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Frankie puffed up like an offended cat, her freckles disappearing under her flush. “I’ve never set anything on fire,” she said defensively. “AndIwas the one who asked for the meeting, remember?”

“Eh, semantics,” Vanessa teased, waving Frankie’s argument away like it was a cloud of smoke. “I just love to see you sweat.”

Frankie

I rolled my eyes at Vanessa, who called me over while Hayden talked business with Joe.

“Please don’t say ‘I told you so’,” I practically begged her.

“Come on,” she groaned. “You know me better than that.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” she said, casually brushing me off, “I noticed that Hayden has eased up on a few of the changes. A lot. You wouldn’t happen to have something to do with that, would you?”

I sucked on the inside of my cheek to smother my grin but ultimately failed.

“You could say we came to an agreement,” I hedged, my gaze drifting back to where Hayden stood, talking animatedly to Joe, Dean, and Blanca. “And I know you want all the saucy details, but I’m not going to give them to you. At least, not until I’ve had my time to properly freak out about them.”

Vanessa chuckled under her breath. “Look, I just want to say that Hayden has changed a lot since the day she first walked in here,” she said. “I never expected her to be this hands on, or even to care this much about us or the store. I thought we’d be another little side project until she got bored and moved on.”

I blinked at Vanessa. “You told me to look at the bright side.” I gasped in disbelief. “And all the while you thought the absoluteworstof Hayden! Do your kids know you lie, Vanessa?”

Vanessa artfully slipped away just as Hayden walked up to us, talking about how badly she needed to clean her coffee machine.

“Liar!” I called after her, but I laughed anyway.

“Hey,” Hayden murmured, her hand gentle on my lower back. “I have the initial contracts, wanna go over them together?”

I nodded and followed her into the staff room, where she produced said contracts and a bottle of champagne I hadn’t noticed.

“What’s all this?” I asked, holding up the obviously expensive champagne.

“I thought we could sign the contracts and cap off a successful day with celebratory drinks,” she announced, setting two glasses from Blanca’s green juice section on the table between us.

“Hayden,” I chuckled, “it’s eleven in the morning.”

“And it’s happy hour somewhere in the world,” she said, filling both glasses and handing me one. “What’s your point?”

“I don’t even remember.” I relented, taking the glass from her. “Do you always carry around a bottle of bubbly or was this a special occasion?”

Hayden laughed, the sound as rich as the champagne that tickled my nose. “I’d love to be the kind of person who carries champagne with her wherever she goes,” she lamented, clinking her glass to mine. “But this is only for special occasions, and I’d say your first successful investor meeting definitely calls for celebration.”

“It was only successful because you were there,” I admitted, the nerves still jangling loosely in my limbs. “I don’t think I would have listened to a word he said if I didn’t think you had the store’s back, or mine.”

“I’ll always have your back,” she said, a playful smile gracing her lips. “And this store is going to make me a very rich woman.”

The jeer in her words pulled a scoff from me, and I leveled a dead stare at her.

“You hardly need the extra money,” I pointed out. She considered it with a thoughtful frown and shrugged.

“Then it’ll makeyoua very rich woman,” she conceded. “A rich woman with enough time to catch up on some actual sleep.”

I glanced away from the intensity of her gaze, those piercing eyes still slightly unnerving, even if they held me captive.

“If I let you have your way,” I said, “you’d chain me to the bed until I caught up on all thirty years’ worth of missed sleep.”

“Love, if I chained you to the bed, sleep would be the last thing on my mind.”