Chapter 2
Two
EZRA
Hmm, where is she? She’s taking too long.
I tap my foot against the table leg as my brothers and I wait for Liana Marsh to arrive. The bakery is warm as we sit at a table closest to the window, waiting for our scheduled meeting. It smells like butter and cinnamon in here.
I chose the table by the window deliberately. Glass on two sides gives me sightlines to both the front door and the street, where the brick storefront of Marsh Florals sits two doors down, its sage-green door closed, the CLOSED sign turned toward the glass.
Seventy-five thousand dollars. More than generous. More than fair.
I want this clean and fast. I don’t want the bad press of evicting a small business owner from a property she’s clearly poured her life into.
“Seventy-five thousand should do it,” my brother Julian says, stirring his coffee with the handle of his spoon. He’s got that look on his face, the one he wears when he’s already counting the win. “That’s life-changing money for a shop that size. She’ll take it.”
“Definitely,” Cole agrees. He’s sitting with his back to the wall, watching the door, his posture loose in that deceptively relaxed way that means he’s clocked every exit, every face, every potential threat in the room without seeming to look.
The sniper’s habit. He never loses it. “We’ve got this in the bag. ”
My youngest brother, August, hasn’t said a word.
He’s got his notebook open on the table, a fountain pen moving across the page in that small, precise script of his.
He loves places like this, and he’s the only one of us who looks like he belongs here in a cafe.
The soft cream sweater, the tortoiseshell glasses sliding down his nose, the boyish slump of his shoulders.
I check my watch. Ten seventeen. She’s late.
“How do you even know she’s coming?” August says without looking up.
“She’s coming,” I say with absolute certainty.
The bell over the door rings.
And there she is.
Fuck. No one told me how beautiful she was.
She walks in with her chin up and her shoulders back and her dark auburn hair pulled into a messy braid that falls over one shoulder, and something in my chest goes tight before I can stop it.
She looks five-two, and her build is petite. My breathing harshens at the sight of her, and my entire body tightens. What the hell is wrong with me?
She’s wearing a loose cream sweater that falls past her hips and soft, worn-looking pants in some faded earth tone, and she looks like she’s trying very hard to be formidable and succeeding only in looking cuter.
My dick gets hard instantly.
Full, throbbing hard, pressing against the seam of my trousers in a way that is absolutely fucking unacceptable at ten in the morning in a goddamn bakery.
Julian goes still beside me.
Across the table, Cole’s posture shifts by maybe half an inch, his shoulders squaring, his gaze tracking her with the focused intensity of a man who has just identified a variable he didn’t account for.
August’s pen stops, and he looks up over the rim of his glasses with his bright blue eyes wide and his mouth slightly open, and the honey scent of him brightens by several degrees.
None of us speak. The air between our table and the door feels charged and thick.
She scans the room. Finds us.
Her pale green eyes lock with mine across twenty feet of warm bakery air. Her gaze is cold, electric, and sharp. She holds the look for three seconds longer than she needs to, and something in that defiance makes my cock twitch against my thigh.
She walks over with a determined look in her eye and pulls out the empty chair next to Julian, sitting across from me.
Her movements are precise, controlled. She folds her hands on the table in front of her, and I notice that her fingers are shaking.
I try to ignore it. Mercy is not a luxury I can afford in a negotiation.
“Liana Marsh,” I say. Her full name. Formal. Cold. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
She looks up. Those pale green eyes meet mine, and the gold flecks in them catch the morning light through the window. Defiant. Beautiful. Fuckable.
“No problem,” she says. Her voice is soft. Softer than I expected. The kind of voice that makes you lean in to hear it.
“Ezra Frostwood,” I say. “Chief Executive Officer, Frostwood Holdings.”
Julian leans forward, that charming smile sliding into place like he’s flicked a switch. “Julian Frostwood. Executive Vice President.” He extends his hand. She doesn’t take it.
Cole nods once. “Cole Frostwood. Head of security.”
August sets his pen down. “August. Record-keeping and analyst. It’s nice to meet you, Liana.”
She looks at each of us in turn. When her eyes land on August, her gaze softens a little before hardening again when she turns to me.
“I came here to tell you that I’m not interested in your deal and that you need to back off…” she starts to say as I push the folder across the table.
