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Tonight, there was no perfume—just the soft whiff of coconut from her shampoo and the natural scent of her skin.

I craved it as much as I hated it.

“Sorry,” she apologized again. “I forgot I left my phone out here.”

Stop apologizing.

Her eyes flew up to mine.

Two sorrys in two minutes is a bit much when you don’t have anything to apologize for.

I didn’t like the restrained, obsequious version of Ayana. It wasn’t her. I wanted to see the version that’d bitten my head off back at the bakery—and who was glaring at me now like she wasn’t sure whether she should agree with me or slap me.

Satisfaction leaked into my chest.That’s more like it.

Granted, I could’ve worded it less like an asshole, but the more I kept her at arm’s length, the better.

Why do you have to be back in New York by Monday morning?

I switched subjects, hoping the conversation would distract me.

Long legs, high cheekbones, rich brown skin, and dark eyes that gleamed with a mixture of intelligence and playfulness—even if she weren’t a well-known model, Ayana would turn heads walking down the street.

But the majority of her allure for me didn’t rest on her physical looks. It was the way she moved, with a natural grace that couldn’t be taught; it was the way she laughed, so whole-heartedly and joyously that it could chase away the darkest shadows. And it was the way she glowed, like there was a fire inside her that was just waiting to be unleashed.

Fame or not, Ayana Kidane was born to shine.

“I have a photoshoot for Delamonte Cosmetics.” She took the seat across from mine. Her midnight-black hair fell in waves past her shoulders, and her skin glowed beneath the suite’s dim lights. She appeared oblivious to my inner turmoil. “I’m their newest beauty ambassador and this is my first shoot with them, so it’s a big deal.”

A big enough deal that her agent would call her on a Saturday to harass her about it.

I couldn’t hear what he said, but I’d heard her end of the conversation. I remembered the way her nails dug into the seat and the tension underlying her voice.

It’d been more than stress; it’d been fear.

Hank Carson.I rolled the name over in my mind as I asked my next question.

Modeling. That was your childhood dream?

“Not exactly.” She traced an absentminded finger over the table. “I loved beauty and fashion. I even convinced my parents to get me aVoguesubscription when I was eleven. But I didn’t see myself as a model. I wanted to be…well, a lot of things. A pediatrician. A psychologist. An interpreter. I ended up studying chemistry and pre-med at Howard until I went to a friend of a friend’s party at Thayer. Hank was there and scouted me. The rest is history.”

I knew all this already. I’d watched every interview and read every article she’d ever been mentioned in.

But I relished hearing her share the details with me herself, though the trace of bitterness in her voice told me there was more to the story than she let on.

For a model who’d graced the cover of countless magazines and commanded the runways in New York, Paris, and Milan, she didn’t appear too thrilled.

“What about you?” Ayana’s eyes were bright with curiosity. “How did you get into the alcohol business?”

It was infuriating, the way my heartbeat thrummed at the faintest sign of interest from her.

I studied chemical engineering.

“That’s not exactly a direct pipeline to running a multinational empire.”

I also studied business on the side.

I didn’t give her my whole, boring backstory, which was that I’d worked for a small distillery in my Virginia hometown in high school. I’d hated how it was run, so I’d saved enough money to buy it outright after college. After I took it over, I’d used my knowledge of chemical engineering to revolutionize the vodka-making process. Markovic Holdings was born, and it kept growing until it became what it was today.