3

Emerson was red in the face and overheated as she hunted down Liam Wyatt.

Lost in a maze of hallways and wings, she finally caught the scent of something sweet, possibly chocolate, and sped up her pursuit, determined not to let hunger deter her from the fight she had in her.

After many failed attempts at pushing through doors, she finally pummeled through a swinging door and arrived in a kitchen that had long sweeping white marble counters, a center island the size of her entire kitchen, and appliances that looked more like technological inventions than kitchen apparatuses.

"Cookie?" Liam asked, pulling a sheet of chocolate chip cookies from the oven.

"I don't want a damn cookie."

The man was an enigma—simple surrounded by complexity.

"More for me." Overlooking her tone, figuring she'd explain it eventually if she wanted to, he transferred cookies to a plate. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"No," she said sternly, refusing to let go of her bite. "I'm mad at you, and you're going to listen to me. You tricked me into coming here and I don't care to be tricked. My CEO is pissed as hell that you didn't invite me here to talk about a partnership because he's..." she considered her words, "misleadingly intrigued by your business sense, and wanted to do a deal with you."

"Misleadingly intrigued? You mean because no one should be intrigued by an unscrupulous, arrant butt-face?" Unaffected, he bit at a cookie, decided the batter required more nuts.

"This isn't funny, Liam. My CEO is pissed because he thinks I'm not doing my job, which technically he's right. My stomach is still woozy from the ridiculous helicopter ride, my shirt is filthy from your unruly dog, flights are cancelled at least until tomorrow which means that I'm stuck here with you, and my son needs his damn cupcakes!" The eruption of anger finished with some huffs and paces around the kitchen.

Liam mixed more pecans into the bowl followed by a quick, barely perceptible pause.

"You have a son?" He considered the idea as he strong-armed the thick batter.

"I have a son who needs his mother at home. I'm supposed to bake cupcakes and deliver them to daycare tomorrow."

"Do you need a nanny too? Is he being cared for while you're gone?"

"What? What kind of response is that? He's with my mom and is just fine. She's probably happy she gets him all to herself a little longer. What're you doing?"

She watched him pull his phone out, press a couple buttons then hold it to his face while he piled clumps of dough onto a cookie sheet.

"I'm sorry, is my life boring to you?"

"Not in the least," he responded matter-of-factly. "Calling my assistant."

She threw her arms up in the air. "And why does your phone work in here and mine doesn't?"

"I tweaked it."

She huffed out a sigh. The man was infuriating, that was all there was to it. It was simple, he was simple. And complex and arrogant and entitled and manipulative and maddeningly attractive.

"Need you to hunt down some cupcakes and have them delivered. Emerson here will give you the details. Hold on."

He handed his phone over. "Here's April. Just tell her what you need, when you need it, and where it's going."

A wave of parental guilt swamped her. "That's cheating. I'm a mom. I'm supposed to be there to make the cupcakes myself."

"But you can't. Weather. This is next best." He kissed the top of her head as if the act were routine.

She frowned as she relayed the details to the polite and efficient assistant then handed the phone back after noting that it smelled like him—clean, masculine, wealthy, and dangerous.

As if wealth had a smell, but it did, she decided. So did danger. Whatever the scent, it knotted in her stomach as he ended the call then placed a cookie on a small plate and set it in front of her.

Temper deflating, she leaned against the thick slab of marble that covered the island and stared at the cookie.

She wanted to stay mad, because if she considered any other emotion, it would likely be desire. And she didn't want desire, she didn't have time for it and it didn't fit in her life. It wasn't the worst thing in the world to be stuck in the ridiculously named "camp" with an attractive man who baked a batch of cookies, then fixed problems with a single call to his assistant. Nor did it really hurt anything to let desire play in her mind.

As she talked herself in and out of thoughts, knots tugged tight in her stomach and were, she noticed, faintly familiar. The last time she'd felt them had been five years ago in New Orleans with Liam.

Which was a sad state of her love life that the strongest memory of sex and passion was from five years ago, but she just had other more immediately important things in her life now. She was living real life, in the real world, as a single working mother.

Snow fell fast and without sound outside the broad kitchen windows that were foggy around the edges, making life around her feel quiet compared to her thoughts. There weren't any colors except the black of the lake and the white of the snow but it was a pretty picture, stark and somehow cozy.

Why the enormous stone castle kept any heat in it was a mystery to Emerson. And so was the man she'd once had a spontaneous tangle with, who seemed comfortable in every moment he stepped into.

His comfort was altogether unsettling.

She sighed out the last of her temper, for now, and gave in to the cookie.

"Tell me about your son," he said tossing a dash of cinnamon into the bowl for the next batch.

Men didn't want to hear about her child, she knew. She'd dated—if it could be called that—in sparse increments and discovered most men ignored the topic, some inquired, dipping a toe in the water before running the other way, and some went out of their way to be so okay with it that they came across as attempting the façade of not freaking out even though they actually were.

Any way you looked at it, the men she'd dated didn't really want to know about her son so she'd stopped dating.

Not that she was on a date now, she corrected, watching the muscles in Liam's legs move him around the kitchen.