“Just take a look,” I say in a steady voice. “It’s the agreement for you to relinquish any and all rights to Marsh Florals, in exchange for a one-time relocation buyout of seventy-five thousand dollars. The terms are clear. The timeline is ninety days.”
She looks at the folder. Doesn’t open it.
“No,” she says.
The word sits between us. Small. Clear. Final.
“Why?”
“No way,” she says. Her voice is still soft, but there’s steel underneath it now, something that makes my skin prickle. “I’m not selling my shop. I worked really hard on it. It’s the only thing I have in this world.”
I’ve heard this before.
A hundred times, from a hundred different people in a hundred different properties. I look at her hands. Still shaking. Still folded on the table like she’s holding herself together by force.
“Liana,” I say, and I reach across the table and place my hand over hers.
Her skin is warm and soft in a way that makes my fingers want to curl around hers. There’s a scent coming off her that isn’t bakery bread or coffee. Her scent underneath smells floral and faintly sweet. Rose, maybe. Something that makes the alpha in me go quiet and alert at the same time.
“Nothing you say will convince me.”
“I understand it’s hard,” I say, my voice dropping lower and gentler.
I’ve been too hard on her. “But sometimes life gives you something better than what you’re holding onto.
If you don’t sign, the building will be mine anyway in ninety days.
The lease expires. The paperwork is already filed.
If you sign now, you walk away with $75,000.
That’s a fresh start. That’s more than fair. ”
She looks down at my hand covering hers. Her lip begins to tremble.
Then the tears come. Her tears track down the fair skin of her cheek and drop onto the table between our hands.
The sight of her crying hits me in my chest. It’s a little harder to breathe right now, and I don’t know why this crying woman is affecting me right now.
My hand tightens around her hand without me knowing it.
Suddenly, she pulls her hand out from under mine and stands up. Her chair scrapes back against the floor.
Julian reaches for her, his hand shooting out, fingers brushing her wrist, the lightest possible contact, skin against skin for maybe half a second.
They both freeze.
Julian’s face goes slack. His hazel eyes widen. His fingers recoil from her wrist like he’s been burned, and he pulls his hand back so fast he knocks his coffee cup. Liquid sloshes over the rim, dark and steaming across the table.
Liana stands perfectly still.
Her eyes are on Julian’s hand, then on his face, and whatever passes between them in that look is something I can’t read. Her expression shifts from shock to fear.
Then she yanks her hand away as she turns away.
And she’s gone, pushing through the bakery door with the bell ringing behind her, her footsteps quick and light on the sidewalk outside before they fade into the morning traffic.
Silence at our table.
Coffee pooling on the wood. Julian staring at his hand like it belongs to someone else.
August leans back in his chair. Raises one eyebrow. “Great job,” he says sarcastically, finally looking up from his fucking notebook.
I push my coffee to the side. The floral scent lingers in the air between us, faint and unsettling.
“What the fuck was that about?” I say out loud at her reaction. “Seventy-five thousand is more than enough. Why would she need a flower shop? The numbers don’t support it. The location doesn’t support it. She could open somewhere else. Somewhere better.”
Nobody answers me.
I look at Julian. He’s still staring at his hand, his expression unreadable, his normally easy charm replaced by something tense and focused.
“Julian,” I say sharply. “What’s the matter?”
He looks up. His hazel eyes find mine, and there’s uncertainty. Alarm.
“Something felt off,” he says. His voice is quiet. Careful. “When I touched her. Just for a second. She’s…” He pauses. Looks at Cole, then at August, then back at me. “She’s not just a regular beta. Or anything normal.”
The air in the bakery goes still. Cole’s posture shifts and August sets his pen down very slowly.
Alarm moves through me like cold water. My skin prickles. The floral scent in the air suddenly seems sharper, more deliberate, like something I should have noticed the moment she walked in.
“Do you think she’s an omega?” I ask.
The question hangs between us. Four alphas at a table in a warm bakery, the scent of butter and cinnamon and something floral lingering in the air, and the implications of what Julian just said settling over us like a weight.
Julian doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I look out the window.
Two doors down, the door of Marsh Florals is closed, the CLOSED sign turned toward the glass, and the ivy climbing the brick wall catches the morning light in tendrils of living green.
Something shifts in my chest.
Something cold and calculating gives way to something else — something warmer, darker, more possessive. She’s more precious than any property I’ll ever have. And now I know I won’t sleep until I find out who Liana Marsh is.