Twins For My Dad’s Best Friend (Surprise Times Two)

Chapter 1

Emma

My carry-on bag feels like it weighs about a hundred pounds.

I hoist it into the overhead compartment, my arms shaking like crazy, and tell myself it's just the adrenaline. The good kind. The kind that comes with doing something exciting.

I'm going to Italy. To Florence, to be exact. To learn everything I can about creating fragrances from a master perfumer who's agreed to let me shadow her for a week.

This is the beginning of everything.

I slide into the window seat—24A, coach of course, because who the hell can afford to fly first class?

—and pull out my notebook. The pages are crammed with formulas and margin notes in three different colors of ink.

My business plan for Essence is also in here, every detail I've agonized over for the past year.

Clean fragrances. No synthetics, nothing toxic. Just pure, beautiful scents.

The plane is filling up around me, a river of bodies and rolling luggage and that particular brand of travel chaos that makes my stomach churn.

I press myself against the window and flip to my notes on sandalwood sourcing, trying to focus.

I have exactly seven days to absorb a lifetime of knowledge.

Seven days to prove to myself that I can build something real, something that's entirely mine.

Something my father can't control.

I'm so deep in my notes—rereading about ethical harvesting practices—that I don't immediately notice someone has stopped beside my row. Don't notice the shift in the air and the faint scent of expensive cologne cutting through the cabin's nasty recycled air smell.

"Emma?"

My heart skips a beat.

I know that voice. Deep, smooth, with the kind of automatic authority that comes from years of people listening when you speak. I've been hearing that voice my entire life—at Christmas dinners, summer barbecues, my college graduation.

I look up slowly, my heart doing a somersault in my chest.

Grant Cross is standing in the aisle, looking at me with those gorgeous blue eyes.

"I—" My voice comes out strangled. I clear my throat, trying again. "Grant. Hi."

He's holding a laptop bag, dressed in dark jeans and a black quarter-zip sweater.

His salt-and-pepper hair is slightly mussed, like he's been running his hands through it, and there are the faintest lines around his eyes that I don't remember being there the last time I saw him.

When was that? More than a year ago? My father's birthday dinner, where I'd ducked out early, unable to stomach another evening of watching my dad hold court while my mother smiled her careful, perfect smile.

"What are you doing here?" Grant asks, and there's genuine surprise in his voice.

"I'm—" I gesture vaguely at my notebook, at the plane, at the rest of the passengers. "Going to Florence. You?"

"Same." He glances at his boarding pass, then at the seat numbers above my head. His brow furrows. Then his mouth—and God, I should not be noticing his mouth—curves into something rueful. "You're kidding me."

My stomach drops. "What?"

He holds up his boarding pass. "24B."

The middle seat. Right next to me.

Of course. Of course the universe would do this to me.

I would take my carefully planned trip, my solo journey of independence and self-discovery, and drop my father's billionaire best friend—the man I've had an embarrassing, ridiculous crush on since I was fourteen years old—directly into the seat beside me for a nine-hour flight across the Atlantic.

"What a coincidence," I manage weakly.

Grant's still looking at me with that slightly stunned expression, like he's trying to reconcile the Emma he knows—or thinks he knows—with the woman sitting in 24A.

His gaze flicks over me, quick but thorough, and I'm suddenly overly aware of what I'm wearing.

Black leggings, a cream-colored sweater, my hair loose and wavy around my shoulders instead of pulled back in my usual ponytail.

I'd dressed for comfort, for the long flight, but the way he's looking at me makes me feel like I'm wearing nothing at all.

"David didn't mention you were traveling abroad," he says, stowing his bag under the seat in front of him and settling into the seat beside me.

He's too big for the space, his shoulder nearly brushing mine, his presence overwhelming in the tight quarters of economy class.

And what the hell is he doing in the economy anyway?

"Dad doesn't know."

Grant's head turns sharply. "He doesn't know you're flying to Italy alone?"

There's something in his voice—concern, maybe, or disapproval—that makes my spine straighten defensively. "I'm twenty-four, not fourteen. I don't need his permission."

For a moment, Grant just looks at me. Really look at me. His eyes are this impossible shade of gray-blue, the kind of eyes that probably make corporate rivals squirm across boardroom tables. But there's something else in them now, something that's making me incredibly uncomfortable.

