Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day, Daisy got up early because eating ice cream for dinner as she had been lately required hitting the gym a few days a week. She was on the treadmill for an hour and a half before she looked down to check the screen. She’d only been on it for four minutes.
It was going to be one of those days.
When she got to the office, she worked her fingers to the bone with Carol on her back about more incoming bids, more clients, more, more, more…making Daisy question whether she would ever really retire.
“Of course, she’s not going to retire,” Daisy’s best friend from college said, video chatting Daisy during a quick lunch break from New York City where Poppy worked at a large corporate concierge firm. “She’s just dangling a carrot to keep you from entertaining other offers.”
“I have no other offers,” Daisy said with a laugh, shoving the last of her sandwich into her mouth.
“Hear me out…” Poppy gave her a hopeful smile. “I’ve planned out my New Year’s resolution. It’s a doozy. Ready to hear it?”
Daisy’s New Year’s resolution was to put the clothes she tried on every morning back on hangers and into her closet instead of on the chair in the corner of her room. “Sure.”
“Well…I’ve been thinking. You’re unhappy there. I’m unhappy here. And we both do basically the same thing. So, why not—?”
“Run away to an island beach somewhere and become barmaids?”
“Or…you come here, and we start our own business. And before you say no,” Poppy said quickly, opening her second laptop and swiveling the screen to face Daisy, “I’ve been putting together some numbers and specs.
I think we could rock our own event planning company here in NYC.
You’re always saying how much you miss the city. And me.”
Daisy had absolutely loved New York. A lot. Going across the country at eighteen had freed her from a rough family life and upbringing. It’d given her an education. A different view of the world than her previous narrowed one. But…she loved being back in San Francisco, too. “Poppy…”
“Wait,” Poppy said quickly, holding up a hand. “Don’t say no off the cuff. Just promise you’ll think about it?”
“I will if you promise to think about doing exactly as you’ve just said but here in San Francisco.”
Poppy bit her lower lip, clearly thinking and thinking hard. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. You make me a proposal for San Fran, and I’ll finish making mine for NYC. But, FYI, mine’s going to be irresistible.”
Daisy laughed, but it faded quickly when she heard her boss coming. “Gotta go,” she whispered and disconnected just in time.
Carol swept into the room. “Did you get the two new client portfolios I sent over? What do you think? Have you contacted them yet? And start a prelim report.”
Daisy checked her email. They’d literally just come in three minutes ago. “Uh—"
Carol’s brows rose. “Do I need to put Melinda on the job?”
Melinda was Daisy’s nemesis. “Nope, I’ve got it.”
“Great,” Carol said and strode out.
Daisy leaned forward and thunked her head on the desk. After a moment, she went back to work and didn’t surface for hours, not until her personal cell phone buzzed. She looked over at it and grimaced.
DO NOT ANSWER was calling…
Yesterday after the cake tasting fiasco, which was how she referred to that holy cow kiss they’d shared after the actual cake testing, she’d changed Diego’s name in her contacts to DO NOT ANSWER.
Just to remind herself.
Plus, it’d been her way of taking control of her tumbling reactions to him. And there were many: regrets, resentment, desire, hunger… It was shocking how just one touch of his incredible mouth had set her emotional maturity back an entire decade.
And he was calling her. Why? She thought of how he’d melted her with his mouth and blew out a breath. She’d never been able to ignore him. So, she answered. “Yes?”
There was a brief pause before he said, “Do you always answer your phone in that irritated-as-all-hell voice, or is that just for me?”
If her voice was irritated as all hell, his was not. It was low, husky, and achingly familiar, and it caused all sorts of reactions inside her body—including weak knees, which really pissed her off.
She was over him.
She was over him.
She was over him.
And maybe if she kept repeating that to herself, she’d learn to actually believe it. “What do you want?”
“The groom just informed me that I’m supposed to go by the tuxedo place for a seven p.m. appointment and get fitted. And that I’m not allowed to go alone.”
Daisy laughed. Hard to believe after the day she’d had and the messy tangle of emotions he caused within her, but she laughed so hard she snorted.
“Please, have fun with this at my expense,” he said dryly.
“Oh, I am.” She managed to get a hold of herself. “Rocco’s probably worried you’ll skip the fitting and attend the wedding in jeans and motorcycle boots. Why can’t he go with you?”
