5. Anya #2
"I don't have to prove anything to you."
"No," he agrees. "You don't. But you'll have to prove it to yourself eventually. To your customers. To your investors. To every person who walks into your café expecting a business that knows what it's doing."
Each word lands with surgical accuracy, finding the spaces between my ribs and sliding home. My breath comes faster because this is exactly what I'm afraid of—that my dream is just that, a pretty fantasy I'll never be capable of executing.
That I'll get three months into this arrangement and they'll hand over the money and I'll fumble it all away because I wanted something more than I understood what it would take to get it.
"Why are you being such a bastard about this?"
"Because Jones and Eric want to give you everything you ask for, and someone needs to make sure you're ready to handle what comes with it."
The admission stops me cold. My anger doesn't disappear, but it shifts, realigning itself as I process what he just revealed.
Vincent isn't questioning my dream because he wants to tear it down. He's questioning it because he's thinking ahead, planning for my success in ways I haven't even considered yet.
"They want to help me."
"They want to make you happy. There's a difference."
"And what do you want?"
The question slips out before I can stop it, raw and more honest than anything I've said since walking into his office. Vincent goes very still, brown eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my pulse race.
"I want to make sure you succeed."
"Why?"
"Because when you do, you'll know it wasn't luck or charity or someone else carrying you across the finish line. You'll know you earned it."
The words hit somewhere deeper than my anger, somewhere that recognizes the gift in what he's offering even as it stings. Vincent isn't trying to tear down my dream—he's trying to make sure it's strong enough to support the weight of reality.
But that doesn't make his questions any less infuriating.
"You still think I'm not ready."
"I think you're smart enough to get ready if you decide you want to."
"I am ready."
"Then answer the questions."
We're back where we started, circling each other like fighters looking for an opening.
My anger burns hot and bright in my chest, fed by his relentless precision and my own fear that he might be right.
That I might not be as prepared as I thought.
That wanting something desperately doesn't automatically make me qualified to have it.
"You know what your problem is?" The words come out harder than I intended, powered by frustration and embarrassment and the particular fury of being seen too clearly by someone I can't read in return.
"Tell me."
"You think watching people gives you the right to judge them."
"I don't judge. I observe."
"Same thing."
"Not even close."
Vincent slides off the desk edge in one fluid motion, and suddenly he's standing. Standing and tall and close enough that the space between us feels charged with everything we're not saying.
My heart hammers against my ribs because I was prepared for sitting-Vincent, perched and casual. Standing-Vincent is something else entirely—six feet four inches of controlled intensity looming over me without actually crowding me.
"Judging would be deciding you're going to fail and walking away," he says, voice dropping to something lower and rougher than before. "Observing is seeing exactly how you fight when someone challenges you and knowing that fire is going to serve you well when you figure out how to aim it properly."
The words wash over me like heat, changing the entire temperature of the room. My breath catches because that's not what I expected him to say.
I expected dismissal, condescension, maybe pity for the girl who thinks she can run a business on dreams and determination alone.
Instead, he's looking at me like my anger is something valuable. Something worth cultivating instead of containing.
"I'm not fighting you," I say, which is a complete lie given that we've been verbally sparring for the last ten minutes.
"Yes, you are. You've been fighting me since you walked through that door. Fighting the questions, fighting the implications, fighting the possibility that you might not have all the answers yet."
His gaze drops. To my mouth. Lingers there long enough that my lips part involuntarily, then travels lower—chest, waist, back up to my mouth. Slow, unhurried, completely unapologetic about where he's looking or what he's seeing.
Heat rushes through my entire body, sudden and overwhelming. My skin feels too tight, too warm, like I'm standing too close to a fire that I don't want to step away from.
Vincent isn't touching me, isn't even speaking, but the weight of his attention feels more intimate than Jones's hands on my body or Eric's mouth on mine.
This is what I felt yesterday when he appeared in his doorway and looked at me. This pull, this awareness, this sense that he sees something in me that I'm only beginning to understand myself. But yesterday was just a moment, a heartbeat of eye contact before he walked away without a word.
