Chapter 1
Adrienne
Present Day…
Numbers should be my love language. Clauses too. I am fluent in indemnification. I can negotiate an escrow in my sleep. Normally, the neat stacks on my glass desk are soothing the way a lined arena is soothing before a barrel race.
Today, the letters blur.
I blink at a paragraph I wrote and approved two days ago, and all I see is the way grease glints on a forearm when sunlight hits it. All I hear is a voice, low as an engine at idle, teasing me.
You are not a teenager. You are Chief Legal Counsel. Focus, Adrienne.
I sit up straighter, as if posture can scare away a fantasy of Scotty.
I turn around to look at the several framed prints of my family lining my office walls.
Every time I struggle to regain focus at work, I remind myself of who I’m measuring up to.
It’s like a legacy of greatness for me to aspire to.
But my favorite picture sits on my desk. I turn back around and grab the frame. It’s Dad roping with Uncle Drake at the annual Slade Charity Rodeo and four-year-old me on his shoulders, holding up the trophy, determined that someday it would be me out there racing.
If there’s one thing I have always excelled at, besides kicking most of my male cousins’ asses in barrel racing, it’s having my shit together. Nobody was surprised when I got accepted into Northwestern and graduated Summa cum laude and then went on to graduate from Harvard Law Magna cum laude.
Just like nobody was surprised when I came back home and hit the ground running when it came to taking over Aunt Celeste’s position as Chief Legal Counsel at Slade.
Just like nobody is surprised that at twenty-nine, I’ve let my career consume me to the point that the only semblance of a romantic relationship I have is my ongoing flirt-fest with Scotty.
But inside, it feels like I’m building a house of cards that is barely standing.
I flip to the marketing addendum and reread Midas Distributing’s latest dodge.
They green-lit “campfire energy” back in March, and now they’re pretending it’s a usage restriction.
Fine. I draft a cure notice under Section 7.
2—forty-eight hours to reinstate the approved copy, or we proceed to remedies.
“Looping PR with a fallback line (“smoky caramel finish”) if they blink,” I say aloud as I type.
My finger hovers over send while I debate calling Ken at Midas to give him a piece of mind when a soft knock interrupts my thoughts.
Before I can even respond, my cousin Milly waltzes right into my office with a look on her face that already tells me lunch is going to be exhausting today.
“You’re useless right now,” she says, dropping into the chair across from me and drumming her fingers on the armrest.
“Excuse me? I’m in the middle of a very serious negotiation with Midas.”
“You’re right, in between daydreams of Scotty.”
I glare at her. “I am deeply committed to getting my way on this negotiation,” I say blandly as I hit send on the email, pretending I did not just stare at the same sentence for four minutes. “Whatever, Brooklyn will eat Ken’s dick for lunch, I guarantee it.”
Milly points at my face. “That is your daydream expression.”
“You’re right, it is. I’m daydreaming about ripping Ken’s dick off.”
She’s not wrong. I’m right on schedule for my usual Scotty infatuation, post-breakup.
I arch a brow. “I’m… strategizing, not daydreaming.”
She rolls her eyes and hikes her thumb over her shoulder. “Brooklyn is already at the new café. Close the laptop, Barbie. The empire will survive if you eat a sandwich.”
“I have a board packet to finalize.”
“We both know you finalized it last night, because you are a monster. Come on.” She stands and snatches my pen, clearly not buying my bullshit today. “You can brief me on the Scotty fantasies while we walk.”
Great, because saying my fantasies about Scotty out loud will absolutely not help me stop thinking about the way his smile tilts when he is about to say something that will live under my skin all day.
I grab my phone and give in. “Fine. Thirty minutes. And you’re buying.”
Milly loops her arm through mine. “Please. I expense everything to the Slade Corporate account. Let’s go.”
We pass Trent’s office, where he’s on the phone, gesturing at a schematic, face red with frustration, while Uncle Drake sits across from him with that classic unimpressed look on his face.
He spots me and mimes a desperate plea for help, but I just shrug and keep moving.
The elevator doors part and swallow us, and for a second, the mirrored walls catch my eyes and reflect back a woman who looks perfectly calm.
I am perfectly calm. I am not thinking about Scotty, no matter how much they goad me. I am absolutely not thinking about Scotty.
The bell over the door jingles as Milly and I walk into the restaurant.