"No," he says finally, his voice quieter. "I don't suppose you do."

The flight attendant begins her speech on exit rows and oxygen masks, and I turn back to my notebook, not knowing what else to say.

I can feel the heat of him beside me, the subtle scent of his cologne—something cedar and citrus. Normally, I would be taking it in, breaking down the notes.

Instead, all I can think is that he smells incredible. And he looks even better.

"So," Grant says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even though I'm not looking at him. "Why are you heading to Florence?"

I take a quick glance at him. He's angled toward me, one arm resting on our shared armrest, his attention entirely focused on me in a way that makes my pulse pound.

"I’m starting a fragrance business," I say. "I'm meeting with a perfumer there. Daniela Conti. She's one of the last traditional distillers in Tuscany, and she's agreed to let me study her methods for a week."

"Perfume," Grant says, and there's a note of surprise. "I heard you were still doing that."

Still. Like it's a phase. Like it's something I'll grow out of.

I feel the familiar flash of defensive anger, the same anger that rises every time my father asks when I'm going to "get serious" about my career. "Yes, I'm still doing that." The words come out sharper than I intended. "This trip is research."

Grant holds up a hand, and I catch a glimpse of his watch—understated, elegant, and stupid expensive, no doubt. "Hey. I wasn't questioning it. I think it's—" He pauses, and when he continues, his voice is warm. "I think it's incredible, actually. That you're pursuing it."

The anger deflates, leaving me feeling suddenly exposed. "Oh.... thanks."

"Your father talks about you, you know. About the lab space you set up in your apartment, the formulas you're developing." Grant's mouth quirks. "He pretends to be baffled by it, but I can tell he's proud. Even if he doesn't know how to say it."

My throat tightens unexpectedly. "He has a funny way of showing it."

"David has a funny way of showing a lot of things."

There's something in the way Grant says it, a familiarity born of decades of friendship, that reminds me exactly who he is.

My father's best friend. His college roommate, his business confidant, the man he calls at midnight when he's had too much scotch and wants to reminisce.

They've known each other for over twenty years.

Which makes this—the way my heart is racing, the hyperawareness of every point where our bodies nearly touch—completely inappropriate.

I force myself to look back at my notebook. "What about you? Do you have business in Florence?"

"Property acquisition. There's a building near the Arno I'm looking at—sixteenth century, needs a complete restoration. I'm meeting with the preservation board."

Of course he is. Grant Cross doesn't just buy buildings; he resurrects them, turns them into architectural showcases that get written up in magazines.

His real estate empire spans three continents.

He's the kind of wealthy that doesn't feel real, the kind I've only ever glimpsed from the outside, at those family events where he and my father trade stories.

"Sounds complicated," I say.

"It is." He stretches slightly, and his shoulder brushes mine. The contact is brief, innocent, but it sends a shock of awareness racing down my arm. "But I like complicated things. Simple is boring."

“This trip was last minute, which is why I’m sitting back here… in the middle seat.”

Oh, well that makes sense. Otherwise, he’d be up front in first class.

I risk another glance at him and find him watching me with an expression I can't quite read. The plane chooses that moment to accelerate, engines roaring as we hurtle down the runway, and then we're airborne, the ground dropping away beneath us.

I turn back to my notebook and I try to focus on it, on anything other than the fact that Grant Cross is close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body. That every breath I take is laced with the scent of him.

This is going to be the longest nine hours of my life.

"So tell me about this company," Grant says once we've reached cruising altitude. He tugs the sleeves of his sweater up slightly, revealing tan forearms. "What's your target market?"

I should deflect. Should pull out my headphones, feign tiredness, create distance. Instead, I find myself turning toward him too, my notebook balanced on my lap.

"Women who are conscious about what they're putting on their bodies," I say.

"The clean beauty movement has exploded in skincare and cosmetics, but fragrance has lagged behind.

Most commercial perfumes are full of synthetic musks, phthalates, and chemicals that are potential endocrine disruptors.

" I'm warming to my subject now, the passion that drives me overriding my nerves.

"I want to create something different. Scents that are beautiful and complex but also completely non-toxic. "