I braced myself, fully expecting Nick to return the favor and punch me back. But instead, his laugh faded as he sauntered slowly back inside his restaurant, rubbing his palm across his jaw.
“Oh my God!” Chloe cried, throwing her arms around my neck and hugging me. “I can't believe you did that for me.”
“He called you a bitch. That's unacceptable. Then again, punching someone in the face is probably also unacceptable.” I shook out my aching hand, opening and closing it a few times.
Chloe pulled back from the hug, keeping a hand on each my shoulders. She blinked those blue eyes, now shimmering with a layer of unshed tears.
Oh crap. No more tears. Not right now while I was out in public after having just punched a guy in the face and could feel my heart beating within my throbbing knuckles. The last thing I needed right now was to start sympathetic crying right along with Chloe. But sure enough, there was that tightness in my throat as it always was when a woman around me cried.
“It's just,” Chloe started to say, but her voice cracked. She tried clearing her throat and began again. “It's just I've been called that before. A few times actually. Once in front of Dan, who actually agreed with the guy when he said it. No one's ever stood up for me before, outside of my sister, mother, and father.”
I couldn’t have heard that right. “Dan actually agreed with the guy?” I shook my head. I hated him more and more with every passing day.
“We were in line at a store and the guy behind me kept bumping me. I turned around to ask him to stop at least twice, and by the third time he told me I was a prissy bitch. Dan laughed and said that I sometimes could be.” Chloe shrugged and pulled away from me, her hands skimming down the length of my arms. “I mean, I guess they’re right. I can be both prissy and bitchy.”
I launched myself forward, gripping her hands gently and pulling her back to look at me. “I want to be really clear,” I said. “If a man had done either of those things you did — told someone who bumped him to back off or strongly advocated for their new business while being interviewed on the news — no one would ever call him an insult like bitch. This misogynistic bullshit’s got to stop.”
Chloe blinked, her mouth gaping open, and I felt my cheeks go hot. Just like my stupid sympathetic crying, I was pretty sure men who blushed weren’t exactly sexy. But there was something in the intense way she was staring at me—those unrelenting blue eyes wider and brighter than before.
Her tensed shoulders relaxed, and a soft smile splayed across her full lips. “Liam Evans,” she said quietly, “Explain to me again how the hell you’re single?”
Her thumbs started stroking the backs of my hands in sensual circles, and that glistening gaze of hers dropped to my mouth, hungry.
Even still, her chest rose and fell with each heavy breath she took, and I licked my lips, aching to kiss her again. Her lips were all I thought about since that morning she kissed me in her foyer. I craved more, desperately wanted her. With a little tug, I pulled her closer to me, and her soft breasts brushed against my body.
I unlinked my fingers from one of her hands and cupped her jaw. “I could say the same thing about you,” I whispered.
As I leaned down to kiss her, she squeaked, “Wait!”
Shit. I misread the situation. Or I moved too fast. I swallowed a grunt and opened my eyes to find Chloe staring up at me panicked. “I-I can’t,” she stammered.
I immediately stepped back from her, nodding. “Yeah. I’m sorry. That was stupid… we’re business partners and—”
“It’s not because of that. I just… I can’t because of my sister.”
I felt my brows crease. “Lainey? I thought Lainey liked me?” Hell, before the thing with my brother, I would have even called her a friend.
“She does,” Chloe said. “It’s just with her and Neil, she sort of flipped out that first night when she found out you spent the night.”
“But nothing happened that night.”
“I know! That’s what I told her. But still. She made me pinky promise we wouldn’t… that I wouldn’t…”
“Ah.” I smiled even though my heart was sinking into my stomach. “I see. I mean, according to Addy, a pinky promise is a binding contract.”
Chloe sighed in relief. “You understand? Maybe if she has more time to process and heal. But for now… I can’t.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
And though I didn’t say it, I was thinking, I can wait.
15 Chloe
The next day was about as successful as our first. We had a couple hundred dollars in the till, but far more unsold baked goods than we should on an opening week. Liam and I dropped off the remaining leftovers to the Maple Grove nursing home, then went to the bar at Greico’s to drown our sorrows in booze and pasta.
I dropped my head into my hands as the bartender delivered my second Limoncello and poured another glass of red wine for Liam. He swirled it but didn’t bother with a sip, sighing instead into the glass. “What if we go out to the public hiking trails at the lake like you said a while ago? There aren’t any restaurants out there, so we might have more luck with foot traffic.”
I shrugged. “Sure. Why not. But then you should probably add something heartier, like a lunch option, to the menu that day. Hikers tend to want more than just baked goods, right?”
I was just assuming. What the hell did I know about hiking? I’d only been twice in my life—once as