“He’s got a tattoo client.”
“Hmm,” she said. “And Tyler?”
“With an interior decorating client.”
As she had yesterday, she got an odd feeling. It just wasn’t like either of the grooms to miss appointments like this. Both of them were invested and would want to be there to see Diego’s suit for the wedding.
“So? Are you coming with me or not?”
“I wasn’t aware you’d actually asked me to come,” she said, wanting to hear him do just that.
“Will you pretty please come?” he asked, voice low and husky and…dammit.
Note to self: not quite ready for primetime bantering with Diego. “The pact…”
“This is part of our promise to Rocco, Princess,” he said. The use of her old nickname had her smile fading, replaced by memories that softened her into a boneless heap of hormones.
“I’m busy,” she said. “I’m at work.”
“Take a dinner break. Hell, I’ll even feed you.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“I’m sure your boss will understand. Everyone’s entitled to a break, especially on a long day like you’ve put in.”
“My boss understands no such thing,” she said. “And how do you know I’m putting in a long day?”
“Is there another reason you’re grumpy?”
Yes. Memories of Diego had kept Daisy up all night. Memories of him moving over her in bed, his eyes locked with hers, both of them lost in each other… “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m outside waiting for you.”
She gaped at her phone. “How did you know you’d convince me to go with you?”
“Because you love Rocco and Tyler, remember? And you’re bossy and controlling. You want to make sure I get into a damn tux.”
Dammit. Because, one…true. And two, just the thought of him in a tux had her head swimming. “I’ll be right down.”
Five minutes later, she was standing on the sidewalk gawking at him on the Harley, looking…well, edible to be honest.
“Get on,” he said and held out a helmet.
She quivered with excitement that she didn’t want to admit.
The last time she’d been on a bike had been with him.
Hell, the only time she’d been on a motorcycle had been with Diego.
And sometimes, even now, she dreamed about it.
About the power of the machine beneath her, the strength of the man she’d wrapped herself around to be her anchor.
The wind in her face. Her inner thighs snuggled up to the outside of his.
The heightened sense of thrill and awareness and desire and hunger pounding through her as they took the open road…
Diego waited with a patience that was new.
He’d changed. Grown up. But he’d also known that being on the back of a bike with him would turn her on.
She had no idea if he remembered any of their past with the same longing that she did.
She looked into his face, trying to read him, but he wasn’t giving anything away.
His body was still, all that carefully harnessed and leashed power and control at rest. But then she lifted her gaze to his and sucked in a breath. There was a fire there. And smoke.
And a whole bunch of trouble if she wanted it.
Clearing her throat, she looked down at herself.
Thankfully, she was in trousers, but her heels might be a problem.
Her blouse was thin, and so was her fitted blazer.
Even as she thought it, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and wrapped it around her.
Then he took the helmet from her fingers and put it on her head himself, leaning in close with a look of concentration as he attached and adjusted the strap.
His hand brushed her jaw, just barely, and a pulse jumped beneath his thumb.
He froze for half a second, every nerve firing, before he forced himself to finish the buckle like it was nothing.
While she was still speechless, he did what she hadn’t, zipped up the jacket, right to her chin, then left his hands on her to straighten the collar.
Even when that was done, his warm fingers slid up her neck as their gazes locked.
He caught himself about to cup her face—reflex, muscle memory—and pulled back.
But her breath caught audibly, and of their own volition, his thumbs lightly stroked where her pulse raced at the hollow of her throat.
She wanted another kiss. With a shocking amount of yearning, she wanted that. But Diego dropped his hands and gave a nod of his chin for her to get on.
So, that’s what she did.
“Hold on,” he said, and she slid her arms around his waist and set her chin on his shoulder. As he roared off into the night, she found herself smiling for the first time all day.
He turned his head slightly. “Okay?”
She tightened her grip. “Very.”
Thirty minutes later, she watched Diego walk out of the dressing room, a dark scowl on his gorgeously scruffy face, his hair a little bit tousled, giving him an overall wild look that went with the tux shockingly well.
He could’ve graced the cover of any bridal magazine, and women the world over would have drooled all over him.
Daisy liked to think that she was above such things, but she closed her mouth just in case.
“No,” he said. “Just, no.”