The new café that recently opened up in our small corner of the world is like a cutesy little place out of a Hallmark movie.
Even the name, Pike’s Perk, feels like it should be the place where the small-town single mom meets the grumpy mountain man who’s new to town.
There’s an exposed brick accent wall, fiddle-leaf fig plants dotted throughout, and of course, a chalkboard menu with drink names like: ‘Mile-High Macchiato’ and ‘Fourteener Fuel’.
“Welcome in,” a cheery voice greets us from behind the counter. The voice comes from a younger woman whose dark hair is piled impossibly high onto her head. She smiles, her cheeks so pink and rosy she looks cherubic. “Feel free to sit anywhere, and someone will be right over to you.”
Brooklyn has the corner table by the big window, laptop open, blazer on the chair back, phone face plastered to her cheek as she types frantically on the keyboard.
“I told you from day one, Ken, I won’t be dicked around by you or anyone at Midas Media. The terms and conditions were clearly outlined in the contract, along with the deliverables. It’s not my problem if you let an intern read the contract for you instead of your legal counsel.”
I smile to myself as she lays into him. Brooklyn has a lot less of a filter than I do and zero problems letting someone be on the receiving end of it.
There’s a smear of something glittery on her sleeve, probably toddler craft carnage, and a spreadsheet glowing on the screen that says she’s every bit as on-duty as I am.
If there’s one woman who can do it all, it’s Brooklyn Slade, as evidenced by her take-no-prisoners speech she’s barking into the phone.
She sees us and shuts the laptop with a little sigh of relief.
“I have to go, Ken, but don’t call me again about renegotiating because it’s not an option.
” She hangs up and drops her phone onto the table before standing up and giving me a brief hug.
“Finally. I was about five minutes away from sending out a search party for you.”
“Unnecessary,” I say, sliding into the chair across from her. “I left willingly. Also, nice speech to Ken.”
Milly snorts as she sits. “She left after I snatched her pen out of her hand and promised to pay.”
I press the cold water glass to my cheek. “You’re both dramatic, I’m swamped with work, you know that, and since Terrance moved back to Denver, I’m short a junior associate I can offload things to.”
“Whatever you say, counselor,” Brooklyn replies as the young woman from behind the counter approaches our table.
“Hi, ladies, welcome in. I'm Sadie. Can I get you something to drink?”
“This place is really cute,” I say, taking a moment to look around again, “are you the owner?”
“I am,” the woman smiles, jutting her hand out toward me. “I’m Sadie.”
I almost tell her she looks too young to own it, but I remember how much I hated hearing that from senior-level attorneys over the years. It almost felt like an underhanded way of saying they didn’t take me as seriously because of it.
“It’s so amazing to meet you, Sadie.” I shake her hand and we each go around introducing ourselves.
“I guess the Slades really do own this town, then, huh?” She laughs after hearing us each say our last name.
“Something like that," Milly laughs. “But I promise you, any of the bad rumors that you might hear are ancient history. The only Slades you have to worry about are the single male Slades.”
That sends us all into a fit of laughter because it’s kind of true. The second a single woman shows her face in this town, it’s a race to see which Slade asks her out first.
“Including her brothers.” Brooklyn points her finger at me and wiggles it, “That Axel is a handful and a half.”
“No kidding.” I roll my eyes. “But seriously, we’re just teasing,” I add when I see her eyes grow a little wide at our jokes. “My brother is great, he’s just the wild one out of us Slade triplets.”
“Triplets?” She shakes her head, “I bet your poor mom had her hands full then. I only have a fourteen-month-old daughter and I feel like I’m running on fumes and well,” she gestures around us, “caffeine.”
We finish up our small talk with Sadie, and she retreats to the back to get our drinks.
Brooklyn folds her hands under her chin and narrows her eyes in a way that would send a grown man’s testicles back up inside of himself. “So. Who ruined your attention span today?”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
Milly props her chin on her palm, grin pure trouble. “She had the look.”
“What look?”
“The Scotty look,” they say together, clearly pleased with themselves.
Heat crawls up my throat. I take a long drink of water.
“We are not doing this.”
Brooklyn’s smile tells me I don’t stand a chance against their onslaught. “We are absolutely doing this. It has been, what, two years since your last “almost” kiss, and you are recently back on the market, which means that Scotty will be sniffing around again at any second.