With No Reservations

Sloane cleared her throat when the hammering paused and stretched to her tiptoes, watching for signs of life in the window of the door behind the counter. There was an impressive stainless steel espresso machine, a few large glass display cases and huge chalkboard panels spread across the serving counters waiting to be written on then hung behind the cash register.

So the restaurant mogul was up on the current trends. Good. It would make her job easier.

“Sloane Bradley?” The contractor walked in her direction, pulling off work gloves to reveal tan, muscled forearms.

“Yes, I’m here to meet with someone from J. Marian Restaurants.”

They were supposed to be talking strategy about the restaurant’s soft opening scheduled for Saturday. But at this rate, it would never be ready by then with only one worker on the job.

Though he certainly looked capable enough.

“You’re from VisibilityNet, right?”

She commanded control of her wayward focus and nodded. This wasn’t how the next few months were going to go. On the clock, Sloane.

“Is anybody back there?” She pointed to the door behind the counter then clamped her hands around the strap of her bag to make their shaking less obvious.

The man paused for a beat and pushed his protective glasses up to reveal appraising, gold-flecked brown eyes.

Sloane took a step back as her brain clicked into cognition.

No. It couldn’t be.

“You’re early.”

It was. Dana had told her the Cooper family would send one of their PR suits, not their spoiled frat boy of a son. It was the face she’d seen on the magazines in the grocery checkout a few years ago, curled into a perpetual smirk. Accessorized by handcuffs, models and half-empty bottles. Only now, his pale, lanky angles had softened into serious lines.

Professional. Right. She must remain professional.

“I’m right on time, Mr. Cooper.” Sloane zeroed in on the layer of dirt that speckled his hands. “May I call you Graham?”

Don’t shake my hand. Please, don’t shake my hand.

“I go by Cooper, actually. My father is Graham.” He moved behind the counter to scrub his hands in the porcelain sink then disappeared through the door into what she assumed was the kitchen.

Sloane spun around—surely this was some kind of joke—and dropped into a chair at the table closest to the door. Better to make a quick getaway if she needed to.

Cooper reappeared right as she uncapped her trusty bottle of hand sanitizer and squeezed the gel into her palm. In his hands was a tray filled with stoneware dishes and a pair of mismatched mugs. Her stomach rumbled its appreciation for the smells coming from the tray.

Acting of its own accord, Sloane’s gaze flickered over him with the new knowledge of who he was, just long enough to absorb the muscles filling his stained white T-shirt, the two or three days’ worth of stubble lining his jaw and his brown hair mussed by the clear work glasses perched on the top of his head. Just long enough to register that he was even better looking in person as he wiped sauce from one of the plates with the edge of a cloth napkin.

But it was long enough for him to notice.

Heat spread across Sloane’s cheeks as her stomach dipped in response to him. What? Did she think this was some kind of reality show or something? And why was her body choosing now of all times to behave this way? It had to be some kind of fight-or-flight misfire.

Cooper set the tray of food in front of her. “I thought I’d give you a preview of what we’re going to serve at the soft opening in case you want to write about it in your little blog.”

Sloane raised an eyebrow. Little blog? Apparently his good looks weren’t all the gossip headlines were right about. But maybe his arrogance would serve her well. Anger and annoyance always had a way of making her less of an awkward disaster. They helped her maintain control.

She ignored his comment and reached for the crock of soup, focusing on the smell of hearty broth and some kind of caramelized white cheese.

Cooper gripped her forearm. “Careful. I just pulled that out of the oven.”

She snatched her hand back as sparks of electricity scattered up her arm. Forget the hot ramekin. His touch might as well have been the lit end of a July Fourth sparkler.

Cooper unrolled a cloth napkin and placed a fork and a spoon on a saucer, reaching across the table to hand it to her. The silverware clattered against the porcelain in her shaky grip when she took it, as if the restaurant were positioned along an unsteady fault line.

He glanced from Sloane’s hands to her eyes, a line creasing in his forehead as she reached into her bag and scrubbed the cutlery with a wipe before dipping her spoon in the soup.

“So, tell me a little about J. Marian Restaurants’ vision for this place.” She blew on the spoonful of broth, crouton and cheese, willing the soup to keep from dribbling back into the bowl since her hand still wasn’t cooperating. “It’s not like the corporation’s other restaurants, is it?”

One bite of the soup threw Sloane back with an explosive blast of flavor.

Cooper smirked at her reaction. “Does that taste like it came from my father’s other restaurants?”

“It’s fantastic,” she answered around another mouthful, already assembling her third bite. “Where did the chef come from?”

He sat up straighter in his seat and crossed his arms, his expressionless face the final brick in the wall he’d put up between them. “I’m the chef.”

Sloane nearly choked on her soup. Certainly, her ears had failed her. Graham Cooper Jr., a chef?

“I trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked in kitchens that made Gordon Ramsay’s seem like Girl Scout camp.”

Wow. His speech had the scratch of a broken record, as if he was used to giving it to naysayers. What did the heir to the Cooper dynasty have to prove anyway?

Sloane cleared her throat and pulled a pad of paper from her bag so she didn’t have to respond, making notes as she sampled the rest of the food in silence. There was an apple and brie panini, a chocolate croissant, a hybrid between a French dip and a croque monsieur, a salted brown butter and berry tart. The food was divine—all of it. She had to stop herself from clearing the entire tray. If she was in business mode, this food was putting up an involuntary out-of-office reply for her. The only thing that kept her in check was the mental tally of calories she’d have to plug into the app on her phone later.

“It was all very good.” Sloane squeezed another dollop of hand sanitizer into her hands as her own white flag of surrender to the food. “You’ve obviously done a lot of work with these flavor profiles.”

The corner of Cooper’s mouth curved into a crooked smile. “No offense, but what does a blogger know about flavor profiles?”

Sloane’s pulse pounded in her ears as she stared at the amused individual across from her in shock.

His grin faded to wide-eyed panic. “Wait. I’m sorry.” He leaned his head on his hands, realized he was still wearing his work goggles and set them on the table. “I think that came out the wrong way.”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” Sloane stared at the goggles. What else could he have meant? He was surely trying to placate her because he didn’t want to be inconvenienced by hurt feelings. She pulled her shoulder blades together. “Can we get back to work now? I’m sure you also have better things you could be doing right now.”

Two could play at that game.

“Go ahead.”

“So, Mr. Cooper. I asked you about the vision for this place. I take it you spearheaded the development yourself?”

Cooper laced his fingers behind his head, studying Sloane through heavy-lidded eyes. “Yes, ma’am. I wanted an answer to my father’s way of doing things, which works for him, I guess, but in a different way.”

Sloane scribbled the keywords that would help her remember their conversation later. “So you basically set out to create a restaurant that will cause a stir with how your father usually does things.”

Cooper frowned and shifted in his seat, scanning her pad of paper. “I wanted to create an atmosphere that said Stay awhile and a cost-effective, sustainable menu that said Savor. You can read into that whatever you want.”