Today, he's not walking away.
"You know what I think?" His voice is steady, even, like we're still discussing business plans and market research instead of standing inches apart with the air between us humming with tension.
"What?"
"I think you like it when someone pushes back. When someone doesn't just hand you what you want because you want it."
The observation lands like truth, unwelcome and impossible to deny. I do like it. Liked it when Jones challenged me in that first meeting. Liked it when Eric made me work for every flirtation.
And I'm liking it now, even as Vincent's questions poke at every insecurity I have about my own preparedness.
"That's not?—"
"You walked in here ready to be defensive, expecting me to ask softball questions like my brothers did. Instead, I gave you something to actually fight against, and look what happened."
He's right. Completely, annoyingly right. I was prepared for gentle handling, for careful encouragement, for the same kind of supportive-but-vague responses I've gotten from everyone else when I talk about my café dream.
Vincent gave me real opposition, real challenges, and instead of wilting under the pressure, I fought back.
"You're infuriating."
"I know."
"And arrogant."
"Also true."
"And you think you know everything about me after watching me for two days."
"No," Vincent says, and his voice drops even lower, rougher, like gravel over silk. "I think I know enough to want to learn the rest."
The admission hangs between us, honest and dangerous and completely at odds with the professional conversation we started with.
My pulse pounds in my throat, in my wrists, in the space between my thighs where Eric's hands were just hours ago.
Vincent's gaze drops to my mouth again, and this time he doesn't look away. Doesn't pretend he's not staring at my lips with the kind of focused attention that makes my knees unsteady.
"I wonder what else that mouth can do besides argue with me."
The words are quiet, unhurried, stated like a fact he's been considering for a while. Not a question—an observation.
Classic Vincent, turning something heated into something clinical, except there's nothing clinical about the way he's looking at me or the way my body responds to the rough edge in his voice.
My brain scrambles for a retort, something sharp and cutting that will put distance between us, but my body has other ideas. Heat pools low in my belly, and my lips part on a breath that comes out shakier than I intended.
Vincent notices. Of course he notices. His brown eyes track the movement, cataloguing my reaction the same way he catalogued everything else about me, and the attention feels like a touch even though he hasn't laid a finger on me.
Then he does.
His hand slides along my jaw, fingers threading into the hair at the base of my neck, and the contact sends electricity shooting down my spine.
The touch is decisive, purposeful, like everything else Vincent does—no hesitation, no testing the waters.
Just his hand in my hair and his thumb brushing over my cheek, and I'm lost.
He pulls me closer, and I let him. Let him guide me forward until I'm pressed against the desk between his legs, until I have to brace my hands on his thighs to keep my balance.
The denim of his jeans is warm under my palms, and I can feel the muscle underneath, solid and real and completely overwhelming.
Vincent's mouth finds mine with the same precision he brings to everything else. The kiss is rough, hungry, nothing like the careful exploration I might have expected from the quietest of the three brothers.
He kisses me like he's been thinking about it for a while, like he's done waiting and watching and ready to move on to something more tangible.
I kiss him back just as hard, just as hungry, because this is what I wanted without knowing I wanted it. Jones's commanding intensity, Eric's warm teasing, and now Vincent's precise hunger—each of them different, each of them pulling something different out of me, each of them impossible to resist.
Vincent's free hand settles on my waist, fingers digging into my hip hard enough to leave marks, and the slight pain makes me gasp against his mouth. He takes advantage of the opening, tongue sliding against mine, and the kiss turns deeper, dirtier, more demanding.
This is Vincent unleashed, Vincent done with observing and ready to participate, and the difference is staggering.
All that quiet intensity focused entirely on me, on this moment, on the taste of my mouth and the way I respond when he bites my lower lip just hard enough to sting.
I arch into him without meaning to, pressing closer, and he makes a sound low in his throat that vibrates against my lips. Approval. Satisfaction. The sound of a man getting exactly what he wanted.