"His name is Archer, he's four, he loves Legos, and he's the love of my life." She sped through the response. "Why are you baking?"

Comfortable with what he considered dual conversations rather than a change of topic, he slid another cookie onto Emerson's plate and thought about what it would be like to have a son, a little being that looked up to him.

It was a thought he'd considered lately more than he ever thought he would, but then again family had occupied him for the past month since his brother's diagnosis. It was the one thing that had escaped him in his success, having a family of his own, and the one thing he found himself missing.

"Legos are amazing. You can create a whole different world that you dominate and rule. Whatever you can dream, you can build. I like cookies so I made some. Thought you'd like them too, given the number of beignets you ate that morning in New Orleans."

The curved lips and knowing sparkle in his eyes buoyed inside of her and she couldn't help but let out a laugh at herself.

"Well, I'd worked up quite an appetite, I suppose."

"We."

"We?"

"We'd worked up an appetite. Ever wonder what would have happened if we'd exchanged names?"

She glanced out the window, her gaze settling on singular flakes, one after the other, as they fell.

"I have an amazing son so I can't answer any what-ifs because I wouldn't trade him for the world, even a hypothetical one."

He slid a bowl into the sink, tossed in some of the utensils he'd used. "Didn't mean it like that."

Liam stopped short. "You said he's four years old?"

She took another bite of the warm cookie, perfectly melted and gooey in the middle. "Yeah, he's an amazing little guy. Anyway, tell me something about you. What have you been up to? Other than living in a castle."

Emerson looked around for somewhere to sit. "You need some stools or chairs in here, by the way."

Liam's mind kicked into gear. He stepped toward her, lifted her up and plopped her on the island to sit, then stayed where he was, standing imposingly close to her. "Emerson."

"Liam." She mockingly matched his serious tone.

"Timing of things sounds suspicious. Anything you want to tell me?"

"Timing of what? Oh, you mean Archer? Wow, no. I'm so sorry. You're not his father. I guess I should've made that clear from the start. Incredibly sorry." She laughed at the panicked look on his face.

"His father is a man I broke up with before you and I...well, yeah...and we briefly got back together after you and I, and we created Archer. That sounds weird. Anyway, he's not in the picture, my ex, and decided he didn't want to even meet Archer."

Liam watched her, listening to every word, watching every fleck of emotion pass on her face as she spoke. "He just abandoned you both?"

Her hand lifted to Liam's chest, a brief companionable touch, a friendly gesture, she told herself. "It wasn't like that. He just didn't want to be part of it. He would have stayed with me out of obligation if I wanted that, but I didn't. A relationship based on obligation isn't something I'm interested in."

"What are you interested in?"

Because she was seated on the cool slab of marble rather than standing at her usual petite height, their faces were close—his gray eyes intent, curious, knowing, his lips waiting.

"I haven't really thought that much about it lately. I ultimately want love...I guess." She glanced out the window again, letting an image roll through her mind.

"I want to see a man I've been with for thirty years across the room and I want to still desire him. And I want to be able to just hold hands through difficult life moments, you know? Someone who's there with you." The gold in her hazel eyes glowed with imagined nostalgia.

"But my friends think I'm crazy to want all that with one person. But anything less is just...not enough. Which explains why I'm single, I guess."

He nudged her face up, just slightly. "It can't be easy to raise a kid on your own and be an executive, working your way to the top. You're still the same fiery, passionate woman I met in New Orleans, but you're softer now too. Like you have this wise softness in the center of you that you keep under the surface. But it's there. And it's beautiful."

Speechless, she reminded herself to breathe. She inhaled, exhaled, and the fringes of the stress from the morning and afternoon relaxed into the warmth of his words.

"I don't know what to say. I've never heard anyone say anything like that. In the movies maybe, but never in real life. Never from anyone who..." She wanted to describe him but words escaped her that would describe the enormity of him, the startling depth of him.

"From anyone who is you," she decided.

He watched her mind work, her breath catch. Desire, swift and strong, pulled hard.

"You should set down that cookie."

"What?" Glancing down, she saw the cookie in her grip. "Oh. Why? I might want to take a bite."

The smile she offered fell, along with the cookie, when he reached behind her and pulled her hips closer to the edge of the marble counter, closer to him.

"Oh," she managed, feeling herself loosing control. She was in charge of details, of deals, of a team, of her household, and now, secluded in a snowy castle with a man who so easily took what he wanted and gave his presence so sincerely, temptation took over.

"Just don't bite me," she whispered, anticipation lighting her eyes, remembering the nibble marks she'd carried home from New Orleans.

"No promises." Liam held her face, met her gaze before his lips met hers in devastatingly slow movements designed with such potency, her mind slipped into the silkiness of it, forgetting all thought, all worry.

"No promises," she repeated, understanding the double meaning. A no-strings-attached, no promises fling that no one had to know about was a luxury she rarely afforded herself. After a quick mental lashing that she was giving him the very thing he'd brought her there for, she decided she was taking what she wanted as well so it was a fair game.

Again, with a slow study of each other, her body opened, warmed, and wanted nothing more than him in that heated winter moment.