dessert notes. Dietary restrictions. Investor names I recognize from business sections and scandal columns. The money in this room could buy my building five times over and still tip badly.
I scan the first page, then the second.
Breakfast pastries. Late-night plated desserts. Brunch spread.
This is not a favor. This is a siege.
I set the cup down. “You’re serious.”
Alexander’s gaze holds mine. “Always.”
“Your pastry vendor didn’t just ‘back out.’”
A beat.
“No.”
Something sharp pricks the back of my neck. “What happened?”
He looks toward the kitchen entrance, toward the dim hallway beyond it, toward the waking city outside.
When he answers, his voice is quieter than before.
“Someone made sure they did.”
I go still.
The early-morning kitchen noise continues around us—metal clatter, low voices, a hiss of steam—but the air between us changes all over again.
This time, it isn’t heat.
It’s threat.
And before I can decide whether I’ve just stepped into a business problem or something much worse, a woman in a navy sheath dress strides through the service doors, phone in hand, face set like a blade.
Her gaze cuts from Alexander to me to the open folder on the table.
Then she says, without preamble, “Tell me you did not drag the bakery girl into this before I could stop you.”
Bakery girl.
I should not care.
I care immediately.
Maybe because I have been awake all night and my nerves are stripped raw. Maybe because I am standing in a strange kitchen in leggings dusted with flour, holding a coffee bought by a man I resent, while another woman in a sheath dress and murder heels looks at me like I’m gum on the bottom of her very expensive shoe.
Or maybe it’s because I know dismissal when I hear it.
Alexander’s expression goes flat in a way that makes the whole room feel colder. “Good morning, Serena.”
So this is Serena Kline. PR shark. Professional fixer. The woman who probably keeps Alexander’s name polished and his scandals neatly gift-wrapped for public consumption.
She doesn’t look at him when she answers. Her eyes stay on me, sharp and assessing, taking in the flour on my shirt, the hair falling out of my ponytail, the fact that I’m clearly not supposed to belong in a room like this.
“That is not an answer.” She sets her phone on the stainless table with surgical precision. “Please tell me the woman who publicly called you a predator is not now standing in your private kitchen with access to your staff, your schedule, and investor weekend materials.”
My spine snaps straight.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say, sugar-sweet and razor-thin. “Were you hoping he only employed women who find him charming?”
Serena turns to me fully for the first time. “I was hoping he employed women who understand discretion.”
“Then you must be devastated he keeps inviting me into his orbit.”
Alexander exhales once through his nose. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was suppressing a reaction.
Serena, unfortunately, does not look amused. “This is not a joke.”
“Funny,” I say. “That’s exactly how I feel about being called bakery girl like I’m a seasonal side character in my own life.”
A beat passes.
Serena’s mouth tightens by a fraction. “Rosie Woods, then.”
“Much better.”
She turns her attention back to Alexander. “You cannot improvise solutions when investors are arriving in less than twenty-four hours and we are already managing rumors, supplier instability, and—” Her gaze flicks to me again. “Uncontrolled variables.”
I let out a short laugh. “That is an amazing way to describe a human being.”
Alexander reaches for the folder and closes it with one calm, decisive motion. “Rosie is handling pastry for the weekend.”
Serena goes completely still.
Then she says, very carefully, “No.”
It is such a simple word, but loaded. Not surprise. Not concern. Refusal.
Interesting.
I look from her to him and back again. “Wow. This really is the warmest room I’ve ever entered before dawn.”
Serena ignores me. “We need controlled optics, vetted vendors, predictable messaging, and minimal exposure. What we do not need is a woman with a public grievance and a talent for saying the loud part into microphones.”
“Okay,” I say, offended into alertness. “First of all, rude. Second, I have never needed a microphone in my life. My natural gifts are enough.”
Alexander’s gaze cuts to mine for one brief second, and there it is again—that almost-smile, gone before it can fully exist.
Serena notices. Her expression hardens.
Oh.
Now that is interesting.
“She’s competent,” Alexander says.
The words land strangely. Not because they’re extravagant. He says them like facts from a balance sheet. But something in me still reacts—a flicker of warmth, unwelcome and bright.
Serena folds her arms. “Competence is not the issue.”
“No,” I murmur. “I’m getting that.”
Alexander’s voice drops half a degree. “The decision is made.”
Silence follows.
Kitchen staff move carefully around us, pretending not to notice the tension stretched over the prep table like wire. Marcel appears at the far station, glances once at Serena, then very deliberately goes back to tempering chocolate as though rich people trying to kill each other with eye contact is standard breakfast ambiance.
Serena picks up her phone again. “Then you need to come upstairs. Now.”
Alexander doesn’t move. “I’m busy.”
Her jaw tightens. “You won’t be when you hear what’s already circulating.”
Something in the way she says it slides cold fingers down my back.
Alexander’s eyes narrow. “What circulating?”
Serena turns the phone screen toward him.
I only catch a glimpse over his arm before he angles it away, but it’s enough: a grainy still image, low light, two figures entering a hallway.
One broad-shouldered man in a charcoal shirt.
One woman in leggings and a tank top, dragging a cooler behind her.
Me.
Serena’s voice is clipped and lethal. “Someone got footage of her coming in through the service entrance fifteen minutes ago.”
My stomach drops.
She looks at me then, finally letting the full weight of the moment land.
“And they’ve already started asking why Alexander Hunt needed a baker before sunrise.”